Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: nuclear disarmament

  • Nobel Laureates Appeal for Nuclear Disarmament

    February 17, 2005

    Letter from Jack Steinberger:

    I have pleasure in enclosing a copy of a Nobel Laureates statement that has been drafted by the Abolition Now Campaign at my initiation. I am deeply concerned that in this year of the 60 th Anniversaries of the atomic bombings the world stands at the brink of a renewed nuclear crisis of incalculable proportions. All of us need to speak out before it is too late. In May the world’s governments will gather at the United Nations in New York to review the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). This statement is a call for them to use this opportunity to begin serious negotiations to rid the world of nuclear weapons once and for all. Led by the Mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki the Mayors for Peace Emergency Campaign is mobilising support from all sectors of society worldwide for this goal. Nobel Laureates can add to this growing campaign by publicly identifying themselves with this call for sanity.

    Please consider adding your name to this statement which will be circulated widely to the press, governments and citizen groups in the run up to the NPT. It is planned to release this statement on March 5 th, the anniversary of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty entering into force in 1970. If you would like more information about the Mayors for

    Peace Emergency Campaign and Abolition Now please look at the website at www.abolitionnow.org or contact Monika Szymurska at monika@abolitionnow.org.

    We are approaching Nobel Laureates from each discipline, not just peace laureates. In this Einstein Year it is clear that all of us have a responsibility to speak out for the highest aspirations of humanity for a peaceful future. Thank you for reading this letter and for considering the statement.

    Yours sincerely,

    Jack Steinberger Nobel Physics Laureate 1988

    The continued reliance of some states on nuclear arsenals, with tens of thousands of times the destructive power of that unleashed upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki, leaves our children and grandchildren under the constant threat of annihilation. All people, including those in the nuclear weapons states themselves, would be more secure in a world without nuclear weapons.

    Every possible effort must be made not only to prevent additional states from acquiring nuclear weapons, but also to ensure that these instruments of ultimate terror do not fall into the hands of those who might use them to perpetrate acts of unthinkable mass destruction.

    This goal can only be achieved through the global elimination of all the nuclear weapons currently in the possession of the nuclear weapon states, and by the securing of all fissile materials under a system of international controls.

    The nuclear weapon states are obligated to achieve global nuclear disarmament under Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Yet, the NPT is in danger of collapse because the nuclear weapons states have spent more than 30 years evading its fundamental principal: that non-proliferation and disarmament must go hand in hand.

    As Nobel Laureates in peace, science, medicine, economics and literature, we call upon the US and the other nuclear weapons states to commence the phased elimination of all nuclear weapons, starting now.

    We call upon all Heads of State to begin negotiations immediately on the complete prohibition of nuclear weapons and to set a timetable for their total elimination by the year 2020. We call upon all Heads of State to attend to Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference at the United Nations in New York in May 2005.

    We call upon all states that may be considering the acquisition of nuclear weapons to abandon this perilous course and to insist instead upon a nuclear weapons-free world as the only basis for national and global security.

    Finally, we call upon civil society to join with the Mayors for Peace, led by the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in their Emergency Campaign to Ban Nuclear Weapons and with civil society organizations around the world that have come together to demand “Abolition Now!”

    Let our legacy be securing for our posterity a future free from the threat or use of nuclear weapons.

    To endorse the statement, please send your name and affiliation to Monika Szymurska at monika@abolitionnow.org or call (212) 726-9161

    For more information about the Abolition Now! Campaign, visit www.abolitionnow.org

  • Our Greatest Threat: The Coming Nuclear Crisis

    When the first atomic bombs destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it could hardly have been imagined that nearly sixty years later 34,145 nuclear weapons would be in existence. In a long career as a parliamentarian, diplomat, and educator, I have come to the conclusion that the abolition of nuclear weapons is the indispensable condition for peace in the twenty-first century. Yet progress toward that goal has been halted.

    In May a conference of the 188 signatory nations to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) will be held in New York City to put a spotlight on this problem. A huge march is planned for May 1. Advocates of nonproliferation will once again try to draw attention to the immorality and illegality of such weapons. But will the eight nations that possess nuclear weapons-the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, and Israel-actually take steps toward eliminating their arsenals?

    The prognosis is not good. The preparatory meetings for the May conference ended in failure, with nonnuclear nations objecting to the intransigence of the nuclear-weapons states, noting how a world of nuclear haves and have-nots is becoming a permanent feature of the global landscape. The United States insists that the problem is not with those who possess nuclear weapons, but with states, such as Iran and other nations, trying to acquire them. To which Brazil responded: “One cannot worship at the altar of nuclear weapons and raise heresy charges against those who want to join the sect.” Faced with this stalemate, the NPT is eroding, and an expansion of the number of states with nuclear weapons, a fear which produced the NPT in 1970, is looming once more.

    Any discussion of the elimination of nuclear weapons inevitably raises questions of the feasibility of such action. How is an architecture of security to be built without nuclear weapons? How can states be prevented from cheating and how can such weapons be kept out of the hands of terrorists? A wide range of military, scientific, and diplomatic experts, notably the Canberra Commission established in 1996, have tried to provide answers to these urgent questions.

    First, the case for a nuclear weapons-free world is based on the commonsensical claim that the destructiveness of these weapons is so great they have no military utility against a comparably equipped opponent. Historically, nuclear weapons have been used as a deterrent. But even as a deterrent they pose too great a risk. Few doubt that the longer weapons are maintained, the greater the risk of use, or that possession by some states causes other nations to acquire them, reducing the security of all.

    Second, the elimination of such weapons will not be possible without a new architecture of security based on an adequate verification system. The components of a reliable verification system are coming into place, beginning with the inspection system maintained by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the monitoring system maintained by the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization, which has the capacity to detect the most minute nuclear test explosions. On-site inspections of suspect materials will have to be part of the disarmament process (the United States and Russia already do this in the case of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty of 1987).

    “Trust but verify,” President Ronald Reagan famously said. Verification is essential, but the demand for a perfect verification regime is little more than an excuse for not seeking a reduction in nuclear weapons. Perfect security is not possible. Inevitably, some risk will have to be accepted if the wider benefits of a nuclear weapon-free world are to be realized. Not the elimination of risk but an evaluation of comparative risks is the rational approach to take. It is much more dangerous for the world to stay on its present path. Compared to the risks inherent in a world bristling with nuclear weapons, the risks associated with whatever threat a cheating state could assemble before it was exposed are far more acceptable.

    No one is advocating unilateral disarmament; that would be an unthinkable policy for the United States. Rather it is in the interests of the United States-and all other nations-to heed the directive of the International Court of Justice and pursue comprehensive negotiations leading to the gradual elimination of nuclear weapons. Such a program would take many years to implement. Many confidence-building measures would be needed. How long disarmament takes is not the most important thing; what is critical is that the major states show the rest of the world they are heading in that direction. Otherwise, the NPT, which entails a legal obligation to pursue negotiations in good faith, will become a mockery. This is the nub of the present dilemma.

    In 1995, on its twenty-fifth anniversary, the NPT (virtually every country in the world except India, Pakistan, and Israel has signed the treaty) was indefinitely extended. In agreeing to that extension, the nuclear powers made three promises: a Nuclear Test Ban Treaty would be achieved; negotiations to ban the production of fissile material would be concluded; “systematic and progressive efforts globally” to eliminate nuclear weapons would be made. None of these promises has been kept.

    When the NPT was reviewed in 2000, all the states were again able to find common ground and, by consensus, made an “unequivocal” commitment to eliminating nuclear weapons through a program of “Thirteen Practical Steps.” Subsequently, the nuclear powers faltered again and bitterness set in.

    The United States is in the forefront of the current stalemate. Its commitment to the consensus of 2000 was made under the Clinton administration. When President George W. Bush was elected, the United States position regressed: the ABM Treaty was abandoned and the administration turned its back on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), two of the thirteen steps agreed to in 2000. Moreover, in 2001 the administration conducted a nuclear posture review, which made clear that nuclear weapons remain a cornerstone of U.S. national-security policy. The review outlines expansive plans to revitalize U.S. nuclear forces, and all the elements that support them.

    The Bush administration has also speculated about specific scenarios where the use of nuclear weapons may be justified: an Arab-Israeli conflict, a conflict with China over Taiwan, a North Korean attack on South Korea, and an attack on Israel by Iraq or another neighbor. This new policy, in contradiction of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, means that for the first time the United States will threaten the use of nuclear weapons against countries that do not themselves possess such weapons. Under President Bush, the United States is actually widening the role of nuclear weapons in defense policy far beyond deterrence. The administration is promulgating a policy that would retain a stockpile of active and reserve nuclear weapons and weapons components for at least the next fifty years.

    Among the current nuclear powers, the U.S. position is particularly aggressive, but it is by no means alone in its determination to hold onto nuclear weapons or to expand their strategic role in military policy. On November 17, 2004, President Vladimir Putin of Russia confirmed that his country is “carrying out research and missile tests of state-of-the-art nuclear missile systems” and that Russia would “continue to build up firmly and insistently our armed forces, including the nuclear component.” The United Kingdom, France, and China are all busy modernizing their nuclear arsenals. Similarly, NATO adheres to its stated policies that such weapons are “essential.”

    More and more states now treat nuclear weapons as part of a war-fighting strategy, not strictly as a deterrent. Nuclear weapons have become embedded in nations’ military doctrines. This shift in the rationale for keeping nuclear weapons is what characterizes our deepening crisis.

    Another aspect of this crisis is the specter of nuclear terrorism. “Nothing could be simpler,” was the assessment of the eminent physicist Frank von Hippel, on the capacity of terrorists to obtain highly enriched uranium and improvise an explosive device with power equal to the Hiroshima bomb. If the 9/11 terrorists had used a nuclear bomb, hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers would have perished. The International Atomic Energy Agency reports that at least forty countries have the capability to produce nuclear weapons, and criticizes the failure of export control systems to prevent an extensive illicit market in nuclear items. The disappearance, by theft or otherwise, of nuclear materials from Russia is well established. The threat of nuclear terrorism is on the mind of every official I know. Mohamed ElBaradei, Director General of the IAEA, says the margin of security today is “thin and worrisome.”

    In 2004, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1540, requiring all states to take measures to prevent nonstate actors from acquiring or developing nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. Similarly, the Proliferation Security Initiative of the United States seeks to interdict on the high seas the transfer of sensitive nuclear materials. And the G8 countries have allocated $20 billion over ten years to eliminate some stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in Russia.

    These steps are by no means sufficient. The fact remains that the proliferation of nuclear weapons cannot be stopped as long as the most powerful nations in the world maintain that nuclear weapons are essential for their own security.

    Of course, Iran and any other hostile state must be stopped from acquiring such weapons, and inspection and verification processes must be stepped up with more funding and personnel. But a one-dimensional approach that attempts to stop proliferation while ignoring meaningful disarmament will never work.

    The New Agenda Coalition, a group of states (Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, and Sweden) pressing the nuclear-weapons states to fulfill their disarmament obligations, offers some hope. The coalition has been gathering political momentum. A recent UN resolution proposed by the group was supported by eight NATO states, including Germany and Canada. That resolution, calling on the nuclear powers to cease activities leading to “a new nuclear arms race,” identifies priorities for action: universal adherence to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the early implementation of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty; reduction of nonstrategic nuclear weapons and ending development of new types of weapons; negotiation of an effectively verifiable fissile-material treaty; establishment of a subsidiary body to deal with nuclear disarmament at the Conference on Disarmament; and compliance with principles of transparency and verification.

    Even though this resolution was mild compared to the regular demands of groups such as the Non-Aligned Movement, the United States, the United Kingdom, and France voted against it. China voted for the resolution and Russia abstained.

    Can the NPT be saved? Will civil society groups, whose protests have been rather mild compared to the vigorous activities of the 1980s, now start clamoring for government action? Will those who maintain that nuclear weapons are deeply immoral and a blot on God’s creation now be heard?

    These are questions posed by the present crisis. Another key question is how religious leaders will react to the realization that nuclear weapons are-apparently-here to stay.

    In 1982, Pope John Paul II sent a message to the Second Special Session on Disarmament:

    In current conditions, “deterrence” based on balance, certainly not as an end in itself but as a step on the way toward 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.

    In short, deterrence as a permanent policy is not morally acceptable. The American bishops’ 1983 Pastoral Letter on War and Peace took up this theme. It argued for a strong “no” to nuclear war, declaring that a nuclear response to a conventional attack is “morally unjustifiable.” Moreover, the bishops expressed skepticism that any nuclear war could avoid the massive killing of civilians. Only a “strictly conditioned moral acceptance of nuclear deterrence” is possible. The nuclear weapons states have ignored the bishops’ admonitions as well as those of many other religious groups.

    A well-considered moral argument must be heard once again that the circle of fear perpetuated by those with a vested interest in maintaining nuclear weapons is a trap from which humanity must escape. The alternative does not bear thinking about.

    Copyright © 2004 Commonweal Foundation

  • Heavily Armed Duo in No Position to Lay down Law on Proliferation

    Thwarting Iran’s nuclear ambitions would be easier if the US and Israel kept their side of the bargain, writes Richard Butler.

    In recent months the US President, George Bush, and senior members of his Administration have asserted that Iran is involved in the clandestine development of nuclear weapons.

    Last week Bush turned up the temperature during his visit to Europe, when he declared, on one public occasion punching the air with his fist, Iran “must not be allowed to acquire a nuclear weapon”.

    A month earlier The New Yorker published a disturbing report by Seymour Hersch that US forces had already entered Iran from Iraq to scope out prospective targets related to Iran’s nuclear activities.

    The Pentagon expressed anger at Hersch’s report and attacked him personally, but did not directly deny its substance. Last week Bush chose to comment publicly on this matter saying that reports the US was planning to attack Iran were wrong, but all options were on the table.

    There is good reason for concern about the directions of Iran’s nuclear program. In a manner similar to Bush’s remarks on his future intentions, Iran has also given contradictory signals, claiming that it was not making a nuclear weapon but had a right to do so if it chose to.

    As a member of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty Iran is obliged to accept inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency to verify that it is pursuing no activities leading to the acquisition of nuclear explosive capability. Last week, the agency’s director-general, Mohamed ElBaradei, appealed to Iran to improve its work with the inspectors.

    But Bush’s strident insistence on Iran’s treaty obligation glaringly omits the other side of the bargain made in the treaty, that the nuclear weapons states must progressively eliminate their armaments. Bush repeatedly and blatantly misrepresents the treaty, which is a two-way – not one-way – street. It provides that states which do not have nuclear weapons must never acquire them and that those which do have them must progressively get rid of them.

    The treaty is reviewed every five years. At the last review conference, in 2000, the five acknowledged nuclear weapons states responded to the grave concern that they were not fulfilling their part of the bargain. They made a new promise that they would increase the tempo of their action to eliminate their nuclear weapons.

    The Bush Administration has not only refused to adhere to its obligations under the treaty and the additional promise of 2000, but has now embarked on what is anathema under the treaty – the production of a new generation of nuclear weapons. These are the new, more compact, nukes the Administration says it needs for the so-called war on terrorism.

    It beggars belief that the Administration appears to believe it can succeed in restraining Iran while it proceeds to violate its obligations. The New York Times recently editorialised to this effect, saying that in the contemporary world, nuclear weapons had become virtually useless. The main danger they now posed was of them falling into the hands of terrorist groups.

    The US is not alone in seeking to maintain a world of nuclear “haves” and “have nots”. Three weeks ago Israel’s Defence Minister said it would be unconscionable for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. This was more than a modicum of chutzpah from a country which, for more than 25 years, has had a clandestine nuclear weapons program producing about 200 devices.

    The existence of the Israeli nuclear weapons capability has been a major stimulus to attempts first by Saddam Hussein (whose reactor the Israelis bombed in 1983) and then others in the region, including Iran, to acquire the same capacity.

    There is, in fact, an axiom of proliferation. It states that as long as any state holds nuclear weapons, others will seek to acquire them. Those others now include terrorist groups and nation states. In making this latter point I would not want to give any assent to the sleight of hand used so successfully to justify the invasion of Iraq, namely that it was made necessary by September 11, 2001. Nonsense: the Republicans had planned the invasion of Iraq as early as 1998 and it has now been thoroughly demonstrated that Saddam had nothing to do with September 11 and that the largest intelligence “error” was the assertion about his nuclear weapons program.

    The axiom of proliferation contains far more truth than the “axis of evil”. It rests on a gut human instinct – fairness. Simply, states are unprepared to believe that their security is less important than that of others. This was put to me repeatedly in more than 25 years of involvement in the treaty.

    It is not acceptable to others for the US, for example, to claim that its security is so important that it is justified in holding nuclear weapons but this is not the case for other states, such as India and now Iran.

    The axiom also means that the basic compact of the treaty is sound and that the only way ahead, whether in the context of Iran or any other potential proliferator, is for the treaty to be implemented. Those who hold nuclear weapons, including countries outside the treaty – India, Pakistan and Israel – should urgently devise safe means for their elimination and for collective action to prevent any future proliferation of new nuclear weapons states.

    Richard Butler was Australia’s ambassador for disarmament 1983-88, ambassador to the UN 1992-97 and head of the UN Special Commission to Disarm Iraq 1997-99.

    Copyright © 2005. The Sydney Morning Herald

  • Gorbachev and the US People-Uncelebrated Victories in the Struggle for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons

    Originally Published in Science for Democratic Action, Volume 13, Number 1, March 2005

    Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev is justly famous for inaugurating demokratizatsiya and glasnost in the Soviet Union in the mid-1980s. His steadfast support for non-violence gave the people of Eastern Europe and in the Soviet Union a chance for open discourse about government, trust, democracy, and freedom. President Gorbachev, in partnership with Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, gave hope to people everywhere that the world may get rid of nuclear weapons.

    But this essay is about what Mikhail Gorbachev is less known for. His actions also created conditions for a special demokratizatsiya and glasnost on nuclear weapons related questions in the United States. In turn, this caused a closure of most of the large U.S. nuclear weapons facilities in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In addition to raising the hopes of people in his own country, Gorbachev’s work also lifted a fear from the hearts and minds of the people of the United States, and enabled them to look at their own nuclear weapons establishment with fresh eyes.

    Gorbachev’s reach

    It started with the trip that Gorbachev made to Britain in December 1984, before he became General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.He was immediately recognized as a prospective leader of the Soviet Union. With his wife, Raisa, Mr. Gorbachev charmed Prime Minister Thatcher, known in British politics as the “Iron Lady.” She said that he was a man with whom she “could do business.”

    After Gorbachev became General Secretary, he talked about reducing nuclear dangers and eliminating the threat of nuclear war. He abandoned the language of confrontation and replaced it with cooperation. If Margaret Thatcher could do business with him, President Reagan could too.

    Gorbachev’s U.K. trip opened the door for the people of the United States to do business with their own government in a manner that no one anticipated. Instead of keeping their eyes fixed on the Soviet Union out of fear, more and more people began to look more closely at the nuclear contamination in their neighborhoods. Some courageous ones had done that before, as indeed, they had in the Soviet Union. But the nuclear weapons establishment had generally been able to silence them, get lawsuits thrown out of court, and cover its own actions in rhetoric of national security and propaganda about the Soviet threat.

    Starting at about the time of Gorbachev’s visit to Britain and for the rest of the 1980s, the numbers of people in the United States with questions about water and air pollution, radioactive waste, and nuclear safety risks due to aging nuclear weapons plants grew rapidly. In times past, public concerns would have quickly died out. But this time, local and national media, law enforcement officials, elected legislators, congressional committees, and even the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) paid more attention to environmental matters relating to nuclear weapons production than they ever had.

    Certainly, it was unthinkable during the Cold War that the FBI might become involved in raiding a nuclear weapons plant to look for evidence of environmental crimes.2 It may have been denounced as a communist plot within the U.S. government. For example, in 1954, when the Japanese fishing boat, the Lucky Dragon, became heavily contaminated with fallout for the U.S. hydrogen bomb test at Bikini, the then-Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission falsely said that it was a Red spy boat inside the prohibited test area.3

    But this time, because of Gorbachev’s refusal to use violence to suppress the hopes of the people in Eastern Europe, the zerozero Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty for intermediate-range nuclear missiles, and the warm relationship between Presidents Gorbachev and Reagan, the result was dramatically different. By the time the Soviet Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov said in 1987, upon the signing of the INF treaty, “I do think the winter of mistrust is over,” much more than the fear of the Soviet Union had lifted. The people were routinely discovering that their own government had—under cover of secrecy, with the aid of bad science, and in the frigid public fright of the Cold War—done them and their children a great deal of harm.

    An Ohio story

    Consider a nuclear weapons factory in southwestern Ohio, about 17 miles west of Cincinnati. It produced half a million tons of uranium metal mainly for use in U.S. plutonium reactors at Hanford and South Carolina. In December 1984 Lisa Crawford, who lives near the plant, heard that some wells in the area were contaminated with uranium. Until then, she and most others like her did not even know they were living near a nuclear weapons plant. It was called the Feed Materials Production Center and had a water tower painted in a red and white checkerboard pattern that resembled the logo of Purina, the famous pet food company. With cows grazing near it, many people thought it was a pet food plant. Others thought it produced paint because it was run by a subsidiary of National Lead Industries, which was a wellknown paint-maker at the time. But few knew it was a nuclear weapons plant. It is commonly known as the Fernald plant.

    In January 1985 there was uproar in this quiet part of Ohio, known for its conservative, anti-communist views. People wanted to know whose wells were contaminated. Tom Luken, the area’s representative in the U.S. Congress at the time, held a meeting there. Hundreds came. Lisa found out that her well was one of polluted ones. She had a young son. She made food with water from the well, and filled her backyard pool with it. She was very upset.

    As usual, the U.S. nuclear weapons establishment said the water was quite safe and there was no need to worry. But, unlike the 1950s and 1960s and 1970s, when most people trusted such assurances, Lisa and her neighbors did not. She was afraid her child might get cancer. (Thankfully, he is well). She did three things. First, she and her husband decided they were not going to have more children, a difficult and tragic way to make such a decision. Second, she got bottled water. Third, at the end of January 1985 she filed a tort lawsuit against the corporation that ran the Fernald plant for the government on behalf of her family and 14,000 other people who lived in the area. They claimed that the company, National Lead of Ohio, had been negligent and endangered their health and damaged their property. The U.S. government defended the lawsuit and paid all the expenses.

    There had been previous lawsuits regarding nuclear weapons issues. In fact, General Groves, who headed the Manhattan Project during World War II, was afraid of them as early as April 1945.4 For example, in the 1950s, shepherds had filed a lawsuit against the government claiming that thousands of sheep had died because of fallout. But representatives of the Atomic Energy Commission falsely told the court that it was not fallout. The case was dismissed. The judge found out in 1980 and wrote that the government had been “deceptive” and “deceitful” in its presentation of the evidence in the case.5 He reversed his decision and made one in favor of the shepherd. But the U.S. government appealed and prevailed.

    Lisa’s lawsuit succeeded where others had failed. Between 1985 and 1989 there was an enormous amount of local and national publicity about the Fernald plant. Lisa became a well-known figure in Ohio and other parts of the country. As part of the lawsuit, the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research was retained to do an expert assessment of radioactivity releases from the plant. In 1989, Bernd Franke and I published the first independent assessment of radioactivity releases from a nuclear weapons plant. We concluded that the nuclear weapons establishment had done poor science, entered fraudulent data into official records, been negligent in operating the plant, and violated its own rules regarding radiation safety. We also concluded that the official estimates of uranium releases from the plant were much higher than what the government and its contractors had told the public. We estimated that releases of uranium had probably been more than 300,000 kilograms since the 1950s, compared to the government’s estimates in 1987 of 135,000 kilograms, revised in 1989 to 179,000 kilograms.6

    In April 2004 I asked Lisa whether Gorbachev’s becoming General Secretary and then President of the Soviet Union played a role in her thinking. She said it was not a direct influence. But she said it affected how she viewed the U.S. government’s criticism of the Soviet government. She specifically mentioned the Chernobyl accident. She said that she thought then that “the United States is horrified that the Soviets did not tell us for three days but they [the U.S. government] did not tell us [about Fernald] for thirty years.” It no longer worked for the U.S. government to point a finger at problems over there in the Soviet Union. It did not divert Lisa’s attention from the problem she was focused on—finding out about the pollution in her own neighborhood.7

    The government settled the lawsuit in June 1989 for $78 million. The money is mainly being used for providing medical monitoring to people. But there was another happy result. In July 1989, production at the Fernald plant was stopped forever. The combination of the Cold War winding down and the lawsuit and the scandals around radioactive pollution of air and water worked together to accomplish important progress in disarmament. The Fernald plant has been dismantled and the factory buildings have been torn down.

    Tank explosion risks

    June 1989 was an historic month in other ways as well. In that month the Soviet government admitted that a high-level waste tank had exploded in 1957 at Chelyabinsk-65 by filing a report about the accident with the International Atomic Energy Agency. I believe this was in response to a question about the accident that Dr. Bernard Lown had raised in a meeting in April 1989 with then-Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Schevernadze. That, too, had big implications for people working the United States. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had known about the accident since 1959. But, unlike so many other things, it took no propaganda advantage of it. Instead, it kept the matter secret, until its papers were revealed as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request by the nongovernmental organization Public Citizen in 1977. (A dissident Soviet scientist, Zhores Medvedev, had written about the accident in the West in 1976.)8

    I suspect that the Atomic Energy Commission did not want to admit that there was also a risk of tank explosion in the United States due to hydrogen build up because the official U.S. position continued to be that things were safe even after the CIA documents became public. But when the Soviet Union officially admitted in 1989 that there had been an explosion, one result was deeper NGO and Congressional investigations into the problems in the United States. The Department of Energy established its own panel on the high-level waste tanks at the Hanford site and steps were taken to reduce explosions risks. Concern about these risks helped ensure permanent closure of the last operating plutonium separation plant at Hanford in the early 1990s.

    FBI raid on Rocky Flats

    Perhaps the most dramatic event of June 1989 in this regard was the FBI raid on the Rocky Flats plant near Denver, a large scale factory for producing plutonium pits for nuclear weapons. Such a raid would have been unthinkable during the Cold War. But by 1989, there was daily publicity about safety issues in the nuclear weapons complex. There had been a Congressional investigation of human radiation experiments done by the U.S. government.More Congressional hearings were focused on health and safety. Before the mid-1980s, such hearings were mainly routine exercises to give more money for nuclear weapons establishment. The scandals multiplied.

    In this atmosphere, federal officials in the Department of Justice based in Colorado heard that illegal burning of plutonium-containing waste may be taking place at Rocky Flats. FBI headquarters in Washington took notice and ordered the raid. The Department of Justice convened a grand jury to investigate whether the corporation that ran the plant had committed environmental crimes. Production at the Rocky Flats plant was stopped.Deputy Energy Secretary W. Henson Moore went to Denver and admitted that the plant had been operated as if the nuclear establishment was above the law.

    In the late 1950s, the Rocky Flats Plant was producing about 10 plutonium pits every day. When production was stopped in 1989, the U.S. government fully intended to re-open it after fixing the safety and environmental problems. But Rocky Flats never re-opened. It will never again produce nuclear weapons. It has been dismantled, though the plutonium will remain for generations in the form of residual contamination.

    By 1989, the public feeling had grown strong that since the United States was arriving at agreements to reduce nuclear weapons, why should the people’s health be put at risk to operate unsafe nuclear weapons plants? The historic events that were occurring in Eastern Europe that are so well celebrated in history books found an echo in Colorado and elsewhere. The global importance of these local events is becoming clearer today than it was then.

    Uncelebrated victories

    The list of local events and concerns about health and environment that added up to an immense accomplishment for the elimination of nuclear weapons is long. All U.S. plutonium and tritium production reactors were closed in the same period. The large plutonium separation plant at Hanford in Washington State was shut. The plutonium for the Nagasaki bomb was made at Hanford. Many smaller facilities were also closed. When the United States stepped down so many large nuclear weapons plants in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it fully intended to resume production. Sometimes plants were shut from one day to the next, with material still in the production lines.

    The Soviet moratorium on nuclear testing that President Gorbachev initiated reverberated in the United States. The nuclear weapons establishment argued against making the moratorium into a U.S. law, but failed. (They did get the so-called stockpile stewardship program for nuclear weapons and a great deal of money for it as a consolation prize, however.) The moratorium was enacted into law and played a role in the achievement of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).

    Of course, there have been severe reverses since the mid-1990s on many fronts including nuclear weapons. The U.S. Senate rejected ratification of the CTBT. The U.S. nuclear weapons establishment has created a new nuclear weapons doctrine that actually names target states, including Russia. It wants to build usable nuclear weapons called “robust nuclear earth penetrators” and mini-nukes.9 Money for design of nuclear weapons as well as maintaining a huge U.S. arsenal is flowing at levels higher than the average of the Cold War.

    But amidst this gloom there are accomplishments from the 1980s and 1990s that endure. Specifically, the U.S. nuclear weapons establishment does not have the capacity to mass manufacture nuclear bombs because Rocky Flats was the only large-scale plutonium pit manufacturing facility in the United States. Its production buildings have been torn down. The Department of Energy has proposed building a new large-scale factory for manufacturing plutonium pits, but it will take a decade or more to build. That gives peace and environmental advocates some time to organize a struggle to prevent it from being built.

    Unlike during the Cold War, it is now much more difficult for the nuclear weapons establishment to get the money for such a factory. Many Congresspersons recognize it is a dangerous proliferation provocation. Local concerns are also crucial. While some want the money and jobs that a new factory would bring, many more are opposed than would have been imaginable during the Cold War, even though we are in a period that resembles it in many ways. But this time the government cannot pretend that such a plant will pose no risks. It is required to publish risk estimates, which indicate that, over the life of the plant with a capacity of 450 plutonium pits per year, nine workers would die from their work.10 The nuclear weapons establishment has asked people not to worry because it is only a statistical estimate. But the public is skeptical. The idea that a little plutonium won’t hurt you finds few takers.

    The gains on nuclear testing are also likely to endure. The nuclear weapons establishment would like to resume testing. But this would be very difficult. During the late 1980s and the 1990s, a huge scandal emerged regarding the poisoning of much of the U.S. milk supply with iodine-131. At first, in the 1980s, it was about iodine- 131 emissions from the plutonium separations plants at Hanford. But the issue grew from there. In 1997, the National Cancer Institute released a study showing that iodine-131 releases from atmospheric nuclear weapons testing at Nevada had been 130 million curies, more than 15 times greater than the releases from the Chernobyl accident. The high fallout areas were spread out all over the country from Idaho and Montana to Kansas and Iowa to New York and Vermont. In the course of pursuing the Cold War, the nuclear weapons establishment poisoned much of the U.S. milk supply and did nothing to protect it. At the same time, declassified documents revealed that the government had provided secret data to Kodak and other photographic film companies so that they could take measures to protect film from becoming fogged as a result of fallout.

    Today, as the U.S. nuclear weapons establishment prepares to test again, the National Academy of Sciences is looking into whether people should be compensated due to the milk contamination and if so how many. A conservative senator, Bob Bennett, Republican from Utah, is playing a role in slowing down the rush for testing.According to his website he has proposed legislation that“will prevent the resumption of nuclear testing without approval by the Congress, extensive environmental and safety analysis, and open public involvement.”11 If this law is passed, it will be difficult or impossible for the United States to resume testing unless some other country does it first.

    Enduring accomplishments

    In October 1989, President Gorbachev told the world,“the Soviet Union has no moral or political right to interfere in the affairs of its East European neighbors. They have the right to decide their own fate.” This opened up the arena for the people of the United States to decide the fate of U.S. nuclear weapons plants. The tradition of vigorous citizen participation in the United States re-awakened with Gorbachev’s determination not to repeat the ghastly violence of the past. The combination has produced a result in reducing the nuclear weapons menace that has not been celebrated, but whose fruits we continue to enjoy.

    The world is undeniably going through a difficult time; war and violence are a constant theme. But the accomplishments of mothers and fathers concerned about their children and water and milk that resulted in a shut down of production at so many nuclear weapons plants and a moratorium on nuclear testing endure. They provide us with breathing room to secure the gains of those times for posterity and to continue to push for the complete elimination of all nuclear arsenals and weapons plants.

    1. Some of the research for this article was done as part of a book grant to Arjun Makhijani made by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The working title is Science of Death, Science of Life: An Enquiry into the Contrasts between Weapons Science and Health and Environmental Science in the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Complex.
    2. See Wes McKinley and Caron Balkany, Esq., The Ambushed Grand Jury: How the Justice Department Covered Up Government Nuclear Crimes and How We Caught Them Red Handed. New York: Apex Press, 2004.
    3. Leo Strauss, as cited in Barton C. Hacker, Elements of Controversy: The Atomic Energy Commission and Radiation Safety in Nuclear Weapons Testing 1947–74. Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1994. pp. 150 –151.
    4. Barton C. Hacker, The Dragon’s Tail: Radiation Safety in the Manhattan Project 1942–1946. Berkeley, California, University of California Press, 1987, p. 85.
    5. International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, Radioactive Heaven and Earth: The health and environmental effects of nuclear weapons testing in, on, and above the earth. New York: Apex Press, 1991, Chapter 4.
    6. For more information on Fernald releases, see Science for Democratic Action vol. 5 no. 3 (October 1996). For information about flawed nuclear worker dose records, see Science for Democratic Action vol. 6 no. 2 (November 1997).
    7. Arjun Makhijani, Science of Death, Science of Life manuscript, Lisa Crawford interview.
    8. International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, Plutonium: Deadly Gold of the Nuclear Age. Cambridge, MA: IPPNW Press, 1992.
    9. See “The ‘Usable’ Nuke Strikes Back,” in Science for Democratic Action vol. 11, no. 4 (September 2003).
    10. See “Back to the Bad Old Days,” in Science for Democratic Action vol. 11, no. 4 (September 2003).
    11. Press release of U.S. Senator Bob Bennett, “Bennett Bill Halts Nuclear Testing Without Congressional Approval, Public Input,” September 7, 2004, online at http://bennett.senate.gov/press/record. cfm?id=225115.

  • Peace and Nuclear Disarmament: A Call to Action

    Speech by Dennis Kucinich

    “. . . Come my friends, ’tis not too late to seek a newer world,” . . . Alfred Lord Tennyson

    If you believe that humanity has a higher destiny, if you believe we can evolve, and become better than we are; if you believe we can overcome the scourge of war and someday fulfill the dream of harmony and peace on earth, let us begin the conversation today. Let us exchange our ideas. Let us plan together, act together and create peace together. This is a call for common sense, for peaceful, non-violent citizen action to protect our precious world from widening war and from stumbling into a nuclear catastrophe.

    The climate for conflict has intensified, with the struggle between Pakistan and India, the China-Taiwan tug of war, and the increased bloodshed between Israel and the Palestinians. United States’ troop deployments in the Philippines, Yemen, Georgia, Columbia and Indonesia create new possibilities for expanded war. An invasion of Iraq is planned. The recent disclosure that Russia, China, Iraq, Iran, Syria, North Korea, and Libya are considered by the United States as possible targets for nuclear attack catalyzes potential conflicts everywhere.

    These crucial political decisions promoting increased military actions, plus a new nuclear first-use policy, are occurring without the consent of the American people, without public debate, without public hearings, without public votes. The President is taking Congress’s approval of responding to the Sept. 11 terrorists as a license to flirt with nuclear war.

    “Politics ought to stay out of fighting a war,” the President has been quoted as saying on March 13th 2002. Yet Article 1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution explicitly requires that Congress take responsibility when it comes to declaring war. This President is very popular, according to the polls. But polls are not a substitute for democratic process. Attributing a negative connotation here to politics or dismissing constitutionally mandated congressional oversight belies reality: Spending $400 billion a year for defense is a political decision. Committing troops abroad is a political decision. War is a political decision. When men and women die on the battlefield that is the result of a political decision. The use of nuclear weapons, which can end the lives of millions, is a profound political decision. In a monarchy there need be no political decisions. In a democracy, all decisions are political, in that they derive from the consent of the governed.

    In a democracy, budgetary, military and national objectives must be subordinate to the political process. Before we celebrate an imperial presidency, let it be said that the lack of free and open political process, the lack of free and open political debate, and the lack of free and open political dissent can be fatal in a democracy.

    We have reached a moment in our country’s history where it is urgent that people everywhere speak out as president of his or her own life, to protect the peace of the nation and world within and without. We should speak out and caution leaders who generate fear through talk of the endless war or the final conflict. We should appeal to our leaders to consider that their own bellicose thoughts, words and deeds are reshaping consciousness and can have an adverse effect on our nation. Because when one person thinks: fight! he or she finds a fight. One faction thinks: war! and starts a war. One nation thinks: nuclear! and approaches the abyss. And what of one nation which thinks peace, and seeks peace?

    Neither individuals nor nations exist in a vacuum, which is why we have a serious responsibility for each other in this world. It is also urgent that we find those places of war in our own lives, and begin healing the world through healing ourselves. Each of us is a citizen of a common planet, bound to a common destiny. So connected are we, that each of us has the power to be the eyes of the world, the voice of the world, the conscience of the world, or the end of the world. And as each one of us chooses, so becomes the world.

    Each of us is architect of this world. Our thoughts, the concepts. Our words, the designs. Our deeds, the bricks and mortar of our daily lives. Which is why we should always take care to regard the power of our thoughts and words, and the commands they send into action through time and space.

    Some of our leaders have been thinking and talking about nuclear war. In the past week there has been much news about a planning document which describes how and when America might wage nuclear war. The Nuclear Posture Review recently released to the media by the government:

    1. Assumes that the United States has the right to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike.
    2. Equates nuclear weapons with conventional weapons.
    3. Attempts to minimize the consequences of the use of nuclear weapons.
    4. Promotes nuclear response to a chemical or biological attack.

    Some dismiss this review as routine government planning. But it becomes ominous when taken in the context of a war on terrorism which keeps expanding its boundaries, rhetorically and literally. The President equates the “war on terrorism” with World War II. He expresses a desire to have the nuclear option “on the table.” He unilaterally withdraws from the ABM treaty. He seeks $8.9 billion to fund deployment of a missile shield. He institutes, without congressional knowledge, a shadow government in a bunker outside our nation’s Capitol. He tries to pass off as arms reduction, the storage of, instead of the elimination of, nuclear weapons.

    Two generations ago we lived with nuclear nightmares. We feared and hated the Russians who feared and hated us. We feared and hated the “godless, atheistic” communists. In our schools, we dutifully put our head between our legs and practiced duck-and-cover drills. In our nightmares, we saw the long, slow arc of a Soviet missile flash into our very neighborhood. We got down on our knees and prayed for peace. We surveyed, wide eyed, pictures of the destruction of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. We supported the elimination of all nuclear weapons. We knew that if you “nuked” others you “nuked” yourself.

    The splitting of the atom for destructive purposes admits a split consciousness, the compartmentalized thinking of Us vs. Them, the dichotomized thinking, which spawns polarity and leads to war. The proposed use of nuclear weapons, pollutes the psyche with the arrogance of infinite power. It creates delusions of domination of matter and space. It is dehumanizing through its calculations of mass casualties. We must overcome doomthinkers and sayers who invite a world descending, disintegrating into a nuclear disaster. With a world at risk, we must find the bombs in our own lives and disarm them. We must listen to that quiet inner voice which counsels that the survival of all is achieved through the unity of all.

    We must overcome our fear of each other, by seeking out the humanity within each of us. The human heart contains every possibility of race, creed, language, religion, and politics. We are one in our commonalities. Must we always fear our differences? We can overcome our fears by not feeding our fears with more war and nuclear confrontations. We must ask our leaders to unify us in courage.

    We need to create a new, clear vision of a world as one. A new, clear vision of people working out their differences peacefully. A new, clear vision with the teaching of nonviolence, nonviolent intervention, and mediation. A new, clear vision where people can live in harmony within their families, their communities and within themselves. A new clear vision of peaceful coexistence in a world of tolerance.

    At this moment of peril we must move away from fear’s paralysis. This is a call to action: to replace expanded war with expanded peace. This is a call for action to place the very survival of this planet on the agenda of all people, everywhere. As citizens of a common planet, we have an obligation to ourselves and our posterity. We must demand that our nation and all nations put down the nuclear sword. We must demand that our nation and all nations:

    Abide by the principles of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
    Stop the development of new nuclear weapons.
    Take all nuclear weapons systems off alert.
    Persist towards total, worldwide elimination of all nuclear weapons.

    Our nation must:
    Revive the Anti Ballistic Missile treaty.
    Sign and enforce the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
    Abandon plans to build a so-called missile shield.
    Prohibit the introduction of weapons into outer space.

    We are in a climate where people expect debate within our two party system to produce policy alternatives. However both major political parties have fallen short. People who ask “Where is the Democratic Party?” and expect to hear debate may be disappointed. When peace is not on the agenda of our political parties or our governments then it must be the work and the duty of each citizen of the world. This is the time to organize for peace. This is the time for new thinking. This is the time to concieve of peace as not simply being the absence of violence, but the active presence of the capacity for a higher evolution of human awareness. This is the time to concieve of peace as respect, trust, and integrity. This is the time to tap the infinite capabilities of humanity to transform consciousness which compels violence at a personal, group, national or international levels. This is the time to develop a new compassion for others and ourselves.

    When terrorists threaten our security, we must enforce the law and bring terrorists to justice within our system of constitutional justice, without undermining the very civil liberties which permits our democracy to breathe. Our own instinct for life, which inspires our breath and informs our pulse, excites our capacity to reason. Which is why we must pay attention when we sense a threat to survival.

    That is why we must speak out now to protect this nation, all nations, and the entire planet and:
    Challenge those who believe that war is inevitable.
    Challenge those who believe in a nuclear right.
    Challenge those who would build new nuclear weapons.
    Challenge those who seek nuclear re-armament.
    Challenge those who seek nuclear escalation.
    Challenge those who would make of any nation a nuclear target.
    Challenge those who would threaten to use nuclear weapons against civilian populations.
    Challenge those who would break nuclear treaties.
    Challenge those who think and think about nuclear weapons, to think about peace.

    It is practical to work for peace. I speak of peace and diplomacy not just for the sake of peace itself. But, for practical reasons, we must work for peace as a means of achieving permanent security. It is similarly practical to work for total nuclear disarmament, particularly when nuclear arms do not even come close to addressing the real security problems which confront our nation, witness the events of September 11, 2001.

    We can make war archaic. Skeptics may dismiss the possibility that a nation which spends $400 billion a year for military purposes can somehow convert swords into plowshares. Yet the very founding and the history of this country demonstrates the creative possibilities of America. We are a nation which is known for realizing impossible dreams. Ours is a nation which in its second century abolished slavery, which many at the time considered impossible. Ours is a nation where women won the right to vote, which many at the time considered impossible. Ours is a nation which institutionalized the civil rights movement, which many at the time considered impossible. If we have the courage to claim peace, with the passion, the emotion and the integrity with which we have claimed independence, freedom and, equality we can become that nation which makes non-violence an organizing principle in our society, and in doing so change the world.

    That is the purpose of HR 2459. It is a bill to create a Department of Peace. It envisions new structures to help create peace in our homes, in our families, in our schools, in our neighborhoods, in our cities, and in our nation. It aspires to create conditions for peace within and to create conditions for peace worldwide. It considers the conditions which cause people to become the terrorists of the future, issues of poverty, scarcity and exploitation. It is practical to make outer space safe from weapons, so that humanity can continue to pursue a destiny among the stars. HR 3616 seeks to ban weapons in space, to keep the stars a place of dreams, of new possibilities, of transcendence.

    We can achieve this practical vision of peace, if we are ready to work for it.
    People worldwide need to be meet with likeminded people, about peace and nuclear disarmament, now.
    People worldwide need to gather in peace, now.
    People worldwide need to march and to pray for peace, now.
    People worldwide need to be connecting with each other on the web, for peace, now.

    We are in a new era of electronic democracy, where the world wide web, numerous web sites and bulletin boards enable new organizations, exercising freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, to spring into being instantly. Thespiritoffreedom.com is such a web site. It is dedicated to becoming an electronic forum for peace, for sustainability, for renewal and for revitalization. It is a forum which strives for the restoration of a sense of community through the empowerment of self, through commitment of self to the lives of others, to the life of the community, to the life of the nation, to the life of the world.

    Where war making is profoundly uncreative in its destruction, peacemaking can be deeply creative. We need to communicate with each other the ways in which we work in our communities to make this a more peaceful world. I welcome your ideas at dkucinich@aol.com or at www.thespiritoffreedom.com. We can share our thoughts and discuss ways in which we have brought or will bring them into action.

    Now is the time to think, to take action and use our talents and abilities to create peace:
    in our families.
    in our block clubs.
    in our neighborhoods.
    in our places of worship.
    in our schools and universities.
    in our labor halls.
    in our parent-teacher organizations.

    Now is the time to think, speak, write, organize and take action to create peace as a social imperative, as an economic imperative, and as a political imperative. Now is the time to think, speak, write, organize, march, rally, hold vigils and take other nonviolent action to create peace in our cities, in our nation and in the world. And as the hymn says, “Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.”

    This is the work of the human family, of people all over the world demanding that governments and non-governmental actors alike put down their nuclear weapons. This is the work of the human family, responding in this moment of crisis to protect our nation, this planet and all life within it. We can achieve both nuclear disarmament and peace. As we understand that all people of the world are interconnected, we can achieve both nuclear disarmament and peace. We can accomplish this through upholding an holistic vision where the claims of all living beings to the right of survival are recognized. We can achieve both nuclear disarmament and peace through being a living testament to a Human Rights Covenant where each person on this planet is entitled to a life where he or she may consciously evolve in mind, body and spirit.

    Nuclear disarmament and peace are the signposts toward the uplit path of an even brighter human condition wherein we can through our conscious efforts evolve and reestablish the context of our existence from peril to peace, from revolution to evolution. Think peace. Speak peace. Act peace. Peace.

  • Hope in the Face of Darkness

    Hope in the Face of Darkness

    I am very happy to be here with you. I want to thank the organizers of this conference and the members of the Youth Peace Conference.

    I feel a great sense of hopefulness in this room, coming from your hearts. I know you have accomplished great things in the past and I know of your commitment to continue to meet the challenges that confront humanity.

    I hold your president, Daisaku Ikeda, in the highest regard, and consider him to be one of the true world citizens and peace leaders of our time. It was my great privilege last year to present him with our Foundation’s World Citizen Award. It was also my privilege to engage in a dialogue with him, which was published this year on August 6th under the title, Choose Hope.

    In our dialogue we discussed the route to achieving a world free of nuclear weapons and a world at peace. We also looked at the role of education, literature and poetry in shaping our lives. There was nothing we agreed upon more strongly than the importance of hope and of youth in shaping our common future. We share the belief that it is indeed possible to shape a peaceful future, and that youth must help lead the way.

    The title for this talk was chosen in the aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. Those attacks were meticulously planned. They were attacks against symbols of US economic and military power, but they were far more than symbolic. They took some 3,000 to 4,000 innocent lives. The intentional taking of innocent lives is a mark of darkness on our planet.

    Each life is a miracle. Each of us is a miracle. We cannot explain by logic or experience where we come from before birth or where we go after death. We have no way to comprehend the mystery of life or the mystery of our universe. We can only appreciate that we exist on this Earth at this time in this vast and expanding universe, and try to use our precious lives for good purposes.

    As shocking as terrorism may be, it is far from our only problem or even our major problem. We still live in a world in which some 30,000 children die daily from starvation and preventable diseases.

    We live in a world in which the richest 20 percent control 80 percent of the resources. Some 450 billionaires have combined incomes equal to over half of the world’s population. While some on our planet live in lavish abundance with every material advantage imaginable, others live in abject poverty, lacking even the basic resources needed to survive.

    The world spends some $750 billion annually on military forces and weapons, while for a fraction of this amount everyone on the planet could have clean water, adequate food, health care, education, shelter and clothing.

    There are some 30 to 40 wars going on at any given time. Injustice, disparity and old and new hatreds give rise to these wars. The vast majority of the casualties are civilians. In these wars, some 300,000 child soldiers participate. These wars destroy the environment, the infrastructure in already poor countries, and produce new masses of refugees.

    In many parts of the world, people suffer from massive human rights abuses. These abuses fall most heavily on women and children.

    As a species, but particularly in the developed world, we are using up the resources of our planet at a prodigious rate. In doing so, we are robbing future generations of their ability to share in the use of these resources.

    We are also polluting our land, air and water – our most precious resources that we need for survival – with chemical, biological and radiological poisons.

    If all of this were not enough, we have developed and deployed tens of thousands of nuclear weapons capable of destroying humanity and most of life. Many people think that this problem has ended, but it has not. There are still more than 30,000 nuclear weapons in the world and some 4,500 of them are on hair-trigger alert.

    We have reached a point where all of us should be concerned and responsive. Things could grow still worse, however. Nuclear, chemical or biological weapons in the hands of terrorists would multiply the dangers. Instead of buildings being destroyed, nuclear weapons could cause the destruction of whole cities. Imagine the damage that could be done if terrorists had nuclear weapons. This danger cannot be dismissed.

    Humanity can no longer afford or tolerate the damage that hatred can cause. Nor can humanity afford or tolerate the suffering and premature death that has been the lot of the poor.

    Far too many people on this Earth live in despair and hopelessness. These are afflictions of the soul that go beyond physical pain.

    Others, who should know better, live in selfishness, ignorance and apathy. In many ways, these are even crueler afflictions of the soul. They are symptoms of the disease of selfishness of the Roman Emperor Nero, who fiddled while Rome burned.

    It is not always easy to have hope in the face of darkness, but it is necessary. If we give up hope for bringing about change, we give away our power and diminish the possibilities for change.

    Hope must be a conscious choice. There are always reasons for giving up and retreating into selfishness, ignorance and apathy. If you want hope, you must choose it. It will not necessarily choose you. The way to choose hope is by your actions to achieve a better world.

    There are important reasons, though, to have hope.

    The most important reason for me is the power of the human spirit. The human spirit is amazing. It is capable of achieving sublime beauty and overcoming tremendous obstacles. All greatness – in art, music, literature, science, engineering and peace – is a triumph of the human spirit. But the greatest triumph of the human spirit comes from choosing a compassionate goal and persisting in overcoming obstacles to achieve this goal. All worthy goals require persistence to achieve. They will not happen overnight.

    We should celebrate the spirit of the hibakusha, the survivors of the atomic bombings. They are fighting for a better world, a world in which nuclear weapons will never again be used. They have been proposed to receive the Nobel Prize for Peace. I would strongly support their nomination for this recognition and high honor.

    Miyoko Matsubara was a young girl when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. She has had a dozen or more surgeries and has suffered from breast cancer, but her spirit is indomitable. She learned English and has traveled throughout the United States and Europe to tell her story to young people in the hope that they will understand nuclear dangers and not suffer her fate. When I think of Miyoko, I think of her humble but determined spirit. She is a woman who has suffered and who bows deeply.

    Sadako Sasaki was two years old when the bomb fell on Hiroshima. When she was 12 years old she suffered from leukemia as a result of her exposure to radiation, and was hospitalized. She folded paper cranes with the wish of being healthy again. She folded some two-thirds of the 1000 paper cranes that she hoped would make her wish come true. On one of these cranes she wrote, “I will write peace on your wings and you will fly all over the world.”

    After Sadako died, her classmates finished folding the cranes. Today Sadako’s statue stands in Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. The base of the statue is always covered in thick layers of folded cranes that have been placed there by children from throughout Japan and from throughout the world. Children all over the world know of Sadako’s story and her courage.

    Nelson Mandela fought for the rights of his people and an end to apartheid in South Africa. The government of South Africa put him in prison, where he remained for 27 years. Despite his imprisonment, he was able to maintain his spirit and his hope. When he was finally released from prison, he became the first black president of his country. Instead of seeking vengeance, he presided over a peaceful transition of power in South Africa, appointing a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to offer pardons to all who confessed their misdeeds during the period of apartheid.

    The first two presidents of Soka Gakkai went to prison rather than fight as soldiers in a war they thought was wrong. I admire their spirits. Mr. Makiguchi died in prison, and Mr. Toda came out to re-build this organization dedicated to applying Buddhist principles to social action. Mr. Toda left a lasting legacy to Soka Gakkai when he called nuclear weapons an “absolute evil,” and called upon the youth of Soka Gakkai to join in ending this evil.

    You responded magnificently to this challenge when you gathered more than 13 million signatures on the Abolition 2000 International Petition calling for ending the nuclear threat, signing a treaty to eliminate nuclear weapons and reallocating resources from nuclear weapons to meeting human needs. This petition was presented to the United Nations, but much more needs to be done.

    There are so many people whose lives reflect the best of the human spirit. Another is Hafsat Abiola, who was one of our Foundation’s honorees for our 2001 Distinguished Peace Leadership Award. Hafsat’s father was the first democratically elected president of Nigeria, but he was not able to serve even one day because he was imprisoned by the military. When Hafsat’s mother fought for democracy in her country and for her husband’s release from prison, she was assassinated. On the day before Hafsat’s father was to be released from prison, he, too, was killed.

    Despite the pain of losing her parents, Hafsat is without bitterness or rancor. After graduating from Harvard University, she started an organization named for her mother, the Kudirat Initiative for Democracy (KIND). Hafsat works for democracy and for the rights of women and children throughout Africa.

    One other example of the power of the human spirit is found in Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire. Mairead was a young woman working as a secretary in Northern Ireland when disaster struck her family. Mairead’s sister and her sister’s three young children were hit by an out of control car when British forces shot an IRA getaway driver. Two of the children died and the pain was so great that Mairead’s sister later committed suicide.

    Mairead debated what she should do. She considered taking up arms against the British, but she instead choose the course of non-violence. Mairead and another woman, Betty Williams, organized peace gatherings in Northern Ireland. They brought together hundreds of thousands of ordinary people calling for peace. The important thing for you to note is that Mairead herself was a very ordinary person, who became extraordinary because of her choices that reflected courage, compassion and commitment. Today she is the most active of the Nobel Peace Laureates, and often brings them together to speak and act on important peace issues.

    A second reason for hope is that even improbable change does occur. Changes that no expert could predict sometimes occur with incredible speed. Relationships change and new possibilities for peace open up, such as occurred in US-China relations in the early 1970s. The Cold War ended after more than four decades of tension and conflict between East and West. This was symbolized by the fall of the Berlin Wall, which opened the way for a reunited Germany. Pieces of that wall with their graffiti are now souvenirs sold to tourists. I have such a small piece of the wall in my office. It reminds me that great barriers can come down.

    Nelson Mandela went from being a prisoner of a repressive government to becoming president of South Africa. Similar stories mark the lives of Lech Walesa of Poland and Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic. These changes are not predictable, and are usually the result of efforts that have been taking place over a long period of time by committed individuals, generally outside the glare of the media spotlight.

    A third reason for hope is the Power of One. Individuals can and do make a difference in our world. The second person our Foundation honored with our 2001 Distinguished Peace Leadership Award was Craig Kielburger. Craig is 18 years old, but he is already an old hand at social change. What changed Craig’s life was reading about a 12-year-old Pakistani boy, Iqbal Masih, when Craig was himself only 12 years old. Iqbal had been sold into bonded labor as a carpet weaver and had been virtually a slave, chained to his carpet loom for 14 to 16 hours a day. Somehow he had been able to get free, and began speaking out against child labor. Iqbal was given the Reebok Human Rights Award, but when he returned to Pakistan he was murdered by the “Carpet mafia.”

    Craig thought about Iqbal being the same age as he was. When Craig went to school that day, he told his friends about Iqbal and insisted that they do something to further the cause of children’s rights for which Iqbal had been fighting. That was the beginning of a new organization, Free the Children, founded by Craig Kielburger at the age of 12.

    Today, six years later, Craig’s organization has grown to over 100,000 members. It is the largest organization of children helping children in the world. They have been responsible for freeing thousands of children from bonded labor, and they have built hundreds of schools in places where children were previously not able to obtain a basic education. Craig travels throughout the world to learn and to inspire young people to get involved and make a difference.

    Let me review. Three important reasons to have hope are: the power of the human spirit; the fact that improbable change does occur; and the Power of One. The most important reason, though, is that hope is needed to change the world, and you cannot leave this job to others. Your hope and your help are needed.

    The greatest enemies of change are selfishness, apathy and ignorance. These are the enemies of hope. I urge you to resist these at all costs.

    Selfishness is a narrow way to live. It is about what you have, not what you do. Rich lives are not about the money we accumulate, but about the ways in which we interconnect and help others. The antidote to selfishness is compassion, built upon helping others.

    Apathy is about not caring about others. It is a lack of interest and a failure to engage in trying to make a difference. The antidote to apathy is caring and commitment.

    Ignorance in the midst of information is also about not caring – not caring enough to find out about the problems that confront us. I recently visited Sadako Peace Garden, the small garden that we created in Santa Barbara on the fiftieth anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. Each year on August 6th we hold a commemoration at the garden for all who died and suffered in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    It is a very beautiful natural garden. It has many wonderful trees, but there is one immense and dramatic eucalyptus tree at one end of the garden that is called the Tree of Faith. The garden also has large rocks in which cranes have been carved.

    In that garden, people sometimes leave folded paper cranes and short messages hanging from the oak trees. On the day I visited, I found this message: “There are many things here I do not know, the knowing of which could change everything.” What a powerful message. The antidote to ignorance is knowledge.

    We must be seekers of knowledge, not for its own sake but to better understand our world so that we can engage in it and break our bonds of selfishness with a compassionate response to life. I don’t think this is asking too much of ourselves or each other. It is the essence of being human.

    Don’t be constrained by national boundaries. Recognize the essential equality and dignity of every person on the planet. This is the basic starting point of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

    Don’t expect to change the world overnight. Change seldom occurs that way. Trees grow from seeds. They all begin small, and some grow large. Sometimes they become magnificent. Often they need care and nurturing. Most of what we do to achieve a better world will require patience and persistence.

    I encourage you to plant seeds of peace by your engagement in issues of social justice, by your efforts to create a more decent world in which everyone can live with dignity.

    I have with me a seed from the Tree of Faith in Sadako Peace Garden. It has within it all that is necessary to become a great magnificent tree, just as you have within you all that is needed to become a great human being and a leader for peace.

    I want to conclude by asking you to take three specific actions.

    First, take the pledge of Earth Citizenship: “I pledge allegiance to the Earth and to its varied life forms; one World, indivisible, with liberty, justice and dignity for all.” That is the world we need to create. I also want to encourage you to study two very important documents, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Earth Charter. Please be an active and responsible citizen of our planet. Nothing less will do.

    Second, help to build schools in areas of great need. We have joined with Free the Children to raise funds to build schools in post-conflict areas, such as Chiapas, Mexico and Sierra Leone in Africa. For between $5,000 and $10,000 dollars a school can be built and a teacher provided for students who would otherwise not get a primary education. Free the Children has already built over 100 of these schools in poor countries. This is one of the best ways I can think of to make a difference in our world.

    Third, make a commitment to work for a nuclear weapons free future. Recognize the essential truth that human beings and nuclear weapons cannot co-exist. Choose life and a human future. In the past you helped gather 13 million signatures on the Abolition 2000 International Petition. Today I’d like to ask you to do even more.

    Work to make your school, your community, your nation and our world nuclear weapons free zones.

    Organize letter writing and petition campaigns to the media and to government leaders.

    Promote the idea of a Nobel Peace Prize for the hibakusha of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to bring global attention to their cry of “Never Again!”

    Use the sunflower as the symbol of achieving a nuclear weapons-free world.

    I urge you also to join us in also gathering support for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Appeal to End the Nuclear Weapons Threat to Humanity, and sending it to leaders of your country and other countries throughout the world. The Appeal, which has already been signed by some of the great peace leaders of our time, asks the leaders of the nuclear weapons states to take five critical actions for the benefit of all humanity. These are:

    – De-alert all nuclear weapons and de-couple all nuclear warheads from their delivery vehicles. – Reaffirm commitments to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. – Commence good faith negotiations to achieve a Nuclear Weapons Convention requiring the phased elimination of all nuclear weapons, with provisions for effective verification and enforcement. – Declare policies of No First Use of nuclear weapons against other nuclear weapons states and policies of No Use against non-nuclear weapons states. – Reallocate resources from the tens of billions of dollars currently being spent for maintaining nuclear arsenals to improving human health, education and welfare throughout the world. – Not one of these critical actions was even addressed by Presidents Bush and Putin at their summit in Crawford, Texas in November. Their pledge to unilaterally reduce their arsenals of strategic nuclear weapons to between 2,200 and 1,700 over a ten-year period is inadequate and represents their desire to continue to rely upon their nuclear arsenals. We must ask that these leaders take up again the issue of nuclear disarmament in a far more serious way when they meet again in Moscow next March. If they do not, they and we will face the risk that terrorists will be able to purchase, steal or develop nuclear weapons and destroy our cities.

    I would encourage delegations of youth representatives to travel to Washington, Moscow, Tokyo and other key capitals to make the case for ending the nuclear weapons threat to humanity. We cannot rely upon the leaders of the nuclear weapons states to solve the problems themselves. They need the help and encouragement of all of us. This is part of our responsibility as citizens of planet Earth.

    If serious progress on nuclear disarmament is not made soon, you will be inheriting the nuclear dangers that are left behind. Time is of the essence and we must approach nuclear disarmament now as if the future of civilization depended upon our success in convincing world leaders to adequately control and eliminate these weapons and the fissile materials needed to create them.

    I hope that I have challenged you, particularly with the actions I have proposed. I have confidence that you will meet the challenge of being an active participant in creating a more just and decent future for humanity, a future you can be proud to pass on to your children and grandchildren.

    I encourage you to choose hope and then never lose hope, even in the face of darkness. Your success in life will be something that only you can judge, but I believe the right criteria for you to use are compassion, commitment and courage. I hope that you will work to achieve a better world, and I know that you can and will make a difference.

    *David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • Ending the Nuclear Weapons Threat to Humanity

    Ending the Nuclear Weapons Threat to Humanity

    Ozaki Yukio Memorial Foundation “Gakudo” Award Lecture

    I am honored to receive an award that is made to individuals and organizations that carry on Ozaki Yukio’s undaunted battle to build a safe and peaceful world for all people. I want to thank the Board of Directors of the Ozaki Yukio Foundation and its President, Moriyama Mayumi, for this high honor. I particularly want to express appreciation to Mrs. Sohma Yukika and Mrs. Hara Fujiko, the daughter and granddaughter of Ozaki Yukio, who are both directors of the Foundation.

    Ozaki Yukio wrote, “I dreamed I would find a way for the peoples of the five continents to live in peace.” I can think of no goal more worthy or necessary. Ozaki Yukio was a great man, a man of the people, who fought for democracy and peace throughout his life. He also fought against war, militarism, military expenditures and unilateralism.

    One of the previous recipients of this award is Elisabeth Mann Borgese. Elisabeth and I worked together for two years in the early 1970s at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbara, California. I was attracted to the Center by Elisabeth’s work of the law of the seas. She believed passionately that a new world order could be built from the necessity of creating a new set of laws for the world’s oceans. Elisabeth, now in her 80s, still exudes passion for this work and remains an inspiration to me.

    Our Common Heritage

    Elisabeth spoke often of the oceans as the Common Heritage of Mankind, a phrase coined by Ambassador Arvid Pardo of Malta. Over the years I have come to see that the concept of Common Heritage applies not only to the oceans, but to virtually everything on our planet, as well as to the planet itself, its biosphere, atmosphere and outer space. The land is our Common Heritage as are the skies, the climate, the trees and the crops we plant. Our Common Heritage also includes our cultures, our languages, our art forms, our religions, and our understandings of the mystery and miracle of life.

    It is part of the human condition that we do not stop often enough to recognize and appreciate the miracle of our lives. Each one of us is a miracle, unique and special. Every simple thing that we are capable of doing — everything that we take for granted such as walking, talking, thinking and creating – is a miracle. And, of course, we ourselves are miracles. We don’t know where we come from before birth or where we go after death. We don’t know why our hearts or brains work or why we are capable of breathing and doing so much more without conscious effort. Each of us is a miracle shrouded in mysteries we cannot understand.

    We now share this incredibly beautiful planet with some six billion other miracles. I have often wondered how it is that miracles are capable of killing other miracles. Perhaps it is because we do not value ourselves highly enough that we are less appreciative of others. Perhaps there is some appreciation for the miracles of who we are and for life that is missing in our cultures and our educational systems.

    The Glorification of War

    Most of us on this planet live in cultures in which war is glorified and celebrated. Our history books are filled with stories and pictures of those who led us into battle. Our popular culture celebrates war and warriors. One has only to look at a culture’s movies, television programming and the video games that children play to understand from where the next generation of warriors will arise.

    The 20th century was the bloodiest century in human history. Some 200 million people died in international and civil wars. One of the most striking things about the 20th century is that the number of civilians killed in warfare rose dramatically throughout the century. In World War I, soldiers fought each other in trenches. In World War II, civilian casualties rose as aerial attacks were directed against cities. By the end of that war, US bombers were destroying Japanese cities at will. It was not a large step from the fire bombing of Tokyo on the night of March 9-10, 1945, in which some 100,000 civilians were killed, to dropping atomic weapons on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of that year.

    By the end of the 20th century over 90 percent of the casualties of warfare were civilians, and throughout the latter half of the 20th century the threat of nuclear annihilation hung over all humanity. The United States and the former Soviet Union engaged in a mad arms race in which they each developed the capacity to destroy humanity many times over. Somehow the world survived the insanity of the nuclear arms race, but we are not yet safe. There are still far too many nuclear weapons in the world, over 30,000, and even today a surprisingly large number of them, some 4,500, remain on hair-trigger alert.

    The Influence of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Peace Memorial Museums

    My goal is to help create a world free of nuclear weapons. I was deeply affected in this regard by a relatively early visit to Japan. I came to Japan in 1963, when I was 21 years old. During my stay in Japan, I visited the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Peace Memorial Museums. I learned something at these museums that I had neither seen nor heard before. It was the extent of the suffering of the people who were beneath those bombs.

    In school in the United States, we had learned a relatively simple lesson about the use of these bombs: Atomic bombs win wars. In the case of World War II, the US dropped the atomic bombs and won the war. There was little discussion of the large numbers of deaths of men, women and children, or of the terrible suffering caused by the bombs. In these museums, however, the people beneath the bombs were brought back into the picture.

    Surely, nuclear weapons are the least heroic weapons imaginable. Their power is such that they kill indiscriminately. Dropped on a city, nuclear weapons kill everything immediately within a broad radius, and spread their radioactive poisons that go on killing over a much broader area. My visit to those museums at a young age had a profound effect on me. It gave direction to my life. I did not know then exactly what I would do, but I did know that nuclear weapons were not really weapons at all. They were instruments of genocide, capable of destroying cities, civilization and even humanity itself.

    Nuclear weapons are also profoundly undemocratic. They concentrate power and take it away from the people. Nuclear weapons were born in secrecy and have always been shrouded in secrecy. The decisions to develop, deploy and use these weapons have always been in the hands of only a small number of individuals. Even today, a single leader, or at most a small group of individuals, could envelop the world in nuclear conflagration.

    The survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had it right: Nuclear weapons and human beings cannot co-exist. If the cry of the atomic bomb survivors, “Never Again!” was to be realized, then nuclear weapons would have to be eliminated. The goal seemed tremendously distant in the face of the implacable hostility being expressed during the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. Yet it seemed necessary. The intention of confronting nuclear weapons and seeking their elimination was set in my mind in 1963, nearly four decades ago.

    After leaving Japan, I joined the army reserves in lieu of being drafted into the army. A second major force that shaped my life in the direction of working for peace was being called to active duty in the army in 1968. The Vietnam War was at its height, and I soon found myself as a young 2nd lieutenant with orders to go to Vietnam. I was totally opposed to the war in Vietnam, thinking it was illegal, immoral and highly inappropriate for the US to be killing Vietnamese peasants on the other side of the world. I decided to fight against going to Vietnam and took the matter to court. Eventually I won, and was released from the army.

    My first job was teaching international relations at San Francisco State University. I felt that change was too slow as a teacher, and that is what led me to work with Elisabeth Borgese at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions. After that I worked for the Reshaping the International Order (RIO) Foundation in the Netherlands, coordinating a project on the relationship of dual-purpose technologies to disarmament and development. Then, in 1982, I was a founder of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

    It has been nearly twenty years since our Foundation was born. At that time, the leaders of the United States and Soviet Union were not talking to each other. The world situation looked grim. A small group of us in Santa Barbara believed that more needed to be done, and that citizen action was critical. We met weekly for a year, trying to develop a plan. From these meetings, we created the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

    The implication of the name was that peace is an imperative of the Nuclear Age. I became the president of this new Foundation. We had no resources, but large dreams. Even in those difficult days, I was filled with hope. Each day brought new challenges. Our small Foundation began speaking out and advocating for a world free of nuclear threat. In those early days, during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, we were viewed with some suspicion for our advocacy of nuclear disarmament.

    The tagline of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation is Waging Peace. It is a concept that we believe is essential to ending the cycle of violence and building a culture of peace. Waging Peace implies an active commitment to changing the world. It means seeking non-violent means to resolve conflicts, and also working actively to prevent wars by creating the conditions of peace. This means active engagement in ending poverty and starvation. It means fighting against human rights abuses wherever they occur. It means fighting against corporate greed when there is human need. It means working for sustainable conditions of development and an environment that will sustain life on our planet.

    There are four main areas in which we have worked. The first is for the abolition of nuclear weapons. We believe that the elimination of nuclear weapons is essential to ensure a human future. We were a founding member of the Abolition 2000 Global Network, a network that has grown to over 2,000 organizations and municipalities throughout the world. We were also a founding member of the Middle Powers Initiative, a small group of non-governmental organizations that has encouraged and supported middle power governments to play a leading role in nuclear disarmament efforts. The Foundation organized an Appeal to End the Nuclear Weapons Threat to Humanity, which has been signed by many world leaders, including 37 Nobel Laureates. I will discuss this Appeal in more detail in a moment.

    The second area of our concern is international law and institutions. We believe that international law must be strengthened and that the United Nations and its specialized agencies must be empowered to do their jobs effectively. We have fought hard for the creation of an International Criminal Court, a court that can hold individuals accountable for the most serious international crimes. An International Criminal Court would bring Nuremberg into the twenty-first century. It would set a standard in the world that no one stands above international law, and that crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide will not go unpunished. To this list of crimes, the crime of international terrorism should now be added.

    Without universal respect for and enforcement of international law, it will not be possible to effectively stop human rights abuses, destruction of the environment, and weaponization of the planet and outer space. Nor will it be possible to provide protection to the oceans, atmosphere, outer space and other areas of Common Heritage of Mankind.

    A third area of our concern is the use of science and technology for constructive rather than destructive purposes. In this area we helped to found and have provided support for the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility (INES). This network, based in Dortmund, Germany, has affiliates in all parts of the world, and major projects in ethics, disarmament, and nuclear non-proliferation. INES has also established a whistleblower fund to support scientists and engineers who act courageously in opposing unethical uses of science and technology. We also have a Renewable Energy Project that promotes the use of sustainable forms of energy.

    The final major area of our concern is reaching out to youth. The Foundation has a Youth Outreach Coordinator on our staff who is responsible for conducting Peace Leadership Trainings for Youth and building chapters on high school and college campuses. We also have a Peace Education Coordinator on our staff who teaches non-violence in the schools and who is developing non-violence curriculum that can be used by teachers throughout the world.

    We provide internships for young people, and we give annual prizes to youth in our Swackhamer Peace Essay Contest and our Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Awards. Through our two web sites, www.wagingpeace.org and www.nuclearfiles.org, we reach additional hundreds of thousands of young people each year, many of whom sign up as members of the Foundation and receive our monthly e-newsletter, The Sunflower.

    The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

    Let me now focus on nuclear issues. In 1995, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty held a review and extension conference. At issue was whether the treaty, which entered into force in 1970, would be extended indefinitely or for periods of time. This is the treaty that requires the nuclear weapons states to engage in good faith negotiations to achieve nuclear disarmament. We went to that treaty conference, along with other non-governmental organizations, lobbying against indefinite extension of the treaty. We wanted extensions of the treaty to be based upon achieving clearly defined nuclear disarmament goals.

    The United States was there lobbying hard for an indefinite extension of the treaty. In the end, the US prevailed and the treaty was extended indefinitely. The continuation of the treaty would not be dependent upon the nuclear weapons states achieving disarmament goals. However, the parties to the treaty agreed by consensus to complete negotiations for a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, to commence negotiations for a Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty, and to the “determined pursuit by the nuclear weapons states of systematic and progressive efforts to reduce nuclear weapons globally, with the ultimate goals of eliminating those weapons….”

    Out of frustration with the slow progress on nuclear disarmament at the 1995 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review and Extension Conference, a number of disarmament non-governmental organizations decided to join together in establishing a new global network, Abolition 2000, to achieve the goal of a nuclear weapons-free world. By the year 2000, the network had grown to over 2000 organizations and municipalities.

    When the parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, now numbering 187 countries, met for their next review conference in the year 2000 there was little good news to report. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty had been created and signed by many countries, but the treaty had not yet entered into force and in 1999 the US Senate failed to ratify the treaty. There had been virtually no progress on a Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty. If anything, the nuclear weapons states could be said to be making “systematic and progressive efforts” to thwart nuclear disarmament.

    At the 2000 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, many parties to the treaty noted the lack of substantial progress on nuclear disarmament, and called for action. The parties agreed to 13 practical steps for nuclear disarmament. Among these were entry into force of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty; the continuation of an interim moratorium on nuclear testing; full implementation of START II and the conclusion of START III as soon as possible while preserving and strengthening the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty; and an “unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear weapons states to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals….”

    An Appeal to End the Nuclear Weapons Threat to Humanity

    On the opening day of the 2000 review conference, our Foundation ran an Appeal to End the Nuclear Weapons Threat to Humanity in the New York Times. The Appeal, signed by many of the great peace leaders of our time, says in part, “Nuclear weapons are morally and legally unjustifiable. They destroy indiscriminately – soldiers and civilians; men, women and children; the aged and the newly born; the healthy and the infirm…. The only way to assure that nuclear weapons will not be used again is to abolish them.”

    The Appeal calls upon the leaders of all nations and, in particular the leaders of the nuclear weapons states, to take five actions for the benefit of all humanity. These actions are:

    – De-alert all nuclear weapons and de-couple all nuclear warheads from their delivery vehicles. – Reaffirm commitments to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. – Commence good faith negotiations to achieve a Nuclear Weapons Convention requiring the phased elimination of all nuclear weapons, with provisions for effective verification and enforcement. – Declare policies of No First Use of nuclear weapons against other nuclear weapons states and policies of No Use against non-nuclear weapons states. – Reallocate resources from the tens of billions of dollars currently being spent for maintaining nuclear arsenals to improving human health, education and welfare throughout the world.

    The Crawford Summit

    In November 2000, Presidents Bush and Putin met at the Crawford, Texas Summit. President Bush announced that he was prepared to unilaterally reduce the size of the US nuclear arsenal to 2,200 to 1,700 strategic nuclear warheads over a ten-year period. President Putin agreed to match these levels, although he had stated previously on several occasions that he was prepared to go to lower levels than this. While perhaps we should be grateful that the reductions are occurring, these numbers are still high enough to destroy the world many times over, and demonstrate that the US and Russia are still stuck in the Cold War mentality of deterrence – even when it is not clear there is anyone to deter.

    The Crawford Summit failed to deal with any of the critical issues raised in the Appeal. Both the US and Russia continue to maintain some 2,250 nuclear weapons each on hair-trigger alert. More than ten years after the end of the Cold War, this is unnecessarily dangerous and increases the possibility of an accidental nuclear war.

    Rather than reaffirm commitments to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, President Bush has been trying to convince President Putin to amend the treaty and has indicated his willingness to abrogate the treaty if President Putin will not agree to amend it. We have prepared a book at the Foundation on the US plans to deploy a National Missile Defense. The book is entitled, A Maginot Line in the Sky: International Perspectives on Ballistic Missile Defense. It provides many arguments why a ballistic missile defenses are destabilizing and decrease global security. In Northeast Asia, theater missile defenses will lead to China’s strengthening its offensive capabilities, which in turn will lead India and Pakistan to strengthen their nuclear arsenals.

    We believe there are three principle reasons why President Bush is pushing so hard to deploy missile defenses: first, he seeks more protection and degrees of freedom for US forward based troops and military installations; second, he seeks to proceed with development and testing to weaponize outer space; and third, the program will transfer tens of billions, perhaps hundreds of billions, of dollars, from US taxpayers to defense contractors. The Bush administration is so eager to move forward with missile defenses that it has actually encouraged China to build up its nuclear arsenal so that it will not feel threatened by US missile defenses.

    In 1999 the US Senate failed to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and President Bush has not shown any intent to re-submit the treaty to the Senate. On the contrary, he has examined possibilities of resuming nuclear testing. At the present, all states are observing a moratorium on nuclear testing. A breakout from this moratorium by one state could lead other states to also resume testing and signal increased reliance on nuclear arsenals.

    Good faith negotiations to achieve the phased elimination of all nuclear weapons are the promise of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which entered into force more than 30 years ago. The failure to engage in these negotiations is a breach of the solemn obligations of that treaty. The unilateral steps announced by President Bush at the Crawford Summit are not a substitute for these negotiations. What is done unilaterally can be reversed unilaterally, and irreversible steps are called for by the parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty at their 2000 Review Conference.

    Policies of No First Use of nuclear weapons against other nuclear weapons states and No Use against non-nuclear weapons states would signal less reliance on nuclear weapons and would provide needed assurances to non-nuclear weapons states. So long as the nuclear weapons states fail to provide these assurances, the uncertainty will be an impetus to nuclear proliferation.

    The US alone is continuing to spend some $35 billion per year on maintaining its nuclear arsenal. That amounts to some $100 million per day. At the same time, some 30,000 children under the age of five are dying daily of starvation and preventable diseases. Relatively small amounts of food and inexpensive inoculations could save these children. The world, led by the United States, continues to squander resources on nuclear arsenals that have virtually no military utility while children go hungry and without adequate nutrition, health care and education.

    The $35 billion that the US spends per year on nuclear weapons is just one-tenth of its military budget of some $350 billion per year. The world as a whole is spending some $750 billion on military forces. These are obscene amounts in the face of the suffering in the world. Just a small percentage of world military expenditures could provide clean water, adequate food and shelter and primary education for all the people on our planet. The potential is there to turn our planet into a paradise for all of its inhabitants, but to do so we must break out of the war culture that militarizes and poisons the planet.

    Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001

    The terrorist attacks on US soil on September 11th taught us that even the most powerful nation in the world is vulnerable to terrorists. The strongest military in the world with its bloated nuclear arsenal could not protect against a small band of terrorists, propelled by hatred and committed to violence. Military force is largely impotent against those who hate and are willing to die in acts of violence. The only way out is by waging peace so effectively, with such depth of compassion, that enemies are turned to friends or at least made neutral. This will not be easy, but it is our best hope for security in the future.

    Current nuclear weapons policies of the nuclear weapons states make it likely that terrorists will be able to buy, steal or make nuclear weapons. Should this occur, it will not only be buildings that may be destroyed but cities. Unless the nuclear weapons states become serious about reducing the size of their nuclear arsenals to a firmly controllable number of nuclear weapons, it is a near certainty that these weapons will at some point land in the hands of terrorists.

    Policy Proposals for Japan

    I would like to suggest some policy considerations for Japan. I offer these as a friend of the Japanese people.

    Japan should be a leader for a nuclear weapons free world. Right now it is not. I think the government of Japan has broken faith with the will of its people on the issue of nuclear disarmament. The people of Japan want nuclear disarmament, and deserve better from their government on this issue. Having experienced nuclear devastation at first hand, Japan is well positioned to lead the world, including the US, to achieve nuclear disarmament.

    Be a true friend of the United States. This means that Japan must be willing to criticize the US if it believes US policies are misguided. True friends do not just go along with their friends. They tell them the truth. In the US, we have a saying, “Friends don’t let friends drive drunk.” On nuclear policy issues, the US has been driving drunk and putting the world at risk. It’s past time for Japan to express its concern to the US in polite but strong terms.

    Be a friend also to China. This means that Japan must also be willing to criticize China, but also to apologize to China for the wrongs committed there by Japan in the past. I just came from China and had the strong sense from the young people I spoke with there that an apology from Japan is long overdue and would improve relations between the two countries.

    Oppose ballistic missile defenses in Northeast Asia, and work instead for a Northeast Asia Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone. This would be important for security in the region and as a model for the world. A leader in this work in Japan is Hiromichi Umebayashi, the president of Peace Depot.

    Follow the Kobe Formula throughout Japan. If the captain of an American ship in Japanese waters is asked whether his ship is carrying nuclear weapons, the standard response based on US policy is to “neither confirm nor deny.” This should not be good enough response for Japan. At Kobe, port entry is denied without a clear response that the ship is not carrying nuclear weapons. This policy could be used throughout Japan.

    Support the five steps set forth in the Appeal to End the Nuclear Weapons Threat to Humanity. These are: de-alert all nuclear weapons; re-affirm commitments to maintaining Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty; commence good faith negotiations for a treaty to eliminate nuclear weapons; declare policies of No First Use of nuclear weapons; and reallocate resources from maintaining nuclear arsenals to meeting human needs.

    Maintain Article IX of your Constitution. This article, which prohibits “aggressive war,” makes Japan unique among nations and gives Japan special responsibility for furthering the cause of peace. There has been some talk of trying to amend or remove this article from the Japanese Constitution. This would be a grave mistake.

    Sadako Peace Garden

    I told you that an early influence on my life was visiting the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Peace Memorial Museums. Thirty-seven years after my first visit to those museums, I was able to arrange with the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for an exhibit from those museums to come to Santa Barbara. Thousands of people were able to gain new insights into the dangers of nuclear weapons by visiting that exhibit. After the exhibit returned to Japan, we were able to create a virtual exhibit that can be viewed from our web sites.

    One of the most moving stories related to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is the story of Sadako Sasaki. Sadako was a little girl, only two years old, when the bomb fell on Hiroshima. For ten years she led a normal life, and then came down with leukemia, a likely result of radiation exposure. While in the hospital, Sadako folded her medicine wrappers into paper cranes in the hopes of regaining her health and achieving peace in the world. On the wings of one of the small cranes she wrote, “I will write peace on your wings and you will fly all over the world.”

    Japanese legend has it that if one folds 1,000 cranes their wish will come true. Sadako died before her 1,000 cranes were finished, but her classmates folded the rest and they spread the story of Sadako. Today her peace cranes have truly flown all over the world. There is a statue of Sadako in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and its base is always covered by mounds of cranes brought and sent by children from throughout Japan and other parts of the world. Sadako’s message of peace has even reached Santa Barbara.

    In 1995, our Foundation commemorated the 50th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by creating a peace garden at a beautiful retreat center in Santa Barbara. We called it Sadako Peace Garden. It is a very natural garden. There are cranes carved into the large boulders in the garden. There is also a very large, beautiful eucalyptus tree at one end of the garden. The tree is over one hundred years old. It has a very broad trunk and it reaches far into the sky. At the retreat center they call it the Tree of Faith.

    Each year on August 6th we hold a commemoration at Sadako Peace Garden. The ceremony is composed of music, poetry and reflections. It is always very solemn and beautiful. During the year, many people visit Sadako Peace Garden for their own quiet reflection. I like to take visitors there. I recently took one of the young honorees of our Distinguished Peace Leadership Award, Hafsat Abiola from Nigeria, and her sister Khafila to visit the garden. There were paper cranes hanging from the trees as well as some messages. We noticed that one of the messages said, “There are many things here I do not know, the knowing of which could change everything.” What a beautiful concept. We must never give up, because there are things we do not know, the knowing of which could change everything.

    At the garden I picked up some small seeds from the ground. It was from a seed like those that the Tree of Faith grew. Each of those seeds contained everything necessary to create a strong, healthy, beautiful tree. It is the same with each of us. We each contain all we need to become strong, healthy and beautiful individuals, although we will certainly be benefited by some support and nurturing. I am speaking, of course, of what we become inwardly as well as outwardly.

    The Importance of Hope

    I want to suggest to you that hope should be a foundation for our actions. Without hope, it is easy to become mired in despair or cynicism. Without hope, vision is limited; and without vision, as the Prophet Isaiah warned long ago, the people perish.

    Hope may be found in the active pursuit of a more peaceful and just world. Hope may be found in educating a new generation in the ways of peace and non-violence. Hope may be found in a compassionate response to suffering, wherever it occurs. Hope will be forged by our actions to end hunger, poverty, and the abuse of human rights. Hope resides in our efforts to stop the pollution of our planetary home and to protect its resources for future generations. And hope will be found in working to abolish nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, and in working to abolish war as a human institution.

    We do not know what the future holds. What we do know is that if we are apathetic and uninvolved we will not be a part of shaping a better future. It gives me hope that increasing numbers of people, many of them young people, are becoming involved in actively working to shape a more decent future.

    In many ways, we are living in a dark and dangerous time. But with hope and perseverance we can make a difference. I recently learned something important: Darkness is not the opposite of light. Darkness is the absence of light. Where there is light, there is no darkness. The same must be true of despair: Where there is hope, there cannot be despair. So I urge you to bring light into dark times, and bring hope to those who despair. By planting and nurturing seeds of peace each day and by living with compassion, commitment and courage, you can help create a world at peace free of the threat of nuclear annihilation. It’s going to take all of us together to change the course of our world, and our joy will be in the effort to accomplish this great goal.

    I pledge to you that the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation will not cease in its efforts to lead the way toward a peaceful, non-violent and nuclear weapons-free world that we can be proud to pass on to the next generation – and I am convinced that our work has never been more necessary or important.

    The Power of One

    Encouraged by exemplary lives such as that of Ozaki Yukio, we will work to find, train and inspire the Ozaki Yukio’s of tomorrow. I’m glad that you are keeping his vision alive, and I hope that our work is also contributing to realizing the vision of this great man of the people.

    I would like to conclude with a short quote by Ozaki Yukio. It comes from an extraordinary article he wrote, entitled, “In Lieu of My Tombstone.” He said this:

    “If the world’s wealth and people are allowed to move freely, economic recovery will be spurred and the gap between the rich and the poor will be bridged. To secure this, the abolition of arms will annihilate the difference between the strong and the weak countries and bring about global equality, which means security and happiness for all mankind.

    “Collaboration or isolation? Open doors or closed? Which will it be? You who read this, wherever you are in the world, I beg you to ponder these lines and choose wisely.”

    We would all do well to not only ponder these lines, but also to ponder the life of Ozaki Yukio. His life demonstrated the Power of One. He lived with compassion, commitment and courage. He made a difference in his country and in the world. In this sense, his life is a beacon.

    I encourage each of you to choose hope and to be persistent in seeking your goals. You will help to fulfill Ozaki Yukio’s noble vision if each day you do something to contribute to a world of peace and justice, free from the threat of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction. Responsibility for the future, as Ozaki Yukio understood so well, rests with each of us.

    *David Krieger is the President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

    Nuclear Age Peace Foundation Appeal to End the Nuclear Weapons Threat to Humanity

    We cannot hide from the threat that nuclear weapons pose to humanity and all life. These are not ordinary weapons, but instruments of mass annihilation that could destroy civilization and end most life on Earth.

    Nuclear weapons are morally and legally unjustifiable. They destroy indiscriminately – soldiers and civilians; men, women and children; the aged and the newly born; the healthy and the infirm.

    The obligation to achieve nuclear disarmament “in all its aspects,” as unanimously affirmed by the International Court of Justice, is at the heart of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

    More than ten years have now passed since the end of the Cold War, and yet nuclear weapons continue to cloud humanity’s future. The only way to assure that nuclear weapons will not be used again is to abolish them.

    We, therefore, call upon the leaders of the nations of the world and, in particular, the leaders of the nuclear weapons states to act now for the benefit of all humanity by taking the following steps:

    – De-alert all nuclear weapons and de-couple all nuclear warheads from their delivery vehicles. – Reaffirm commitments to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. – Commence good faith negotiations to achieve a Nuclear Weapons Convention requiring the phased elimination of all nuclear weapons, with provisions for effective verification and enforcement. – Declare policies of No First Use of nuclear weapons against other nuclear weapons states and policies of No Use against non-nuclear weapons states. – Reallocate resources from the tens of billions of dollars currently being spent for maintaining nuclear arsenals to improving human health, education and welfare throughout the world.

  • A Terrorist Threat – The Movement of Black Market Nuclear Materials into the United States

    “What is the problem? The breakup of the Soviet Union left nuclear materials scattered throughout the newly independent states and increased the potential for the theft of the those materials, and for organized criminals to enter the nuclear smuggling business. As horrible as the tragedies in Oklahoma City and the World Trade Center were, imagine the destruction that could have resulted had there been a small-scale nuclear device exploded there.”

    — President William Jefferson Clinton

    Overview

    The problem is recognizing that the nuclear threat from terrorists acquiring weapons grade fissile material is greater than all the other threats combined and that it has to be treated independently for the specific set of threats it poses.

    Biological and chemical threats are scalable in their level of threat because they create damage in proportion to the amount of material distributed over a given geographical area. The effects, while deadly, are relatively short term and perishable with proper treatment. Also, they are dependant on effective distribution systems and environmental conditions. They can be used in small amounts in small areas quite easily but use in large areas requires techniques that lend themselves to detection and prevention. If an event occurs, rapid response can mitigate their effects substantially in a relatively short time.

    In comparison, the nuclear threat is that it will cause the greatest damage over a large area from a single point with a small amount of material. A nuclear blast is its own distribution system and its effects are persistent over larger areas for longer periods. Rapid response to an event will offer little in the mitigation of the effects other than defining the areas of destruction and contamination. It will create its own environment for distribution as it expands into the prevailing environment.

    Level of Threat

    Dealing with nuclear terrorism requires an understanding of what the potential threats are, at what level they exist and what their consequences will be. The most formidable characteristics of terrorism are variability and unpredictability. Target selection, time of use, degree of destruction and psychological impact are all open questions.

    Where any nuclear threat is perceived, maximum effort has to be expended to verify its potential and prevent the occurrence of an event. There are no options to this action. However, reaction at this level will require a mobilization of resources in a given area in a very short period of time. Therefore, the overall consequences of a nuclear threat by terrorists have to be evaluated within its probability of occurrence. Multiple threats of nuclear events would quickly paralyze the response systems and produce wide scale vulnerabilities, increasing the probability of a successful terrorist event at some location .

    Specific scenarios of prevention and reaction need to be developed by posing postulates for as many methods of acquisition, assembly and deployment as can be imagined. Unfortunately, it appears that no focused effort in this regard has coalesced. The most discernible appreciation for the nuclear threat seems to be to prepare for an after-the-fact reaction to it.

    Background

    Proliferation in the production of fissile materials in many countries has increased the probability that such materials will fall into the hands of terrorist groups who have the capability for assembling crude nuclear weapons.

    During the Cold War, nuclear materials were highly controlled by the nations that developed them. With the end of the Cold War, the controls have slipped to an unacceptable level; security for nuclear inventories has been dangerously degraded. In fact, there are unknown amounts of fissile material for which there has been no accountability. Locations for these materials are scattered and, for the most part, unknown. Additionally, inventory control at many of the existing storage warehouses for nuclear materials is lacking and security measures are generally unsophisticated and inadequate.

    The major threat these unaccounted for materials present is that they will fall into the hands of terrorist groups whose purpose is to bring about, for their own cause, destruction, distraction from national purpose and general social upheaval. Secondary threats will be the creation of unbridled fear, distrust, economic instability and the sense of a loss of personal security should the possession become known.

    Preventive Measures

    The imperative for detecting and controlling these materials is recognizing that for them to be useful for terrorist purposes the materials must be moved from their points of origin or storage to points of utilization. If a concentrated effort is directed toward identifying potential transfer methodologies and routes of distribution then it might be possible to interdict the materials before they can be transformed into weapons status.

    In the area of import/export accountability there is much work to be done. There are no international standards that can be effectively applied for maintaining control during the transportation of nuclear materials and, even if there were, It would take a prodigious effort to oversee the extremely complex interconnected network of international transportation and commerce. The proliferation of the drug traffic throughout the world presents strong evidence of this fact. Gaps in import/export controls almost insure that distribution of fissile materials will occur undetected.

    Once the material is in the distribution system the unknown factors increase – Where did it go? To whom? And for what purpose? Even when lost it bequeaths a set of hazardous conditions that are unacceptable in normal commerce.

    Yet, movement is a key to interdiction. To be useful, the materials must be sent to a central location for additional processing and assembly. At some point sufficient material must be present to construct a nuclear device. Movement of large quantities of fissile material to a construction site is unlikely because it presents a greater possibility for interdiction than do small quantities. Also, large scale movements present additional hazards to the handling facilities because of the possibilities of radioactive leakage and accidental detection.

    Movement of small quantities of the material, on the other hand, afford a greater probability that the movement will be undetected by conventional means and will be delivered successfully to a destination of choice. Smaller shipments are more likely to remain undetected during transport.

    Established commercial conveyance systems probably will be used where small quantities of fissile material can be shipped using various packaging techniques and routes to a single destination. Because of the increased detection probabilities, quantities of fissile material will not be shipped in a given container to a single destination.

    Some possibilities for moving this type of material are:

    (1) – Superimpose the shipment of small, well-shielded packages on established drug and contraband routes.

    (2) – Ship materials conventionally in well-shielded, small containers through a surreptitious network of widely dispersed handlers.

    (3) – Man carry many small quantities across the mostly porous borders of the United States.

    (4) – Use diversified distribution techniques (routes and conveyances) by requiring multiple way-points and altering the characteristics of external shipping containers at each point.

    (5) – Mix materials and legitimate products for routine deliveries.

    The formidable nature of the tasks required to detect and identify well packaged fissile materials in small quantities renders the likelihood of detection highly questionable.

    The most complex of the above projections is No. 4. Presuming an originating point in Asia, a small package could be shipped with little notice through Cambodia to the island of Palau into Micronesia or the Phillipines, then through the small Kiribati Islands to the Cook Islands, then to Hawaii and then to the mainland USA through Mexico, Canada or directly through an open area of the US borders. There are literally hundreds of such routes that could be set up and utilized. The detection and surveillance of these multiple transfer shipping points would require the participation of hundreds of specialists examining all arriving and departing packages – a near impossible task, thereby essentially insuring a successful delivery for most attempts.

    The virtual impossibility of providing surveillance at the many points of exit in the Far East and the many potential points for entry into the United States makes this an imposing task but nevertheless it has to be undertaken. It is almost a given that, once in the United States, the free and open access to our highway network and relatively unsecured transportation system, make it a simple task to transport dangerous materials throughout the United States without any great fear of interdiction.

    Where nuclear materials are concerned, individuals involved with national security need to become focused on more effective prevention strategies than ever before. This new era of terrorism demands a dramatic shift in thinking with regard to the possibility of a small-scale, but dramatic and destructive, nuclear catastrophe. No longer are they faced with decisions about extensive arrays of military weapons with comprehensive destructive capabilities, but rather, they are faced with the likelihood of attacks by small covert bands of individuals with crude nuclear weapons which can still deliver substantial destructive power.

    New methodologies incorporating sophisticated sensing devices are needed for the tasks of detecting, containing, and eliminating small-scale movements of nuclear material in order to prevent such terrorist events. The face of war is changing from that of a well-equipped soldier in uniform to that of the nondescript member of a dedicated cult whose very nature is to deceive and remaine hidden from view until their targets are most vulnerable and the political climate is confused.

    Conclusion:

    There are no easy solutions or quick fixes.

    “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, as we drift toward unparalleled catastrophes.”

    – Albert Einstein

    A number of experts predicted that some catastrophic event similar to the Oklahoma City bombing disaster would be needed to energize the international community to work in concert to eliminate this problem. It has happened in New York and Washington. The unfortunate fact is that the US government, as well as other governments, and the American people found themselves in situations for which they were not prepared. This has to change.

    The danger is so great, and the threat so immediate, that US policymakers and the public need to recognize that the diversion of fissile materials is as critical and urgent a national security priority as controlling the theft of a complete nuclear weapon. This will require top-level commitment to public education and sufficient resource allocation if, eventually, we are to prevail in this new security challenge.

    One can only hope that a nuclear tragedy will not be necessary for galvanizing world action, and that we will achieve progress toward an international consensus that it is in no one’s interest to allow these materials to be expropriated for terrorist purposes. The need is to concentrate an effort within existing political structures to build a collective regional security, capped by the United Nations, that would promote collaboration among nuclear weapons states to establish methods and records of control over the inventories of fissile materials.

    In examining current efforts on how to stop the illegal distribution of these materials, it is hard to see how any current strategy, no matter how clever the concept or broad the implementation, could do more than raise the level of awareness of the problem. The responsibility is so fragmented among sovereign states and among competing agencies within these sovereignties that viable methods of control are either paralyzed or, for practical purposes, nonexistent. Because of this, problems in managing the inventories of these materials are too diverse and complex to solve in the short term. Consequently, without international cooperation, the United States cannot expect to control the misappropriation of fissile material that is inherent in nuclear proliferation and inappropriate nuclear disarmament methodologies.

    The reality is that a number of states are actively seeking the technology to manufacture nuclear weapons. Their main requirement is getting the materials to do so. Unfortunately, because of some very lax attitudes toward the security of weapons grade nuclear materials during the current disarmament process, the materials already exist in the Black Market. Indifference to this fact seems to be continuing and will contribute to the likelihood that, within the next two-to-three years, there will be a political crisis involving a terrorist group and nuclear materials.

    Slow progress has been made in establishing global and regional non proliferation measures. Commensurately, little effort has been expended for controlling the illegal movement of fissile materials. There appears to be a blindness to the fact that, in this imperfect world, while no system can be developed that will stop all the determined terrorists; a high level of effort must be expended for understanding the dimensions of the problem and correcting deficiencies. In some measure, all civilized nations should be prepared to respond as effectively as possible when terrorist threats of any kind occur but, especially, where nuclear materials are concerned.

    During the Cold War, high technology warheads sat atop powerful delivery systems. Targeting was a known factor. The world was at risk of a hair-trigger response but the realization of a mutually assured destruction kept these systems under “reasonable” control. Today, the potential weapon size is speculative and the delivery system in all probability will have feet. The targets are completely unpredictable – they can be anything, anywhere, at any time. No negotiating. No advanced warning. No clues of impending danger. Nothing is rational in the equation.

    Ultimately, there can be no foolproof system short of eliminating all inventories of the materials. However, it is an immediate and critical imperative that all nations work in collaboration to eliminate the spread of fissile materials. Control will require the continuous and simultaneous exercise of multiple measures including international intelligence gathering, international cooperation for conflict resolution, import/export accountability, and selective, proportional coercive measures including the use of force. Eventually, a comprehensive set of measures will have to be developed for the international community that will allow it to exercise the political will to stop and ultimately eliminate the threat of a catastrophe involving terrorist and nuclear materials.

    George Washington said, “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.” Again, it is time to listen to one of our founding fathers.

    *Gene R. Kelly is a human factors engineer who has consulted for government and industry on issues of nuclear security for the past 22 years.

  • Bush-Putin Nuclear Arms Cuts Are Not Enough

    Bush-Putin Nuclear Arms Cuts Are Not Enough

    Presidents Bush and Putin announced jointly that their countries “have overcome the legacy of the Cold War.” While the new cooperative relationship between the US and Russia is to be applauded, what their Presidents said and what was left unsaid about nuclear arms reductions still resonated with Cold War logic.

    President Bush announced that he would be reducing the US arsenal of long-range nuclear weapons by two-thirds from some 7,000 weapons to somewhere between 2,200 and 1,700 over a ten-year period. President Putin said, “we will try to respond in kind.” These cuts, which need to be viewed in the context of the post Cold War world, will not make us two-thirds safer.

    It was Presidents Bush Sr. and Yeltsin that agreed back in 1993 in the START II agreements to cut long-range nuclear arsenals to 3,500 each by the beginning of 2003. Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin moved this date back to the end of 2007, but also agreed in principle to go beyond this in a next step to 2,500 long-range nuclear weapons in START III negotiations.

    Since entering office, President Putin has let it be known that he is prepared to reduce the long-range nuclear arsenals of the two sides to 1,500 or less. Some of his aides have said privately that President Putin was prepared to go down to 1,000 or less. Chances are he still is prepared to move to lower levels.

    Still lower levels of nuclear armaments would be consistent with leaving behind the legacy of the Cold War, while improving the security of both countries. If the US and Russia are no longer using these weapons to deter each other from attacking (since there is no reason to do so), for what reason do they need these weapons at all? It is widely understood that nuclear weapons have no military utility other than deterrence, and even this was shown to be ineffective in preventing terrorist attacks on September 11th.

    China has a minimal deterrent force of only some 500 weapons with only some 20 missiles capable of reaching the United States. India and Pakistan also have small nuclear arsenals, but surely they pose no threat to the US or Russia. The UK, France and Israel also have small nuclear arsenals, but pose no threat to either the US or Russia.

    North Korea, Iran and Iraq have neither nuclear weapons nor missiles with which to attack the US or Russia, and they would certainly be foolish to do so, given the conventional military power alone of these two countries.

    The greatest danger posed to both countries is not from each other or any other country. It is from terrorists, but terrorists cannot be deterred by nuclear weapons. Certainly this was one crucial lesson of September 11th.

    The US and Russia need to ensure that nuclear weapons do not fall into the hands of terrorists. The best way to do this is to reduce the numbers of nuclear weapons in all states to a level that can be controlled with certainty and to institute controls on weapons-grade fissile materials.

    To achieve such controls, which are truly in the security interests of both countries, will require even deeper cuts made with far more sense of urgency. Such cuts are necessary to keep Russian “loose nukes” out of the hands of terrorists and to demonstrate to the world the US and Russia are truly committed to achieving the nuclear disarmament they promised when they signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty more than three decades ago.

    Presidents Bush and Putin have also left some important things unsaid in regard to nuclear arms. They have made no mention of the continued high alert status of their nuclear weapons. Currently each country has some 2,250 nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert, ready to be launched within moments of an order to do so. This tempts fate unnecessarily, and could lead to an accidental nuclear war.

    Neither have the two Presidents made reference to tactical nuclear weapons, the smaller battlefield nuclear weapons that would be most likely to be used and that could most easily fall into the hands of terrorists. Nor has President Bush made mention of the serious implications for global stability if the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty is amended or abrogated, as the US is seeking, to allow for the testing of space based weaponry.

    President Bush has said that he is prepared to reduce the US nuclear arsenal unilaterally, but this means that it is also possible to reverse this decision unilaterally. Several thousand US and Russian nuclear warheads will be dismantled in the coming ten years, but their nuclear cores will presumably be stored and available for reassembly on short notice. The decision to reduce nuclear arsenals should be committed to writing and made irreversible, such that the nuclear cores are unavailable for future use and subsequent administrations in both countries will be bound by the commitment.

    In the year 2000, the parties to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty agreed that the principle of irreversibility should apply to nuclear disarmament. The US and Russia also agreed, along with the UK, France and China, to an “unequivocal undertaking…to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals.”

    If the US and Russia truly want to prevent future nuclear terrorism, this is the time for leadership to accomplish the “total elimination” that has been promised. The US and Russia are the only countries capable of providing this leadership, but it is unlikely that they will do so unless pressed by the American and Russian people. And this will only happen if our peoples grasp the extent of the nuclear dangers that still confront us.

    We should not be lulled into thinking that reductions of long-range nuclear weapons to 2,200 to 1,700 in ten years time are sufficient. Such arsenals will continue to place at risk our cities as well as civilization and most of life.

    *David Krieger, an attorney and political scientist, is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • Nuclear Weapons and Homeland Security

    Nuclear weapons do not make us safer. They make us less secure.

    The greatest vulnerability of the United States and the rest of the industrialized world is not to terrorists who hijack planes or disperse biological agents. It is to terrorists with nuclear weapons.

    September 11th was a shocking reminder of the futility of relying on nuclear weapons for security. Nuclear weapons cannot deter a suicidal terrorist, but a suicidal terrorist with nuclear weapons could destroy the United States.

    US nuclear policies make it more likely that terrorists will be able to attack the United States with nuclear weapons. In general, the US has pursued a nuclear weapons policy of “Do as I say, not as I do.” We have set the wrong example for the world, continuing to rely upon nuclear weapons long after the end of the Cold War.

    The US has slowed the process of nuclear disarmament, leaving many thousands of nuclear weapons potentially available to terrorists. If we want to prevent a nuclear holocaust by terrorist nuclear bombs in American cities, the US must take leadership in a global effort to bring all nuclear weapons and nuclear materials under control. This will require significant policy changes.

    To gain control of nuclear weapons, the numbers of nuclear weapons in the world must be dramatically reduced. Numbers need to be brought down from the over 30,000 currently in the arsenals of the US and Russia to far more reasonable numbers capable of being effectively controlled in each of the eight nuclear weapons states, on the way to zero.

    The numbers being discussed by the Bush administration of 2,000 to 2,500 strategic nuclear weapons are far too high and will send a signal to the world that the US is not serious about nuclear disarmament. The Russians have already proposed many times joint reductions to 1,500 strategic nuclear weapons. Even this number is too high. Just one of these weapons in the hands of terrorists could do immeasurable damage.

    To gain control of nuclear materials, a global inventory of all nuclear weapons and materials must be established immediately. We must know what nuclear materials exist in order to establish a rational plan to guard and eliminate them.

    All nuclear weapons should immediately be taken off hair-trigger alert and policies of launch on warning should be abandoned. The US and Russia still have some 4,500 nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert. This is an accidental nuclear holocaust waiting to happen, particularly given the gaping holes in the post Cold War Russian early warning system. Smart and determined terrorists could potentially trick one of the nuclear weapons states into believing it was being attacked by another nuclear weapons state, leading to retaliatory strikes by one nuclear power against another.

    The US should forego its plan to build a national missile defense system, and reallocate these funds to more immediate security risks. US deployment of a national missile defense will lead Russia and China to rely more heavily on their nuclear arsenals and to develop them further. No so-called rogue state currently has nuclear weapons or long-range missiles capable of reaching the United States. Nor could a national missile defense system protect us from terrorists.

    The US should rejoin the international community in supporting a treaty framework to control and eliminate nuclear weapons. We should fulfill our treaty obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty for good faith negotiations to eliminate all nuclear weapons. We should stop threatening to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. We should honor the Outer Space Treaty, and stop seeking to weaponize outer space. We should ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and move forward with START III negotiations. Finally, we must stop putting up obstacles to nuclear disarmament in the United Nations and its Disarmament Commission, and instead actively assist them in their efforts.

    Since September 11th, the US government has made only one change in our nuclear weapons policy. It removed the sanctions on India and Pakistan that were put in place in response to their testing nuclear weapons in 1998. That change was a move in the wrong direction, away from nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation.

    President Bush made campaign promises, which he has reiterated since assuming office, to move forward with unilateral reductions and de-alerting of our nuclear arsenal. But unilateral actions are not sufficient.

    The US must lead the way in bringing all nuclear weapons states to act swiftly and resolutely in dramatically reducing all nuclear arsenals and assuring that no nuclear weapons or materials fall into the hands of terrorists. If the US fails to provide this leadership, efforts to achieve homeland security could fail even more spectacularly than they did on September 11th.

    *David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, an international organization on the roster of the United Nations Economic and Social Council.