Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: Nagasaki

  • The Case for a Group Nobel Peace Prize for Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s Global Survivors

    This article was originally published on the blog of Akio Matsumura.


    The survivors of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki–a group that represents not just Japan but many nations–carry memories invaluable to bridging the gap between violence and peace.  Their stories as the sole witnesses and survivors of nuclear weapons used as an act of war are the most powerful deterrent to future nuclear war.  There is not much time to carry their message forward; the bombings were many decades ago. The group and its message are fading.


    Historically, the Nobel Peace Prize has only been awarded to an institution or an individual, precluding groups from winning the Peace Prize. The Nobel Peace Committee should adjust its policies and bring renewed attention to the atrocities of nuclear weapons by awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s global survivors.    


    The Grave Issue of Nuclear Security


    You wouldn’t have to be a betting man to say that nuclear security has been synonymous with international security for the past seven decades.  Today, other pressing concerns have crowded the top of the agenda, but nuclear security holds its weight among them.  The US Congress just passed the New START agreement to reduce nuclear stockpiles.  The international community is concerned with developments of programs and testing in several countries, including Iran and North Korea.  And the threat of proliferation among terrorists, especially in Pakistan, has the United States and other governments in panic.  Much of the world’s violent conflict directly relates to the perception of nuclear instability in South Asia and the Middle East.  While there are many safeguards in place to reduce the threat of nuclear proliferation or attack, such an important issue deserves to be viewed from several perspectives.


    I am Japanese, and the two atomic bombs the United States dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki—on August 6 and 9, 1945—have played a special role in my life.  I have spent much time investigating the horrific disaster, from watching documentary films of survivor stories and political movements against the atomic bomb to talking with survivors, politicians, and religious figures.


    Piecing the Puzzle Together


    Such a polarizing global event has many facets, and to gain a full perspective one must be able to see them all.  Because I worked at the UN and other international organizations for three decades, I was able to hear another side—the perspectives of those who suffered Japanese military aggression in China, Korea, the Philippines, and Dutch-Indonesians.


    Just as important a perspective came from the Americans who believe that dropping the atom bombs, while tragic, ended the war early and saved hundreds of thousands of lives.


    To be sure, the American use of the atom bomb in 1945 against the Japanese was terrible. Tens of thousands died instantly upon explosion, and many more died from radiation in the ensuing years.  The cities were razed.  But the memory has taken an enormous toll on the survivors, both the victims and the assailants.  How does one rebuild a country and life after such devastation?


    What about those who were in Hiroshima or Nagasaki in early August 1945 and managed to survive the explosions? Surely those who had lived through such carnage were unforgiving and resentful.  Understandably, many are.   But I was convinced that there was a different story.  I asked Mr. Tadayuki Takeda, a Hiroshima native and a friend from university, to help me find a new story: was there a victim who could transform that violent act into a promotion of peace?


    A Fresh Perspective


    In December 2006 I flew to Hiroshima to meet with Mr. Yuuki Yoshida, a victim of the Hiroshima atomic bomb. His story is incredible, but his outlook is more so.  Mr. Yoshida’s duty as a survivor, in his words, is to share his story and instill the great fear that nuclear weapons deserve.  His goal is to make sure the disaster of August 1945, the use of atomic or nuclear weapons, never occurs again. His message, along with those of the other remaining survivors, is invaluable for this purpose.
    Mr. Yoshida, who is 79 years old and has been crippled by Polio since birth, miraculously escaped death when the atomic bomb exploded over the city of Hiroshima.  His younger brother died two weeks later, and his eldest sister narrowly survived after undergoing more than a dozen operations.  She gave birth to a son after fifteen years despite strong worries about radiation.  (Her son, Mr. Kazufumi Yamashita, studied in Berlin under the guidance of the famous conductor Mr. Herbert von Karajan and has become one of the most popular conductors in Japan.)


    Mr. Yoshida and his family are Japanese but have a surprising background.  Mr. Yoshida’s mother was American.  Born in Hawaii, she moved to Hiroshima before World War II and gave birth to her children there.  In 2008 Mr. Yoshida moved to Luzon, Philippines, to honor those who died there at the hands of the Japanese military.


    Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s Global Survivors


    It had always been my impression that the victims of the atomic bombs were Japanese. But, after hearing of Mr. Yoshida’s American mother, I have since learned that the United States didn’t just bomb the Japanese in August 1945, but also citizens of China, Korea, the United States, the Philippines, the Netherlands, and Brazil—perhaps even many other countries.  There were survivors from all of these nations as well.  I had completely missed this perspective.  Survivors from all countries are carrying forth their story to deter future nuclear disasters.  This global memory is a bridge from suffering to peace that we cannot lose.


    When I learned of the survivors from across the world, I thought perhaps there were other nuclear cases I should consider.  Were there other atomic weapons survivors to be included this message? How do victims of the 1986 Chernobyl accident, and other nuclear energy accidents, fit in with the Hiroshima and Nagasaki victims?  What about the victims of nuclear bomb tests in Nevada, the Pacific Islands, and other countries?


    In 2007 I visited Moscow to attend a conference chaired by my old friend, Dr. Evgeny Velikhov, former vice president of the Soviet Academy of Sciences and oversaw the cleanup of the Chernobyl disaster.


    He made it very clear to me that Chernobyl was caused by human error.  An accident from the use of nuclear energy is tragic, but very different from the malicious and purposeful destruction of two cities.  He also told me that, although there were many victims of the bomb tests—especially many indigenous people in Nevada—they were not killed in an act of war, so their situation is not directly comparable to that of the survivors in Japan.


    Carrying Their Message Forward with the Nobel Peace Prize


    All survivors from so many nations have suffered so much and yet have demonstrated to society that we should provide a peaceful life for our children without hateful attitudes. The survivors are getting old and we could not have learned the valuable lessons they share if they had not continued to live or if they did not make such extraordinary efforts to live longer in order to pass their message on to us. I fear that they have little time left with us to continue sharing their message, and that we should work now to make sure it is known as widely as possible.


    How can we recognize their lofty mission and express our gratitude for their efforts to bridge hatred and create a peace that has its foundation in the non-use of nuclear weapons?


    Time Magazine named “YOU” as 2006’s Person of the Year.  What a powerful message. We each have the power to shape world.   If all of the atomic bomb survivors were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize as a group, the impact of their message would reach new heights and the Committee would establish a new precedent in who—a group, not just an individual or institution—could receive the prize. And what better way to honor Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s global survivors’ great push for peace while bringing a powerful but fading message to the forefront of public consciousness?


    A copy of Nobel Peace Prize award and its citation would be presented to each survivor by governors or mayors in countries of Japan, America, China, Korea, Philippines, Netherlands, Brazil and any other countries with survivors. I have no doubt that such an occasion would promote a position that is against nuclear weapons in a non-political manner and do much for reducing violence and the serious nuclear threat we face.


    The epitaph carved into the stone coffin at the Hiroshima City Peace Memorial reads:


            “Let all souls here rest in peace, for we shall not repeat the evils.”


    We the world have a moral obligation to pass the torch of positive force on to the next generations so that they may partake in our wisdom, not just our mistakes.  The survivors and victims of the atomic bombs have sacrificed much to pass on this torch.  By awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to all of the atomic bombs’ survivors–a group from many nations–the Nobel Peace Committee would honor a generation devoted to creating peace rather than resenting harm, as well as underscore its commitment to stopping these evils from reoccurring.


    Response from Bill Wickersham


    I have recently read your very compelling article “The Powerful and Fading Message of Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s Global Survivors:  The Case for a Group Nobel Prize.” As a long time professor of peace studies, and one who has promoted nuclear disarmament for almost 50 years, I think your blog and Nobel Peace Prize campaign are very critical elements for the promotion of a worldwide movement for the abolition of nuclear weapons from Planet Earth.


    Over the years, my sub-specialty in educational psychology and peace studies has been the problem of social and psychological obstacles which hinder personal, group, national and international efforts to mobilize public demand for the elimination of the omnicidal threat.  Unfortunately, those obstacles, including ignorance, denial and apathy, have blocked most such mobilization, with the possible exception of the worldwide ” Nuclear Freeze ” movement of the 1980s, which was aimed more at arms control than truly deep cuts and abolition of nuclear weapons.


    Historically, hundreds of fine non-governmental organizations have provided excellent research, information and program/action recommendations aimed at citizen involvement on behalf of nuclear disarmament.  In so doing, the NGOs have provided essential data for the “head” but, in large measure, have failed to truly reach the “heart”  of their audiences in a way that strongly moves people to action.


    One major exception to this failing was the project initiated by my former boss, noted editor and peace advocate, the late Norman Cousins, who in 1955, brought 25 young female Japanese A-bomb survivors to the United States for plastic surgery, other medical treatment, and meetings with prominent U.S. leaders and other U.S. citizens.  The medical care was donated by New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital, and involved 125 operations on the women, rebuilding lips, noses, hands, and eyelids, thus allowing them a promising future. Other expenses were covered by the Quakers and other donors.  This project was important for two reasons.  It was a fine example of human reconciliation, and it also helped many Americans to concretely FEEL and understand the real human price of nuclear war.  The problem was no longer an abstraction for the Americans who met with, and interacted with the young Japanese women.  Philosopher Jean Paul Sartre has noted that the biggest crime of our time is to make that which is concrete into something that is abstract. And, of course, this is a major roadblock of the whole issue of nuclear extinction without representation.  It is the ultimate abstraction for many people.  Norman’s project overcame this obstacle, and for a brief period, his project stimulated several U.S. NGOs to step up their organizing efforts for nuclear disarmament.  It is unfortunate that he did not have a blog such as yours to reach the hearts of people everywhere.


    In the past few years, our Missouri University Nuclear Disarmament Education Team (MUNDET), other elements of our peace studies program and our Mid-Missouri chapter of Veterans for Peace, have used films and photographic exhibits of the nuclear devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to reach the emotional core of our students, civic and faith groups, and other audiences.  We have found this approach to be very effective in terms of attitude change on the part of most participants.  We, like you, have steered clear of the U.S assailant/Japanese victim theme and “blame game” approach, and have instead stressed the incredible danger and insanity of the nuclear deterrence myth.


    Children and adults around the world are frequently taught that we must learn the lessons of history so we will not repeat the repeat the mistakes of the past.  This is precisely the approach you are so skillfully offering with your very attractive website, blog and carefully crafted campaign for the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors, including several from countries other than Japan who were residents in those cities at the time of the atomic bombings. Their history and voices of reconciliation are truly the most important messages required by the human species if it is to survive the nuclear madness. Consequently, that history and their voices must not be allowed to fade away.


    It is my sincere hope that the Nobel Peace Prize Committee will accept your proposal for a group prize arrangement for the A-bomb survivors.  I believe such an arrangement could be a triggering mechanism for widespread mobilization of citizens everywhere on behalf of nuclear weapons abolition.  If there is any way that I and our MUNDET team may be of assistance in your campaign,  please let me know.

  • Nuclear Weapons: The Goal is Zero

    David KriegerNuclear weapons release vast amounts of energy.  They do this by breaking apart the bonds of the atom, but this is not all they break apart.  They also break apart the bonds of our relationships with the Earth, with other forms of life and with the future.  This is part of the nuclear fallout that occurred at Hiroshima and Nagasaki and has continued through the Nuclear Age.


    Nuclear weapons are capable of destroying cities, as was demonstrated by the US attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  We know that the destructive capacity of these weapons does not end there.  They are also capable of destroying countries and civilization as we know it.  The philosopher John Somerville coined the term “omnicide” to describe the potential destructive capacity of nuclear weapons – the death of all.  In the Nuclear Age, our destructive capacity has moved from homicide to genocide to omnicide. 


    In considering the fallout of nuclear weapons, we might ask: what have these weapons done to our psyches?  The destructive potential of our nuclear inventions transcends the death of an individual or group and shows us a glimpse of the death of all.  For those of us willing to look, this is a fearful view into the abyss, a darkened world of incineration and shadows, a world barren of life.  Although nuclear weapons bring us close to the precipice of such a world, most of us choose to avert our eyes and our minds from grasping the reality.  We gamble the human future on the judgment and human fallibility of political and military leaders.  This strikes me as a very bad bet. 


    It is argued that no weapon ever created has been discarded until another, more powerful weapon has taken its place.  But with nuclear weapons we do not have this luxury.  Nuclear weapons force us to put aside our childish and tribal ways of solving conflicts.  They push us to higher levels of maturity.  We cannot continue our old ways and survive in a nuclear-armed world. 


    Ten Reasons to Abolish Nuclear Weapons


    Let me share with you ten reasons to abolish nuclear weapons:


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


    2. They threaten the destruction of cities, countries and civilization; of all that is sacred, of all that is human, of all that exists.  Nuclear war could cause deadly climate change, putting human existence at risk. 


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


    4. They make cowards of their possessors, and in their use there can be no decency or honor.  This was recognized by most of the leading generals and admirals of World War II, including Dwight Eisenhower, Hap Arnold, and William Leahy. 


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


    6. They are a distortion of science and technology, siphoning off our scientific and technological resources and twisting our knowledge of nature to destructive purposes.  


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


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


    9. They concentrate power in the hands of a small group of individuals and, in doing so, undermine democracy.


    10. They are morally abhorrent, as recognized by virtually every religious organization, and their mere existence corrupts our humanity. 


    New START


    In December 2010, the US Senate voted 71-26 to ratify the New START agreement with Russia.  It was a struggle to obtain the requisite two-thirds majority of the Senate needed for ratification, but in the end enough Republicans joined with the Democrats to assure the treaty’s ratification.  With previous strategic arms reduction treaties, however, the votes for ratification were largely bipartisan, reflected by overwhelming majorities. 


    The New START agreement was described by Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, as “vital to national security.”  The treaty has four important benefits. 


    First, it will reduce the number of deployed strategic nuclear weapons on each side to 1,550 by the year 2017.  This is about a one-third reduction from the 2,200 agreed to in the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT).  However, there are some accounting irregularities that were agreed to in New START, such as counting each bomber plane as having one nuclear weapon even though it could carry up to 20. 


    Second, it will reduce the number of delivery vehicles for nuclear weapons to 800 total, with an upper limit of 700 of these deployed. 


    Third, it will put inspectors back on the ground in both countries to verify compliance with the treaty.  There have been no inspections since December 2009, when the START I agreement expired. 


    Finally, it will hopefully keep the US and Russia moving forward on reducing their arsenals still further in the years to come.  A failure to ratify the New START agreement would have been disastrous for US-Russia cooperation.


    Despite the important benefits of the treaty, however, it should not be forgotten that it still leaves the US and Russia with 1,550 deployed strategic weapons each, more than enough to destroy the world many times over.  It also does not place limits on the shorter-range tactical nuclear weapons or the strategic nuclear weapons held in reserve.  These issues will be on the agenda of future US-Russia negotiations.


    There was also a heavy price pledged by President Obama for obtaining Republican votes for the treaty, approximately $185 billion over the next ten years.  About $85 billion will go to the modernization of the nuclear infrastructure in the country and the modernization of the US nuclear arsenal.  Another $100 billion will go to improving the delivery vehicles to carry the nuclear weapons.  These expensive improvements to US nuclear forces cast reasonable doubt on the seriousness of the US commitment to nuclear disarmament.


    The Republicans were also able to extract a promise from President Obama regarding missile defenses.  As a candidate for President in October 2007, Obama said, “I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems.”  In an effort to get the New START agreement ratified, President Obama wrote in December 2010 to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, “…as long as I am President, and as long as the Congress provides the necessary funding, the United States will continue to develop and deploy effective missile defenses to protect the United States, our deployed forces, and our allies and partners.”  Candidate Obama had it right that missile defense systems were “unproven.”  President Obama had it wrong that such systems are “effective.”  In recent months, two missile defense tests from Vandenberg Air Force base have been admitted failures with no intercepts, and these were simple tests without multiple attack missiles or decoys.


    New START is only what it says – a start.  The only stable number of nuclear weapons in the world is zero, and this must be our goal.  The way to get to zero is through a negotiated Nuclear Weapons Convention, a new treaty for the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons.  A Nuclear Weapons Convention will require leadership from the US and other countries.  Leaders must be pushed from below.  In effect, the people must lead their leaders.  Achieving the goal of Zero must start with each of us.


    Implementing Change


    The path to achieving change in the Nuclear Age starts with the implementation of some traditional means for bringing about change: conscience, compassion, courage, cooperation, creativity and commitment.  


    Conscience is the voice inside that distinguishes right from wrong, and moves us to take action for what is right.  It is a capacity that is uniquely human.  We can recognize right from wrong and choose our course.  With conscience there is always choice.


    Compassion is the force of love put into action.  Along with poet John Donne, we must recognize that we are “a part of the continent, a piece of the main.”  We must care for the Earth and all its inhabitants.  Compassion does not recognize borders.  We all share a common Earth.  We are all created equal.  We are all diminished by nuclear threats or any other threats to the well-being of people anywhere. 


    It takes courage to think differently, to break away from the group-think of the tribe.  It takes courage to express compassion and to embrace the world.  It takes courage to wage peace rather than war. 


    Cooperation is needed to solve the world’s great problems.  There is no significant global problem – war, abuses of human rights, environmental degradation, climate change, nuclear threat – that can be solved by any one nation alone.  It takes not only a village, but a world to bring about the changes that are needed.


    Creativity is also essential to change.  It will take new and creative ways of thinking to prevent the ultimate catastrophe to ourselves and our fellow inhabitants of Earth.  Einstein said prophetically, “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”  We must change our modes of thinking, and replace the old patterns with new ones.  We must become world citizens and peace leaders.


    Commitment will keep you going when the goal seems distant and the obstacles seem overwhelming.  No great goal is easy to attain, but some goals – and I would place the abolition of nuclear weapons among these – are challenges that cannot be ignored or cast aside.  The future, which cannot speak for itself and has only our voice, deserves our commitment.

  • Nobel Summit: Final Declaration on the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons

    The undersigned Nobel Peace Laureates and representatives of Nobel Peace Prize organizations, gathered in Hiroshima on November 12-14, 2010, after listening to the testimonies of the Hibakusha, have no doubt that the use of nuclear weapons against any people must be regarded as a crime against humanity and should henceforth be prohibited.

    We pay tribute to the courage and suffering of the Hibakusha who survived the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 and honour those that have dedicated their lives to teaching the rest of the world about the horrors of nuclear war. Like them, we pledge ourselves to work for a future committed to peace, justice and security without nuclear weapons and war.

    “Nuclear weapons are unique in their destructive power, in the unspeakable human suffering they cause, in the impossibility of controlling their effects in space and time, in the risks of escalation they create, and in the threat they pose to the environment, to future generations, and indeed to the survival of humanity.” We strongly endorse this assessment by the International Committee of the Red Cross, three times recognised with the Nobel Peace Prize for its humanitarian work.

    Twenty-five years ago in Geneva, the leaders of the two largest nuclear powers declared that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” There has been some substantive progress since then. The agreements on intermediate range nuclear forces (INF); strategic arms reductions (START); and unilateral and bilateral initiatives on tactical nuclear weapons, have eliminated tens of thousands of nuclear weapons. We welcome the signing by the United States and Russia of the New START treaty and the consensus Nuclear Disarmament Action Plan that was adopted by the 2010 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference.

    Nevertheless, there are still enough nuclear weapons to destroy life on Earth many times over. The proliferation of nuclear weapons and the possibility of their use for acts of terrorism are additional causes for deep concern. The threats posed by nuclear weapons did not disappear with the ending of the Cold War.

    Nuclear weapons cannot be disinvented, but they can and must be outlawed, just as chemical and biological weapons, landmines and cluster munitions have been declared illegal. Nuclear weapons, the most inhumane threat of all, should likewise be outlawed in keeping with the 2010 NPT Review Conference final document, which reaffirmed “the need for all States at all times to comply with applicable international law, including international humanitarian law”.

    Efforts to rid the world of nuclear weapons must proceed along with measures to strengthen international law, demilitarize international relations and political thinking and to address human and security needs. Nuclear deterrence, power projection and national prestige as arguments to justify acquiring and retaining nuclear weapons are totally outdated and must be rejected.

    We support the UN Secretary General’s five point proposal on nuclear disarmament and proposals by others to undertake work on a universal treaty to prohibit the use, development, production, stockpiling or transfer of nuclear weapons and nuclear weapon technologies and components and to provide for their complete and verified elimination.

    • We call upon heads of government, parliaments, mayors and citizens to join us in affirming that the use of nuclear weapons is immoral and illegal.

    • We call for the ratification without delay of the START agreement by the United States and Russia and for follow-on negotiations for deeper cuts in all types of nuclear weapons.

    • We call on all nuclear weapon possessor states to make deep cuts in their existing arsenals.

    • We call on the relevant Governments to take urgent steps to implement the proposals agreed on in the 2010 NPT Review Conference Final Document towards realising the objectives of the 1995 resolution on the Middles East.

    • We call on China, the United States, Egypt, Iran, Israel and Indonesia to ratify, and on India, Pakistan and North Korea to sign and ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty that has already been ratified by 153 nations so that the Treaty can be brought into full legal force.

    • We call on nations to negotiate an universal treaty to abolish nuclear weapons, in partnership with civil society

    To ensure that the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki never reoccur and to build a world based on cooperation and peace, we issue this call of conscience. We must all work together to achieve a common good that is practical, moral, legal and necessary – the abolition of nuclear weapons.

  • The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence Today: International Law as Anchoring Ground

    Ladies and gentlemen:

    I am very happy to be speaking with you this evening. I want to express my gratitude to Zeit-Fragen for publishing the German language edition of my book The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence (Clarity Press: 2002) which comes out now on the anniversary of the end of the Second World War.  At this time 65 years ago, Japan surrendered to the United States after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the incineration of 250,000 completely innocent human beings.

    My father was a Marine who invaded Saipan, Tinian, and Okinawa, and was preparing to invade Mainland Japan. I was brought up to believe that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had saved my father’s life and thus made mine possible, although my father never raised me to be anti-Japanese or anti-German.  But when I came to study international relations, I realized: This simply was not true.  Indeed it was total propaganda by the United States government to justify nuclear terrorism and the mass-extermination of a quarter of a million human beings. Even Justice Pal in his dissent to the Tokyo Judgment said that the Japanese war criminals had nothing to their discredit as the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which you can only compare to Nazi Acts.

    Today the world is at a precipice of another world war. The United States government has committed acts of aggression against Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, and has authorized, armed, equipped, and supplied Israel to commit acts of aggression, crimes against humanity, and outright genocide against Lebanon and Palestine. Today the United States government is threatening to attack Iran under the completely bogus pretext that they might have a nuclear weapon, which the International Atomic Energy has said is simply not true. If they attack Iran with the Israelis, a British think-tank has predicted they could exterminate 2.8 million Iranians! They are fully prepared — the Americans and the Israelis — to use tactical nuclear weapons.

    Indeed today tactical nuclear weapons have been fully integrated into U.S. armed forces and tactical training and programs. I have read the manual myself.  Nukes are now treated — starting with the Bush Junior administration — as if they were just another weapon.

    We must remember when President Putin was in Iran and he said he did not believe the Iranians had a nuclear weapon, President Bush Jr. publicly got up and threatened World War III. Remember that threat! He threatened World War III! I cannot recall in my lifetime a threat of this nature. You would have to go back to Hitler and Mussolini and Tojo to find high level government officials threatening a world war.

    What did this threat mean? It was saying to Russia: “You had better stand back if we attack Iran.” It wasn`t a threat to Iran; that would not produce a world war attacking Iran, but just a slaughter.  But saying to Russia: “You had better stand back, we are prepared to risk World War III if you don’t let us get our way with Iran.” An attack on Iran would set this entire region of the world on fire, from Egypt over to India, from Uzbekistan down to Diego Garcia. And as my friend and my colleague, Hans von Sponeck pointed out yesterday with his map: We see the counter-alliance to NATO: Russia, China and the so-called Central Asia Collective Security Organization. If you read about the origins World War I or World War II an attack on Iran could clearly set off World War III – remember Bush threatened it. And it could easily become nuclear. I kid you not on the dangers we are facing us all as human beings today.

    We stand on a nuclear precipice, and any attempt to dispel this ideology of nuclearism and its myth propounding the legality and morality of nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence must come to grips with the fact that the nuclear age was conceived in the original sins of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These weapons have always been criminal!  Remember they were developed to deal with the Nazis, out of fear that the Nazis would get them first. And yet for some reason they used them on the Japanese to make a point, to terrorize the rest of the world.

    The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki constituted war crimes and crimes against humanity as defined by the Nuremberg Charter of August 8th 1945 — right after the United States bombed Hiroshima, and the day before they bombed Nagasaki — that condemned the wanton destruction of cities, towns, and villages; and applied it to the Nazi leaders, but of course never applied it to themselves. In my book The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence there is an entire chapter on the criminality of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and I list all the legal violations there, up to and including the United States Department of War Field Manual 27-10 (1940).  So these bombings, and also the firebombing of Tokyo, exterminating 100,000 civilians, were war crimes. Even as recognized officially by the United States government itself.

    The start of any progress towards resolving our nuclear predicament as human beings must come from the realization that nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence have never been legitimate instruments of state policy, but have always constituted instrumentalities of internationally lawless and criminal behaviour. And those states that wield nuclear weapons, their government officials are criminals in accordance with the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles, and the Tokyo Charter and Judgment that the Allies applied to the Nazi war criminals and the Japanese war criminals after World War II.  So I’m not talking here about applying any principle of law that the United States government and the other victors of World War II applied to their enemies to hold them accountable.

    The use of nuclear weapons in combat is contemplated now by the United States and Israel against Iran. How many times have we heard U.S. government officials involved in the Bush Junior administration and now the Obama administration say: “All options are on the table.”  They mean it: not just the use the force but the use of nuclear weapons as well. These are prohibited by conventional and customary international law, including the Genocide Convention of 1948, designed to prevent a repetition of the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews, the Poles, the Russians, the Ukrainians. The use of nuclear weapons would also violate Resolutions of the U.N. General Assembly that repeatedly condemned their use as an international crime.  We must understand that when dealing with nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence: They are not simply immoral, they are not simply illegal, but they are criminal across the board!

    The Swiss Foreign Ministry a commissioned a study of nuclear deterrence by three American authors, I read it, and I agree with what they said. They pointed out that the critical factor is the delegitimisation of nuclear weapons in the minds of the people. Having litigated nuclear weapons protest cases in the United States, Canada, Britain, and elsewhere since 1982, for me the critical factor in winning these cases is to explain to the common, ordinary people on juries that nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence are criminal. Not simply illegal, not simply immoral, but criminal!

    Yet the government officials in all the nuclear weapon states, not just the United States — they are the worst of them — but also Russia, France, Britain, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea: They are the criminals! For threatening to exterminate all humanity! For threatening Nuremberg crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide. That’s what nuclear deterrence really is: threatening mass extermination.  And in the Advisory Opinion by the International Court of Justice on nuclear weapons, the World Court ruled that the threat stands or falls on the same legal grounds as the actual use.  If mass extermination of human beings is a crime, the threat to commit mass extermination is also a crime.

    It is as if the leaders of the nuclear weapon states have all taken out a gun, cocked the trigger, and held it at the heads of all humanity! In any system of criminal justice today that activity is criminal! In the United States it would be attempted murder, and you would be prosecuted for it.  Yet today U.S. government officials threaten murder to millions of people around the world. And now especially in Iran.

    According to the Nuremberg Judgment soldiers would be obliged to disobey criminal orders to launch and wage a nuclear war. And yet, how many soldiers have been educated to understand these principles? A few have educated themselves, acted on it, and have been prosecuted by the United States government.  I have helped to defend them, with a good deal of success, but not complete success. You can read about this in my latest book Protesting Power: War Resistance and Law (Rowman & Littlefield: 2008). How we defended military resisters in our all-volunteer Armed Forces who refused to fight in illegal, criminal wars waged by the United States government, going back to Gulf War I by Bush Senior, Haiti by Clinton, Gulf War II by Bush Junior.

    All government officials and military officers who might launch or wage a nuclear war would be personally responsible for the commission of crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide. And such individuals whether statesmen or high level military personnel would not be entitled to any defenses of superior orders, act of state, tu quoque, self-defense, presidential authority, etc. All those defenses were made by lawyers for the Nazi defendants at Nuremberg and they were rejected. And yet today in the United States of America starting with the Bush Junior administration and now continuing with Obama you will hear international lawyers working for the government, and many in the private sector, making Nazi arguments to justify what the United States government is doing around the world. That’s how desperate the situation is!

    The whole Bush Doctrine of preventive warfare, which is yet to be officially repealed by Obama now after 18 months, was made by the Nazi lawyers for the Nazi defendants at Nuremberg, and it was rejected. And the argument by Nuremberg was: There is no such thing as preventive self-defense or things of this nature. What is self-defense can only be determined by reference to international law. And the test is clearly: the necessity of self-defense must be instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, no moment for deliberation. Certainly not Afghanistan or Iraq or Lebanon or Palestine or Iran or Somalia or Yemen or Pakistan. And yet all victims of this Nazi doctrine of preventive self-defense that is now justified by all these prostituted international lawyers on the payroll of the United States government, leaving government service, now they infiltrate into American academia where they likewise try to justify these doctrines and policies that were condemned as criminal at Nuremberg.

    Article 2, paragraph 4 of the United Nations Charter prohibits both the threat and the use of force except in cases of legitimate self-defense. And there is a standard for self-defense. Article 51 of the U.N. Charter, and as supplemented by Nuremberg, that clearly rejects the wars against Afghanistan as aggression – explained in my book in greater detail — against Iraq, against Pakistan, which by the way has nuclear arms.  The Obama administration has now escalated to a war against Pakistan, trying to set off civil war and destabilize Pakistan, just as they did in Yugoslavia, just as they did in Iraq, just as they did in Afghanistan. As we lawyers say: “The modus operandi is the same.”

    The Empire does not change from one administration to the next! In America the government is run by elites who are either liberal imperialists, conservative imperialists, or reactionary imperialists, like the Neocons. But they are all imperialists! And they believe in the god-given right to the American Empire. That’s the way America started. Remember, how did the United States of America start? White European settlers coming over to North America, exterminating millions of indigenous people, and robbing their land, and building an Empire. The process just continues today as we speak.

    The threat to use nuclear weapons, what we call “nuclear deterrence” — I would call “nuclear terrorism” — constitutes ongoing international criminal activity: planning, preparation, solicitation, and conspiracy to commit Nuremberg crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide.  These are what we lawyers call inchoate crimes, not the substantive offences themselves, but crimes leading up to the commission of the substantive offences. They were made criminal at Nuremberg in order to establish a bright line and that we would punish even walking up to that bright line as criminal.

    In the case of nuclear weapons once a nuclear war starts I doubt very seriously we are going to be having another war crimes tribunal for anyone.  So what that means then is that it is up to us citizens of the world to stop and prevent a nuclear war, and to stop and prevent the threat, conspiracy, solicitation of the use of nuclear weapons. “Everything is on the table” — clearly a threat to use nuclear weapons, clearly a criminal threat under the World Court Advisory Opinion, against Iran.

    As I explain in more detail in my book, the design, research, testing, production, manufacture, fabrication, transportation, deployment, installation, storing, stockpile, sale, and purchase and the threat to use nuclear weapons are criminal under well-recognized principles of international law.  And I know the German government has finally asked the United States, NATO, to take its nukes out of Germany. And Mrs. Clinton has said: “We don’t support it.” Well is the German government going to cave in? Or will it use law and international law and the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment and Principles to get American criminal nukes out of Germany? I guess we will find out this Fall.

    Those government decision-makers in all nuclear weapon states with command responsibility for nuclear weapons are responsible today for personal criminal activity under the Nuremberg Principles for this practice of nuclear deterrence/nuclear terrorism, that they inflict on all states and peoples in the world today.  And in particular counter-ethnic targeting for the United States, destroying Russians just because they are Russian.

    Also counter city-targeting!  When I worked on the case of the U.K. nuclear weapons in Scotland we established that the entire purpose of the U.K. nuclear weapons force, under the control and allocated to NATO, was to destroy the city of Moscow, seven million human beings! It had no other purpose. Needless to say, once we did that we got all of our defendants off for four counts each of malicious destruction of property when they destroyed a tender servicing the U.K. Trident II nuclear weapons submarines with these weapons of mass extermination. They might have destroyed the tender, but they did not act maliciously.  They acted for the perfectly lawful reason to stop the nuclear extermination of seven million human beings.

    So, I argue in my book, the simple idea of the criminality of nuclear weapons and deterrence can be used to pierce through the ideology of nuclearism, to which so many citizens in the nuclear weapon states and around the world have succumbed — by means of propaganda techniques, propagated by the governments, going back to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. At the time of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki the U.S. government tried to present this as positive to the American people and in particular that it was necessary to end a war to avoid an invasion of Japan, which of course was not going to happen, because the Japanese were already defeated and were trying desperately to negotiate a surrender.

    It is with this simple idea of the criminality of nuclear weapons that people can easily comprehend the illegitimacy and fundamental lawlessness of these policies that their governments pursue in their names — or allied governments as well. And to those living in the NATO states today: Their leaders are all accomplices, they go along with nuclear policies as well. They send their generals over to NATO headquarters to be integrated into NATO’s strategy.

    I remember after the Berlin Wall fell, the German Branch of International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms had a big conference in Berlin and I gave the keynote address along these lines. And they asked the German General of the Bundeswehr in charge of liaison with NATO on nuclear weapons to respond to me. And he got up and he said: “Well, we all know that Nuremberg is soft law.”

    I had two reactions to that. One: “Mister General, we hanged your predecessors at Nuremberg, under the Nuremberg laws. How can you say it is soft law?”  Not that I support the death penalty even for major war criminals like Bush Junior and Tony Blair.

    But the second reaction I had to this notion of soft law like Joe Nye’s “soft power”: “Soft law’”, I said, “you know, he got that from us.” So we Americans have convinced German generals that Nuremberg is soft law in order to pursue our nuclear policies with the cooperation of the next generation of German generals whose predecessors we hanged at Nuremberg.

    After the public speech I discussed this matter with him, and he agreed with me but he said: “Look, we have no alternative but to do what the Americans tell us to do.” And I quoted to him a passage from the Bible saying: “Yes, and the blind shall lead the blind.”  And the German General said:  “We have to trust that the Americans are doing the right thing.”  Right over the nuclear precipice! The German people have to stand up here and say: “Enough! We want your nukes out of Germany for sure and we are no longer going to cooperate with you on nuclear weapons policies.”

    Humankind must abolish nuclear weapons before nuclear weapons abolish humankind!  Nevertheless there are a small number of governments in the world that continue to maintain their nuclear weapons systems despite the rules of international criminal law to the contrary. I would respond in a very simple way: Since when has a small gang of criminals — the leaders of the nuclear weapons states — been able to determine what is illegal or legal for the rest of the world by means of their own criminal behaviour? What right do nuclear weapons states have to argue that by means of their own criminal behaviour — nuclear deterrence/nuclear terrorism — they have made criminal acts legitimate? No civilized state would permit a small gang of criminal conspirators to pervert its domestic legal order in this way. Indeed both the Nuremberg Tribunal and the Tokyo Tribunal made it clear that a conspiratorial band of criminal states has no right to opt-out of the international legal order by means of invoking their own criminal behaviour as the least common denominator of international deportment. It’s a basic rule of international law: Right cannot arise out of injustice! Ex iniuria ius non oritur!

    The entire human race has been victimized by an international conspiracy of ongoing criminal activity carried out by the nuclear weapons states and their leaders under this doctrine of nuclear deterrence which is really a euphemism for nuclear terrorism. And the expansion of NATO has now drawn in almost all of Europe. They have broken down – the United States and NATO – even the traditionally neutral states. Sweden today acts as if it were a de facto but not yet de jure member of NATO. Finland has basically abandoned its neutrality. Austria, with a constitutional obligation to be neutral, has basically abandoned its neutrality. Even Ireland, little bitty Ireland – I have dual nationality with Ireland.  The Americans have forced and compelled Ireland to join up to the Partnership for Peace (PFP) which is one step away from NATO membership, and have forced Ireland then under PFP to put some troops in Afghanistan to help them wage an illegal and criminal war of aggression against Afghanistan.

    The only state in Europe still holding out is Switzerland. Yes, it signed up for Partnership for Peace which it should never have done. But at least Switzerland is holding out, it has no troops in Afghanistan or Iraq. And Switzerland must continue to hold out. And that is exactly why it is been subjected to so much pressure! Including an attack on its banking and financial system to bring Switzerland into line with NATO and the United States, exactly as every other country in Europe has done and succumbed.  That is really what’s at stake here. Are you, the Swiss, going to join up – either de facto or de jure – with NATO and the Americans, so that if and when they attack Iran and perhaps set off a new world war, you and your children will get sucked into it? Switzerland avoided the last two world wars. I certainly hope Switzerland will avoid the next one by having nothing to do with the United States and NATO. And somehow working your way out of Partnership for Peace.

    This international criminal conspiracy of nuclear deterrence/nuclear terrorism, is no different from any other conspiracy by a criminal gang or band. They are the outlaws. We are the sheriffs — the citizens of the world. So it is up to us to repress and dissolve this international criminal conspiracy by whatever non-violent means are at our disposal and as soon as possible.  As I said: If we all don’t act now, Obama and his people could very well set off a Third World War over Iran, that has already been threatened publicly by Bush Junior.

    Every person around the world has a basic human right to be free from the criminal practice of nuclear deterrence/nuclear terrorism, and its specter of nuclear extinction. All human beings in our capacities as creatures of God possess the basic right under international law to engage in civil resistance for the purpose of preventing, impeding or terminating the ongoing commission of these international crimes.

    And this is not civil disobedience.  It’s civil resistance! We have disobeyed nothing! We are obeying the dictates of international law! It is the government officials in the nuclear weapons states and their allied states that are disobeying international law. They are the criminals! We are the sheriffs! And it is up to us to stop them!

    Every citizen of the world community has the right and the duty to oppose the existence of nuclear weapons systems by whatever non-violent means are at his or her disposal. Otherwise the human race will suffer the same fate as the dinosaurs. And the planet earth will become a radioactive waste-land. And it very well could happen in our life-time.

    The time for preventive action is now! And civil resistance by all of us human beings is the way to go.

    Thank you.

  • 2010 Sadako Peace Day

    Welcome to this 16th annual commemoration held in Sadako Peace Garden.  This garden – a project of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and La Casa de Maria – is made sacred by your presence; by your willingness to look back at the tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; and, most of all, by your commitment to building a more peaceful and decent world, free of nuclear threat.

    On this day 65 years ago, a single atomic bomb destroyed the city of Hiroshima, killing some 90,000 people by blast, fire and radiation.  By the end of 1945, some 140,000 victims of the bombing were dead and another 70,000 had died from the Nagasaki bombing.

    Hiroshima ushered in the Nuclear Age.  It was a tragic beginning that pointed toward the possibility of an even more tragic ending.  In the excitement that marked the end of World War II, the atomic bombings cast a dark shadow over the future of civilization and the human species.

    In the past 65 years, we have witnessed a truly mad nuclear arms race between the US and Soviet Union, based on the principle of Mutually Assured Destruction.  We have ascribed god-like characteristics of power and protection to bombs that have no purpose other than the threat of massive annihilation and the carrying out of that threat.

    At its peak in 1986, there were some 70,000 nuclear weapons in the world.  Today there are still more than 20,000 of these weapons in the arsenals of nine countries: the US, Russia, UK, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea.  Without a plan of action to eliminate these weapons, they will continue to proliferate and will be used by accident, miscalculation or intention.

    Over the past 65 years, the United States alone has spent more than $7.5 trillion on nuclear weapons and their delivery systems.  We still spend more than $50 billion annually on these weapons.  What a terrible waste of resources and opportunity!

    The possession of these weapons challenges our humanity and our future.  We are here to remember what these bombs have done in the past, to imagine what they are capable of doing in the future, and to reinvigorate our commitment to ending the nuclear weapons era.

    Imagination is the creative beginning of change.  If we can imagine that a world with zero nuclear weapons it is possible to achieve such a world.  President Obama says, “America seeks the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”  But he also says that he is not naïve and doesn’t see it happening in his lifetime.

    Perhaps I am naïve, but I can imagine achieving this goal in a far more urgent timeframe.  Over 4,000 Mayors for Peace throughout the world – mayors of cities large and small – believe the goal can be achieved by the year 2020.  Why not?  It is within our human capacity, if we will join together.

    To achieve a world free of nuclear weapons will require serious leadership from the US.  To achieve US leadership the people will need to lead their leaders.  That is our challenge and it is the daily work of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.  We thank you for caring and for joining us in this most critical work.

    I’d like to end with a poem from my new book, God’s Tears: Reflections on the Atomic Bombs Dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  The poem tells the story of Shoji Sawada, a young boy at the time of the bombing of Hiroshima.

    FORGIVE ME, MOTHER

    for

    Shoji Sawada

    After the bomb,
    the young boy
    awakened beneath
    the rubble of his room.

    He could hear
    his mother’s cries,
    still trapped
    within the fallen house.

    He struggled to free
    her, but he lacked
    the
    strength.

    A fire raged
    toward them.  Many people
    hurried past.

    Frightened and
    dazed, they would not stop
    to help him free
    his mother.

    He could hear
    her voice from the rubble.
    The voice was
    soft but firm.

    “You must run
    and save yourself,”
    she told
    him.  “You must go.”

    “Forgive me,” he
    said, bowing,
    “Forgive me,
    Mother.”

    He did as his
    mother wished.
    That was long
    ago, in 1945.

    The boy has long
    been a man, a good man.
    Yet he still runs from those flames.

  • Message for Hiroshima Day 2010

    The Nuclear Age is 65 years old.  The first test of a nuclear device took place on July 16, 1945 at the Alamogordo Test Range in New Mexico’s Jornada del Muerto Desert.  The Spanish name of this desert means “Journey of Death,” a fitting name for the beginning point of the Nuclear Age.  Just three weeks after the test, the United States destroyed the city of Hiroshima with a nuclear weapon, followed by the destruction of Nagasaki three days later.  By the end of 1945, the Journey of Death had claimed more than 200,000 human lives and left many other victims injured and suffering.  

    Over the past 65 years, the Journey of Death has continued to claim victims.  Not from the use of nuclear weapons in war, but from the radiation released in testing nuclear weapons (posturing).  We can be thankful that we have not had a nuclear war in the past 65 years, but we must not be complacent.  Our relative good fortune in the past is not a guarantee that nuclear weapons will not be used in the future.  Over the years, the power of nuclear weapons has increased dramatically.  They have become capable of ending civilization and complex life on the planet.  What could possibly justify this risk?

    We remember the anniversaries of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as cautionary tales.  The survivors of the bombings, the hibakusha, have been strong proponents of “Never Again!”  They have spoken out about what they experienced so that their past does not become our future.  They have warned us repeatedly, “Nuclear weapons and human beings cannot coexist.”  We must choose: nuclear weapons or a human future.  The choice should not be difficult.  Humanity should shout out with a single voice that we choose a world free of the overarching nuclear threat, a world free of nuclear weapons.

    The people must lead their leaders, choosing hope for a far more decent human future.  The United States alone has spent more than $7.5 trillion on nuclear weapons over the span of the Nuclear Age.  The world currently spends more than $1.5 trillion annually on weapons, war and the preparation for war, while spending only a small portion of this on efforts to meet human needs and achieve social justice.  Clearly, change is needed.  Bringing about this change could begin by joining together to eliminate the nuclear weapons threat to the human future.  

    The future is now.  Sixty-five years of nuclear threat to humanity is enough.  We continue to rely upon the theory of deterrence at our peril.  The theory requires rationality from leaders who are not always rational.  The higher rationality and greater good for humanity would be to eliminate the threat by eliminating the weapons.  The time to raise our voices and demand a world free of nuclear weapons is now, before it is too late.  On this demand we must be both insistent and persistent.

  • Creating a Peaceful Society Without Nuclear Weapons

    (Mr. Hiroo Saionji) I’d like to start off with a question about the purpose of your visit to Japan this time. We hear that you are going to attend the fourth Nagasaki Global Citizens’ Assembly for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons.

    (Dr. David Krieger) I’ve just come from the Nagasaki Global Citizens’ Assembly. That was the principal purpose for my visit to Japan. It was a very extraordinary conference. The idea of holding a Global Citizens’ Assembly was very appealing to me. I believe that citizens need to be awakened and become engaged in the issue of eliminating nuclear weapons. Until they are, it’s not likely that we are going to see real progress toward eliminating nuclear weapons. What happened in Nagasaki is a model for what could happen in many other places.

    (Saionji) I was told that you were only 21 years old, Dr. Krieger, when you visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki for the very first time. At that time you visited the museums to see the devastation of those cities, and since then you have been involved in trying to eliminate nuclear weapons.

    I do pay my deepest, deepest respect to many years of your endeavors, but I’d like to know how you felt when you first visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Since then you’ve been working on this very topic for, I take it, more than 40 years? And how do you feel now as well?

    (Krieger) When I first visited the museums, I gained a different perspective. It was very different from what I’d learned about using the Bomb in my schooling in the United States. Basically what I’d learned in the U.S. was that the United States dropped those Bombs because it was necessary to achieve the Japanese surrender and to win the war. That’s the perspective from which the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are taught in American schools, and that was the education that I had. When I went to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I realized the extent of human suffering and death that was involved in the atomic bombings. Visiting the Peace Memorial Museums made it far more real to me. Also, it showed the other side of the story.

    What I came to understand was that American way of educating about the Bomb was from a perspective of being above the Bomb. The perspective was that we made use of this new technology and we won that war. At the museums at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, you could gain perspective from under the Bomb. I found that a far more compelling perspective and far more human perspective. I realized that what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki could happen anywhere. It was not acceptable as means of warfare to have the mass killing of civilians. It was a very strong experience for me to visit those cities and their museums. It was an awakening.

    (Saionji) I see. Since having gone through that experience, I take it this has motivated you to be very active in trying to eliminate the weapons for the next 40 plus years. As a result, you have established the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation so as to educate people. Very, very briefly, would you let me know the activities of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation?

    (Krieger) We have three major goals: 1) to abolish nuclear weapons; 2) to strengthen international law; and 3) to empower new peace leaders, particularly young peace leaders. The three goals are interrelated. It’s unlikely we will be able to succeed in abolishing nuclear weapons if we don’t make international law a stronger presence in our lives. And without a new generation of peace leaders, there won’t be anybody to carry on the struggle for a nuclear weapon-free world. To achieve these goals, we do a great deal of public education through lectures, conferences, speeches, books, newspaper and magazine articles, a great deal of outreach.

    We also have links with like-minded groups around the world. We were involved in the establishment of the Abolition 2000 Global Network in 1995. We are one of the eight international organizations in the Middle Powers Initiative, trying to encourage middle-power governments to play a greater role in seeking the abolition of nuclear weapons.

    We also give awards and hold contests. Most recently, we established a new short video contest on topics of peace and disarmament. We’ve recently started a new program, our Peace Leadership Program, in which we are trying to teach young people the skills of leadership related to building a peaceful world.

    We have a long-standing contest in peace poetry, in which we encourage poets in three categories – adults, teenagers, and children – to submit poems related to peace and the human spirit. That’s been a very successful project involving the arts.

    In addition to education, we also engage in advocacy, for example, with our Action Alert Network. We ask people to send messages to government leaders, primarily in the United States. We try to awaken interest, raise awareness and help people to become more active and engaged in critical issues of peace and disarmament.  

    Those are some of the things that we are doing at this time.

    (Saionji) Well, having listened to that, I must say that there are close similarities in the direction that our Foundation is seeking with yours. And the approaches are very similar. At the Goi Peace Foundation, we’ve strived to realize peace inclusive of the activities you’ve mentioned. I’m struck by so much similarity both in the direction we are trying to head to as well as the approaches taken.

    (Krieger) I hope we can find ways to cooperate more in the future.

    (Saionji) Exactly, I feel the same.

    As a grand premise, what is the most important in educating the people is to have the people know the truth, the reality that is in front of them.

    This is related to former Vice President Al Gore’s book, An Inconvenient Truth, which is about global warming. You say, Dr. Krieger, that there’s something that’s far more important than global warming, which is the nuclear issue. So in order to educate the general public, what do you think is the very first thing that everybody should be aware of? And, at the same time, it seems that there could be a most important truth that many people are misunderstanding. Could you refer to those two points briefly?

    (Krieger) The most important truth about nuclear weapons, or about the Nuclear Age in general, is that we’ve created weapons that are capable of destroying everything. I often refer to the term omnicide, a term coined by philosopher John Somerville, that means the death of all. With suicide, a person takes his or her own life. With genocide, the lives of a specific group are targeted. Nuclear weapons have created a possibility of omnicide.

    I find that a powerful warning. We’ve created the tools of our own destruction. By our ingenuity as a species, we’ve created the devices that could destroy everything that’s been created, including all the efforts of over ten thousand years of civilization. And actually it’s more than that, because it’s not only humans and civilization that would be destroyed, but most complex life forms. I believe that if people really understood what is at stake and took that simple truth into their hearts, they would fight for a world without nuclear weapons.

    Most people in the world are confused by the experts who talk about national security and make the issue very complex. The issue isn’t as complex as they make it and people don’t really need to defer to experts to know that nuclear weapons can destroy everything. In reality, nuclear arms are not even weapons. They are devices of annihilation and shouldn’t exist. So it’s our challenge as human beings to end this threat to human and other forms of life on our planet.

    (Saionji) Well, you said that we don’t need to listen to the opinions of experts. But some of those experts say that nuclear weapons are going to be deterrents. How would you respond to those experts who say that these weapons are necessary as a deterrent?

    (Krieger) Nuclear deterrence is at the heart of the problem. Nuclear deterrence has as a foundational understanding that an opponent will be rational. It requires rationality. In effect, deterrence is the threat of nuclear retaliation. A rational person would say, “All right, I don’t want to be attacked, so I won’t attack you.” But, we should ask the question, “Are all leaders rational at all times?” I think the answer to that question is clearly “No”. All leaders are not rational at all times. Deterrence doesn’t take this into account. That’s a major problem with deterrence. In fact, I think the theory of deterrence is irrational for exactly the reason that it relies upon rationality. It also doesn’t take into account the possibility of accidents or inadvertent use of the weapons.

    Earlier I talked about a perspective from above the Bomb and from below the Bomb. I think there is a parallel here. Experts try to use complex, even mathematical, models to predict human behavior. But human behavior is extremely complex, even more complex than human experts can model. The so-called experts are trying to predict and provide advice that’s based on human behavior that is not completely understood and is out of their control. On the other hand, people should understand that nuclear weapons cannot really protect them. All they can do is to threaten to kill other people. If people really understood this, would they want to base their security on threatening to kill tens of millions or hundreds of millions of innocent people? Doesn’t it make sense that a better solution would be to eliminate the weapons and not face that dilemma?

    (Saionji) I agree that the capability of nuclear weapons serving as a deterrent would work if the countries are going to be viewed as a country, but our world at present is becoming globalized, so that many of the issues we have at present cannot be resolved by looking at individual nations. We need a global perspective.

    Compared to the time when A-bombs were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, the existing nuclear weapons have far more destructive capability. It’s said that they can destroy humankind several times over.

    So what we need to think is not based upon individual countries, but upon the whole Earth. Maybe the theory of the deterrence could have had some place in the 20th century, but now we are in the 21st century, and in this 21st century as well as into the future I believe that the theory of deterrence is no longer meaningful.

    (Krieger) I agree with your latter premise that the deterrence is no longer meaningful, but I am not sure if deterrence really was helpful in the 20th century. I tend to think that we survived the nuclear threat in the 20th century more by great good fortune than by the effectiveness of deterrence. As you know, we had many close calls and came very near to nuclear disaster. I think we were extremely fortunate and we cannot rely on that good fortune to last indefinitely.

    But I agree with you totally on your main point that we are now entering into a global age. There are many problems confronting humanity, including poverty, hunger, health care, environmental degradation, and issues of terrorism. There is not one of these problems that can be resolved without global cooperation. No matter how powerful any single country is, it cannot solve global problems by itself. No country can rely upon nuclear weapons to protect it in an island of prosperity in the midst of a world with the kinds of serious problems that our world faces.

    (Saionji) I agree exactly with what you said. I wasn’t trying to justify that deterrence was that effective in the 20th century, but more to contrast that now in the 21st century it is far more meaningless compared to the 20th century. I was not trying to justify that in the 20th century deterrence was working.

    Coming back to deterrence once again, some say that a very, very rich person would build a nuclear shelter for themselves so that they themselves would be protected. What an absurd story that is!

    (Krieger) I’m glad you clarified your remarks with regards to deterrence in the 20th century. The reason I raised that point was exactly because there are many policy makers in the United States and other places who say we need to move toward a nuclear weapon-free world, because deterrence is not as valuable now as it was in the 20th century. I think this position only justifies their own behavior during the time when they were policy makers. And I think it’s appropriate to challenge that position. Deterrence was problematic in the 20th century and remains so now.

    (Saionji) Let me continue a story about a shelter. It is in Voluntary Simplicity written by Duane Elgin. He talks about the activist Dr. Helen Caldicott, because she said what would happen if the nuclear weapons were used, what tragedy is going to follow.

    Even a very, very rich person with a beautiful nuclear shelter, if his city is a target of a bombing, even if he is in a shelter, there will be flames that would eat up all the oxygen, so whoever is in a shelter is going to die because of suffocation. Even if the bombing struck far away in the community, and he makes it to run into the shelter, he would have to stay there for at least two weeks. Otherwise there will be very strong radiation that he would be exposed to.

    But if you have to stay for more than two weeks, he is going to lose his mental senses. Even let’s say he survives the first two weeks, and comes out good, there will be no doctors, no hospitals, no food, and water will be highly irradiated and contaminated. Maybe the ozone layer itself is destroyed, so he is going to have third-degree burns if he is exposed for three minutes. Thus, the whole earth is going to be burned out, and in order to avoid all of that, they will have to stay underground for five years. But even so, he is probably going to have leukemia or he is going to have typhoid fever or polio or all the other diseases which more or less have been eradicated so far.

    So it’s not a matter of who is the enemy or who is your ally. This is so powerful a weapon that once it’s used, it’s not only that individual or state that is the victim. It is going to destroy the whole Earth. That’s something we have to have everybody be aware of.

    (Krieger) I have a personal experience I’d like to share with you. This happened during the 1950s. I remember very clearly sitting around the dinner table with my parents. We were discussing bomb shelters, and my mother said, “I would rather die than go into a bomb shelter.” That was very surprising for me to hear at that time. But she said that’s no way to live. It’s no way to live, in fear and in a little shelter underground. At that time, people were talking about needing guns to keep neighbors out of their shelters. Looking back, I think my mother was quite wise. There are some ways of living that aren’t worth living. If you have to shoot your neighbors, and have an illusion that you can survive underground from nuclear weapons, that’s completely the wrong approach. Anybody who thinks the bomb shelters will save them is delusional. They are certainly not rational. The better strategy for those people and for everyone is to work for the elimination of nuclear weapons, rather than just trying to save themselves.

    (Saionji) I agree with you exactly. I think we are showing the common understanding that we have no other point that we want to pursue but to eradicate nuclear weapons. Then comes the issue of how do we approach that. That’s an issue on which I would like to exchange some opinions.

    Why don’t you start, Dr. Krieger, by telling us the vision, or what are the steps you intend to take to eliminate nuclear weapons? Of course, we do know what your Foundation is up to on these activities, but probably you could share how you would like to go by looking at different nations, different legal systems, and other systems as to how you can attain the goal of abolition.

    (Krieger) I think there are three levels that we have to think about. At the highest level, the goal needs to be a Nuclear Weapons Convention, a treaty for the phased, verifiable, irreversible, and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons. That’s the goal. At that level, states do need to come together and agree upon what’s included in the phases, how the verification system works, how to make it irreversible, and how to make it transparent, while still maintaining the security of all states in a process. So that’s one level.

    But getting to that level involves dealing with various states as you suggested. I think we have to first require the nuclear weapon states to give an accurate accounting of their nuclear forces. Second, I would require states to prepare environmental and human impact statements that would reveal to the public what will happen to other human beings and to the environment if their nuclear weapons are used. Third, I think we should require each state with nuclear weapons to prepare its own roadmap for going to zero. In other words, what would they need to go to zero. That’s the second level, dealing with individual nuclear weapon states and with the states that have a capability to develop nuclear weapons.

    The third level, the most foundational level, involves people all over the world. That’s the level where we work the most. We can suggest a vision of what needs to be done, but until there is a strong citizens’ movement throughout the world for the elimination nuclear weapons I don’t think political leaders will feel the necessary pressure to move with the sense of urgency toward a nuclear weapon-free world.

    We try to continue refining the vision of how global nuclear disarmament can come about, but the most important work we should do is educating people everywhere about the necessity of eliminating nuclear weapons and encouraging their engagement in pressing in an active way for the goal of abolition.

    I don’t mean to imply that this needs to be a very long process. Technologically, nuclear weapons could be dismantled and eliminated within a period of 10 years. What’s missing is the political will to change, and that’s where a large number of people need to enter into the discussion, and engage in political action to achieve that goal.

    (Saionji) I cannot agree more with what you said. With regard to the first two levels of the three levels you’ve referred to, even if you are successful in coming out with the Convention, a law or social system that is going to be better than we have, there’s no guarantee whatsoever that people are going to honor them all the way into the future. Therefore, I would say the most important is your third level, which is to change the awareness and the mentality of each and every one of us who lives on this Earth.

    I do recall that Dr. Krieger you have written about this somewhere, looking at the activities of democratization like the example of the Berlin Wall in the former East and West Germany. It was the change in the mentality of each German who came together to achieve the major change in destroying the Berlin Wall.

    So the democratization type of campaign and activities are necessary. To take another example of the non-smoking movement, even though there were dozens of reports that smoking induced lung cancer, not the federal government nor the state government nor the city government take any action. Of course, we know that there was strong pressure from the cigarette companies.

    But why has the country changed? It is because there have been changes in the awareness of the people towards smoking. That was at a basis of the foundation to change the position of the government. If you really wanted to have the nuclear-free world, what we need to do is to change the awareness and mentality of the people. Otherwise, it will not be assured for eternity into the future.

    (Krieger) I completely agree. The idea of the necessity of changing thinking has honorable routes, going back to Albert Einstein who made his famous statement that “[t]he unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” This statement was made early in the Nuclear Age, and I think it is very prescient and very wise. Until there’s a shift in thinking among large numbers of people, we probably won’t see the change that we are seeking.

    The challenge that we have, and I think that humanity has, is to how to bring about a change in thinking. Basically, it is a matter of education and persistence. Sometimes there’s a shift in thinking beneath the surface, and it’s only when circumstances are right that the shift in thinking becomes apparent. This was the case with the Berlin Wall, with the break up of the Soviet Union, and with the ending of Apartheid in South Africa. Those things didn’t just happen on the spur of the moment. There was a lot of work that was going on, like an underground stream, which eventually broke to the surface. The power for change was there beneath the surface. In a sense, that’s an act of faith. Doing this work is an act of faith, because we don’t know what the results will be, but we do know that the problem is serious enough that it demands our attention. I often feel that the work that we do to achieve a world without nuclear weapons will eventually succeed, but it’s necessary for me not to expect immediate results and to keep working in the belief that those results will come.

    (Saionji) How do we change the way of thinking? Of course, there are different ways like education, public awareness campaigns and such. However, if we think of how we can really change the mentality and way of thinking of the people, we need to go back to the fact of how much money has been spent to prepare for wars as well as for the military budget. In a year, more than $1 trillion U.S. dollars is spent for military budgets around the world.

    Is this $1 trillion plus being used for the sake of mankind? No, I think it’s a negative expenditure, because all that money that’s spent on military budgets to prepare for war is not serving the interests of mankind.

    If you look at my diagram, you can look at the society and the economic aspects, those on macro and micro levels, as well as towards science, medicine and effects toward human beings, both direct and indirect, for the physical as well as for the mental and spiritual, as well as the effects towards environment, in regard to the oxygen, pollution, toxic substances as well as ecology. In short, if we look at more than $1 trillion being spent to prepare for war and for military budgets, I don’t think a single cent is being used for the benefits of mankind. That is something that everybody should be aware of, that so much money is being spent for a negative purpose.

    If the $1 trillion is not going to be used for military budgets, that means we can eradicate the negative side of the story. But let’s turn the story around, so that the funds are going to be used positively for the welfare of mankind. They could be used for education, eradication of poverty, food, clean water and disaster relief. Let’s say the soldiers are going to be unemployed, but they can be turned around to be engaged in relief activities or to rehabilitate the damaged environment, and so on. And the welfare expenses will be utilized for medicine and education. As a result, we abate the negative use and use it positively. If you are able to do so, that goes to providing so much help in resolving the major issues that we face. I think we need to take that kind of macroscopic view. What I wanted to add is that as long as we take the macroscopic view, mankind is facing so many varied issues. However, we do have the way to solve them.

    (Krieger) I completely agree with your analysis. When you look from a macro point of view, nuclearism is the problem, but it is embedded in the larger problem of militarism. Nuclear threats are one manifestation of it. Nuclearism happens to be a manifestation that can destroy humanity, so it has special importance.

    But in terms of changing thinking, I think it is a very good idea to focus on the extraordinary amounts of money that are largely being wasted throughout the world for military purposes. Actually, the figure that I’ve heard is closer to $1.5 trillion. I saw some statistics recently that said if we took only between five to ten percent annually of what is spent globally on the military, we could meet all eight of the Millennium Development Goals’ targets for the year 2015. There is no doubt that we are using our resources for the wrong purposes.  

    If we want to think about security, we shouldn’t be thinking only about military security. Primarily we should be thinking about human security, which would require a reallocation of resources from a model of military security to a model of security threatened in various ways by illness, pollution, poverty, hunger, etc. There is a way we can solve those problems and provide security if we use some of our resources on them.

    I think it’s fair to say that where we put our resources is where our values reside. It is important to help people everywhere understand that allocating all that money to the military reflects values that don’t honor human rights. First of all, the military is primarily a killing machine. Second, you have missed the opportunity of helping people who really need help now.

    One of the figures that is worth noting is that the United States alone spent $7.5 trillion on its nuclear weapons and delivery systems from the beginning of the Nuclear Age. This enormous amount of money has been diverted from socially beneficial programs into making weapons that hopefully will never be used again.

    (Saionji) I would like to come up with something like a textbook, or part of a textbook, a part which could be put, and edited into a textbook, in which it could be a joint collaboration with you, Dr. Krieger. Because of all the “inconvenient truths,” we would need to do a good job of accurately analyzing the situation, and expressing it in a way that is easy to understand, whether by the children or just ordinary plain people.

    (Krieger) I’d be happy to collaborate with you on such a project. This takes us back to some of our earlier comments on common sense. Everything that you are talking about here is common sense. It should be easy for people to understand. Also, using An Inconvenient Truth as a model, it might be a good idea to also prepare a video so that it’s easier for people to get the information.

    (Saionji) Yes, we can think of many other media, in terms of how to distribute the message. But what I would want to stress is that I would want as many people as possible to have an accurate understanding of what we call common sense, the simple common sense. That’s why I have referred to it as a textbook. It could be video, or it could take other form as well. Also, I serve as mentor of Japanese National Commission for UNESCO, so we could probably collaborate with them as well. It would be the mission to diffuse the message to as many people as possible, especially to the children, the importance of the common sense we share.

    One of the pillars of UNESCO’s activities is to carry out ESD, which is its Education for Sustainable Development program, and that’s the basic education that they like to render in order to create the sustainable Earth – sustainable in terms of peaceful, and would include all subjects we’ve talked about. If you talk about sustainable society, all the problems we’ve discussed would be included. I believe that’s a basic message that we need to communicate to all the people.

    (Krieger) I agree.

    (Saionji) Yes, when we were talking about the education of children earlier, you mentioned “peace leaders.” Could you elaborate a bit about “peace leaders”?

    (Krieger) We are trying to reach as many people as possible, particularly young people, and teach them about peace and about leadership. When I say peace, I mean it in a broad sense, because peace requires justice and human security. We want young people to have a sense that they can contribute to making a better world. There are things they can do and things that they need to know in order to make a contribution.

    In addition to education about the issues, we are also trying to teach leadership skills. Most young people don’t have any training for leadership. There is no place for learning how to lead in school, so we are trying to encourage young people to develop skills such as organizing, goal setting, public speaking and public outreach – various skills that are required for leadership.

    One of the things we observe is that most leadership is hierarchical. In the military or in a corporation, there are very hierarchical leadership methods. Such leadership is very easy to implement when a higher ranking person tells a lower ranking person what to do. But with peace leadership, you don’t have any hierarchy. It’s a harder form of leadership, because you cannot order somebody to do something, and you cannot fire them if they don’t do it. You have to convince them from your heart that something is worth doing. You have to sustain the interests of the people you want to follow. It is very challenging to help people to develop leadership skills in working for peace. But that’s our goal.

    It’s very interesting that we have a young person who is leading our program who was a West Point graduate. West Point is the United States Military Academy. He went through West Point and served in the army for seven years after graduating. During that period, he wrote and published a book on peace titled Will War Ever End? He has written a second book on peace that’s going to be published soon. We think we are very fortunate to have that young man, who has leadership training in the military but wants to apply that training to the challenge of developing peace leaders.

    (Saionji) Yes, we do put importance in education, so here again is another area that we would like to further step up our collaboration, especially in the Peace Leadership Program you have mentioned. I hope that we shall be able to share and exchange more information about the Peace Leadership Program, and activities that we do as well. It would be very nice if the young man you have referred to, who is a graduate of West Point, would come to Japan one day and speak to the people here in Japan.

    (Krieger) I would love to see that happen.

    (Saionji) You have been working to eliminate nuclear weapons for the last 40 years. But I don’t think the elimination of nuclear weapons in itself is an ultimate goal that you have set forth. When I read your books and other articles you have written, it is clear that just by eradicating nuclear weapons it is not going to make the world perfect or end up in a nice peaceful world. So what’s your image of a peaceful world? And how would you set that as your vision?

    (Krieger) That’s a great question. First of all, I totally agree that a world free of nuclear weapons is not necessarily a peaceful world, although I believe it would be a better world. By eliminating nuclear weapons in the world, we would have eliminated the most urgent threat to humankind and to the future of life. But, of course, that’s not the end. We need to build a world that is fair for all people, that gives all the people a chance to live their lives fully. We need to create a world in which there are not a few people living in extraordinary luxury, as at the present, while billions of people are living without enough food, without safe drinking water, without health care, without education. There’s something terribly wrong with our humanity if we allow those conditions to continue.

    We can readily identify one of the primary areas that needs to change if we are going to solve the problem of gross inequality in the world. That is redistributing the large military budgets to positive uses. I strongly believe that we have to keep working for a more just and decent world. That’s an obligation of all of us on our planet. If you have the privilege to live in a place where you are not wanting for food, where your human rights are being protected, where you already have a decent life, there is responsibility to help others who are less fortunate on our planet.

    We need to take our responsibilities, learn to think globally, become better world citizens, and speak out on these issues of inequities and injustice, and not allow them to be buried from view. We need to make these issues transparent, and we need to work to change them. Eliminating nuclear weapons is getting rid of a big threat hanging over humanity. Then we can concentrate on the many things we need to change in a positive direction.

    (Saionji) I just want to share with you the Declaration for All Life on Earth, that is by our Foundation, in which people, animals, and plants all have the responsibility to support the Earth. Furthermore, we have four guiding principles: 1) reverence for life; 2) respect for all differences; 3) gratitude for coexistence with all of nature; and 4) harmony between the spiritual and material, in which regardless of different ethnicity, or countries, there are common values that could be shared by all the people on Earth.

    I know we are running out of time, so this will be the last question. Having had the discussion this morning, I would like you to refer to what each individual can do in order so that he or she shall make a contribution to creating a world free of nuclear weapons.

    (Krieger) In looking at this Declaration for All Life on Earth, I appreciate its overall sentiments. What particularly catches my interest is the Age of the Individual, not in the sense of egoism, but an age in which every individual is ready to accept the responsibility. That’s something I have believed in for a long time – along with rights, go responsibilities. I am happy to see that responsibility is there.

    What responsibility can individuals take with regard to nuclear weapons? I think responsibility lies primarily with the citizens of nuclear weapon states, the countries that have nuclear weapons. But in broader sense it’s a problem for all humanity. People need to cut through the seeming layers of complication, and get to the level of understanding that these weapons do not promote life and are really instruments of death on a massive scale, a scale beyond anything that we can easily imagine.

    One of the challenges is just to imagine what nuclear weapons are capable of. Beyond that, people need to speak out, they need to communicate with their political leaders, they need to not accept simplistic solutions from political leaders, but rather to challenge reliance upon these weapons.

    Individuals need to themselves become agents of change. First, they need to learn, then they can teach other people, their friends and acquaintances. The last thing, I think is the need to persevere and persist in seeking the goal of a world without nuclear weapons. I think everybody has different talents. Some people are fine singers, some people can write, some people can teach. Whatever a person’s talent happens to be, I would like to see them use their creativity to put that talent to work for a nuclear weapon-free world. I cannot tell them how to use their talents, but I know everyone has some talent that they can use. My main point is that people need to raise the priority of the nuclear issue, and understand the urgency of solving this problem, so we can move on and solve the many other serious problems that deserve our attention.

    (Saionji) Thank you very much. It was a very wonderful discussion, and thank you so much for your contribution to our Foundation.

    (Krieger) Thank you, it was a pleasure talking with you.

    Hiroo Saionji is President of the Goi Peace Foundation (www.goipeace.or.jp) founded in Japan in 1999. The Foundation is dedicated to supporting the evolution of humanity toward a peaceful and harmonious new civilization by promoting consciousness, values and wisdom for creating peace, and by building cooperation among individuals and organizations across diverse fields, including education, science, culture and the arts. Mr. Saionji is the great-grandson of Prince Kinmochi Saionji, who was twice Prime Minster of Japan during the Meiji Period. He also serves as the president of the World Peace Prayer Society, a member of the Japanese National Commission for UNESCO, an Ambassador of the World Wisdom Council, and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Foundation for Cultural Heritage and Art Research, among others. In 2007, he was awarded the Cultural Prize of the Dr. Lin Tsung-i Foundation of Taiwan, in recognition of his contributions to world peace. He also received the Philosopher Saint Shree Dnyaneshwara World Peace Prize of India along with his wife Masami Saionji in 2008.

  • A Nuclear Weapons Convention

    This speech was delivered by David Krieger to the 4th Nagasaki Global Citizens’ Assembly for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons.

    A Nuclear Weapons Convention is a treaty to ban and eliminate nuclear weapons.  Such a treaty does not yet exist, except in the form of a model treaty developed by non-governmental organizations and introduced by Costa Rica and Malaysia to the United Nations General Assembly.  The model treaty shows that a Nuclear Weapons Convention is possible from a technical perspective.  What it does not demonstrate is its feasibility from a political perspective.  

    If the goal is a world free of nuclear weapons, then a Nuclear Weapons Convention is the best vehicle for achieving this goal.  When speaking about a Nuclear Weapons Convention, I generally add “a treaty for the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons.”  Let’s discuss those qualifiers.

    Many leaders express concern about nuclear disarmament occurring too rapidly, without sufficient preparation, and thus being potentially dangerous and destabilizing.  Of course, that concern must be compared to the considerable dangers of current nuclear weapons policies, including proliferation, terrorism, and inadvertent or intentional use.  However, to avoid destabilization in the process of nuclear disarmament, the proposal is for phased elimination of nuclear weapons, which would allow for confidence building in each phase.  As certain steps were accomplished in each phase, confidence in the system would be strengthened.  For example, reductions in numbers of weapons can be set out for the various phases.  Safeguards can be strengthened in phases, and so forth.  There are many ways in which the phases can be designed, related to the number of phases, their length, and what is to be accomplished in each phase.

    A principal concern related to nuclear weapons abolition is cheating.  Thus, any disarmament system must be subject to verification.  Ronald Reagan famously said, “Trust, but verify.”  There need to be systems of inspection and verification so that there is confidence that cheating is not occurring.  Individual states should not be allowed to control the methods of inspection and verification on their territories.  Verification must not have limiting factors.  It must allow for full inspections.  Countries must be prepared to open their facilities to challenge inspections at any time and in any place.  The right to full inspections to assure against cheating must be understood as a basic requirement for a Nuclear Weapons Convention.  There are many ways in which verification procedures can be organized and designed, related to issues such as what entities would authorize and conduct inspections, and the timing and scope of the inspections.

    Making disarmament irreversible is an important element of the process of moving to zero nuclear weapons.  It is one of the 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament agreed to at the 2000 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference.  Irreversibility is a matter of principle in order to hold on to the gains that are made in the process of disarmament and not allow for the possibility of backsliding.  Some technical questions may be involved, including the determination of what constitutes irreversibility.  

    The final element I would stress is transparency.  A Nuclear Weapons Convention should make the process of nuclear disarmament transparent so that all parties will have confidence that the required steps are actually being taken.  This is an element that must be carefully thought through, however, so as not to increase the vulnerability of states as the number of weapons is reduced.  There is a delicate balance between security and transparency that must be considered.  

    I view these four elements – phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent – as being essential for a Nuclear Weapons Convention.  They are necessary for building confidence that the abolition of nuclear weapons can be accomplished.  They will be guideposts in negotiating the treaty, but before there can be a treaty we must first get to the negotiating table.

    Over the years, there have been many calls for a Nuclear Weapons Convention.  In 1995, when the Abolition 2000 Global Network was formed following the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review and Extension Conference, they called in their founding statement for the NPT nuclear weapon states to “[i]nitiate immediately and conclude…negotiations on a nuclear weapons abolition convention that requires the phased elimination of all nuclear weapons within a timebound framework, with provisions for effective verification and enforcement.”

    In 1996, the International Court of Justice issued an Advisory Opinion on the illegality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons.  The Court stated unanimously: “There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.”  In effect, the Court said there is a legal obligation to pursue a Nuclear Weapons Convention.  

    On the opening day of the of the 2000 NPT Review Conference, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation published an Appeal in the New York Times signed by, among others, 35 Nobel Laureates, including 14 Nobel Peace Laureates.  The Appeal called upon the nuclear weapon states to “[c]ommence good faith negotiations to achieve a Nuclear Weapons Convention requiring the phased elimination of all nuclear weapons, with provisions for effective verification and enforcement.”

    In 2008, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued an Action Plan for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Nuclear Disarmament, emphasizing that the two are strongly interrelated.  The first of his five actions is “[a] call for all NPT parties to pursue negotiations in good faith – as required by the treaty – on nuclear disarmament either through a new convention or through a series of mutually reinforcing instruments backed by a credible system of verification.”

    The Mayors for Peace Hiroshima-Nagasaki Protocol calls for negotiations for a Nuclear weapons Convention or a comparable Framework Agreement to eliminate nuclear weapons by the year 2020.  They have promoted this among their 3,500 member cities.

    The most important issue confronting us is not the elements of a Nuclear Weapons Convention.  These can be worked out through negotiations.  The most important issue is how to generate the political will to commence negotiations.  I believe that such political will must come from demands by the people.  I also believe that the United States should lead the way, and this places a special responsibility upon the shoulders of Americans.  If the US does not lead, it is hard to imagine the Russians joining; if the Russians don’t join, it is hard to imagine the Chinese joining, and so forth.

    President Obama has called for the US, as the only country to have used nuclear weapons, to lead on achieving a nuclear weapons-free world.  Unfortunately, though, he doesn’t believe the goal can be achieved in his lifetime.  It is up to people everywhere to make their voices heard on this issue and to encourage him to convene negotiations for a Nuclear Weapons Convention with a sense of urgency.  President Obama has expressed strong concern about nuclear terrorism.  He must be convinced that the threat of nuclear terrorism will only be eliminated when nuclear weapons are eliminated.

    If the United States does not act in convening negotiations for a Nuclear Weapons Convention, Japan could take the lead.  As the victims of the first atomic attacks, Japan has an equal, if not more valid, claim to leadership and responsibility on this issue.  Most important, the voices of the bomb survivors, the hibakusha, must be ever present in the debate on achieving a world free of nuclear weapons.  

    In a Briefing Booklet that the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation is preparing for the 2010 NPT Review Conference, we describe a spectrum of perspectives toward nuclear weapons.  At one end of the spectrum are the Nuclear Believers, those who believe the bomb has been a force for peace.  At the other end of the spectrum are the Nuclear Abolitionists, those who believe that nuclear weapons threaten the annihilation of the human species and most forms of life.  In the center is the category of the Nuclear Disempowered, those who are confused, ignorant and apathetic.  People in this category are often fatalistic and are inclined to defer to “experts.”  It is this enormous group of disempowered individuals that must be awakened, empowered and engaged in seeking a world free of nuclear weapons.   This is our challenge as abolitionists.  If we can succeed in building a solid base of support for nuclear weapons abolition, a Nuclear Weapons Convention will be the vehicle to take us to the destination.

  • Nagasaki Appeal 2010

    We have gathered from around the world at the Nagasaki Global Citizens’ Assembly for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons for the fourth time to demonstrate our determination that Nagasaki be the last place ever to suffer a nuclear attack. At the first Assembly in 2000, we heard atomic bomb survivors say, “We want to see nuclear weapons abolished in our lifetime.” Since then, ten years have passed without their wish being realized. Hearing again the voices of survivors, we renew our resolve to achieve a world without nuclear weapons. Their stories remind us of the suffering of victims created at the every stage of the nuclear cycle from uranium mining to weapons production and testing.

    With this in mind we must act on the opportunities provided by:

    • The five-point plan for nuclear disarmament proposed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on United Nations Day, 24 October 2008;
    • The tidal-wave of hope inspired by US President Obama’s April 2009 speech in Prague, and the joint statement of US President Obama and Russian President Medvedev in April 2009 pledging to work for nuclear stockpile reductions and supporting the goal of a nuclear-weapons-free world;
    • The change of government in Japan and the subsequent statements by Prime Minister Hatoyama and Foreign Minister Okada calling for sole-purpose nuclear doctrines, negative security assurances and advocating for a regional nuclear weapon free zone;
    • The announcement by German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle recommending the removal of US nuclear weapons from the territories of NATO states as a step in reducing the role of nuclear weapons in NATO.

    Nuclear weapons are the ultimate threat to life and the environment and the most extreme violation of human rights. They are dangerous in anyone’s hands and any use would be a crime against humanity. We call upon governments, in cooperation with civil society, to launch the process of abolishing nuclear weapons in a visible manner. To that end, the Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to be held in May 2010, provides a critical opportunity to achieve this goal.

    Bearing this in mind, we advocate the following actions:

    1. Establishment of a process, involving like-minded countries and representatives of civil society, to undertake preparatory work on a treaty to prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons. Such a process should be organized with reference to the five-point proposal for nuclear disarmament advanced by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, which includes a call on states to commence negotiation on a nuclear weapons convention or package of agreements. The Hiroshima-Nagasaki Protocol, launched by Mayors for Peace at the 2008 NPT Preparatory Committee meeting in Geneva, also advocates such a process. We call on the 2010 NPT Review Conference to agree to this.

    2. All states possessing nuclear arsenals should halt research, development, testing, and component production while reductions of arsenals are in progress, not afterwards, with production and research facilities subject to an intrusive verification regime at the earliest possible time. States should reduce nuclear weapons in a manner that supports general disarmament, and the financial and human resources currently used to develop and maintain nuclear weapons systems should be redirected towards meeting social and economic needs consistent with the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.

    3. Increased citizen involvement in nuclear disarmament, including through campaigns and activities of Mayors for Peace, Parliamentarians for Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament (PNND), Abolition 2000 Global Network, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) and others. We support nonviolent actions to oppose nuclear weapons, including direct action at nuclear weapons facilities. We encourage greater participation of youth in such campaigns and activities.

    4. Creation of more nuclear weapons free zones or zones free of weapons of mass destruction, or single state nuclear weapons free zones, in regions of the world including the Middle East, Northeast Asia, Europe, South Asia and the Arctic. Nuclear weapon free zones provide a practical means for reducing the role of nuclear weapons in security doctrines and decreasing the threat of nuclear weapons being used in the regions covered by the zones, and provide a realistic alternative to reliance on extended nuclear deterrence. In particular, we call on the governments of Japan and South Korea to prepare and publicize plans for creating a Northeast Asia Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone. This would create a favorable environment for promoting the six-party talks designed to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula.

    5. Bring world leaders, including U.S. President Obama, to Hiroshima and Nagasaki to meet survivors and see for themselves the consequences of the use of nuclear weapons, which continue through the lives of survivors and subsequent generations. It is essential to continue to impart the experiences of A-bomb victims in all their aspects to people all over the world. In this matter, Japan as the only country to have suffered atomic bombing, has a unique contribution to make.

    To the leaders of the nations that have nuclear weapons and those that wish to have them, we address our final comments to you:

    Surely you are aware through literature and films of the enormous destructive power of the atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. While you may believe that nuclear weapons serve your national security interests and elevate your prestige, you have not personally experienced the effects of an atomic bomb explosion. The fact is that tens of thousands of innocent citizens were obliterated instantly under those mushroom clouds, that people who did not die instantly died after writhing in agony, covered in blood or burned in fire, and that people who narrowly escaped death had to suffer from radiation-induced illnesses for the rest of their lives. 

    You cannot be proud of possessing nuclear weapons or seeking to have them in the future. It means that you are conspirators in a shameful offence against humanity. From Nagasaki, an atomic bombed city, as global citizens, we demand that you take immediate steps towards the realization of a world without nuclear weapons.

    February 8, 2010

    The 4th Nagasaki Global Citizens’ Assembly for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons

  • 64 Years and Counting

    This editorial was originally published by Asahi Shimbun on August 6, 2009

    This summer has special significance for Hiroshima and Nagasaki in that it is the first since U.S. President Barack Obama gave his landmark speech in Prague in April to declare that the United States will “take concrete steps toward a world without nuclear weapons.”

    It is enormously significant that Obama said the United States, as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, has “a moral responsibility to act.” But this is not the only reason why his Prague speech was so galvanizing.

    In this age of globalization, the world is becoming increasingly interdependent. A nuclear explosion in any major city in the world would not only kill a great number of people but also bring the global economic system to the brink of collapse. The consequences would be the same whether it was a nuclear strike or a terrorist attack.

    The argument that nuclear deterrence is more effective in securing stability around the world still enjoys considerable support among the nuclear powers and their allies. But succumbing to the allure of nuclear deterrence could result in the acceleration of nuclear proliferation. The world is also facing a real danger of nuclear arms falling into the hands of terrorists. If that nightmare becomes reality, the risks would be immeasurable.

    What must be done? Shouldn’t we come up with a new security strategy to move toward a nuclear-free world? That is the question posed by Obama.

    On Obama’s initiative, it has been decided that leaders of the United Nations Security Council member countries will meet on Sept. 24 to discuss nuclear issues. No pre-emptive nuclear attacks

    Creating a security framework that doesn’t rely on nuclear arms will require formulating and implementing a broad array of policies. We have a raft of proposals for countries that have nuclear arsenals. In particular, we want them to work on spreading the “nonnuclear umbrella.”

    The idea is that nuclear powers will pledge not to use nuclear weapons against any nonnuclear countries that are part of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). If this is established as a global rule, nonnuclear parties of the treaty could significantly reduce their risks of coming under nuclear attack. This is how the nonnuclear umbrella works.

    Expanding the nonnuclear umbrella would help decrease the role of nuclear weapons and lead to a substantial reduction in the number of nuclear weapons in the world. This approach, which would contribute to both arms reduction and global security, should be promoted as much as possible while Obama is in office.

    There are many ways to expand the nonnuclear umbrella. One would be a Security Council resolution that bans nuclear attacks against nonnuclear countries in the NPT camp. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon has said that it is possible for the Security Council permanent members, which are all nuclear powers, to guarantee they will not use nuclear arms to attack countries without nuclear capability. Such a Security Council resolution should be adopted as soon as possible.

    A second way would make use of nuclear-free zone treaties. There are treaties on nuclear-weapon-free zones for five regions–Latin America, the South Pacific, Africa, Southeast Asia and Central Asia. The treaty for Africa has not yet come into force. Each of these treaties comes with a protocol that commits the nuclear powers to refraining from nuclear attacks against the treaty participants.

    Only the nuclear-free zone treaty for Latin America, however, has been ratified by all the five original members of the nuclear club–the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China. The nonnuclear umbrella should be established as an obligation under international law through efforts to put the treaty for Africa into effect as soon as possible and to have the nuclear powers ratify all the protocols to those treaties.

    A third way would be for nuclear-armed nations to declare that they will not stage pre-emptive nuclear strikes and thereby confine the role of their arsenals to deterrence to nuclear attacks from other countries. Since nonnuclear countries cannot stage nuclear attacks, such declarations by nuclear-capable nations would spread the nonnuclear umbrella drastically.

    The Japanese government is cautious about the United States vowing not to launch pre-emptive nuclear strikes. North Korea has conducted nuclear tests, and the reclusive regime may have biological and chemical weapons as well. Japan’s position is that the option of a pre-emptive nuclear strike by the United States should be left open to deter Pyongyang from using those weapons.

    However, the credibility of Japan’s nonnuclear diplomacy would be badly damaged if Tokyo emphasizes the importance of nuclear deterrence too much and obstructs Obama’s efforts to reduce the role of nuclear weapons and promote nuclear disarmament. Even if it wants to keep nuclear deterrence intact for the time being, Japan should adopt a policy of promoting the nonnuclear umbrella. Nuclear-free zone in Northeast Asia

    One worthwhile idea would be a nuclear-free zone treaty for Northeast Asia. Japan and South Korea could take the initiative by signing such a treaty first and putting it into force. If the United States, China and Russia all ratify a protocol that bans them from launching nuclear attacks against Japan and South Korea, a nonnuclear umbrella would be raised for the region.

    North Korea should be able to join the treaty for protection under the nonnuclear umbrella after it abandons its nuclear program and returns to the NPT. This prospect would give North Korea a strong incentive to abandon its nuclear ambitions and help bolster regional stability.

    It is also vital to deal with China’s rapid military buildup. During the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue meeting in Washington in July, Obama underlined the importance of bilateral cooperation. He cited the denuclearization of North Korea as one such policy challenge, saying neither Washington nor Beijing has an interest in a nuclear arms race in East Asia. “A balance of terror cannot hold,” he said in his speech at the conference.

    The U.S. and Chinese economies are rapidly become entwined. Their relations are completely different from those between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Back then, the two superpowers could have destroyed the other’s industry without suffering much damage to its own economy. Integrating China into arms reduction

    Japan should understand the reality of the U.S.-China relationship and propose a plan for enhancing regional stability while curtailing the role of nuclear arms in Northeast Asia. The Japan-U.S. security alliance should evolve from the current security architecture based primarily on nuclear deterrence into a platform for broader cooperation to expand the nonnuclear umbrella and enhance arms control in the region. That would give a big boost to efforts to engage China in nuclear disarmament efforts.

    The problem of nuclear proliferation in the world is linked closely to regional and religious conflicts. India and Pakistan have both carried out nuclear tests. Israel is widely regarded as a virtual nuclear power. Iran is continuing with its program to enrich uranium. Regional or religious conflicts are behind all these examples of nuclear proliferation.

    Pushing these countries into giving up their nuclear ambitions will require tenacious efforts to resolve the conflicts and convince them that they only endanger themselves by possessing nuclear arsenals.

    As the only country to have come under nuclear attack, Japan should make greater contributions to such diplomatic efforts.

    Asahi Shimbun is Japan’s leading newspaper.