Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: NAPF

  • Seeking Peace in the Nuclear Age

    Seeking Peace in the Nuclear Age

    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation was founded in 1982 by a small group of citizens who believed that peace is an imperative of the Nuclear Age – that our powerful technologies, particularly nuclear weapons, have brought us to the stage in human development when we must put an end to war before war puts an end to us. We created the Foundation in the belief that citizens can make a difference by influencing other citizens and government officials.

    The Foundation began with only a handful of individuals and now reaches millions of people annually through our programs, publications and websites. We operate internationally and are on the Roster in consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council. The Foundation has been named a United Nations Peace Messenger organization, and among our advisors are many Nobel Peace Laureates from throughout the world.

    The work of the Foundation is based upon a commitment to achieve a more secure and decent future for humanity. We have three principal goals: to abolish nuclear weapons; to strengthen international law and institutions; and to inspire and empower a new generation of peace leaders. We seek these goals by means of education and advocacy.

    Abolishing nuclear weapons may seem like an impossible goal, but it is critical to pursue because these weapons can destroy cities, civilizations and even the human species. The stated purpose of nuclear weapons has always been deterrence, to prevent others from using nuclear weapons by threatening to retaliate with massive force. But now that the Cold War has ended there are no nuclear weapons states that remain enemies, excepting possibly India and Pakistan , and even they are attempting to work out their differences.

    Nuclear weapons are not needed to deter friends, and they cannot deter terrorists who cannot be located. Thus, our most practical and safest course of action is the phased and verifiable elimination of all nuclear weapons. To succeed in this endeavor, the US must take the lead, for without the US it will not happen. The Foundation works with other organizations around the world on these issues. We helped form a network of over 2000 organizations working for a nuclear weapons-free future. We have also initiated a national campaign to chart a new course for US nuclear policy. The campaign is called Turn the Tide and it allows citizens to learn about US nuclear policies and to play a role in changing them.

    Each year the Foundation hosts a symposium on international law that looks at strengthening some aspect of the global legal structure. One of our symposiums focused on creating a United Nations Emergency Peace Service – a small UN rapid deployment force that could be used to stop genocides and crimes against humanity from occurring by moving rapidly to prevent them. Another symposium focused on the importance of supporting an International Criminal Court that will hold all individuals, including national leaders, accountable for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

    The Foundation is also active in reaching out to young people. We are working to create a new generation of peace leaders. Michael Coffey , our Director of Youth Programs, travels around the country speaking to and working with youth on high school and college campuses. In 2005, the Foundation will host a conference of 50-60 young nuclear activists from around the country to learn from each other and from a team of experienced activists about being more effective in creating a nuclear weapons-free future. We are very excited about the potential of this youth conference to have a multiplier effect in reaching a broad audience of young people and influencing them to play a role in shaping their future.

    We do much more at the Foundation, which you can find out about at our principal web site, www.wagingpeace.org. You can also visit our other web sites,www.nuclearfiles.org and www.ucnuclearfree.org.

    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation is an organization that works daily to build a peaceful and nuclear weapons free world. It is a persistent voice for peace in our troubled world. We invite you to add your voice and help support our efforts to abolish nuclear weapons, strengthen international law and reach out to young people. Help us create a world we can be proud to pass on to our children and grandchildren.

    David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. This is an edited version of remarks made at the kick-off event for the Foundation’s 20th Anniversary Campaign.

  • There Is Something In this World that Does Not Love an Empire

    Acceptance speech upon receiving the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s 2003 Distinguished Peace Leadership Award, November 15, 2003

    Jonathan SchellI am honored to be honored, and especially in the company of David Krieger and Richard Falk, who are for me true heroes of the nuclear age.

    I want to talk about violent and nonviolent means of change. We gather in a dark time. Our country, in what seems to me a wrong turn of truly epic proportions, has turned to force, to violence as the mainstay of its policy, not only abroad but at home as well, menacing and constricting constitutional freedom at home, while approaching the world with a drawn imperial sword. And yet I want to speak of something hopeful.

    I think that in the twentieth century, we witnessed the bankruptcy of violence, broadly speaking. You all probably know the saying “War is the final arbiter.” It means that if you want to find the powerful ones in a given situation, look for the people with the guns. Or, in the words of Max Weber, who really spoke not just for a tradition of thought as long as history but also for a common-sense understanding, “politics operates with very special means, namely power backed up by violence.”

    Or as Vladimir Lenin said, “Great problems in the life of nations are decided only by force.” This was thought to be true in revolution, and obviously, all the more so in war. Indeed, I’d say that the conviction that force was always the final arbiter was not in truth so much an intellectual conclusion as a tacit assumption on all sides—the product not of a question asked and answered but of one unasked.

    I want to question the truth of this assertion. I argue, in fact, that force, always a tragedy for both user and the one upon which it is used, has become less and less effective in deciding political matters. Indeed, the history of the twentieth century, I argue, holds a lesson for the twenty-first. It is that in a steadily and irreversibly widening sphere, violence, always a mark of human failure and bringer of sorrow, has now also become dysfunctional as a political instrument.

    The domain of force has been squeezed on two sides. First, at the top of the system, has come the nuclear revolution, which, by rendering war between the greatest powers unthinkable, has ruled out the kind of global war that twice broke out in the twentieth century. The paralyzing influence of nuclear arms extends far below the superpower level, deep into the realm of conventional war, helping to render conventional war between fully fledged nation-states a rare thing compared to earlier times.

    Those of you familiar with the work of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation know what this nuclear stalemate meant and still means: that our species stood, and still stands, on the brink of its annihilation. And you know too what solution this Foundation recommends, and that I recommend, too: Get rid of those weapons, get rid of them in Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, India, but also in China, Russia, France, England and, yes, here in the United States. As John Kennedy said to his good friend, the British Ambassador Ormsby Gore, at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, “Our world will never make any sense until we get rid of these things.” His insight, born as the responsibility for the future of the United States and the whole human species bore down upon him in that mortal crisis is as critical for the twenty-first century as it was for the twentieth, even more so. And it holds true, of course, for all the weapons of mass destruction.

    And yet, this evening I’m not going to talk more about that great, necessary, common sense objective of our time. For it seems to me that if you propose to get rid of something—in this case, weapons of mass destruction, which stand at the apex of the structures of force, you need something to replace it with. What’s wonderful is that even in the midst of the twentieth century something began to appear—not perhaps a full-fledged answer, but the beginnings of the answer, the foundations.

    If at the superpower level, political matters cannot be decided by force, something else has to decide—and something else did decide with the Cold War, for example. What was that something? This brings me to the pressure on warfare—or, more specifically, on imperial conquest—from the other side, the underside, so to speak. If we look at the recent history of empire, surely the most notable fact is that all of the empires that stood at the beginning of the twentieth century–the British, the French, the Dutch, the German, the Portuguese, and so forth—have all gone under the waves of history. The same is true of the fascist empires that arose in the nineteen-thirties.

    There is something in this world that does not love an empire.

    The great pioneer was of course Mohandas Gandhi, who began his campaign against imperial rule at the beginning of the twentieth century. Surprisingly, he found hope in religious faith. Reversing centuries of tradition, which had taught that God was to be sought above all in monasteries and desert places, he said of his pursuit of God, “If I could persuade myself that I should find Him in a Himalayan cave, I would proceed there immediately. But I know that I cannot find Him apart from humanity.” The aim of his life would be to “see God,” but that pursuit would lead him into politics. “For God,” he said, reversing centuries of tradition in a phrase, “appears to you only in action.”

    Gandhi overcame the suspicion that if spiritual energies were released into the political world, the result would be more destructive than constructive. We don’t need to go beyond September 11th to see how true that is. Or, we can look to our own religious fundamentalists who look forward to something called “the rapture,” in which the faithful will be flown up to heaven while everyone else perishes.

    What Gandhi offered was two essential correctives: he insisted that a spiritualized politics must be nonviolent. And also that it must be tolerant. He insisted on something else, though, that is equally important. He declared—I would say discovered—that not only should the power of government depend on the consent of the people but that it actually did so, and that was true of dictatorships as well as democracies.

    We know the result, although it took a long time: the British were forced to quit India. We may wonder, though, whether it was restricted to India. The end of the Soviet Union gives an answer. The activists who brought down that leviathan seemed to rediscover—but also to remodel and vary—Gandhi’s scheme.

    Vaclav Havel, the Czech dissident, and later president of the Czech Republic, spoke of “living in truth”—the title of an essay he published in 1978. Living in truth stood in opposition to “living in the lie,” which meant living in obedience to the repressive regime. Havel wrote: “We introduced a new model of behavior: don’t get involved in diffuse general ideological polemics with the center, to whom numerous concrete causes are always being sacrificed; fight ‘only’ for those concrete causes, and fight for them unswervingly to the end.”

    Why was this “living in truth”? Havel’s explanation constitutes one of the few attempts of this period, or any other, to address the peculiarly ineffable question of what the inspiration of positive, constructive nonviolent action is. By living within the lie, that is, conforming to the system’s demands, Havel says, “individuals confirm the system, fulfill the system, make the system, are the system.” A “line of conflict” is then drawn through each person, who is invited in the countless decisions of daily life to choose between living in truth and living in the lie.

    Living in truth—directly doing in your immediate surroundings what you think needs doing, saying what you think is true and needs saying, acting the way you think people should act—is a form a protest, Havel admits, against living in the lie, and so those who try to live in truth are indeed an opposition. But that is neither all they are nor is it the main thing they are. That is to say, if the state’s commands are a violation deserving of protest, the deepest reason is that they disrupt this something—some elemental good thing, here called a person’s “essential existence”—that people wish to be or do for its own sake, whether or not it is opposed or favored by the state or anyone else.

    Havel rebels against the idea that a negative, merely responding impulse is at the root of his actions. He rejects the labels “opposition” or “dissident” for himself and his fellow activists. Something in him craves manifestation. People who so define themselves do so in relation to a prior “position.” In other words, they relate themselves specifically to the power that rules society and through it, define themselves, deriving their own “position” from the position of the regime. For people who have simply decided to live within the truth, to say aloud what they think, to express their solidarity with their fellow citizens, to create as they want and simply to live in harmony with their better ‘”self,” it is naturally disagreeable to feel required to define their own, original and positive “position” negatively, in terms of something else, and to think of themselves primarily as people who are against something, not simply as people who are what they are.

    For Havel, this understanding that action properly begins with a predisposition to truth has practical consequences that are basic to an understanding of political power: Under the orderly surface of the life of lies, therefore, there slumbers the hidden sphere of life in its real aims, of its hidden openness to truth. The singular, explosive, incalculable political power of living within the truth resides in the fact that living openly within the truth has an ally, invisible to be sure, but omnipresent: this “hidden sphere.” Thus in 1978 did he foresee the downfall of the Soviet Union.

    Now you may wonder why, in the United States of 2003, I’m talking about Mohandas K. Gandhi in the early 1900s and Vaclav Havel in the 1970s. In the first place, the two historical events I have cited were not marginal. These were the two greatest empires of the time. The British empire was the one on which the sun was supposed never to set. But it did set. And the most important reason was probably the nonviolent resistance organized by Gandhi.

    The Soviet empire was no detail of the twentieth century. Who would have thought that that colossus, with its immense nuclear arsenal, its Red Army, its KGB, all of those instruments of force in the hands of a totalitarian state, would melt away one fine day like the morning dew? And who would have thought that this would happen substantially without violence? Who would have thought it? Well, Havel thought it and Lech Walesa, the electrician who led the Solidarity trade movement, thought it, and they did it. “We did it,” Lech Walesa told a Joint Session of the US Congress, “without breaking a single pane of glass.”

    I could give many more examples. I think all democratic activism is of this character. This is what I hope can turn around the policies of the United States. But also every empire that was standing at the beginning of the twentieth century had fallen by its end. And that goes for the fascist empires—the Japanese and the German—that arose at mid-century.

    There is something in this world that does not love an empire.

    There is another aspect of this business that is close to home. Revolution without violence, of the kind that occurred in India and the Soviet Union—and also in Spain, Greece, Portugal, the Philippines, Serbia, and any number of other countries that I can mention—has tended, much more than the violent kind to lead to liberal democratic rule. What is democratic rule, after all, including the American Republic, but a means of governing oneself without violence—of transferring power without tank fire at the local television station, without torture in the basement?

    So these two things go together. The one is a good solid foundation for the other. A third thing goes with them, though this is less developed—something very familiar: simply the gradual strengthening and thickening of the rule of law, in the form of agreements, treaties, international organizations, governmental and otherwise. These are the counterpart in international affairs of nonviolent revolution at the level of the street and liberal democracy at the level of the national state.

    I mentioned the nuclear dilemma. Under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, 182 countries have agreed to do without nuclear weapons. The treaty provides in its Article VI that the existing nuclear powers should join the 182 in living without nuclear arms.

    If I’m right that the nonviolent political power—sometimes called people power—is at the bottom of both the collapse of the world’s empires in the twentieth century and is a promising new foundation for democratic government, then what a colossal error it is for the United States to get back into the imperial business. For it does seem to me that the United States is indeed engaged now in the enormous folly of seeking to reinvent imperialism for the twentieth century.

    The spread of democracy is a wonderful thing—if I’m right it is a necessary foundation for peace—and it can happen. But it cannot be advanced by force, and still less by the creation of a new empire, an idea that is as unworkable as it morally mistaken. Empire, the embodiment of force, violates equity on a global scale. No lover of freedom can give it support. It is especially contrary to the founding principles of the United States.

    “Covenants, without the sword, are but words,” Hobbes said. Since then, the world has learned that swords without covenants are but empty bloodshed. Can cruise missiles build nations, in Iraq or elsewhere? Does power still flow from the barrel of a gun—or from a B-2 bomber? Can the world in the twenty-first century really be ruled from 35,000 feet? Modern peoples have the will to resist and the means to do so. Imperialism without politics is a naive imperialism. In our time, force can win a battle or two but politics is destiny.

    Perhaps you have read the news this morning. In Baghdad over the last several weeks there have been a series of devastating explosions. Now again today there have been explosions, but this time the American command has announced that we are the ones doing it.

    But these explosions cannot build democracy–not in Iraq and not in the United States, where democracy is also in danger.

    The point I want to leave you with is not only that violence is futile, but that the antidote and cure—nonviolent political action, direct or indirect, revolutionary or reformist, American or other—has been announced. May we apply it soon to our troubled country and world.

  • Supporting Active Citizenship Among Youth: Discussion Notes

    On Thursday, September 25, 2003, the Foundation hosted a dialogue entitled “Supporting Active Citizenship among Youth.” Numerous local organizations with an interest in better serving youth were represented: Santa Barbara County Education Office, Endowment for Youth Committee, Future Leaders of America, Big Brothers/Big Sisters, La Casa de Maria, and PAX 2100. Similarly, a strong contingency of students and parents from Santa Barbara Middle School enriched the dialogue.

    Foundation Board Member, Marc Kielberger, shared pictures from his recent trip to Sierra Leone, reflecting on the experience while incorporating lessons learned as Executive Director of Free the Children (the largest network of children helping children in the world). Similarly, Marc referred to his efforts as founder of Leaders Today (an international youth development organization) and author of Take Action! A Guide to Active Citizenship (a text used annually by 17,000 school children in Toronto alone). The presentation began with startling statistics about Sierra Leone. At 147 infant deaths per 1,000 births, Sierra Leone has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world. Life expectancy is 45 year of age for women and 40 years for men. While minerals are the Sierra Leone’s main export, Marc explained how many of the individuals he met during his travels view diamonds as one compounding factor fueling civil strife and extreme cases of human rights abuses. Still, Marc found hope on his trip. He visited a primary school built by Free the Children. He met and talked with numerous former child soldiers who had forgiven themselves and their former enemies, choosing to work for peace instead. He renewed his own passion for helping others in need.

    Prior to our general discussion, Lauren Peikert, a 7th grade student at Santa Barbara Middle School, made a special presentation of $2,500 to Free the Children’s School Building Campaign. Lauren was inspired to help others when Free the Children’s Embracing Cultures Tour visited her school last year. The tour featured three powerful young speakers and artists from different cultural backgrounds who invited Lauren and her classmates to be leaders in their school, community, and the world. Lauren sold drinks at sports events, spoke at her church, and organized numerous other creative ways toward building a school and hiring teachers for children in Sierra Leone.

    The discussion that followed contained numerous insightful comments and revelations, all focused on better identifying and meeting the needs of Santa Barbara youth so that they may have the will and skills to help others. A number of participants who were born and raised in Santa Barbara cited a sense of neighborhood as a key factor in coming of age, building self-confidence, and resolving conflict. Many participants agreed that this sense of neighborhood has been replaced with a certain degree of segregation, exclusion, and isolation. We asked ourselves, how can we restore this sense of community? How can we teach compassion in an extremely competitive culture? Marc commented that young girls often develop an interest in leadership and community service before their male counterparts. His trainings tend to focus and mobilizing this core group and challenging them to inspire and instruct their peers. Following these trainings, the school culture often shifts from one of competition to one where social consciousness is cool. Numerous parents agreed and added that parents must set a good example for their children to become compassionate leaders.

    Toward the end of the dialogue, three follow-up actions were proposed. Foundation President, David Krieger, challenged all of the Santa Barbara Middle School students present to raise enough money to build another school. When they achieve their goal, they will have the opportunity to present the check at the Foundation’s upcoming 20th Anniversary Evening for Peace, honoring Harry Belafonte and Jonathan Schell. In addition, the organizations present expressed an interest in collaborating toward creating a series of opportunities for young people to speak out and participate in informative, empowering events. This series would culminate in a summer leadership camp.

    If you are interested in contributing toward the successful completion of these actions or for more information about this event, please contact Michael Coffey, the Foundation’s Youth Outreach Coordinator, at youth@napf.org. 

  • Wallace Drew, A Man Of Peace, (1917 – 2003)

    Wallace Drew, chair emeritus of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, died peacefully on September 7, 2003 at the age of 85. Wally was one of the Foundation’s founders and served as its first treasurer and later as the first chair of the Board. A disabling stroke in 1998 slowed Wally down considerably, but he fought back courageously and remained involved in the work of the Foundation until his death.

    During World War II, Wally served as a major in the Army Corps of Engineers. He landed at Normandy and fought in seven major battles across France. He was part of the US forces that liberated Paris and one of the first Americans to enter the Buchenwald concentration camp. Wally received a Bronze Star and seven battle stars. After the conclusion of the war in Europe, Wally was assigned to be part of the planning group for the invasion of Japan.

    His experiences in war as a young man strengthened Wally’s commitment to building a peaceful world. In a 1997 interview, Wally reflected upon these experiences, “I was one of four boys. One brother was killed in action, another was wounded. I wanted to do everything possible to prevent future wars.”

    Wally’s commitment to preventing future wars led him to join with David Krieger, Frank Kelly and Charles Jamison in the creation of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation in 1982. Wally served on the Foundation’s Board of Directors for the next 21 years.

    Wally was a humble man who did not seek recognition for himself, but for his efforts he received many awards. These included a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Santa Barbara News Press, a Community Service Award from the Anti-Defamation League, and a Community Hero Award from Sansum Clinic. Wally believed in giving back to his community and to the world, and he did so in many admirable ways.

    Foundation President David Krieger said of Wally in his Eulogy: “In a world filled with suffering, Wally lived compassionately. In a world awash in apathy and complacency, Wally lived with commitment. And in a world too often marked by the cowardice of inaction, Wally consistently acted with courage.”

    We will miss Wally’s determination and good humor, along with his compassion, commitment and courage, but we will carry forward his spirit in the work of the Foundation.

    In honor of Wally, the Foundation is establishing the Wallace T. Drew Internship for Peace and Disarmament. This internship will support the work of a summer intern to work on issues of peace and disarmament each year at the Foundation.

     

  • Remembering Hiroshima & Nagasaki

    Remembering Hiroshima & Nagasaki

    At 1:45 a.m. on August 6, 1945, a US B-29 bomber, named Enola Gay, took off from Tinian Island in the Mariana Islands. It carried the world’s second atomic bomb, the first having been detonated three weeks earlier at a US test site in Alamogordo, New Mexico. The Enola Gay carried one atomic bomb, with an enriched uranium core. The bomb had been named “Little Boy.” It had an explosive force of some 12,500 tons of TNT. At 8:15 a.m. that morning, as the citizens of Hiroshima were beginning their day, the Enola Gay released its horrific cargo, which fell for 43 seconds before detonating at 580 meters above Shima Hospital near the center of the city.

    Here is a description from a pamphlet published by the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum of what happened immediately following the explosion:

    “The temperature of the air at the point of explosion reached several million degrees Celsius (the maximum temperature of conventional bombs is approximately 5,000 degrees Celsius). Several millionths of a second after the explosion a fireball appeared, radiating white heat. After 1/10,000th of a second, the fireball reached a diameter of approximately 28 meters with a temperature of close to 300,000 degrees Celsius. At the instant of the explosion, intense heat rays and radiation were released in all directions, and a blast erupted with incredible pressure on the surrounding air.”

    As a result of the blast, heat and ensuing fires, the city of Hiroshima was leveled and some 90,000 people in it perished that day. The world’s second test of a nuclear weapon demonstrated conclusively the awesome power of nuclear weapons for killing and maiming. Schools were destroyed and their students and teachers slaughtered. Hospitals with their patients and medical staffs were obliterated. The bombing of Hiroshima was an act of massive destruction of a civilian population, the destruction of an entire city with a single bomb. Harry Truman, president of the United States, upon being notified, said, in egregiously poor judgment, “This is the greatest thing in history.”

    Three days after destroying Hiroshima, after failing to find an opening in the clouds over its primary target of the city of Kokura, a US B-29 bomber, named Bockscar, attacked the Japanese city of Nagasaki with the world’s third atomic weapon. This bomb had a plutonium core and an explosive force of some 22,000 tons of TNT. It had been named “Fat Man.” The attack took place at 11:02 a.m. It resulted in the immediate deaths of some 40,000 people.

    In his first speech to the US public about the bombing of Hiroshima, which he delivered on August 9, 1945, the day the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Harry Truman reported: “The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians.” While Hiroshima did have a military base in the city, it was not the base that was targeted, but the center of the city. The vast majority of the victims in Hiroshima were ordinary civilians, including large numbers of women and children. Truman continued, “But that attack is only a warning of things to come.” Truman went on to refer to the “awful responsibility which has come to us,” and to “thank God that it has come to us, instead of to our enemies.” He prayed that God “may guide us to use it in His ways and for His purpose.” It was a chilling and prophetic prayer.

    By the end of 1945, some 145,000 people had died in Hiroshima, and some 75,000 people had died in Nagasaki. Tens of thousands more suffered serious injuries. Deaths among survivors of the bombings have continued over the years due primarily to the effects of radiation poisoning.

    Now looking back at these terrible events, inevitably our collective memory has faded and is reshaped by current perspectives. With the passage of time, those who actually experienced the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have become far fewer in number. Although their own memories of the trauma to themselves and their cities may remain vivid, their stories are unknown by large portions of the world’s population. The message of the survivors has been simple, clear and consistent: “Never Again!” At the Memorial Cenotaph in Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park is this inscription: “Let all souls here rest in peace; for we shall not repeat the evil.” The “we” in the inscription refers to all of us and to each of us.

    Yet, the fate of the world, and particularly the fate of humanity, may hang on how we remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If we remember the bombings of these cities as just another point in human history, along with many other important points, we may well lack the political will to deal effectively with the challenges that nuclear weapons pose to humanity. If, on the other hand, we remember these bombings as a turning point in human history, a time at which peace became an imperative, we may still find the political will to save ourselves from the fate that befell the inhabitants of these two cities.

    In the introduction to their book, Hiroshima in America, Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell write, “You cannot understand the twentieth century without Hiroshima.” The same may be said of the twenty-first century. The same may be said of the nuclear predicament that confronts humanity. Neither our time nor our future can be adequately understood without understanding what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    Since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki there has been a struggle for memory. The story of the bombings differs radically between what has been told in America and how the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki recount this tragedy. America’s rendition is a story of triumph – triumph of technology and triumph in war. It views the bomb from above, from the perspective of those who dropped it. For the vast majority of US citizens, the creation of the bomb has been seen as a technological feat of extraordinary proportions, giving rise to the most powerful weapon in the history of warfare. From this perspective, the atomic bombs made possible the complete defeat of Japanese imperial power and brought World War II to an abrupt end.

    In the minds of many, if not most US citizens, the atomic bombs saved the lives of perhaps a million US soldiers, and the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is seen as a small price to pay to save so many lives and bring a terrible war to an end. This view leaves the impression that bombing these cities with atomic weapons was useful, fruitful and an occasion to be celebrated.

    The problem with this rendition of history is that the need for dropping the bombs to end the war has been widely challenged by historians. Many scholars, including Lifton and Mitchell, have questioned the official US account of the bombings. These critics have variously pointed out that Japan was attempting to surrender at the time the bombs were dropped, that the US Army Strategic Survey calculated far fewer US casualties from an invasion of Japan, and that there were other ways to end the war without using the atomic bombs on the two Japanese cities.

    Among the critics of the use of nuclear weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were leading US military figures. General Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander Europe during World War II and later US president, described his reaction upon having been told by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson that atomic bombs would be used on Japanese cities:

    “During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, attempting to surrender with a minimum loss of ‘face’. . . .”

    In a post-war interview, Eisenhower told a journalist, “…the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.”

    General Henry “Hap” Arnold, Commanding General of the US Army Air Forces during World War II, wrote, “It always appeared to us that, atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse.”

    Truman’s Chief of Staff, Admiral William D. Leahy, wrote,

    “It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender…. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children….”

    Despite these powerful statements of dissent from US World War II military leaders, there is still a strong sense in the United States and among its allies that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified by the war. There is insufficient recognition that the victims of the bombings were largely civilians, that those closest to the epicenters of the explosions were incinerated, while those further away were exposed to radiation poisoning, that many suffered excruciatingly painful deaths, and that even today, more than five decades after the bombings, survivors continue to suffer from the effects of the radiation exposure.

    The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are in the past. We cannot resurrect these cities. The residents of these cities have done this for themselves. What we can do is learn from their experience. What they have to teach is perhaps humanity’s most important lesson: We are confronted by the possibility of our extinction as a species, not simply the reality of our individual deaths, but the death of humanity. This possibility became evident at Hiroshima. The great French existential writer, Albert Camus, wrote in the immediate aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima:

    “Our technical civilization has just reached its greatest level of savagery. We will have to choose, in the more or less near future, between collective suicide and the intelligent use of our scientific conquests. Before the terrifying prospects now available to humanity, we see even more clearly that peace is the only battle worth waging. This is no longer a prayer but a demand to be made by all peoples to their governments – a demand to choose definitively between hell and reason.”

    To rely upon nuclear weapons for security is to put the future of our species and most of life at risk of annihilation. Humanity is faced with a choice: Eliminate nuclear weapons or continue to run the risk of them eliminating us. Unless we recognize this choice and act upon it, we face the possibility of a global Hiroshima.

    Living with Myths

    In his book, The Myths of August, former US Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall writes:

    “In the first weeks after Hiroshima, extravagant statements by President Truman and other official spokesmen for the US government transformed the inception of the atomic age into the most mythologized event in American history. These exhilarating, excessive utterances depicted a profoundly altered universe and produced a reorientation of thought that influenced the behavior of nations and changed the outlook and the expectations of the inhabitants of this planet.”

    Many myths have grown up around the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that have the effect of making the use of nuclear weapons more palatable. To restate, one such myth is that there was no choice but to use nuclear weapons on these cities. Another is that doing so saved the lives of in excess of one million US soldiers. Underlying these myths is a more general myth that US leaders can be expected to do what is right and moral. To conclude that our leaders did the wrong thing by acting immorally at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, slaughtering civilian populations, flies in the face of this widespread understanding of who we are as a people. To maintain our sense of our own decency, reflected by the actions of our leaders, may require us to bend the facts to fit our myths.

    When a historical retrospective of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – which was to include the reservations of US military leaders such as Eisenhower, Arnold and Leahy – was planned for the fiftieth anniversary commemorations of these events at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, a major outcry of opposition arose from veteran’s groups and members of the US Congress. In the end, the Smithsonian exhibition was reduced under pressure from a broad historical perspective on the bombings to a display and celebration of the Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima.

    Our Myths Help Shape Our Ethical Perspectives

    Our understanding of Hiroshima and Nagasaki helps to give rise to our general orientation toward nuclear weapons. Because of our myths about the benefits of using nuclear weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there is a tendency to view nuclear weapons in a positive light. Despite the moral issues involved in destroying civilian populations, most US citizens can justify reliance on such weapons for our “protection.” A good example of this rationalization is found in the views of many students at the University of California about the role of their university in the management of the US nuclear weapons laboratories.

    Recently, I spoke to a class of students at the University of California at Santa Barbara. I presented the students with a hypothetical situation. They were asked to imagine that they were students at a prestigious German university during the 1930s after the Nazis had come to power. They discovered a secret laboratory at their university where professors were researching and developing gas chambers and incinerators for the Nazis to use in exterminating their enemies. I then posed the question: What were their ethical responsibilities after making this discovery?

    The hypothetical generated a lively discussion. The students took their ethical responsibilities within the hypothetical situation seriously. They realized that there would be danger in overtly opposing the development of these genocidal devices. Nonetheless, they were willing to take risks to prevent the university from going forward with their program to develop the gas chambers and incinerators. Some were ready to go to the authorities at the university to protest. Others were prepared to form small groups and make plans to secretly sabotage the program. Others were intent upon escaping the country to let the world know what was happening in order to bring international pressure to bear upon the Nazi regime. The students were not neutral and most expressed a strong desire to act courageously in opposition to this university program, even if their futures and possibly their lives would be at risk.

    After listening to the impressive ethical stands that the students were willing to take and congratulating them, I changed the hypothetical. I asked them to consider that it was now some 70 years later and that they were students at the University of California in the year 2003. This, of course, is not hypothetical. The students are in fact enrolled at the University of California at Santa Barbara. I asked them to imagine that their university, the University of California, was involved in the research and development of nuclear weapons, that their university managed the US nuclear weapons laboratories that had researched and developed nearly all of the nuclear weapons in the US arsenal. This also happens to be true since the University of California has long managed the US nuclear weapons laboratories at Los Alamos and Livermore.

    After presenting the students with this scenario, I asked them to consider their ethical responsibilities. I was expecting that they would reach similar conclusions to the first hypothetical, that they would express dismay at discovering that their university was involved in the research and development of weapons of mass destruction and would be prepared to oppose this situation. This time, however, only a small number of students expressed the same sense of moral outrage at their university’s involvement and indicated a willingness to take risks in protesting this involvement. Many of the students felt that they had no ethical responsibilities under these circumstances.

    Many students sought to distinguish the two scenarios. In the first scenario, some said, it was known that the gas chambers and incinerators were to be used for the purpose of committing genocide. In the second scenario, the one they were actually living in, they didn’t believe that the nuclear weapons would be used. They pointed out that nuclear weapons had not been used for more than 50 years and, therefore, they thought it was unlikely that they would be used in the future. Further, they didn’t think that the United States would actually use nuclear weapons because our leaders would feel constrained from doing so. Finally, they thought that the United States had a responsibility to defend itself, which they believed nuclear weapons would do.

    Frankly, I was surprised by the results of this exercise. I had expected that the students would oppose both scenarios and that their idealism would call for protest against their university’s management of the nuclear weapons laboratories. In the second scenario, however, they had many rationales and/or rationalizations for not becoming involved. This scenario was not hypothetical. It was real. It would actually demand something of them. Many were reluctant to commit themselves. Most had accepted the mythology about our leaders doing the right thing and the further mythology about nuclear weapons protecting us. They had not thought through the risks associated with possessing and deploying large numbers of nuclear weapons. They had not considered the risks of accidents and miscalculations, the dangers of faulty communications and irrational leaders. They had not considered the possibilities that deterrence could fail and the result could be future Hiroshimas and Nagasakis, in fact, globalized Hiroshimas and Nagasakis.

    Most of the students were able to avoid accepting personal responsibility for the involvement of their university in the process of developing weapons of mass destruction. Some also dismissed their personal responsibility on the basis that the university did not belong solely to them and that in fact nuclear weapons were a societal problem. They were, of course, right about this: nuclear weapons are a societal problem. Unfortunately, it is a problem for which far too few individuals are taking personal ethical responsibility. The students represented a microcosm of a larger societal problem of indifference and inaction in the face of our present reliance on nuclear weapons. The result of this inaction is tragically the likelihood that eventually these weapons will again be used with horrendous consequences for humanity.

    Making the Nuclear Weapons Threat Real

    Just as most of these students do not take personal ethical responsibility to protest involvement in nuclear weapons research and development by their university, most leaders and potential leaders of nuclear weapons states do not accept the necessity of challenging the nuclear status quo and working to achieve nuclear disarmament.

    What helped me to understand the horrendous consequences and risks of nuclear weapons was a visit to the memorial museums at Hiroshima and Nagasaki when I was 21 years old. These museums keep alive the memory of the destructiveness of the relatively small nuclear weapons that were used on these two cities. They also provide a glimpse into the human suffering caused by nuclear weapons. I have long believed that a visit to one or both of these museums should be a requirement for any leader of a nuclear weapons state. Without visiting these museums and being exposed by film, artifacts and displays to the devastation that nuclear weapons cause, it is difficult to grasp the extent of the destructiveness of these devices. One realizes that nuclear weapons are not even weapons at all, but something far more ominous. They are instruments of genocide and perhaps omnicide, the destruction of all.

    To the best of my knowledge, no head of state or government of a nuclear weapons state has actually visited these museums before or during his or her term in office. If political leaders will not make the effort to visit the sites of nuclear devastation, then it is necessary for the people of their countries to bring the message of these cities to them. But first, of course, the people must themselves be exposed to the stories and messages of these cities. It is unrealistic to expect that many people will travel to Hiroshima or Nagasaki to visit the memorial museums, but it is not unrealistic to bring the messages of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to communities all over the world.

    In Santa Barbara, where the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation is located, we have tried to bring the message of Hiroshima to our community and beyond. On the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima we created a peace memorial garden that we named Sadako Peace Garden. The name Sadako comes from that of a young girl, Sadako Sasaki, who was exposed to radiation as a two-year-old in Hiroshima when the bomb fell. Sadako lived a normal life for the next ten years until she developed leukemia as a result of the radiation exposure. During her hospitalization, Sadako folded paper cranes in the hopes of recovering her health. The crane is a symbol of health and longevity in Japan, and it is believed that if one folds one thousand paper cranes they will have their wish come true. Sadako wished to regain her health and for peace in the world. On one of her paper cranes she wrote this short poem, “I will write peace on your wings and you will fly all over the world.”

    Sadako did not finish folding her one thousand paper cranes before her short life came to an end. Her classmates, however, responded to Sadako’s courage and her wish for peace by finishing the job of folding the thousand paper cranes. Soon Sadako’s story began to spread, and throughout Japan children folded paper cranes in remembrance of her and her wish for peace. Tens of thousands of paper cranes poured into Hiroshima from all over Japan. Eventually, Sadako’s story spread throughout the world, and today many children in distant lands have heard of Sadako and have folded paper cranes in her memory.

    In Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park there stands a monument to Sadako. At the base of that monument is this message, “This is our cry. This is our prayer. For peace in this world.” It is the message of children throughout the world who honor Sadako’s memory.

    Sadako Peace Garden in Santa Barbara is a beautiful, tranquil place. In this garden are some large rocks, and cranes are carved in relief onto their surfaces. Each year on August 6th, Hiroshima Day, we celebrate Sadako Peace Day, a day of remembrance of Sadako and other innocent victims of war. Each year on Sadako Peace Day we have music, reflection and poetry at Sadako Peace Garden. In this way, we seek to keep the memory of Hiroshima alive in our community.

    In addition to creating Sadako Peace Garden and holding an annual commemoration on Hiroshima Day, we also made arrangements with the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Peace Memorial Museums to bring an exhibition about the destruction caused by the atomic weapons to our community. The museums sent an impressive exhibition that included artifacts, photographs and videos. The exhibit helped make what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki real to many members of our community.

    At the time of the exhibit, several hibakusha, survivors of the bombings, visited our community and spoke in public about their experiences. They brought to life the horrors of nuclear weapons by relating their personal experiences. There are also many books that collect the stories of atomic bomb survivors. It is nearly impossible to hear or read of their experiences without being deeply moved.

    Here is the description of one hibakusha, Miyoko Matsubara, who was a 12-year-old schoolgirl in Hiroshima at the time of the bombing. Her description begins upon awakening from being unconscious after the bombing:

    “I had no idea how long I had lain unconscious, but when I regained consciousness the bright sunny morning had turned into night. Takiko, who had stood next to me, had simply disappeared from my sight. I could see none of my friends nor any other students. Perhaps they had been blown away by the blast.

    “I rose to my feet surprised. All that was left of my jacket was the upper part around my chest. And my baggy working trousers were gone, leaving only the waistband and a few patches of cloth. The only clothes left on me were dirty white underwear.

    “Then I realized that my face, hands, and legs had been burned, and were swollen with the skin peeled off and hanging down in shreds. I was bleeding and some areas had turned yellow. Terror struck me, and I felt that I had to go home. And the next moment, I frantically started running away from the scene forgetting all about the heat and pain.

    “On my way home, I saw a lot of people. All of them were almost naked and looked like characters out of horror movies with their skin and flesh horribly burned and blistered. The place around the Tsurumi bridge was crowded with many injured people. They held their arms aloft in front of them. Their hair stood on end. They were groaning and cursing. With pain in their eyes and furious looks on their faces, they were crying out for their mothers to help them.

    “I was feeling unbearably hot, so I went down to the river. There were a lot of people in the water crying and shouting for help. Countless dead bodies were being carried away by the water – some floating, some sinking. Some bodies had been badly hurt, and their intestines were exposed. It was a horrible sight, yet I had to jump in the water to save myself from heat I felt all over.”

    After describing her personal struggle as a survivor of the bombing, Miyoko Matsubara offered this message to the young people of the world: “Nuclear weapons do not deter war. Nuclear weapons and human beings cannot co-exist. We all must learn the value of human life. If you do not agree with me on this, please come to Hiroshima and see for yourself the destructive power of these deadly weapons at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.”

    A Simple Proposal

    I would like to offer a simple proposal related to remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which is also a way to confront the deadening myths in our culture that surround the bombing of these cities. I suggest that every community throughout the globe commemorate the period August 6th through August 9th as Hiroshima and Nagasaki Days. The commemoration can be short or long, simple or elaborate, but these days should not be forgotten. By looking back we can also look forward and remain cognizant of the risks that are before us. These commemorations also provide a time to focus on what needs to be done to end the nuclear weapons threat to humanity and all life. By keeping the memory of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki alive we may also be helping to keep humanity alive. This is a critical part of our responsibility as citizens of Earth living in the Nuclear Age.

    Each year on Hiroshima and Nagasaki Days, August 6th and 9th respectively, the mayors of these two cities deliver proclamations on behalf of their cities. These proclamations are distributed via the internet and by other means. Copies may be obtained in advance and shared on the occasion of a community commemoration of these days. It is also a time in which stories of the hibakusha, the survivors, may be shared and a time to bring experts to speak on current nuclear threats.

    The world needs common symbols to bring us together. One such common symbol is the photograph of the Earth from outer space. It is a symbol that makes us understand immediately that we all share a common planet and a common future. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are other common symbols. We know that these names stand for more than cities in Japan; they stand for the massive destructiveness of nuclear weapons and for the human strength and spirit needed to overcome this destructiveness.

    The world needs to recall and reflect on the experiences of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as symbols of human strength and indomitable spirit. We need to be able to remember truly what happened to these cities if we are going to unite to end the nuclear weapons threat to humanity and all life. We need to understand that it is not necessary to be victims of our own technologies, that we are capable of controlling even the most dangerous of them.

    In their book, Hiroshima in America, Lifton and Mitchell conclude:

    “Confronting Hiroshima can be a powerful source of renewal. It can enable us to emerge from nuclear entrapment and rediscover our imaginative capacities on behalf of human good. We can overcome our moral inversion and cease to justify weapons or actions of mass killing. We can condemn and then step back from acts of desecration and recognize what Camus called a ‘philosophy of limits.’ In that way we can also take steps to cease betraying ourselves, cease harming and deceiving our own people. We can also free our society from its apocalyptic concealment, and in the process enlarge our vision. We can break out of our long-standing numbing in the vitalizing endeavor of learning, or relearning, to feel. And we can divest ourselves of a debilitating sense of futurelessness and once more feel bonded to past and future generations.”

    The future is in our hands. We must not be content to drift along on the path of nuclear terror. Our responsibility as citizens of Earth and of all nations is to grasp the enormity of our challenge in the Nuclear Age and to rise to that challenge on behalf of ourselves, our children and all future generations. Our task must be to reclaim our humanity and assure our common future by ridding the world of these inhumane instruments of indiscriminate death and destruction. The path to assuring humanity’s future runs through Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s past.
    * David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is the co-author of Choose Hope, Your Role in Waging Peace in the Nuclear Age (Middleway Press, 2002) and the editor of Hope in a Dark Time, Reflections on Humanity’s Future (Capra Press, 2003). This article is being published as Blackaby Paper #4 by Abolition 2000-UK.
    Sources

    _____, “Records of the Nagasaki Atomic Bombing,” Nagasaki: City of Nagasaki, 1998.

    _____, “The Outline of Atomic Bomb Damage in Hiroshima,” Hiroshima: Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, 1994.

    _____, The Spirit of Hiroshima, An Introduction to the Atomic Bomb Tragedy, Hiroshima: Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, 1999.

    Cantelon, Philip L., Richard G. Hewlett and Robert C. Williams (eds.), The American Atom, A Documentary History of Nuclear Policies from the Discovery of Fission to the Present (Second Edition), Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991.

    Hogan, Michael J. (ed.), Hiroshima in History and Memory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

    Lifton, Robert J. and Greg Mitchell, Hiroshima in America, New York: Avon Books, 1996.

    Matsubara, Miyoko, “The Spirit of Hiroshima,” Santa Barbara, CA: Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, 1994, online at: https://wagingpeace.davidmolinaojeda.com/articles/hiroshima-hibakusha.html.

    Udall, Stewart L., The Myths of August, A Personal Exploration of Our Tragic Cold War Affair with the Atom, New York: Pantheon Books, 1994.

    Walker, J. Samuel, Prompt and Utter Destruction, Truman and the Use of Atomic Bombs Against Japan, Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1997.

  • Nuclear Age Peace Foundation Statement: The Challenge of Nuclear Weapons in the Twenty-First Century: A Path Forward

    The peoples and governments of the world face an urgent challenge relating to weaponry of mass destruction and particularly to nuclear weaponry.

    At the crossroads of technology, terrorism, geopolitical ambition, and policies of preemption are new and potent dangers for humanity. Despite ending the nuclear standoff of the Cold War era, nuclear weaponry is again menacing the peoples of the world with catastrophic possibilities.

    We recognize the need for any government to pursue its security interests in accordance with international law; and further, we recognize that distinctive threats to these interests now exist as a result of an active international terrorist network having declared war on the United States and its allies. Nonetheless, we reject the assessment of the current US administration that upgrading a reliance on nuclear weapons is in any sense justified as a response. We find it unacceptable to assign any security role to nuclear weapons. More specifically, nuclear weapons are totally irrelevant and ineffective in relation to the struggle against terrorism.

    Nuclear weapons, combined with policies that lower barriers to their use, pose unprecedented dangers of massive destruction, recalling to us the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Any major use of such weapons could doom humanity’s future and risk the extinction of most life on the planet.

    The international regime preventing proliferation of nuclear weapons has badly eroded in recent years, and is in danger of unraveling altogether. This is due in large part to the refusal of the nuclear weapons states to fulfill their long-standing obligations set forth in Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to pursue nuclear disarmament in good faith. Other states, taking note of this underlying refusal to renounce these weapons over a period of more than five decades, have seen growing benefits for themselves in acquiring nuclear weapons.

    Back in 1998, India and Pakistan, responding at least in part to the failure of the declared nuclear weapons states to achieve nuclear disarmament, decided to cross the nuclear weapons threshold. These two countries, both having always remained outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, have a long history of conflict and war with each other. They are a flashpoint for potential nuclear war in South Asia.

    Another flashpoint is Israel’s undeclared, yet well-established, nuclear weapons arsenal, which introduces the risk that nuclear weapons will be used in some future crisis in the Middle East. Israel’s nuclear arsenal and the implicit threat of its use has encouraged other Middle Eastern countries to seek or acquire weapons of mass destruction, including the establishment of nuclear weapons programs.

    A third flashpoint exists on the Korean Peninsula in Northeast Asia, where North Korea has withdrawn from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and other agreements restricting its nuclear program. The North Korean government has announced that it will expand its nuclear weapons program unless the US agrees to negotiations to establish a mutual security pact.

    US government policies are moving dangerously in the direction of making nuclear weapons an integral component of its normal force structure, and terrorists are becoming increasingly unscrupulous in challenging the established order. Terrorist organizations have been boldly seeking access to weaponry of mass destruction. Beyond this, the recent Iraq War, supposedly undertaken to remove a threat posed by Iraqi possession of these weapons, seems to have sent the ironic message to North Korea and others that the most effective way to deter the United States is by proceeding covertly and with urgency to develop a national arsenal of nuclear weapons.

    US official policies to develop smaller and more usable nuclear weapons, to research a nuclear earth-penetrating weapon for use as a “bunker buster,” and to lessen the timeframe for returning to underground nuclear testing, along with the doctrine and practice of preemptive war, have dramatically increased the prospect of future nuclear wars. The nuclear policies and actions of the US government have proved to be clearly provocative to countries that have been named by the US president as members of “the axis of evil” or that have been otherwise designated by the present US administration to constitute potential threats to the United States. Several of these countries now seem strongly inclined to go all out to acquire a deterrent in the face of American intimidation and threats.

    There is no circumstance, even retaliation, in which the use of nuclear weapons would be prudent, moral or legal under international law. The only morally, legally and politically acceptable policy with regard to nuclear weapons is to move rapidly to achieve their universal and total elimination, as called for by the world’s leading religious figures, the International Court of Justice in its 1996 opinion, and many other governments and respected representatives of civil society. Achieving such goals would also dramatically reduce the possibilities of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorist organizations.

    Given the existence of treaty regimes that already ban chemical and biological weapons, the outlawing and disarmament of nuclear weapons would complete the commitment of the governments and peoples of the world to the prohibition and elimination of all weaponry of mass destruction. Such a prohibition, and accompanying regimes of verification and enforcement, could lead over time to a greater confidence by world leaders in the rule of law, as well as encourage an increased reliance on non-violent means of resolving conflicts and satisfying grievances.

    It is the US insistence on retaining a nuclear weapons option that sets the tone for the world as a whole, reinforcing the unwillingness of other nuclear weapons states to push for nuclear disarmament and inducing threatened or ambitious states to take whatever steps are necessary, even at the risk of confrontation and war with the United States, to develop their own stockpile of nuclear weaponry. In this post-September 11th climate, the United States has suddenly become for other governments a country to be deterred rather than, as in the Cold War, a country practicing deterrence to discourage aggression by others.

    For these reasons, we call upon the United States government to:

    • Abandon its dangerous and provocative nuclear policies, in particular, researching, developing and making plans to shorten the time needed to resume testing of new and more usable nuclear weapons;

    • Take its nuclear arsenal off the high alert status of the Cold War;

    • Meet its disarmament obligations under Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Treaty’s Review Conferences, including making arms reduction agreements irreversible;

    • Renounce first use of or threat to use nuclear weapons under all circumstances;

    • Enter into negotiations with North Korea on a mutual security pact; and

    • Assert global leadership toward convening at the earliest possible date a Nuclear Disarmament Conference in order to move rapidly toward the creation and bringing into force of a verifiable Nuclear Weapons Convention to eliminate all nuclear weapons and control all nuclear materials capable of being converted to weapons.

    We also call on other nuclear weapons states to accept their responsibilities to work toward a world without weapons of mass destruction as a matter of highest priority.

    These steps leading to the negotiation and ratification of a treaty to eliminate nuclear weapons should then be coordinated with existing arrangements of prohibition associated with biological and chemical weapons to establish an overall regime dedicated to the elimination of all weaponry of mass destruction. It would be beneficial at that stage to also create an international institution with responsibility for safeguarding the world against such diabolical weaponry, including additional concerns associated with frontier technologies, such as space weaponization and surveillance technology, radiological weapons, cyber warfare, advanced robotics, genetic engineering and nanotechnology.

    Finally, we recommend that an international commission of experts and moral authority figures be appointed by the Secretary General of the United Nations to issue a report on existing and emerging weaponry of mass destruction and to propose international arrangements and policy recommendations that would enhance the prospects for global peace and security in the years ahead and, above all, the avoidance of any use of weapons of mass destruction.

    Humanity stands at a critical crossroads, and the future depends upon our actions now.

  • Human Rights Defenders Visit the Foundation

    In areas of conflict and oppression working for peace and human rights can be dangerous and even life threatening. To help ameliorate such situations, foreign activists can, under certain circumstances, provide an international presence that pressures oppressive governments not to crack down on local human rights workers. Two such international activists, Claudio Valls and Andrew Miller, recently visited the Foundation and spoke about their experience providing protective accompaniment in Colombia with Peace Brigades International (PBI).

    Andrew, co-director of Peace Brigades International/USA, began the talk by giving an overview of PBI as an organization. PBI’s mission is to work to open a space in which conflicts can be addressed in a nonviolent way in regions where there is oppression and conflict. The organization currently has four active projects in Mexico, Guatemala, Indonesia and Colombia. PBI works only upon the request of local organizations working for human rights, social change and the development of civil society, and which use nonviolent means. PBI’s establishes its presence by placing volunteers in the area of conflict, who physically accompany local activists and network with the local officials and embassies. Andrew explained that the work of the volunteers on the ground is reinforced by an emergency response network maintained by PBI country groups around the world. These country groups network with their federal officials who can put pressure on the oppressive government not to harm the activists accompanied by PBI. The organizational structure of PBI is unique in that it works by consensual process and uses non-hierarchical structures.

    Claudio, a Santa Barbara resident who previously worked at the Foundation, is currently volunteering with PBI on a one year stint in Colombia. Claudio gave the talk’s participants a feeling for what it is like for PBI volunteers in the field. “Sometimes we go into an area where the authorities have told us that we would have government protection, and it turns out the area is not even controlled by the military but by guerrillas,” he explained. This is dangerous because the guerilla and paramilitary groups that are active in Colombia are not susceptible to same kind of international pressure that the Colombian government is. PBI volunteers, such as Claudio, undergo a training and selection process that evaluates there language ability, their ability to work in a group and their ability to hold up in high pressure situations. According to Claudio there are certain “red flags” that volunteers look for that signal the need to alert their emergency response network. Such signs could include direct threats against the activists PBI is accompanying or public statements by the government criticizing the work of the activists.

    Though it is difficult to gauge success in their work, Claudio and Andrew feel that PBI accompaniment has saved many lives. When PBI is fully successful it diffuses the threat to the local activists and allows them to continue their work. At other times, the accompaniment buys activists enough time to get out of the area where they have been threatened.

    That PBI activists are able to use nonviolent means to protect local activists trying to work for a more just society is a formidable accomplishment. That those working with PBI struggle to take the international support given to repressive regimes and turn it into effective and restraining influence is a sign that they have a profound sense of responsibility to their international community.

    For more information about PBI see their website athttp://www.peacebrigades.org

  • Notes from the Road, March of the Antmen

    Rennie Harris Puremovement, a dynamic Philadelphia-based hip hop dance company, performed at the University of California at Santa Barbara recently. As a college student in Philadelphia, I jumped at every chance my studies would allow me to join their cipher, to explore and celebrate our diverse and rich heritage through dance, spoken word, and theater. Their respect for capoiera and traditional African drumming combined with a distinctly urban edge and sense of urgency mirrored my own artistic sensibilities.

    Sitting at the UCSB session, feeling the thumping beats, taking in the acrobatic moves, and fully appreciating P-Funk and Endangered Species took me back a couple years to the sites and scenes of a city overflowing with arts, activism, and energy – back to master classes at the Pained Bride, Mumia rallies at City Hall, DanceAfrica at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Odunde processions to the Schulkyll River, bantubas at the Community Education Center, Penn Relay after parties everywhere, and then – the nostalgia ended abruptly. March of the Antmen had a new message for me, has new meaning as our leadership pursues the individuals responsible for the events of 9/11.

    I make no claims to be a dance critic, yet the opening and closing sequences alone held power – a battle scene of soldiers crawling along, hugging the earth contrasted against a group of young brothers perpetrating a drive-by and losing one of their own in the gunfire exchange. Antmen poses a number of pressing questions: why do men often march into war at a feverish pace? What parallels are there between “official” and “unofficial” war zones, between trauma resulting from gang violence and poverty as opposed to trauma resulting from warfare? And Who ultimately suffers? Whether you’re a b-boy, senator, dance critic, and/or peace activists, the question we must all ask ourselves is what role do I play in all of this?

    *Michael Coffey is the Youth Outreach Coordinator for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • Searching for a Peaceful Solution

    Candles flickered in the darkness of night as about 500 people gathered Tuesday in search of peaceful solutions in response to last week’s acts of terror.

    The peace vigil at Alameda Park was an opportunity for the community to unite and think not just about last week’s events but about the broader aspects of violence and any nonviolent options, said Carah Ong of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, a sponsor of the vigil.

    “I think everyone believes some sort of response is needed,” said Chris Pizzinat, the foundation’s deputy director.

    But he said a military response is not necessarily the answer; another answer is the International Criminal Court.

    “I think everyone agrees the perpetrators need to be identified and brought to justice,” he said. “I have no misconceptions that will be easy. And there will be bloodshed.”

    David Krieger, president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, said any response by the United States needs to be based on three things: the legality under international law; morality, not taking any more innocent lives; and thinking about how the problem of terrorism can be solved without increasing the cycle of violence.

    He hoped the vigil would bring the people together “to recognize we are a community not only here in Santa Barbara, but we are a community with the nation and the world.”

    A community, he said, needs to come together in times of grief and celebration.

    “And this is a time of grief and we need to support each other,” Mr. Krieger said.

    He said the nation needs to be very careful not to take steps to add to the violence.

    “I’m worried myself about this mood in Washington and a desire for vengeance,” he said.

    Besides hearing from a variety of speakers, those attending the vigil had the opportunity to sign condolence books that Rep. Lois Capps, D-Santa Barbara, will take back with her to Washington, D.C.

    The books will be shared with those in the areas where the devastation occurred.

    The congresswoman told the crowd that they gathered together to light a candle in the darkness and to give voice to that which is unspeakable.

    Gail Shaughnessy was among those who agree a military response might not be the best answer.

    “I think it would be a big mistake to rush in in a vengeful state. We need to step back and make sure we don’t jeopardize more innocent lives. Enough innocent lives have been lost. I do believe there are other ways,” she said.

    Security and intelligence could be increased, as well as putting pressure on those who can get to the perpetrators, Ms. Shaughnessy said.

    “I hope that’s the course we decide to take, ultimately,” she said. “So far I feel we are being prudent. We didn’t just mount a blind attack immediately.”

    As they listened to the speakers, members of the crowd sat silently, candles flickering. Some held flags and scattered throughout the crowd were young and old wearing T-shirts with Old Glory and the words, “God Bless America.”

    As he ended his remarks, Mr. Krieger said, “We do have the opportunity to change the world. We can create a world that can truly live together in peace. May your candles shine brightly and your love fill the world and make it a better place.”

    E-mail Vicki Adame at: vadame@newspress.com

  • Message from the Peace Education Coordinator on the Recent Attacks

    Now more than ever, teaching peace is of utmost importance in our country. In the face of such terrible acts, we should be teaching our students about nonviolent responses to violence rather than the retributive and retaliatory acts which are at the forefront of our national dialogue. Peacemaking is a teachable skill, and one which takes commitment and discipline. How can we expect to create peaceful homes, schools, communities and nations if we do not explicitly train our students in the ways of nonviolence?

    In my nonviolence class during the past week, we have been talking a lot about hot versus cold violence. Hot violence is the violence which makes you shrink back in horror. The terrorist attacks this week in New York and Washington, DC were examples of hot violence. Cold violence, on the other hand, is the kind that is more quiet and often legitimized by society. Examples of cold violence, in my estimation, are the 25% of youths in America who live in poverty, or the nearly 40,000 children who die every day as a result of malnutrition and hunger.

    We get so angry about hot violence. It makes us indignant because it is in our faces. As long as we don’t see the violence, we are not motivated to take action. Why did we not allocate an emergency $40 billion to alleviate the mass poverty in our country, or to provide health care for the millions of Americans without any? Or to provide salary increases for the seriously underpaid teachers who deal daily with the effects of family, community, school and institutional violence?

    Cold violence is a tragedy, just as hot violence is. Just because a child dies in quiet, and not in a fiery blast, does not mean that the death is less significant and that the child was any less special. We need to be teaching our young people how to handle the violence they experience on a personal level as well as the systemic violence which perpetuates inequality and injustice all over the world.

    Classes in peacemaking teach our young people that hatred toward an entire people does not make the world a better place. Classes in peacemaking teach our young people the scope of their power and the importance of their voices. Classes in peacemaking teach our young people that their lives are special and that in the midst of mass-marketing strategies and consumerism, that an authentic alternative exists. Classes in peacemaking are the only real response to the many forms of violence to which young people are exposed. If peace is what we want, peace is what we should prepare for. Teaching peace lays the foundation for a more fulfilling life.

    *Leah C. Wells is Peace Education Coordinator at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.