Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: nuclear abolition

The Nuclear Question: The Church’s Teachings and the Current State of Affairs

Thank you, Bishop Finn, for the opportunity to join you in the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, and address a very critical question that has such particular relevance here. The “nuclear question” is at once complex and straightforward: what do we do with the Cold War legacy of thousands of the most destructive weapons humankind has ever created? For more than 60 years since the dawn of the nuclear age, the world, and particularly the Church, has grappled with the role of these weapons, their legality and the moral implications of their production, deployment and intended use.

What I would like to do here is to share how the development of the Church’s teachings have advanced over the years and what those teachings say to us today. I will then explore the current status of efforts to address these unique weapons and specifically, the position of the Holy See.

As you all are aware, new attention is being paid to the unresolved problem of 20,000 nuclear weapons located at 111 sites in 14 countries. More than half the population of the world lives in a nuclear-armed country. Each year, nations spend $100 billion on maintaining and modernizing their nuclear arsenals.

When we are talking about the nuclear disarmament, the principle of good faith is vital within international law. Essentially, good faith means abiding by agreements in a manner true to their purposes and working sincerely and cooperatively through negotiations to attain agreed objectives.

Therefore, the current modernization of nuclear forces and their technical infrastructure are contrary to such good faith because they make difficult or impossible a negotiated achievement of global nuclear disarmament.

President Ronald Reagan at his second inaugural address in 1985 said: “We seek the total elimination one day of nuclear weapons from the face of the Earth”. I think it is time to follow through on his goal.

The vastness of this problem has long concerned the Catholic Church. With new efforts now being made to build a global legal ban on nuclear weapons, this is a good moment to review the Church’s teaching on weapons of mass destruction.

Catholic teaching on nuclear deterrence is found in the documents of the Second Vatican Council and in subsequent statements by Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI.

Indeed, we can see that the indiscriminate use and devastating effects of nuclear weapons have led the Church to abhor any use of nuclear weapons. In the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, the Church’s fundamental condemnation of any use of nuclear weapons is stated clearly: “Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities or of extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation” (n. 80).

As you well know, the Church’s condemnation of any use of nuclear weapons has always been grounded in the Church’s respect for life and the dignity of the human person.

Although the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council expressed their desire for a universal prohibition against war, they, with the understanding they had at that time, seemed to have rather reluctantly accepted the strategy of nuclear deterrence. The accumulation of arms, they said, serves “as a deterrent to possible enemy attack.”

Pope John Paul II restated the Catholic position on nuclear deterrence in a message to the UN Second Special Session on Disarmament in 1982 at the height of the Cold War nuclear weapons build-up by the United States and the Soviet Union:

In current conditions, ‘deterrence’ based on balance, certainly not as an end in itself but as a step along the way towards a progressive disarmament, may still be judged morally acceptable. Nonetheless, in order to ensure peace, it is indispensable not to be satisfied with the minimum which is always susceptible to the real danger of explosion.

This statement made clear that nuclear deterrence during the Cold War years could only be acceptable if it led to progressive disarmament. What is intended therefore is not nuclear deterrence as a single, permanent policy.
Here lies the central question of deterrence: the Church’s moral acceptance of nuclear deterrence was always conditioned on progress toward their elimination.

Deterrence must be an interim measure; it should not be an acceptable long-term basis for peace. Deterrence must be used only as a bridge to provide stability while nuclear disarmament is pursued, as required under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Nuclear deterrence is only justified in this limited way, as a means of deterring the use of nuclear weapons by an adversary. Deterrence was never accepted as a means of projecting state power, protecting economic or political interests, nor was it acceptable to use nuclear deterrence as a primary defense strategy to address other security issues or to deter other, non-nuclear threats.

As the Soviet Union disintegrated and the Cold War came to a close, great hope was ignited that the world could move decisively and expeditiously with nuclear disarmament. The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty was extended in 1995 and new energy was focused on Article VI, the grand bargain, as it were, which lies at the heart of the NPT. The nations of the world agreed to forgo any development of nuclear weapons in exchange for a commitment from the nuclear-weapon states to eliminate their own arsenals and provide access to nuclear technology for peaceful uses.

The Holy See is party to the Nonproliferation Treaty and remains actively engaged in the Treaty’s review process every five years. Unfortunately, rather than pursuing disarmament as they are obligated to do under the Treaty, the nuclear-weapon states engaged in a reinvestment in their nuclear weapons complexes, pouring tens of billions of dollars into new technologies to allow them to continue to design, test and deploy these weapons for the indefinite future. New missions were conceived for their nuclear arsenals and new capabilities and upgrades for their weapons were aggressively pursued.

As the Cold War receded and a new century dawned, the international community continued to press the nuclear-weapon states for concrete movement on fulfilling their obligations to eliminate their nuclear arsenals as called for under the Non Proliferation Treaty. The Church’s efforts in this area increased, and became focused on challenging what we came to see as the institutionalization of deterrence. Deterrence was not being considered anymore as an interim measure. Rather, nuclear-weapon states started to pursue nuclear advantage, maintaining that nuclear weapons were fundamental to their security doctrines. Modernization programs were accelerated. Hundreds of billions of dollars were earmarked for these modernization efforts and the fragile barrier between nuclear and conventional arms was obliterated.

In 2005 when the nations of the world gathered to review the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Treaty itself was on the verge of collapse. Not only were the commitments to disarm under Article VI being ignored, the very concept of nuclear elimination was dismissed out of hand by the nuclear-weapon states. And the Church increased its pressure on the nuclear-weapon states.

The Holy See voiced its growing concern over this situation, for example, at the 2005 Review Conference of the NPT:

When the Holy See expressed its limited acceptance of nuclear deterrence during the Cold War, it was with the clearly stated condition that deterrence was only a step on the way towards progressive nuclear disarmament. The Holy See has never countenanced nuclear deterrence as a permanent measure, nor does it today when it is evident that nuclear deterrence drives the development of ever newer nuclear arms, thus preventing genuine nuclear disarmament.

On his part, Pope Benedict XVI reinforced this position in his address on World Peace Day, 1 January 2006, when he asked:

What can be said, too, about those governments which count on nuclear arms as a means of ensuring the security of their countries? Along with countless persons of good will, one can state that this point of view is not only baneful but also completely fallacious. In a nuclear war there would be no victors, only victims. The truth of peace requires that all —whether those governments which openly or secretly possess nuclear arms, or those planning to acquire them— agree to change their course by clear and firm decisions, and strive for a progressive and concerted nuclear disarmament. The resources which would be saved could then be employed in projects of development capable of benefiting all their people, especially the poor.

Indeed, experts have estimated that more than $1 trillion has been spent on developing and maintaining nuclear arsenals. Today, hundreds of billons of additional dollars are being channeled to maintain this scourge. With development needs across the globe far outpacing the resources being devoted to address them, the thought of pouring hundreds of billions of additional dollars into the world’s nuclear arsenals is nothing short of sinful. It is the grossest misplacement of priorities and truly constitutes the very “theft from the poor” which the Second Vatican Council condemned so long ago.

Today, more and more people are convinced that nuclear deterrence is not a viable means of providing security. If some nations can continue to claim the right to possess nuclear weapons, then other states will claim that right as well. There can be no privileged position whereby some states can rely on nuclear weapons while simultaneously denying that same right to other states. Such an unbalanced position is unsustainable.

Some 40 nations possess the capacity to weaponize their civilian nuclear programs. Proliferation is a real and serious challenge. However, nonproliferation efforts will only be effective if they are universal. The nuclear-weapon states must abide by their obligations to negotiate the total elimination of their own arsenals if they are to have any authenticity in holding the non-nuclear-weapon states to their commitments not to pursue nuclear weapons or if they are to be effective in bringing those last few states who remain outside the NPT to the table of negotiations for the gradual elimination of their nuclear arsenals.

It is now more than two decades since the end of the Cold War. Though nuclear weapons stocks held by the major powers have been reduced, they are still being maintained and modernized, and the prospect of even more proliferation to other countries is growing. We are now witnessing an “extended deterrence” by which non-nuclear countries are put under the protection of a friendly nuclear state. Instead of being a temporary measure during the Cold War, the “doctrine of nuclear deterrence” has become permanent and is used to justify continued nuclear buildup.

When the 2010 Review Conference of the Non-Proliferation Treaty opened, Pope Benedict XVI, who had previously called for “negotiations for a progressive and mutually agreed dismantling of existing nuclear weapons” sent a message asking delegates to “overcome the burdens of history”. He said, “I encourage the initiatives to seek progressive disarmament and the creation of zones free of nuclear weapons, with a view to their complete elimination from the planet”.

From this body of teaching, the Church has made clear its growing abhorrence of nuclear weapons. It is now recognized that they are incompatible with the peace we seek for the 21st century. In the 2001 Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) Conference, the Holy See Delegation had stated:

The most perilous of all the old Cold War assumptions carried into the new age is the belief that the strategy of nuclear deterrence is essential to a nation’s security. Maintaining nuclear deterrence into the 21st century will not aid but impede peace. Nuclear deterrence prevents genuine nuclear disarmament. It maintains an unacceptable hegemony over non-nuclear development for the poorest half of the world’s population. It is a fundamental obstacle to achieving a new age of global security.

International law and the Church’s Just War principles have always recognized that limitation and proportionality must be respected in warfare. But the very point of a nuclear weapon is to kill massively; the killing and the poisonous radiation cannot be contained (Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Chernobyl are permanent ominous reminders). The social and economic consequences of nuclear war in a world whose life-support systems are intimately interconnected would be catastrophic.

In the event of a nuclear explosion, the severe physical damage from radiation would be followed by the collapse of food production and distribution and even water supplies. The prospect of widespread starvation would confront huge masses of people. Rampant disease would follow the breakdown in health-care facilities. The entire question of human rights would be up-ended. The right to a social and international order, as set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, would be completely lost. The structures underpinning international law would be gone. Order would be inverted into disorder.

The Holy See believes that international law is essential to the maintenance of peace among nations. When peace breaks down, international law, setting limits on the conduct of warfare, is essential to the reestablishment of an enduring peace and civilized life at war’s end.

In 1996, fifteen years ago this very month, the International Court of Justice issued its landmark decision on the threat or use of nuclear weapons and the obligations of States parties to the NPT. The Court said that negotiations for elimination must be concluded. The Court’s decision stated: “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”.

The Catholic Church embraced the Court’s call for negotiations to eliminate nuclear weapons and, in 1997, in addressing the United Nation’s First Committee, the Holy See Delegation put forth the Church’s position in the strongest terms:

Nuclear weapons, aptly described as the ‘ultimate evil’, are still possessed by the most powerful States which refuse to let them go…. If biological weapons, chemical weapons, and now landmines can be done away with, so too can nuclear weapons. No weapon so threatens the longed-for peace of the 21st century as the nuclear. Let not the immensity of this task dissuade us from the efforts needed to free humanity from such a scourge. With the valuable admonition offered in the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice, the international community can now see how the legal and moral arguments against nuclear weapons intertwine with the strategic: since nuclear weapons can destroy all life on the planet, they imperil all that humanity has ever stood for, and indeed humanity itself…

The work… in calling for negotiations leading to a Nuclear Weapons Convention must be increased. Those nuclear-weapon States resisting such negotiations must be challenged, for, in clinging to their outmoded rationales for nuclear deterrence, they are denying the most ardent aspirations of humanity…

And finally, in that statement, the Holy See Delegation voiced in clearest terms the Church’s position on nuclear weapons, “Nuclear weapons are incompatible with the peace we seek for the 21st century. They cannot be justified. They deserve condemnation. The preservation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty demands an unequivocal commitment to their abolition.”

Yet the comprehensive negotiations called for by the International Court of Justice have not even started. The bilateral START treaty between the US and Russia only makes small reductions and leaves intact a vast nuclear arsenal on both sides, with many nuclear weapons held on constant alert status.

At last year’s Review Conference of the NPT, the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon put forth a Five-Point Plan for Nuclear Disarmament, which is worthy of the full support of all nations. He called specifically for a new convention or set of mutually reinforcing instruments to eliminate nuclear weapons, backed by strong verification and has asked that nations start negotiations. “Nuclear disarmament is not a distant, unattainable dream,” Mr. Ban said. “It is an urgent necessity here and now. We are determined to achieve it.”

The Holy See supports this plan and strongly advocates for transparent, verifiable, global and irreversible nuclear disarmament and for addressing seriously the issues of nuclear strategic arms, the tactical ones and their means of delivery. The Church remains fully engaged in efforts both to stem proliferation and to move forward on negotiating a binding international agreement, or framework of agreements, to eliminate existing arsenals under effective international verification.

The 2010 NPT Review Conference called on “all nuclear-weapon states to undertake concrete disarmament efforts,” and also affirmed that “all states need to make special efforts to establish the necessary framework to achieve and maintain a world without nuclear weapons.” This responsibility must be taken seriously. Nations which continue to refuse to enter a process of negotiating mutual, assured and verifiable nuclear disarmament are acting irresponsibly.

From its part, also the UN Security Council held summit level meetings devoted to nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament.

The Holy See welcomes such developments regarding nuclear non proliferation and disarmament.

Viewed from a legal, political, security and most of all – moral – perspective, there is no justification today for the continued maintenance of nuclear weapons. This is the moment to begin addressing in a systematic way the legal, political and technical requisites for a nuclear-weapons-free world. For this reason, preparatory work should begin as soon as possible on a convention or framework agreement leading to the phased elimination of nuclear weapons.

To accomplish this goal, we must rethink and change our perception of nuclear weapons. It is a fact that no force on earth will be able to protect civilian populations from the explosion of nuclear bombs, which could cause as many as millions of immediate deaths. We must understand the catastrophic humanitarian and environmental consequences of any use of nuclear weapons.

Reports indicate that workers employed by the nuclear weapons industry are exposed to radiation at nuclear weapons production sites across the globe. Hundreds of highly toxic substances are used every day in the production and maintenance of nuclear weapons and their non-nuclear components. Workers suffer from a range of illnesses, many affecting them only years after exposure. People are asking for transparency and guarantee about the safeguards measures. Secrecy surrounding nuclear weapons programs has led to a failure to inform – if not an outright misleading of – workers and civilian populations living in close proximity to nuclear weapons facilities about the dangers their activities pose to human health.

The Holy See cannot countenance this disregard for human life and the health of those most directly and immediately affected by the nuclear weapons enterprise. Provisions must be established to ensure transparency and appropriate safeguards support to workers as well as civilians living in proximity to these facilities to ensure their safety, even as we move expeditiously to a process for dismantling and destroying these unlawful weapons under international supervision. Moreover, the toxic legacy of the nuclear era will continue to pose urgent challenges requiring substantial investments of resources to clean up the heavily contaminated sites that dot the landscapes of every nuclear weapon state.

The need to effectively and transparently address the toxic legacy posed by six decades of nuclear weapons production and maintenance is of the highest priority. The risks involved with even the peaceful use of nuclear technology illustrate the problem. Here I wish to underscore the Holy See’s active role in confronting global environmental issues. His Holiness Benedict XVI has personally appealed for environmental justice in defense of creation. Nothing less than the dignity of the human person and the right to a fully human and healthy life are at stake in the global challenge to clean up the environmental damage of the nuclear era.

The recent experience in Fukishima, Japan, has refocused attention on the inherent dangers and indiscriminate nature of radiation.

As a founding Member State of the IAEA, the Holy See participated last week in the IAEA Ministerial Conference which took place in Vienna, Austria. The concerns and observations made there by the Holy See bear repeating.

Is it legitimate to construct or to maintain operational nuclear reactors on territories that are exposed to serious seismic risks? Does nuclear fission technology, or the construction of new atomic power plants, or the continued operation of existing ones exclude human error in its phases of design, normal and emergency operation?

Besides the above questions, there are others concerning political will, technical capacity and necessary finances in order to proceed to the dismantling of old nuclear reactors and the handling of radioactive material or waste. With regard to standards of safety and security, the Holy See asks:
Are States willing to adopt new safety and security standards? If so, who will monitor them? However, one fact remains: without transparency, safety and security cannot be pursued with absolute diligence.

Understanding that enhanced safety standards are only part of the solution, the Holy See also observed that threats to security come from attitudes and actions hostile to human nature. It is, therefore, on the human level that one must act – on the cultural and ethical level…. What is absolutely necessary are programs of formation for the diffusion of a “culture of safety and security” both in the nuclear sector and in the public conscience in general…. Security depends upon the State, but also on the sense of responsibility of each person….

As a result of the nuclear crisis in Fukishima, one point emerges with ever greater clarity. A shared and co-responsible management of nuclear research and safety and security, of energy and water supplies and of the environmental protection of the planet call for one or more international authorities with true and effective powers.

The nuclear sector can represent a great opportunity for the future. This explains the “nuclear renaissance” at the world level. This renaissance seems to offer horizons of development and prosperity. At the same time, it could be reduced to an illusion without a “cultural and moral renaissance.” Energy policies are to be viewed in the perspective of the “integral development of the human being” (Declaration on the Right to Development of 1986, 5), which includes not only material development, but, above all, the cultural and moral development of each and every person and of all peoples. All are involved in this ambitious and indispensable project, both inside and outside of the nuclear and energy sector, both in the public and private sector, and both on a governmental and non-governmental level. In this way, a common commitment to security and peace will lead not only to a just distribution of the earth’s resources, but above all to the building of a “social and international order in which the rights and freedoms” (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 28) of all human persons can be fully realized.

As terrible as the Fukishima disaster has been – let us not forget what happened in Chernobyl in 1986 – its impact would be dwarfed by the effects of a nuclear weapon explosion. Perhaps it is also because of this Germany decided just recently to close all of its nucelar reactors by 2022. So, the Church’s condemnation of any use of nuclear weapons remains as unequivocal today as it was nearly 50 years ago when the Second Vatican Council expressed that condemnation so clearly.

International law governing the conduct of warfare is known as the law of armed conflict. More recently, it is referred to as “international humanitarian law.” This recognizes the purpose of protecting civilians from the effects of warfare, and also protecting combatants from unnecessary and cruel suffering. The Church’s unequivocal commitment to the dignity of the human person lies at the very heart of its commitment to international law.

The simple truth about the use of nuclear weapons is that, being weapons of mass destruction by their very nature, they cannot comply with fundamental rules of international humanitarian law forbidding the infliction of indiscriminate and disproportionate harm. Nor can their use meet the rigorous standards of the Just War principles’ moral assessment of the use of force.

Both Just War principles and international humanitarian law prohibit the use of means of attack incapable of distinguishing between military objectives and civilians or civilian property. In this regard, it is appropriate to recall what the International Court of Justice has to say about it: “states must never make civilians the object of attack and must consequently never use weapons that are incapable of distinguishing between civilian and military targets.”

Your 40th president asked: “Is there either logic or morality in believing that if one side threatens to kill tens of millions of our people, our only recourse is to threaten killing tens of millions of theirs?” So, even President Regan considered the strategy of deterrence to be in need of being replaced by a more permanent solution.

The threat as well as the use of nuclear weapons is barred by law. It is unlawful to threaten an attack if the attack itself would be unlawful. This rule makes unlawful specific signals of intent to use nuclear weapons if demands are not met. It also makes unlawful general policies of so-called deterrence declaring a readiness to resort to nuclear weapons when vital interests are at stake.

The unlawfulness of the threat and use of nuclear weapons calls into serious question the lawfulness of the possession of nuclear weapons. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty prohibits acquisition of nuclear weapons by the vast majority of states. In conformity with the good faith principle, it cannot be lawful to continue indefinitely to possess weapons which are unlawful to use or threaten to use, or are already banned for most states, and are subject to an obligation of elimination. Countries must abide by agreements to “pursue negotiations on… a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control” (NPT, Art. VI).

The Holy See supports this gathering body of work and calls for more stringent attention to the urgency of implementing a well-founded comprehensive approach to eliminating nuclear weapons. For far too long, nuclear weapons have threatened humanity and there has not been sufficient political will toward removing this scourge. Now is the time for a profound rethinking and change in our perception of nuclear weapons. Nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation are essential from a humanitarian point of view. That is why the Holy See welcomed the clear statement made in the Final Document of the 2010 NPT Review conference which stated:

The conference expresses its deep concern at the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons, and reaffirms the need for all States at all times to comply with applicable international law, including international humanitarian law.

This principle lays the groundwork for a possible outlawing of nuclear weapons. The international community is now challenged to ensure that every step on the non-proliferation and disarmament agenda is geared toward ensuring the security and survival of humanity and built on principles of the preeminent and inherent value of human dignity and the centrality of the human person, which constitute the basis of international humanitarian law.
The Holy See delegation articulated this very sentiment at the 2009 Deterrence Symposium organized by the U.S. Strategic Command in Omaha, Nebraska. There the Delegation stated that:

In Catholic teaching, the task is not to make the world safer through the threat of nuclear weapons, but rather to make the world safer from nuclear weapons through mutual and verifiable nuclear disarmament… The moral end is clear: a world free of the threat of nuclear weapons. This goal should guide our efforts. Every nuclear weapons system and every nuclear weapons policy should be judged by the ultimate goal of protecting human life and dignity and the related goal of ridding the world of these weapons in mutually verifiable ways.

It is becoming ever clearer that nuclear disarmament must be addressed from a comprehensive approach. Despite steps for decades, we still have a profusion of nuclear weapons. The Holy See believes there needs to be a binding together of steps into a coherent commitment to eliminate nuclear weapons in clearly defined phases for an incremental disarmament. Only the expression of a visible intent to construct a global legal basis for the systematic elimination of all nuclear weapons will suffice. It cannot be considered morally sufficient to draw down the stocks of superfluous nuclear weapons while modernizing nuclear arsenals and investing vast sums to ensure their future production and maintenance. This current course will ensure the perpetuation of these weapons indefinitely.

The Holy See therefore welcomes the new dialogue starting on a Nuclear Weapons Convention or framework of instruments to accomplish nuclear disarmament. At the 2010 NPT Review Conference, the Holy See Delegation stated:

The world has arrived at an opportune moment to begin addressing in a systematic way the legal, political and technical requisites for a nuclear-weapons-free world. For this reason, preparatory work should begin as soon as possible on a convention or framework agreement leading to the phased elimination of nuclear weapons.

A critical component of any framework to eliminate nuclear weapons is an immediate ban on the testing of new weapons. For decades the international community has struggled to institute a legal ban on all forms of nuclear weapons test explosions. In this regard, the Holy See continues to call upon all non signatory States to ratify without delay the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty for its earliest entry into force. Its passage and entry into force remains a commitment made by the nuclear-weapon states at the 2000 Review Conference of the NPT that would most clearly signify their willingness to forgo the development of new nuclear weapons. The international community views the CTBT not as an end in itself but as a concrete signal by the nuclear-weapon states that they intend to fulfill their international commitments and take seriously the global demand to end the nuclear arms race and begin negotiations to eliminate these weapons.

In closing, I think it is appropriate to restate the position of the Holy See expressed back in 1997, that “If biological weapons, chemical weapons, and now landmines can be done away with, so too can nuclear weapons.” This is the challenge before the international community today. It is the challenge before the Church today, and it is the challenge facing all people of goodwill today, believers and non believers alike.

As someone wrote, in the 18th and 19th centuries individuals fought for the abolition of slavery because they understood that every human being has the God-given right to live in freedom and dignity. In the end, slavery was brought to an end. In today’s world, we confront an issue of even greater importance: the possible annihilation of human species and human civilization by nuclear explosion. So, together we should work to build a world free of nuclear weapons. A world without nuclear weapons is not only possible, it has now become urgent.

Thank you and God bless you all!

July 22, 2011
We All Share the Duty to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons

This article was originally published by the Sydney Morning Herald.

If international law as an institution is to have any relevance, it must apply to critical issues. Nuclear weapons do not fall beyond its scope – indeed they pose its most critical test.

These instruments of terror, through their ordinary use, cause indiscriminate human suffering on an unimaginable scale. They violate fundamental principles of international humanitarian law, as well as treaties protecting human rights and the environment.

Their continued existence in the thousands undermines the very notion of the rule of law, reinforcing instead a system of rule by force, whereby a small number of nations threaten to inflict mass destruction on others – and themselves to boot – to achieve political objectives.

Fifteen years ago today, the International Court of Justice – the highest legal authority in the world – declared it illegal to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons, and ruled that all nations have a duty to eliminate their nuclear forces, whether or not they are parties to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Today there are more than 20,000 nuclear weapons across the globe with an average explosive yield 20 to 30 times greater than that of the Hiroshima bomb. Roughly 2000 are maintained on high-alert status – ready to wreak havoc at any moment by accident or design.

A single nuclear bomb, if detonated on a large city, could kill millions of people. No effective humanitarian response would be possible, with most medical infrastructure in the city destroyed and any outside relief efforts severely hampered by high levels of radioactivity – a silent, scentless, invisible and persistent killer.

The only sane path is to eliminate these monstrous weapons from all national arsenals without delay. Nuclear disarmament is not just an option; it is mandated by international law. But nuclear powers and their allies, including Australia, are resisting progress towards abolition.

A comprehensive convention banning the nuclear bomb is long overdue. Australia should drive the international push for negotiations – just as the Labor Party promised it would do prior to winning government in 2007.

Similar agreements have been concluded to outlaw and eliminate other categories of weapons deemed by the international community to cause unacceptable humanitarian harm – from biological and chemical weapons to land mines and cluster bombs. All of these treaties have changed state practice and resulted in meaningful disarmament.

The New START agreement recently concluded by Russia and the United States is a move in the right direction, but it will only result in modest cuts to the two nations’ sizeable arsenals. The three other NPT nuclear weapon states – Britain, France and China – have little to show in terms of actual disarmament, and nothing much has been done to bring Israel, India and Pakistan into a multilateral disarmament process.

In spite of the support declared by some nuclear-armed states for “a world free of nuclear weapons”, all are investing heavily in the modernisation of their nuclear forces – which is incompatible with the requirements of international law.

In 2011 they will spend an estimated $100 billion between them bolstering their nuclear arsenals. This sum is equal to the UN regular budget for 50 years. According to the World Bank, an annual investment of just half that amount – between $40 and $60 billion – would be enough to meet the Millennium Development Goals to end extreme poverty worldwide.

The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons revealed this May through FOI laws that the Future Fund – which invests Australian taxpayers’ money – has holdings worth $135 million in 15 companies that manufacture nuclear weapons for the US, Britain, France and India.

These investments hamper disarmament efforts and go against the Future Fund’s own stated policy not to invest in companies involved in economic activities that are illegal in Australia or contravene conventions to which we are a party. The Fund should divest from these companies, just as it has, commendably, divested from companies that produce land mines and cluster munitions.

So long as Australia continues to claim the protection of US nuclear weapons, its credibility as a disarmament advocate will be greatly diminished. With a US president sympathetic to the cause of disarmament, the time is ideal for Australia to adopt a nuclear-weapon-free defence posture and begin contributing meaningfully towards nuclear abolition.

July 11, 2011
Ending Nuclear Evil

Eliminating nuclear weapons is the democratic wish of the world’s people. Yet no nuclear-armed country currently appears to be preparing for a future without these terrifying devices. In fact, all are squandering billions of dollars on modernization of their nuclear forces, making a mockery of United Nations disarmament pledges. If we allow this madness to continue, the eventual use of these instruments of terror seems all but inevitable.

The nuclear power crisis at Japan’s Fukushima power plant has served as a dreadful reminder that events thought unlikely can and do happen. It has taken a tragedy of great proportions to prompt some leaders to act to avoid similar calamities at nuclear reactors elsewhere in the world. But it must not take another Hiroshima or Nagasaki – or an even greater disaster – before they finally wake up and recognize the urgent necessity of nuclear disarmament.

This week, the foreign ministers of five nuclear-armed countries – the United States, Russia, Britain, France, and China – will meet in Paris to discuss progress in implementing the nuclear-disarmament commitments that they made at last year’s Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference. It will be a test of their resolve to transform the vision of a future free of nuclear arms into reality.

If they are serious about preventing the spread of these monstrous weapons – and averting their use – they will work energetically and expeditiously to eliminate them completely. One standard must apply to all countries: zero. Nuclear arms are wicked, regardless of who possesses them. The unspeakable human suffering that they inflict is the same whatever flag they may bear. So long as these weapons exist, the threat of their use – either by accident or through an act of sheer madness – will remain.

We must not tolerate a system of nuclear apartheid, in which it is considered legitimate for some states to possess nuclear arms but patently unacceptable for others to seek to acquire them. Such a double standard is no basis for peace and security in the world. The NPT is not a license for the five original nuclear powers to cling to these weapons indefinitely. The International Court of Justice has affirmed that they are legally obliged to negotiate in good faith for the complete elimination of their nuclear forces.

The New START agreement between the US and Russia, while a step in the right direction, will only skim the surface off the former Cold War foes’ bloated nuclear arsenals – which account for 95% of the global total. Furthermore, these and other countries’ modernization activities cannot be reconciled with their professed support for a world free of nuclear weapons.

It is deeply troubling that the US has allocated $185 billion to augment its nuclear stockpile over the next decade, on top of the ordinary annual nuclear-weapons budget of more than $50 billion. Just as unsettling is the Pentagon’s push for the development of nuclear-armed drones – H-bombs deliverable by remote control.

Russia, too, has unveiled a massive nuclear-weapons modernization plan, which includes the deployment of various new delivery systems. British politicians, meanwhile, are seeking to renew their navy’s aging fleet of Trident submarines – at an estimated cost of £76 billion ($121 billion). In doing so, they are passing up an historic opportunity to take the lead on nuclear disarmament.

Every dollar invested in bolstering a country’s nuclear arsenal is a diversion of resources from its schools, hospitals, and other social services, and a theft from the millions around the globe who go hungry or are denied access to basic medicines. Instead of investing in weapons of mass annihilation, governments must allocate resources towards meeting human needs.

The only obstacle we face in abolishing nuclear weapons is a lack of political will, which can – and must – be overcome. Two-thirds of UN member states have called for a nuclear-weapons convention similar to existing treaties banning other categories of particularly inhumane and indiscriminate weapons, from biological and chemical arms to anti-personnel land mines and cluster munitions. Such a treaty is feasible and must be urgently pursued.

It is true that nuclear weapons cannot be uninvented, but that does not mean that nuclear disarmament is an impossible dream. My own country, South Africa, gave up its nuclear arsenal in the 1990’s, realizing it was better off without these weapons. Around the same time, the newly independent states of Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine voluntarily relinquished their nuclear arms, and then joined the NPT. Other countries have abandoned nuclear-weapons programs, recognizing that nothing good could possibly come from them. Global stockpiles have dropped from 68,000 warheads at the height of the Cold War to 20,000 today.

In time, every government will come to accept the basic inhumanity of threatening to obliterate entire cities with nuclear weapons. They will work to achieve a world in which such weapons are no more – where the rule of law, not the rule of force, reigns supreme, and cooperation is seen as the best guarantor of international peace. But such a world will be possible only if people everywhere rise up and challenge the nuclear madness.

July 1, 2011
HR1334: Nuclear Weapons Abolition and Economic and Energy Conversion Act of 2011

To write to your Representative about co-sponsoring HR1334, click here.

112th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. R. 1334

To provide for nuclear weapons abolition and economic conversion in accordance with District of Columbia Initiative Measure Number 37 of 1992, while ensuring environmental restoration and clean-energy conversion.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
April 1, 2011

Ms. NORTON introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and in addition to the Committee on Armed Services, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned

A BILL

To provide for nuclear weapons abolition and economic conversion in accordance with District of Columbia Initiative Measure Number 37 of 1992, while ensuring environmental restoration and clean-energy conversion.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the ‘Nuclear Weapons Abolition and Economic and Energy Conversion Act of 2011’.

SEC. 2. REQUIREMENT FOR NUCLEAR WEAPONS ABOLITION AND ECONOMIC AND ENERGY CONVERSION.

(a) In General- The United States Government shall–

(1) by the date that is three years after the date of the enactment of this Act, provide leadership to negotiate a multilateral treaty or other international agreement that provides for–

(A) the dismantlement and elimination of all nuclear weapons in every country by not later than 2020; and

(B) strict and effective international control of such dismantlement and elimination;

(2) redirect resources that are being used for nuclear weapons programs to use–

(A) in converting all nuclear weapons industry employees, processes, plants, and programs smoothly to constructive, ecologically beneficial peacetime activities, including strict control of all fissile material and radioactive waste, during the period in which nuclear weapons must be dismantled and eliminated pursuant to the treaty or other international agreement described in paragraph (1); and

(B) in addressing human and infrastructure needs, including development and deployment of sustainable carbon-free and nuclear-free energy sources, health care, housing, education, agriculture, and environmental restoration, including long-term radioactive waste monitoring;

(3) undertake vigorous, good-faith efforts to eliminate war, armed conflict, and all military operations; and

(4) actively promote policies to induce all other countries to join in the commitments described in this subsection to create a more peaceful and secure world.

(b) Effective Date- Subsection (a)(2) shall take effect on the date on which the President certifies to Congress that all countries possessing nuclear weapons have–

(1) eliminated such weapons; or

(2) begun such elimination under established legal requirements comparable to those described in subsection (a).

April 13, 2011
Daisaku Ikeda’s Perseverance and Passion for Peace

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

March 25, 2011
Breaking Free from Nuclear Deterrence
This speech was delivered by Commander Robert Green at the 10th Annual Frank K. Kelly Lecture on Humanity’s Future on February 17, 2011 in Santa Barbara, CA.

When David Krieger invited me to give this lecture, I discovered the illustrious list of those who had gone before me – beginning with Frank King Kelly himself in 2002. I was privileged to meet him the previous year when my wife Kate Dewes and I last visited Santa Barbara. So I feel quite a weight on my shoulders. However, this is eased by an awareness of the uplifting qualities of the man in whose memory I have the huge honour of speaking to you this evening.

As I do so, I invite you to bear in mind the following points made by Frank in his inaugural lecture:

• “I believe that we human beings will triumph over all the horrible problems we may face and over the bloody history which tempts us to despair.”

• Some of the scientists who brought us into the Nuclear Age made us realize that we must find ways of living in peace or confront unparalleled catastrophes.

• A nun who taught him warned him he would be tested, that he would “go through trials and tribulations.”

As President Truman’s speechwriter, Frank discussed the momentous decisions Truman had to make – including this one:

• “When I asked him about the decision to use atom bombs on Japan, I saw anguish in his eyes. He made it clear that he felt the weight of what he had done.”

• “My experience in the Truman era indicated to me that the American people were not well informed about what was really going on in other countries and in the United States.”

I have done my best to take all this wisdom to heart in what I now have to say about breaking free from nuclear deterrence.

First, I will try to answer two challenging personal questions. People often ask why I am the only former British Navy Commander with experience of nuclear weapons to have come out against them. Others in the peace movement ask why it took me so long.

A Child of the Nuclear Age

In some ways, I am a child of the Nuclear Age. I was five days past my first birthday when 24-year-old Theodore Van Kirk, navigator of the Enola Gay, helped conduct the first nuclear atrocity, on Hiroshima. In 1968, I too was a 24-year-old bombardier-navigator when told that my Buccaneer strike jet pilot and I had been chosen as a nuclear crew in our squadron aboard the aircraft-carrier HMS Eagle. After being cleared to see top secret information, and indoctrinated about the honour and heavy responsibility of this role, we were given our target: a military airbase on the outskirts of Leningrad. We had to plan how to get there undetected from somewhere in the Norwegian Sea. This meant choosing the shortest route, over Sweden – a neutral country with very capable air defence. Our mission was to deliver a ten-kiloton WE177 tactical nuclear bomb, and then try to get back to our carrier, or at least bale out over Sweden or Norway. When I discovered there would not be enough fuel because the target was at the limit of our aircraft’s range, my pilot shrugged and said: “Well, Rob, if we ever have to do this, by then there won’t be anything to go back for.” So we submitted our flight plan, and celebrated our initiation into the nuclear elite.

Thirty years later, I was shocked to land at my target, to attend an anti-nuclear conference on European security on the eve of the 21st century. During the taxi drive into St Petersburg, I understood how my bomb would have caused massive civilian casualties from collateral damage. On TV that evening, I apologized to the citizens of Russia’s ancient capital. Then I told them I had learned that nuclear weapons would not save me – or them.

Back in 1972, after retraining in anti-submarine warfare, I was appointed as senior bombardier-navigator of a Sea King helicopter squadron aboard the aircraft-carrier HMS Ark Royal. Our task was to use variable-depth sonar, radar and other electronic sensors, plus a variety of weapons, to detect and destroy enemy submarines threatening our ships. However, our lightweight anti-submarine torpedoes were not fast enough and could not go deep enough to catch the latest Soviet nuclear-powered submarines. So we were given a nuclear depth-bomb, an underwater variant of the WE177 design.

The problem was that, if I had dropped one, it would have vaporized and irradiated one Soviet nuclear submarine, a large volume of ocean – and myself. This was because, unlike a strike jet, a helicopter was too slow to escape before detonation. So it would have been a suicide mission. Also, my leaders ignored the fact that there would have been heavy radioactive fallout from my bomb, plus the submarine’s nuclear power plant and any nuclear-tipped torpedoes it carried. And I might have escalated World War 3 to nuclear holocaust. All this, just to protect my aircraft-carrier.

This time I did complain. I was reassured there would almost certainly be no need to use nuclear depth-bombs; no civilians would be involved; and the Soviets might not even detect it. Besides, I had a glittering career ahead of me, and did not want to spoil my prospects, did I? As I was ambitious, and no-one else raised concerns, I fell silent. In due course, I was promoted.

However, the experience of such military incompetence and irresponsibility shocked me into a less trusting, more questioning frame of mind. That potent military tradition, carefully nurtured to carve out and hold down the British Empire, was immortalized in Tennyson’s Crimean war poem The Charge of the Light Brigade about an earlier suicide mission: “Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die.” That attitude was alive and well, in an all-volunteer Royal Navy. This was when I realized the significance of the fact that, unlike most of my colleagues, I had no military pedigree. My father worked in the Ministry of Agriculture. His father was a priest and divinity teacher at Trinity College, Dublin; and my paternal great-grandfather was an engineer. On my mother’s side, her father came from a line of professional gardeners and horticulturalists.

UK Polaris Replacement and Falklands War

In 1979, Margaret Thatcher swept into 10 Downing Street as Britain’s first woman Prime Minister. I was working just across the street as a newly promoted Commander, in the Ministry of Defence. In my position as Personal Staff Officer to the Assistant Chief of Naval Staff (Policy), I watched my Admiral facilitate the internal debate on replacing the four British Polaris nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarines. The nuclear submarine lobby insisted upon a scaled down version of the massively expensive, over-capable US Trident system, despite threatening the future of the Navy as a balanced, useful force. Mrs Thatcher rammed the decision through without consulting her Cabinet; and the Chiefs of Staff, despite misgivings, were brought into line.

My final appointment was as Staff Officer (Intelligence) to Commander-in-Chief Fleet. It was a stimulating time to work in military intelligence in the command bunker in Northwood, just outside London, where operational control of the British Navy was coordinated. The Soviets had just invaded Afghanistan; the Polish trade union movement Solidarnosc was pioneering the East European challenge to them; and new Soviet warship designs were emerging almost every month. I ran the 40-strong team providing round-the-clock intelligence support to the Polaris submarine on so-called “deterrent” patrol, as well as the rest of the Fleet.

In 1981, the Thatcher government, desperate to find savings because of her determination to have Trident, announced a major defence review. With projected cuts to the Royal Navy’s aircraft carriers, destroyers and frigates, my chances of commanding a ship – the next step to higher rank – were slim. So I took the plunge and applied for redundancy.

Notification of my successful application came one week into the Falklands War. In 1982, Britain suddenly went to war with an erstwhile friend, Argentina; and the Royal Navy’s role was pivotal. So the war was directed from Northwood by my boss, Admiral Sir John Fieldhouse. At one point the outcome was in the balance: our ships were being sunk, and some friends and colleagues killed. If Argentine strike aircraft or submarines had sunk an aircraft-carrier or troopship before the landing force got ashore, the British might have risked defeat. What would Mrs Thatcher have done? Until then, she had been the most unpopular Prime Minister in British history. Now she had become the ‘Iron Lady’, and needed a military victory to save her political career.

Polaris had not deterred Argentine President Galtieri from invading the Falkland Islands. With victory in his grasp, would he have believed, let alone been deterred by, a threat from Mrs Thatcher to use nuclear weapons against Argentina? Yet after I left the Navy I heard rumours of a very secret contingency plan to move the British Polaris submarine on patrol south within range of Buenos Aires. The submarine was fitted with 16 launch tubes, each housing an intercontinental ballistic missile equipped with three 200 kiloton warheads. Then came corroboration, from France. François Mitterrand was President in 1982. In 2005, his psychoanalyst’s memoirs revealed that in his first counselling session Mitterrand had just come from an extremely stressful phonecall with Thatcher. A French-supplied Exocet missile fired from a French-supplied Argentine Navy Super Etendard strike jet had sunk a British destroyer. Mrs Thatcher had threatened to carry out a nuclear strike against Argentina unless Mitterrand ordered his brother, who ran the Exocet factory, to release the missile’s acquisition system frequencies to enable the British to jam them. Mitterrand, convinced she was serious, had complied.

These nightmarish rumours led me to confront the realities of operating nuclear weapons for a leader in such a crisis. Defeat would have been unthinkable for the British military, and would have ended Mrs Thatcher’s career. She was a true believer in nuclear deterrence. Yet if she had threatened Galtieri with a nuclear strike, he would have publicly called her bluff and relished watching President Reagan try to rein her in. The Polaris submarine’s Commanding Officer, briefed by me before going on patrol, would have been faced with a shift of target. Had he obeyed the order, Britain would have become a pariah state, its case for retaining the Falklands lost in the international outrage from such a war crime, especially against a non-nuclear state. Nuclear deterrence failure would have compounded the ignominy of defeat.

Redundancy, Roof-thatching and Murder

Back in 1982, on terminal leave after the British retook the Falkland Islands, I was 38 years old, with no qualifications except my rank and experience. Tired of weekend commuting to high-pressure jobs in London, I decided to try my luck and find local work which allowed me to be home every night. So I became a roof thatcher, enduring many painful jokes with stunned former colleagues. For eight idyllic years, I loved working with my hands in the open air restoring fine old houses, with a bird’s eye view of some of the most picturesque parts of southwest England.

Thatching proved vitally therapeutic in 1984, when my beloved aunt Hilda Murrell was murdered. My mother’s unmarried elder sister, she had become my mentor and close friend after my mother died when I was a 19-year-old Midshipman. Hilda was a Cambridge University graduate, and a successful businesswoman who ran the family rose nurseries. In retirement she became a fearless environmentalist and opponent of nuclear energy and weapons. At the age of 78, she applied to testify at the first British public planning inquiry into a nuclear power plant. Mrs Thatcher was determined to introduce a programme of reactors of a design which failed at Three Mile Island. Hilda, who had a formidable network of establishment contacts, did her homework about the insoluble problems of nuclear waste. A true patriot, she was not prepared to let the nuclear industry ruin and poison her country – and potentially the rest of the planet with nuclear weapons.

Rumours of nuclear conspiracy swirled around an incompetent police investigation into her bizarre murder. Then in December 1984, a maverick member of parliament announced in the House of Commons that I had been suspected of leaking secret documents about the controversial sinking of the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano in the Falklands War, and hiding them with my aunt. I had done nothing so stupidly treasonable; yet several reliable sources agreed that State security agents had allegedly searched her house. A cold case review resulted in the 2005 trial and conviction of a petty thief, who was 16 years old in 1984. I have evidence that he was framed; and I am completing a book about this.

First Gulf War and Breakout

Implicating me in Hilda’s murder radicalized me. Then after Chernobyl, I took up her anti-nuclear energy torch. I learned that the nuclear energy industry had begun as a cynical by-product of the race to provide plutonium for nuclear weapons. My case for supporting nuclear deterrence crumbled with the Berlin Wall. However, it took the 1991 first Gulf War to break me out of my indoctrination.

From the moment in November 1990 when the US doubled its original figure for ground forces to eject Iraqi forces from Kuwait, I realised this was to be a punitive expedition. My military intelligence training warned me that the US-led coalition’s blitzkrieg strategy, targeting Iraq’s infrastructure as well as the leadership and military, would give Saddam Hussein the pretext he needed to attack Israel in order to split the coalition and become the Arabs’ champion. If personally threatened, he could order the launch of Scud ballistic missiles with chemical or biological warheads. If such an attack caused heavy Israeli casualties, Prime Minister Shamir would come under massive pressure to retaliate with a nuclear strike on Baghdad. Even if Saddam Hussein did not survive (he had the best anti-nuclear bunkers Western technology could provide), the Arab world would erupt in fury against Israel and its allies, its security would be destroyed forever, and Russia would be sucked into the crisis…

In January 1991, I joined the growing anti-war movement in Britain and addressed a crowd of 20,000 in Trafalgar Square. A week later, the first Scud attack hit Tel Aviv two days after the Allied blitzkrieg began. For the first time, the second city of a de facto nuclear state was attacked and its capital threatened. Worse still for nuclear deterrence, Iraq did not have nuclear weapons. The Israeli people, cowering in gas masks in basements, learned that night that their so-called ‘deterrent’ had failed in its primary purpose. Thirty-eight more conventionally armed Scud attacks followed, causing miraculously few casualties. When US satellites detected Israeli nuclear armed missiles being readied for launch, President Bush rushed Patriot missiles and military aid to Israel, which was congratulated on its restraint.

Meanwhile, in Britain, the Irish Republican Army just missed wiping out the entire Gulf War Cabinet with a mortar-bomb attack from a van in central London. A more direct threat to the government could barely be imagined. What if instead they had threatened to use even a crude nuclear device? A counter-threat of nuclear retaliation would have had zero credibility.

Coming out against nuclear weapons was traumatic. My conversion was no sudden Damascene experience. I knew about indoctrination, the Official Secrets Act and top security clearances, linked to the carrots and sticks of a career requiring me uncritically to accept the nuclear policies of my government. My circumstances were unique. I went through a process of cumulative experiences, including the murder of my aunt and mentor in which British state security agents were allegedly involved. Nuclear weapons and power seem to make superficially democratic governments behave badly.

Belatedly forced to research the history of ‘the Bomb’, I learned that the British scientific-politico-military establishment initiated and spread the nuclear arms race. Having alerted the United States to the feasibility of making a nuclear weapon, Britain participated in the Manhattan Project. On being frozen out of further collaboration by the 1946 McMahon Act, it began to develop its own nuclear arsenal. Thus Britain became a role model for France, and later Iraq and India: the first medium-sized power with delusions of grandeur to threaten nuclear terrorism. Also, I learned that nuclear deterrence does not work; it is immoral and unlawful, and there are more credible and acceptable alternative strategies to deter aggression and achieve security.

Legal Challenge to Nuclear Deterrence

Having given up thatching as the 1991 Gulf War loomed, after my breakout I became Chair of the British affiliate of the World Court Project. This worldwide network of citizen groups helped persuade the United Nations General Assembly, despite desperate countermoves by the three NATO nuclear weapon states, to ask the International Court of Justice for its Advisory Opinion on the legal status of nuclear weapons. In 1996, the Court confirmed that the threat, let alone use, of nuclear weapons would generally be illegal. For the first time, the legality of nuclear deterrence had been implicitly challenged.

One aspect of the Court’s decision was especially important. It confirmed that, as part of international humanitarian law, the Nuremberg Principles apply to nuclear weapons. This has serious implications for all those involved in operating nuclear weapons – particularly military professionals who, unlike a President or Prime Minister, really would have to “press the button”. What is at stake here is a crucial difference between military professionals and hired killers or terrorists: military professionals need to be seen to act within the law. Nuclear weapons should be stigmatized as chemical and biological weapons have been, so that no military professional is prepared to operate them.

The next year, recently retired General Lee Butler spoke out far more powerfully than I could. He is still encouraging me to keep going. Then in 1999 I found myself with David Krieger in a delegation to Tokyo not only with Lee Butler, but Robert McNamara too. In a heretical team of that calibre, I knew what I was doing was right.

Why Nuclear Deterrence is a Scam

It was the American writer H L Mencken who quipped: “There’s always an easy solution to every problem: neat, plausible, and wrong.” Nuclear deterrence fits this nicely. To make it acceptable to political leaders and those in the military who have to operate them, the appalling effects of even the smallest modern nuclear weapon have been played down, and that “there would almost certainly be no need to use them.” In fact, they are not weapons at all. They are utterly indiscriminate devices combining the poisoning horrors of chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction, plus inter-generational genetic effects unique to radioactivity, with almost unimaginable explosive violence. Yet nuclear deterrence is not credible without the will to use them. This is why a state practising nuclear deterrence is actually conducting a deliberate policy of nuclear terrorism.

My next fundamental objection relates to the fact that, if deterrence based on conventional weapons fails, the damage is confined to the belligerent states and the environment recovers. What is at stake from nuclear deterrence failure is the devastation and poisoning of not just the belligerents, but potentially most forms of life on Earth.

Closely related to this is a crazy reality: nuclear deterrence is a scheme for making nuclear war less probable by making it more probable. The danger of inadvertent nuclear war is greater than we think, when nuclear deterrence dogma demands that the United States and Russia persist with over 2,000 nuclear warheads between them poised for launch at each other inside half an hour. What are they playing at, over twenty years after the Cold War ended and when they are collaborating in the so-called “war on terror”?

I now suspect that nuclear deterrence is an outrageous scam, devised sixty years ago by the US military-industrial monster dominating US politics and foreign policy. President Barack Obama’s vision for a nuclear weapon-free world, in his Prague speech in April 2009, was immediately contradicted by a caveat. He said: “…as long as these weapons exist, we will maintain a safe, secure and effective arsenal to deter any adversary, and guarantee that defense to our allies…” This is old, muddled thinking, because a rational leader cannot make a credible nuclear threat against a nuclear adversary capable of a retaliatory strike. And a second strike is pointless, because it would be no more than posthumous revenge. This is why enthusiasm for a nuclear weapon-free world is hypocrisy if some nuclear weapons will be kept “for deterrence as long as anyone else has them.”

The deception deepens when the nuclear weapon states, aware that extremists armed with weapons of mass destruction cannot be deterred, plan pre-emptive nuclear attacks in “anticipatory self-defence” of their “vital interests” – not last-ditch defence of their homeland. Thereby, their unprovable claim that nuclear deterrence averts war is cynically stood on its head.
Extremists would not only not be deterred by nuclear weapons. They could provoke nuclear retaliation in order to turn moral outrage against the retaliator and recruit more to their nightmarish causes.

Consequences of Nuclear Deterrence Failure

With such an irresponsible example from the five recognised nuclear weapon states, it is no surprise that India and Pakistan are trying to emulate it, locked toe to toe in hostile rivalry. Indian governments became convinced that the fetishistic power of nuclear deterrence held the key to guaranteed security and acceptance as a great power; whereupon Pakistan promptly followed suit.

I will never forget a public meeting in Islamabad in 2001. The nuclear physicist Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy had persuaded General Aslam Beg, one of the “fathers” of Pakistan’s Bomb, to join a panel with himself and me. Beg warned against raising awareness about the effects of a nuclear strike on a Pakistan city, “in case it scares the people.” He had a simplistic faith in nuclear deterrence, ignoring all the added dangers of a nuclear standoff with India. He is not alone: my experience is that most believers in nuclear deterrence refuse to discuss the consequences of failure. I will now confront them.

Economic Consequences. In April 2005, an internal report for US Homeland Security appeared on the web. Titled Economic Consequences of a Rad/Nuc Attack, the report examined what it would take to recover from the detonation of just one nuclear device in various cities. Much depends on the size of bomb and level of decontamination, but the economic consequences for New York alone would be around $10 trillion. That is roughly the annual Gross Domestic Product of the entire US economy. Just one nuclear bomb, on one city.

Environmental and Agricultural Consequences. A deeply disturbing article, published in January last year in Scientific American, reported on recent climate research about a regional nuclear war between India and Pakistan in which about only 100 Hiroshima-size nuclear devices would be detonated over cities. Apart from the mutual carnage and destruction across South Asia, enough smoke from firestorms – let alone radioactive fallout – would be generated to cripple global agriculture. Plunging temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere would cause hundreds of millions of people to starve to death, even in countries far from the conflict.

Health Consequences. In 2004, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War published their findings regarding casualties from a Hiroshima-size nuclear warhead detonated over New York. Total fatalities were estimated at about 60,000. Another 60,000 would be seriously but non-fatally injured. These would clearly utterly overwhelm any hospitals surviving the explosion. Again, this is just one nuclear weapon on one city.

In 1985, the Pentagon accepted the theory of ‘nuclear winter’ was valid. However, its response was reflected in this statement to Congress by US Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle: “Rather than eliminating nuclear weapons, the most realistic method of preventing nuclear winter is to build enough weapons to make sure that the Soviets will be deterred from attacking.” Redundant warhead numbers have been cut, but little has changed in such thinking.

Nuclear Deterrence Does Not Work

In London in 2008, Kate and I attended one of the last public lectures by Sir Michael Quinlan. Known as the British high priest of nuclear deterrence, he advised successive governments on how to justify nuclear deterrence. Almost twenty years after the end of the Cold War, he asserted that rejecting any threat or use of nuclear weapons amounted to “full-blown pacifism”. Ignoring conventional deterrence options, Quinlan swept aside any objections that:
- Nuclear deterrence has a credibility problem;
- It incites nuclear arms racing and the spread of nuclear weapons;
- Nuclear weapons cannot be used discriminately or proportionately; and
- Nuclear weapon use would inevitably risk escalation.
He failed to take into account the environmental and health consequences of even a limited nuclear exchange, avoiding any mention of the word “radioactivity”; and he dismissed abolition as unrealistic. In light of the World Court Advisory Opinion, Kate asked him for a legal use of nuclear weapons. Revealing his disturbing Cold War mindset, he gave the Russian naval base at Murmansk.

The 2009 report Eliminating Nuclear Threats by the Australia-Japan International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament challenged the assumption that nuclear weapons have deterred major war. It acknowledged that avoidance of nuclear war has been due more to luck than deterrence. It agreed that nuclear weapons are worse than useless to deter terrorists.
It correctly argued that, just because nuclear weapons cannot be uninvented, this does not mean they should not be outlawed and abolished as chemical and biological weapons have been.

Surprisingly, the report, chaired by former Foreign Ministers of Australia and Japan, also questioned the need for extended nuclear deterrence, arguing that conventional deterrence was adequate. Yet, having admitted that extended nuclear deterrence undermines progress towards a nuclear weapon-free world, it failed to follow the logic of its criticisms. No doubt this was because, unlike New Zealand, Australia and Japan continue to fall for the hoax of nuclear deterrence.

The report should have concluded that extended nuclear deterrence does not make Japan or Australia secure, and is not credible. The misnamed “nuclear umbrella” has helped the US maintain its military alliances and bases in both countries for its own purposes. However, the “umbrella” is really a lightning rod for insecurity, because the US risks being pushed past the nuclear threshold when its own security is not directly threatened.

Why would any state attack Australia or Japan, let alone with nuclear weapons? If it did, the US would almost certainly not respond with nuclear weapons because it would risk inevitable, uncontrollable escalation to full-scale nuclear war. Instead, if the US decided it was in its national interest to come to their defence, it would rely on its formidable conventional firepower.

Nuclear deterrence has not prevented non-nuclear states from attacking allies of nuclear weapon states. Examples include China entering the Korean War when the US had a nuclear monopoly in 1950; Argentina invading the British Falkland Islands in 1982; and Iraq invading close US ally Kuwait in 1990, and attacking nuclear-armed Israel with Scud missiles in 1991. In all these cases nuclear deterrence failed. The US in Korea and Vietnam, and the USSR in Afghanistan, preferred withdrawal to the ultimate ignominy of resorting to nuclear weapons to secure victory or revenge against a non-nuclear state.

Safer Security Strategies

The main security threats in the 21st century include climate change, poverty, resource depletion and financial crises as well as terrorism. Nuclear deterrence, provoking hostility and mistrust, prevents rather than assists the global non-military cooperation required to solve them.

For all these reasons, all but about 35 states feel more secure without depending on nuclear deterrence. After Japan and Australia’s admirable leadership through co-sponsoring their recent report, they, South Korea and NATO’s non-nuclear members should therefore join the 140 states now supporting negotiating a Nuclear Weapons Convention.

In Britain, a defence budget crisis has revived the debate about replacing Trident, and uncritical British support for US foreign policy. Indeed, the black hole in defence spending has been caused by desperate attempts to keep up with the Americans. Such poor decisions were driven by British nuclear dependence on the US.

Instead, making a virtue from necessity, the British government should reassert its sovereignty and announce that it will rescue the dysfunctional nuclear non-proliferation regime by becoming the first of the recognized nuclear weapon states to rely on safer and more cost-effective security strategies than nuclear deterrence.

A new world role awaits the British. By far the best-placed candidate for ‘breakout’, Britain’s nuclear arsenal is the smallest of the five recognized nuclear weapon states; and they are deployed in just one system, a scaled down version of Trident. Its government has to decide by 2016 whether to replace Trident with whatever the US decides. The minority Liberal Democrats, in coalition with the Conservatives, oppose Trident replacement. The alternative – nuclear-tipped Cruise missiles launched from attack submarines – has been ruled out, because the Obama Administration is scrapping its nuclear-armed Tomahawk missiles.

All Britain has to do is decide not to replace its four Vanguard class Trident-armed submarines. British ‘breakout’ would be sensational, transforming the nuclear disarmament debate overnight. In NATO, Britain would wield unprecedented influence leading the drive for a non-nuclear strategy. British leadership would create new openings for shifting the mindset in the US and France, the other two most zealous guardians of nuclear deterrence. This would heavily influence India, Israel, Pakistan and states intent on obtaining nuclear weapons. The way would then open for a major reassessment by Russia and China, for all nuclear forces to be stood down, and for negotiations to begin on a Nuclear Weapons Convention.

The key is to see nuclear disarmament as a security-building process, moving from an outdated adversarial mindset to a co-operative one where nuclear weapons are recognized as an irrelevant security liability. Mikhail Gorbachev was the first leader of a nuclear weapon state to understand this. In 1986, three years before the Berlin Wall was torn down, he briefly broke the grip of Cold War security thinking. Tragically, the opportunity to abandon Mutual Assured Destruction at the Reagan/Gorbachev summit in Iceland was defeated by the US military-industrial complex’s vested interests over ballistic missile defence, and the spurious US need to extend nuclear deterrence to its allies. Here was an example of how nuclear deterrence undercuts the political stability its proponents claim it creates.

Conclusions

To conclude, I hope I have explained why I rejected nuclear deterrence, and why it is the last major obstacle to a nuclear weapon-free world. Finding our way back from the nuclear abyss, on the edge of which nuclear deterrence has held us hypnotised and terrorised for sixty-five years, will not be easy. As with all advances in human rights and justice, the engine for shifting the mindset has to come from civil society.

I recall what Mahatma Gandhi said in 1938, as he launched the final push towards evicting the British from India: “A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.” The American anthropologist Margaret Mead added: “Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

A surprisingly small network of individuals drove the campaign to abolish slavery. As with nuclear deterrence, slavery’s leading apologists were the power elites of the United States, Britain and France. They argued that slavery was a “necessary evil”, for which there was “no alternative”. They failed, because courageous ordinary British, American and French citizens mobilised unstoppable public and political support for their campaign to replace slavery with more humane, lawful and effective ways to create wealth. The analogy holds for nuclear deterrence, which can and must be discarded for more humane, lawful and safer security strategies if civilisation and the Earth’s ecosystems are to survive.
February 17, 2011
Santa Barbara Declaration: Reject Nuclear Deterrence: An Urgent Call to Action
Click here to sign the declaration.

Vaya aquí para la versión española.

Nuclear deterrence is a doctrine that is used as a justification by nuclear weapon states and their allies for the continued possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons.

Nuclear deterrence is the threat of a nuclear strike in response to a hostile action. However, the nature of the hostile action is often not clearly defined, making possible the use of nuclear weapons in a wide range of circumstances.

Nuclear deterrence threatens the murder of many millions of innocent people, along with severe economic, climate, environmental, agricultural and health consequences beyond the area of attack.

Nuclear deterrence requires massive commitments of resources to the industrial infrastructures and organizations that make up the world’s nuclear weapons establishments, its only beneficiaries.

Despite its catastrophic potential, nuclear deterrence is widely, though wrongly, perceived to provide protection to nuclear weapon states, their allies and their citizens.

Nuclear deterrence has numerous major problems:
1. Its power to protect is a dangerous fabrication. The threat or use of nuclear weapons provides no protection against an attack.
2. It assumes rational leaders, but there can be irrational or paranoid leaders on any side of a conflict.
3. Threatening or committing mass murder with nuclear weapons is illegal and criminal. It violates fundamental legal precepts of domestic and international law, threatening the indiscriminate slaughter of innocent people.
4. It is deeply immoral for the same reasons it is illegal: it threatens indiscriminate and grossly disproportionate death and destruction.
5. It diverts human and economic resources desperately needed to meet basic human needs around the world. Globally, approximately $100 billion is spent annually on nuclear forces.
6. It has no effect against non-state extremists, who govern no territory or population.
7. It is vulnerable to cyber attack, sabotage, and human or technical error, which could result in a nuclear strike.
8. It sets an example for additional countries to pursue nuclear weapons for their own nuclear deterrent force.
Its benefits are illusory. Any use of nuclear weapons would be catastrophic.

Nuclear deterrence is discriminatory, anti-democratic and unsustainable. This doctrine must be discredited and replaced with an urgent commitment to achieve global nuclear disarmament. We must change the discourse by speaking truth to power and speaking truth to each other.

Before another nuclear weapon is used, nuclear deterrence must be replaced by humane, legal and moral security strategies. We call upon people everywhere to join us in demanding that the nuclear weapon states and their allies reject nuclear deterrence and negotiate without delay a Nuclear Weapons Convention for the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of all nuclear weapons.
_____________

Initial Signers: Participants in The Dangers of Nuclear Deterrence Conference, hosted by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Santa Barbara, February 16-17, 2011.

Blase Bonpane, Ph.D., Director, Office of the Americas
Theresa Bonpane, Founding Director, Office of the Americas
John Burroughs, Ph.D., Executive Director, Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy
Jacqueline Cabasso, Executive Director, Western States Legal Foundation
Kate Dewes, Ph.D., Co-Director, Disarmament and Security Centre, New Zealand
Bob Dodge, M.D., Coordinator, Beyond War Nuclear Weapons Abolition Team
Dick Duda, Ph.D., founding member, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation – Silicon Valley
Denise Duffield, Associate Director, Physicians for Social Responsibility – Los Angeles
Richard Falk, J.S.D., Chair, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
Commander Robert Green (Royal Navy, ret.), Co-Director, Disarmament and Security Centre, New Zealand
David Krieger, Ph.D., President, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
Robert Laney, J.D., Secretary, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
Steven Starr, Senior Scientist, Physicians for Social Responsibility
Rick Wayman, Director of Programs, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
Bill Wickersham, Ph.D., Adjunct Professor of Peace Studies, University of Missouri
February 17, 2011
Ronald Reagan’s Great Dream

On February 6, 2011, Ronald Reagan would have been 100 years old. It is worthwhile to recall that this conservative president’s great dream was the abolition of nuclear weapons. According to his wife, Nancy, “Ronnie had many hopes for the future, and none were more important to America and to mankind than the effort to create a world free of nuclear weapons.”

President Reagan was a nuclear abolitionist. He believed that the only reason to have nuclear weapons was to prevent the then Soviet Union from using theirs. Understanding this, he asserted in his 1984 State of the Union Address, “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” He continued, “The only value in our two nations possessing nuclear weapons is to make sure they will never be used. But then would it not be better to do away with them entirely?”

Ronald Reagan regarded nuclear weapons, according to Nancy, as “totally irrational, totally inhumane, good for nothing but killing, possibly destructive of life on earth and civilization.”

In 1986, President Reagan and Secretary General Gorbachev met for a summit in Reykjavik, Iceland. In a remarkable quirk of history, the two men shared a vision of a world free of nuclear weapons. Despite the concerns of their aides, they came close to achieving agreement on this most important of issues. The sticking point was that President Reagan saw his Strategic Defense Initiative (missile defense) as being essential to the plan, and Gorbachev couldn’t accept this (even though Reagan promised to share the US missile defense system with the then Soviet Union). Gorbachev wanted missile defense development to be restricted to the laboratory for ten years. Reagan couldn’t accept this.

The two leaders came heartbreakingly close to ending the era of nuclear weapons, but in the end they couldn’t achieve their mutual goal. As a result, nuclear weapons have proliferated and remain a danger to all humanity. Today, we face the threat of terrorists gaining possession of nuclear weapons, and wreaking massive destruction on the cities of powerful nations. There can be no doubt that had Reagan and Gorbachev succeeded, the US and the world would be far more secure, and these men would be remembered above all else for this achievement.

In his book, Ronald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, Paul Lettow quotes Reagan as saying, “I know that there are a great many people who are pointing to the unimaginable horror of nuclear war…. [T]o those who protest against nuclear war, I can only say, ‘I’m with you.’” Lettow also quotes Reagan as stating, “[M]y dream is to see the day when nuclear weapons will be banished from the face of the Earth.”

In the 18th and 19th centuries, individuals struggled for the abolition of slavery because they understood that every man, woman and child has the right to live in freedom. Through the efforts and persistence of committed individuals like William Wilberforce in Great Britain and Frederick Douglass in the United States, institutionalized slavery was brought to an end, and humanity is better for it. In today’s world, we confront an issue of even more transcending importance, because nuclear weapons place civilization and the human species itself in danger of annihilation.

Ronald Reagan was a leader who recognized this, and worked during his presidency for the abolition of these terrible weapons. He believed, according to Nancy, that “as long as such weapons were around, sooner or later they would be used,” with catastrophic results. He understood that nuclear weapons themselves are the enemy.

Unfortunately, Ronald Reagan died before seeing his goal of abolishing nuclear weapons realized. It is up to those of us still living to complete this job. It is not a partisan issue, but rather a human issue, one that affects our common future.

February 3, 2011
Next Steps for a Nuclear Weapon-Free World

“Senate ratification of New START was a small but valuable Christmas present for the world. Its principal value is in helping to stabilise the US-Russia nuclear relationship. However, it does nothing to reduce the threat of nuclear war. For the next ten years, over 1,500 strategic nuclear warheads on each side will remain ready for launch within half an hour, vulnerable to computer malfunction or false warning of attack. As evidence of cyberwarfare grows, this is an unacceptable perpetuation of the Cold War nuclear stand-off, sustained by complacent acceptance of the fallacies of nuclear deterrence. My focus this year, therefore, is to continue to raise awareness of the risks and consequences of nuclear deterrence failure; and to promote safer, more cost-effective strategies to deter aggression and achieve real security for all.”

— Commander Robert Green, Royal Navy (ret’d), author of Security Without Nuclear Deterrence

“Personally I want to focus more on engaging the “persuadable middle.” I thought that the polls that were taken concerning the New START treaty were revealing — the CNN poll said that 73% of Americans favored it. Opinion Research Corp. put the number at 75%. Those are landslide numbers. And if you look at the many, many editorials and op-eds that supported New START in major national publications, they were largely focused on the proposition that the treaty made us safer. The task requires thoughtfulness, dedication, and energy — but I do not think it is daunting. Primarily, I think it requires finding ways to reach people who are not already convinced.

“The problem, of course, is that the “red meat” arguments that energize the progressives (decrying American imperialism, bemoaning the evil military/industrial complex, reasserting the incredible immorality of nuclear weapons …) turn off the persuadable middle, and more temperate arguments that might appeal to the middle are scorned by the militant progressives.

“But the New START treaty did — at the very end — catch the public’s attention, and revealed that people really do want to get rid of the nuclear threat. I think that the goal for 2011 should be to build on that basic public support and to drive home the message that we as a nation are safer and more secure if these weapons can be controlled and ultimately eliminated world wide.”

— Richard Duda, founding member of the NAPF Silicon Valley Chapter

“1. The movement needs to agree on a common theme, and a compelling narrative. The right certainly works that angle, with “death tax”, “death panels”, “nuclear umbrella”, “nuclear deterrent” (see my blog, and your video The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence also hits that point), and more. Maybe something like:

Bloated nuclear arsenals are the greatest cause of our national insecurity.
or
Nuclear weapons are the greatest cause of our national insecurity.
or
A newborn child has at least a 10% risk of being killed by nuclear weapons.

A US In the World Report has some thoughts along these lines, especially about the language of risk.

“2. Getting society to reexamine the fallacious assumptions that have led us to the current crazy situation. So long as American policy is based on false premises, arms control, much less nuclear disarmament, will proceed at best in fits and starts. A critical first step is to root out the myths that cause us to take actions that are against our own best interests. I list 11 possible candidates in one of my course handouts, and there are many others. Getting consensus within the movement on which are most important, and then focusing our communal effort on those would be a big plus.

“3. Forming what I am calling pockets of nuclear awareness. Until people are aware, little of real import will happen. (The New START was only important in that rejection would have been a big setback. It is, at best, a baby step forward.) And people are social animals who require others around them to be thinking the same way or they tend to lose interest. This is explained on my web page.”

— Martin Hellman, Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University and founding member of the NAPF Silicon Valley Chapter.

“Treaties for the people, for the planet, are hard to come by because the politicians, owned and controlled by the non-people, the corporate glob, must ratify the same. Thus the steps are too painfully slow to save us and the world we live in. It is like nailing the occupant of a burning house to the wall, and then, some passer-by comes along and pulls out one of the hundreds of nails. And they would call that a treaty. The house is still burning.”

— Gerry Spence, trial lawyer and author

“I think that now that the two major possessors of nuclear weapons have taken this step in the right direction, the focus on stopping the acquisition of these weapons by other nations is critical. As you know, not just Iran, but Jordan, the Saudis, etc. want to or are already moving forward in the nuclear area, which is very worrisome for a myriad of reasons.”

— Riane Eisler, author, social scientist and lawyer

“Although most people, if asked directly, will say that they favor the abolition of nuclear weapons, very few have any real idea of the threat which existing nuclear arsenals pose to humans and other complex forms of life. In fact, here in the U.S., most people do not even know that immense nuclear arsenals still exist, that their own nation (and Russia) have 95% of the 22,000 nuclear weapons in the world, and that they keep 2,000 strategic nuclear weapons ready to launch with only a few minutes warning. They have no idea that just one of these weapons can instantly ignite tens or hundreds of square miles of the Earth’s surface into a gigantic nuclear firestorm, and that a hundred such firestorms could produce enough smoke to cause deadly climate change, leading to global nuclear famine.

“An uniformed public cannot make informed decisions. We are still conducting our political discussions about nuclear weapons in Cold War terms, focusing upon how we are “behind” if we don’t “modernize” our nuclear arsenal, that we are “locked into a position of permanent inferiority” by agreements with the Russians to limit our nuclear weapons. There is absolutely no discussion of the consequences of the use of existing arsenals, particularly those maintained by the US and Russia, the dialogue is dangerously out of touch with the peer-reviewed scientific predictions that *any* nuclear conflict which detonates as little as 1% of existing nuclear arsenals in cities will likely kill at least 1 billion people through nuclear famine. We must bring current scientific understandings of what nuclear war would do to the biosphere, agriculture, ecosystems and global climate into the active debate about the need for nuclear weaponry.

“Furthermore, In a time when we cannot find enough money to maintain our schools, highways, hospitals and basic infrastructure, do we need to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to rebuild our nuclear weapons manufacturing complex and “upgrade” nuclear weapons systems? No, just the opposite, we need stop or prevent funding for such projects, which guarantee that there will be no “world without nuclear weapons.” I am going to start ending my presentations with a chart which shows what we could do with the endless billions we spend on nuclear weaponry, something like what Eisenhower did with his “Cross of Iron” speech. We have to give concrete examples of what could be immediately gained through the elimination of insane spending for nuclear doomsday machines. We can combat the idea that nuclear spending creates jobs by giving examples of what could be done to construct, for example, needed alternative energy systems (wind, solar, tidal, etc.) that can begin rebuilding our own industrial infrastructure, which has been dismantled and shipped overseas.

“If we are going to get into a race with other nations, let it be a race towards a better human future. Building nuclear weapons does just the opposite, it paves the way for mass extinction of complex forms of life, including human life.”

— Steven Starr, senior scientist with Physicians for Social Responsibility

January 28, 2011
Nuclear Weapons: The Goal is Zero

Nuclear 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.

January 10, 2011