Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: nuclear famine

  • Two Billion at Risk: The Threat of Limited Nuclear War

    This article was originally published by Common Dreams.

    As physicians we spend our professional lives applying scientific facts to the health and well being of our patients. When it comes to public health threats like TB, polio, cholera, AIDS and others where there is no cure, our aim is to prevent what we cannot cure. It is our professional, ethical and moral obligation to educate and speak out on these issues.

    That said, the greatest imminent existential threat to human survival is potential of global nuclear war. We have long known that the consequences of large scale nuclear war could effectively end human existence on the planet. Yet there are more than 17,000 nuclear warheads in the world today with over 95% controlled by the U.S. and Russia. The international community is intent on preventing Iran from developing even a single nuclear weapon. And while appropriate to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, there is precious little effort being spent on the much larger and more critical problem of these arsenals.

    Despite the Cold War mentality of the U.S. and Russia with their combined arsenals and a reliance on shear luck that a nuclear war is not started by accident, intent or cyber attack, we now know that the planet is threatened by a limited regional nuclear war which is a much more real possibility.

    A report released Tuesday by the Nobel Laureate International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and its US counterpart Physicians for Social Responsibility documents in fact the humanitarian consequences of such a limited nuclear war. Positing a conflict in South Asia between India and Pakistan, involving just 100 Hiroshima sized bombs— less than 0.5% of the world’s nuclear arsenal— would put two billion people’s health and well being at risk. The local effects would be devastating. More than 20 million people would be dead in a week from the explosions, firestorms and immediate radiation effects. But the global consequences would be far worse.

    The firestorms caused by this war would loft 5 million tons of soot high into the atmosphere, blocking out sunlight and dropping temperatures across the planet. This climate disruption would cause a sharp, worldwide decline in food production. There would be a 12% decline in US corn production and a 15% decline in Chinese rice production, both lasting for a full decade. A staggering 31% decline in Chinese winter wheat production would also last for 10 years.

    The resulting global famine would put at risk 870 million people in the developing world who are already malnourished today, and 300 million people living in countries dependent on food imports. In addition, the huge shortfalls in Chinese food production would threaten another 1.3 billion people within China. At the very least there would be a decade of social and economic chaos in the largest country in the world, home to the world’s second largest and most dynamic economy and a large nuclear arsenal of its own.

    A nuclear war of comparable size anywhere in the world would produce the same global impact. By way of comparison, each US Trident submarine commonly carries 96 warheads each of which is ten to thirty times more powerful than the weapons used in the South Asia scenario. That means that a single submarine can cause the devastation of a nuclear famine many times over. The US has 14 of these submarines, plus land based missiles and a fleet of strategic bombers. The Russian arsenal has the same incredible overkill capacity. Two decades after the Cold War, nuclear weapons are ill suited to meet modern threats and cost hundreds of billions of dollars to maintain.

    Fueled in part by a growing understanding of these humanitarian consequences of nuclear war, there is today a growing global movement to prevent such a catastrophe. In 2011, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent movement called for its national societies to educate the public about these humanitarian consequences and called for the abolition of nuclear weapons. Seventeen nations issued a Joint Statement in May 2012 on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons that called for their total elimination. By this fall the number rose to 125 nations.

    The international community should continue to take practical steps to prevent additional countries from acquiring nuclear weapons. But, this effort to prevent proliferation must be matched by real progress to eliminate the far greater danger posed by the vast arsenals that already exist.

    Simply put, the only way to eliminate the threat of nuclear war or risk of an accidental launch or mishap is to eliminate nuclear weapons. This past year the majority of the world’s nations attended a two-day conference in Oslo on the humanitarian consequences of nuclear war. The United States and the other major nuclear powers boycotted this meeting. There will be an important follow up meeting in Mexico in February. It is time for us to lead the nuclear weapons states by example in attending this meeting and by embracing the call to eliminate nuclear weapons.

  • Continuing the Struggle

    David KriegerI have been working for a world free of nuclear weapons for over four decades. On occasion I am asked, “Why do you continue this struggle when change seems to come so slowly?” Here is my response.

    Nuclear weapons threaten the existence of civilization and the human species. We humans cannot continue to be complacent in the face of the nuclear dangers that confront us. Too many people are complacent and too many are ignorant of the threat posed by these weapons.

    Albert Einstein warned: “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” The nature of the catastrophe was demonstrated first at Hiroshima and then at Nagasaki. We continue to face the possibility of a global Hiroshima.

    If even a few nuclear weapons were used today, the humanitarian consequences would be beyond our capacity to cope. There would not be enough surviving medical personnel available to aid the suffering of the victims. There would not be enough hospitals or burn wards. Water supplies would be contaminated. Infrastructure would be destroyed. The damage would not be containable in either time or space.

    Atmospheric scientists have modeled the effects of the use of nuclear weapons. They find that the use of only one hundred Hiroshima-size nuclear weapons in a regional war between India and Pakistan would trigger a nuclear famine that would lead to the deaths by starvation of some one billion people globally. That would be the result of a small nuclear war. How would this happen?  The weapons would destroy cities, putting massive amounts of soot into the stratosphere, blocking warming sunlight, shortening growing seasons, causing crop failures and food shortages.

    A large-scale nuclear war between the US and Russia would, of course, be far worse, lowering temperatures on Earth to Ice Age levels. There would be few survivors.

    All this is to say that perhaps I know too much. I cannot stop struggling to end the nuclear weapons era. I am challenged to fight against ignorance and indifference. I know that this is not a problem that can be set aside with the expectation that it will take care of itself.

    There has been progress. By 1986, the number of nuclear weapons in the world had ballooned to 70,000. Today, the number is around 17,000. Over 50,000 nuclear weapons have been eliminated. That is worth celebrating, but not for too long. It hasn’t changed the fundamental proposition that nuclear war could destroy most complex life on the planet, and this planet remains the only place we know of in the universe where life exists. As Carl Sagan used to remind us, we live on a “pale blue dot,” our planetary home, one which is infinitesimally small in relation to the universe, but infinitely precious.

    President Obama, in a recent speech in Berlin, stated, “Peace with justice means pursuing the security of a world without nuclear weapons – no matter how distant that dream may be.” Yes, we – all of us – need the security of a world without nuclear weapons, but why must the dream be distant? Why must we think of the dream as being distant? Why must President Obama frame it in this way? Is he not demonstrating a deficit of leadership in doing so? Whose interests are being served – those of corporate weapons makers or those of the people of the world?

    Nuclear deterrence does not protect us. If it did, there would be no need for missile defenses. Nor would we object to other countries developing nuclear deterrent forces. And, of course, nuclear deterrence does not even apply to terrorist organizations, which have no territory to retaliate against and may be suicidal.

    Nuclear weapons are actually suicidal weapons. Use them, and they will be used against you. Use them, and run the risk of nuclear famine or nuclear winter. They may also be omnicidal weapons, their use leading to the death of all.

    If we want to end the insecurity of a world with nuclear weapons, we must continue the struggle for a world without them. And we must realize that the nature of the weapons require that the struggle be approached with a sense of urgency and boldness.

    So, I continue the struggle – in the hope that you may join with me and many others to make the abolition of nuclear weapons an urgent – rather than distant – dream.

    David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • Report on the NGO Committee for Disarmament Seminar

    On September 5, 2012, with the generous support of the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, the NGO Committee for Disarmament convened the “Seminar on the Humanitarian Dimensions of Nuclear Disarmament” at the Palais des Nations in which Mr. Colin Archer, Secretary-General of the International Peace Bureau, served as the moderator. 


    During the seminar, Mr. Peter Herby, Head of the International Committee of the Red Cross` Mines-Arms Unit; Dr. Daniel Plesch, Director of the School of Oriental and African Studies` Center for International Studies and Diplomacy (CISD); Mr. Magnus Lovold, a representative of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN); and Mr. Christian N. Ciobanu, Geneva Representative of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, provided important perspectives about the humanitarian dimensions of nuclear disarmament to students, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), Non-Nuclear Weapon States, Nuclear Weapon States, and officials from the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research.


    The following is a brief description of what each speaker discussed at the seminar.


    Peter Herby


    Mr. Herby explained the bombings of Hiroshima caused thousands of civilian deaths, including 270 doctors, 16 nurses, and 112 pharmacists in Hiroshima. He also described the devastating health effects of nuclear weapons on the hibakusha, such as the ionizing effects of Uranium-235 and genetic complications caused by the highly enriched Uranium-235. These effects prompted the ICRC to publicly vocalize its position in favor of nuclear disarmament in late 1945.


    Mr. Herby further touched upon the three core principles of International Humanitarian Law (IHL), including the principle of distinctions between civilians and combatants, the principle of proportionality, and the principle of precaution of attack. He further elaborated upon the International Court of Justice’s 1996 Advisory Opinion on the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons.  Finally, he touched upon the ICRC’s decision to affirm its position on nuclear disarmament in 2011.


    Daniel Plesch


    Dr. Plesch provided a concise historical overview of the evolution of International Humanitarian Law to the participants of the seminar. He described how the results of the Nuremberg Trials and the Commission of the Universal Declaration established the basis of IHL. He further discussed the international community’s views on IHL during the period of the Cold War.  Finally, he elaborated upon the ICJ’s 1996 Advisory Opinion and the Nuclear Weapons States’ nuclear deterrence doctrines to illustrate how the Nuclear Weapon States are violating IHL by investing in and modernizing their nuclear arsenals.


    Dr. Plesch also mentioned that the international community should engage in discussions on disarmament within the context of the Open Skies Agreement as illustrated in CISD’s Strategic Concept for Removal of Arms and Proliferation. This process will help the international community to evaluate disarmament within a new context.


    As part of his concluding remarks, Dr. Plesch suggested that the international community should develop a framework, which would be similar to the Iraqi Weapons Inspection Regime, to pressure the Nuclear Weapon States to dismantle their nuclear weapons.


    Magnus Lovold


    As a representative of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), Mr. Magnus Lovold explained that “the humanitarian aspects of nuclear disarmament provide an opportunity to take the issue down from the high shelves of international security, and turn it into something that everyone can understand.” Moreover, he argued that the humanitarian approach enables key actors in the disarmament movement to form linkages between the humanitarian dimensions of nuclear disarmament and other humanitarian disarmament processes, including the process leading to the treaty banning landmines and the treaty banning cluster bombs. Finally, by forming linkages between different disarmament processes, ICAN can form the necessary relationships with new organizations to encourage the international community to agree to a treaty that bans nuclear weapons.


    Christian N. Ciobanu


    Mr. Ciobanu, Geneva Representative of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, said that states must support the humanitarian dimensions of nuclear disarmament to avoid the possibility of a nuclear war that would directly contribute to a nuclear famine in the world. He remarked that a nuclear war anywhere in the world, using as few as 100 weapons, would disrupt the global climate and agricultural production so severely that the lives of more than a billion people would be at risk. Finally, he contended that leading atmospheric scientists warned that the effects of a regional war between neighboring states could cause nuclear famine.


    To illustrate his point that a regional war between neighboring states can contribute to nuclear famine, Mr. Ciobanu described that scientists modeled a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan in which each side detonates 50 Hiroshima-size nuclear weapons on the other side’s cities. He noted that smoke from the burning cities would rise into the stratosphere, where it would reduce sunlight for up to ten years, dropping temperatures on Earth to the lowest levels in the past 1,000 years and shortening growing seasons across the planet. The result would be crop failures and a nuclear famine, which could result in the deaths of hundreds of millions to a billion people globally.


    Mr. Ciobanu underscored that states should support Article 51 and Article 54 of the Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Convention. Finally, he emphasized that states must support the principles of IHL and produce tangible political results to create a world that is free of nuclear weapons.

  • Once Upon a Time Can Be Now: Rescuing Planet Earth and Restoring Paradise

    David KriegerFairy tales often begin with the words, “Once upon a time….”  For example, “Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess….”  In a fairy tale, the hero, perhaps a handsome prince, may kill the dragon and rescue the princess, and they “live happily ever after.”  I want to suggest a fairy tale in which there is a beautiful planet and the heroes and heroines who save it are us.  So, here is a fairy tale about saving a planet in distress.  Our challenge is to bring this fairy tale to life.


    Once upon a time there was a beautiful and pristine planet.  It was the third planet in a remote solar system in a vast galaxy of stars.  While it might have seemed like an ordinary planet, if anything, rather on the small side, it was far from ordinary.  It was, in fact, a very special planet, for it had just the right climate and temperature to support life.  On this planet there were oceans and continents and mountains and rivers, and they teemed with life.  There were broad plains with grasses that rippled in the winds; hillsides covered with wildflowers; trees that spread their branches and bore fruits.  And there were animals of every shape and kind: fish that swam, birds that flew, and animals that hopped and jumped and ran.  This planet had sunrises and sunsets and a night sky filled with twinkling stars.  Compared with the harsh, lifeless planets that filled the solar system, it was a paradise. 


    And into this paradise came a featherless bi-ped capable of knowing.  He called himself man, and he called the paradise he inhabited Earth.  He devised stories about his own creation, stories that helped to explain the mystery of being — the mystery of something emerging from nothing.  Man was clever and he created tools that gave him power over other creatures, even though he was not as strong or fast or agile as they were.  He created powerful gods in his own image and then had those imaginary creatures bestow upon him dominion over all that swam and flew and ran.  Man took charge of the planet.


    Man’s most recent creation story, the science-based creation story, is that the universe grew from a “Big Bang” some 15 billion years ago, and it has been expanding ever since.  Earth was created 4.5 billion years ago and a half-billion years later simple forms of life emerged on Earth.  Early forms of man in this creation story came into existence only a few million years ago and more modern forms of man only some 50,000 years ago.  Only in the past eight to ten thousand years have human civilizations emerged.


    While the science-based creation story gives a skeletal outline of the development of the universe, its large numbers are difficult to grasp.  It is helpful to think of them in terms of a very big 15,000-page book.  Each page of the book represents a million years in the history of the universe.  The “Big Bang” occurs at the top of page one.  It is not until page 10,500 that the Earth is created and not until page 11,000 that life begins on Earth.  It is not until page 14,997 that primitive forms of man come into being.  Assuming that each word on each page represents 1,000 years, it is only in the final ten words on the final page of the book that civilization begins.  Civilization reflects a larger-scale ordering of society, characterized by agriculture, hierarchy and specialization.  Civilization gives rise to larger and larger tribal loyalties, to competing social systems and to increasingly virulent warfare. 


    It is only within the last two or three words of the book that Isaiah, Lao Tzu, Confucius, Buddha, Socrates, Zoroaster, Jesus and other spiritual leaders walk the planet.  But, despite their lives and the moral lessons they teach, warfare becomes more prominent within and among human societies.  Man increases his skill in organizing to engage in the large-scale slaughter of other men.  Over the millennia, man develops ever more powerful weapons with which to kill his fellow man.  He advances in the technology of weaponry from stones to spears to arrows to swords to guns to modern artillery and bombs, and finally, to nuclear and then thermonuclear weapons. 


    In describing our time, the Argentine poet Jorge Luis Borges, writes, “The planet had been parceled out among various countries, each one provided with loyalties, cherished memories, with a past undoubtedly heroic, with rights, with wrongs, with a particular mythology, with bronze forefathers, with anniversaries, with demagogues and symbols.  This arbitrary division was favorable for wars.”  Our time has been favorable for wars, but the development of our technologies of warfare and the resources we have devoted to war and its preparations have made wars unfavorable for us.


    It is not until the final punctuation mark on the final page of the 15,000-page book that the Nuclear Age begins with three explosions: a test explosion at Alamogordo, New Mexico, followed by the destruction of Hiroshima and, three days later, Nagasaki.  In only seven or eight more years, man had created thermonuclear weapons, and two of the many “arbitrary divisions” of the planet that man calls countries, the United States and the Soviet Union, were engaged in a mad nuclear arms race.  It was in this period, the Nuclear Age, that man arrived at a new juncture in his history, one in which his weaponry had become powerful enough to destroy himself and most other forms of complex life on the planet.  In doing so, man had made himself a godlike creature, a god of savagery and destruction.  He now held his fate in his own hands. 


    The final punctuation mark in the 15,000-page book is now being determined.  It may be thought of as a question mark, and the question is: will man be able to summon the will and strength to control his most dangerous technologies and continue his own history, along with that of the remarkable planet on which he lives, on page 15,001?  It may instead be a dramatic exclamation point, another “Big Bang,” this one created by man himself, bringing a cataclysmic end to human life on the planet.
    In many ways, man has taken the beautiful and pristine planet that he inherited from the cosmos and undermined its sustainability.  Man’s powerful technologies combined with his greed threaten the climate and health of the planet.  His waste and pollution are poisoning the planet and its creatures.  Disparities in wealth have turned the planet into a hell for many of the poorest among us.  Man has not been a good trustee of the planet for future generations.  But the most urgent issue of sustainability confronting man is the threat posed by the nuclear arsenals he has created, an issue that has received very little public attention, particularly since the end of the Cold War some two decades ago. 
    The principal points that I want to make are these: first, we are destroying our paradise by our own actions; second, nuclear weapons are incompatible with a sustainable future; and third, the future is in our collective hands.  We must abolish nuclear weapons before they abolish us.  We must also abolish war as a means of settling our conflicts.  By doing so, we would release vast amounts of capital and human creativity.
    At the height of the nuclear arms race in the mid-1980s, there were over 70,000 nuclear weapons in the world, primarily in the arsenals of the United States and Soviet Union.  These weapons were capable of destroying complex life on Earth many times over.  On many occasions, man has come close to a nuclear war – by accident, miscalculation or design – that could have ended the human future on the planet.  Perhaps the most serious of these occasions was the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, in which the US and former Soviet Union almost stumbled over the precipice.  The Nuclear Age has been characterized by its policies of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), with opposing sides locked in a life-and-death struggle that would be both suicidal (death of self) and omnicidal (death of all).


    Although the world’s nuclear arsenals have been reduced by over 50,000 nuclear weapons in the past 25 years, there are still slightly under 20,000 nuclear weapons in the world.  These remain largely in the arsenals of the US and Russia, but also in those of seven other countries: the UK, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea.  Two decades after the end of the Cold War, large numbers of nuclear weapons remain on high alert 24 hours a day, and there has been an unfortunate lack of political leadership for ending the nuclear weapons threat to humanity.


    Most of us are aware of the direct effects of nuclear weapons that result from blast, fire and radiation.  At Hiroshima, some 90,000 people died immediately from the US atomic bombing on August 6, 1945, some being vaporized and leaving shadows etched into stone walls behind where they had been at the time of the explosion.  By the end of 1945, the death toll in Hiroshima had risen to 145,000.  For the survivors of the atomic bombings, the suffering and trauma continues even until today.  Soon the survivors will all be gone, and there will be no first-hand witnesses to the horror of nuclear weapons.


    The indirect effects of nuclear weapons use, we now know from the studies of atmospheric scientists, would be even worse than the direct effects.  A regional war between India and Pakistan, for example, in which each side used 50 Hiroshima-size nuclear weapons on the other side’s cities and industrial areas, would have devastating global effects.  The smoke from burning fires would rise into the stratosphere, blocking warming sunlight, lowering global temperatures to the lowest experienced in the last 1,000 years, and shortening growing seasons.  Hundreds of millions of people would likely perish in the resulting global famine. 


    These consequences, as horrendous as they are, would pale in comparison to those in a nuclear exchange between the US and Russia, whose launch-ready, operational nuclear arsenals have a combined explosive power more than 500 times greater than those of India and Pakistan.  Such an exchange would result in global temperatures becoming colder than those experienced in the last Ice Age, some 18,000 years ago.  This radical climate change, along with the destruction of the ozone layer, would create conditions on Earth that would likely result in the extinction of most or all complex forms of life on the planet.


    This is the threat that we live with every moment of each day.  Could it happen?  Of course, it could.  We ignore it at our peril.  We cannot be naïve enough to believe that humans can create fool-proof systems.  To understand this, we need only recall the accidents at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, or the many close calls we have had with nuclear weapons, including accidents and false warnings of nuclear attacks.


    Not long ago, I was arrested for protesting the launch of a US Minuteman III missile from Vandenberg Air Force Base, not far from where I live in California.  The Minuteman III is a land-based, nuclear-armed missile.  There are 450 of them in silos in Montana, Wyoming and North Dakota.  They are launch-ready, first-strike weapons.  If there is a warning – including a false warning – of attack against the United States, there will be pressure for the US to use these weapons before they are destroyed in their silos.  The same is true of the Russian land-based, nuclear-armed missiles.  They will have the same pressure to use them before incoming missiles could destroy them in their silos.  The land-based, nuclear-armed missile forces of both sides should be thought of as Nuclear Doomsday Machines.  They are triggers for World War III, what would undoubtedly be a short and cataclysmic war.


    The US and Russian presidents would have only a few minutes, perhaps 12 minutes at the most, to evaluate a warning of attack and decide whether or not to launch their own missiles and initiate World War III.  This is an intolerable situation.  President Mikhail Gorbachev recognized this when he said, “It is my firm belief that the infinite and uncontrollable fury of nuclear weapons should never be held in the hands of any mere mortal ever again, for any reason.”  This is sound advice.  We mortals, all of us, are not gods, and none of us should be trusted with nuclear weapons when the future of our planet, our species and other forms of life are in our hands.  All of us are threatened by the power of our nuclear arsenals and the all-too-real possibilities of nuclear proliferation, nuclear war and nuclear famine.


    When I began, I spoke about the paradise of our Earth, the only place we know of in the universe where there is life.  Our minimum responsibility, in return for living on this planet, is to pass the planet on intact and sustainable to the next generation.  Our technologies of warfare have made this far more challenging than in the past, but we must not fail in confronting the threats posed by nuclear weapons and war. 


    To end the urgent threats of nuclear proliferation, nuclear war and nuclear famine, we must abolish nuclear weapons.  This will require leadership from great states and from great individuals within those states.  Nuclear weapons are illegal under international law, immoral and costly.  Rather than being considered a source of prestige, they should be taboo, like cannibalism and slavery.  We should demand that all states begin negotiations immediately on a new treaty, a Nuclear Weapons Convention, for the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons.  In the meantime, while this treaty is being negotiated, we should demand that all nuclear weapon states adopt policies of No Use of these weapons against non-nuclear weapon states and No First Use against other nuclear weapon states.  To support such policies and give them credence, nuclear weapon states should separate their warheads from delivery vehicles on land-based missiles, so there will not be temptation to use them first in the event of a false warning.  Finally, before the US proceeds with further deployment of missile defense installations in Europe, it should take seriously Russian security concerns and conduct a joint threat assessment with Russia.


    The abolition of nuclear weapons is our responsibility.  We should take care of it promptly, with the urgency it demands, and not allow this global threat to be passed on to our children and grandchildren.  Then we should dedicate ourselves to doing more than this minimum for survival and take steps to assure the restoration of Earth to being the paradise it was and could be again.  An international appeal for the 2012 RIO + 20 conference, initiated by the International Peace Bureau and the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility, points out these important linkages: “Without disarmament, there will be no adequate development; without development, there will be no justice, equality and peace.  We must give sustainability a chance.”


    In 1955, a group of scientists, led by Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein, issued the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, which stated, “There lies before us, if we choose, continued progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom.  Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels?  We appeal as human beings to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.  If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death.”


    It is up to us to choose.  Let us choose peace and hope and a sustainable future.  May we show by our actions that we take seriously our roles as trustees of the Earth for our children and their children and all children of the future – that they may enjoy a peaceful and harmonious life on our planetary home. 

  • Nuclear Weapons and a Sustainable Future

    2012_05_01_npt_briefing.pdf

  • Earth Day

    David Krieger


    Vaya aquí para la versión española.


    We live in a vast universe made up of billions of galaxies, each of which is made up of billions of stars.  Our home is a small planet that revolves around a small sun in a remote galaxy.  It is just the right distance from the sun that it is not too hot and not too cold to support life.  It has air that is breathable, water that is drinkable, and topsoil suitable for growing crops.  In the immensity of space, it is a very small dot, what astrophysicist Carl Sagan referred to as a “pale blue dot.”  Our Earth is the only place we know of that harbors life.  It is precious beyond any riches that could be imagined. 


    One would think that any sane, self-reflecting creatures that lived on this planet would recognize its beauty and preciousness and would want to tend to it with care.  In Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s classic book, The Little Prince, the prince says, “It’s a matter of discipline.  When you’ve finished washing and dressing each morning, you must tend to your planet.”  But that is an imaginary planet with an imaginary little prince.  On the real planet that supports life, the one we inhabit, there aren’t enough of us who exercise such discipline and tend to our planet with loving care.


    Think about how we have managed our planet.  We have allowed the planet to become divided into rich and poor, where a few people have billions of dollars and billions of people have few dollars.  While some live in greed, the majority live in need.  We have parceled the planet into entities we call countries and created borders that countries try to protect.  We have created military forces in these countries and given them enormous resources to prepare for war and to engage in war.  Annual global military expenditures now exceed $1.6 trillion, while hundreds of millions of humans live without clean water, adequate nutrition, medical care and education.


    We have eagerly exploited the planet’s resources with little concern for future generations or for the damage we cause to the environment.  Instead of using renewable energy from the sun to provide our energy needs, we exploit the Earth’s stores of oil and transport them across the globe.  We have turned much of the world into desert.  We have polluted the air we breathe and the water we drink.  In our excess, we have pushed the planet toward the point of no return in global warming, and then argued global warming as a reason to build more nuclear power plants.


    We keep relearning in tragic ways that we humans are fallible creatures.  That is the lesson of our recurrent oil spills.  It is also the lesson of the accidents at Chernobyl a quarter century ago and at Fukushima one year ago.  It is a lesson that we urgently need to learn about nuclear weapons – weapons we have come close to accidentally using on many occasions and have twice used intentionally. 


    Nuclear weapons kill directly by blast, fire and radiation.  The nuclear weapons used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were small in comparison with today’s thermonuclear weapons.  In recent years, we have learned some new things about nuclear war.  Atmospheric scientists have modeled a hypothetical nuclear war between India and Pakistan in which each side uses 50 Hiroshima-size nuclear weapons on the other side’s cities.  In addition to the direct effects of the weapons, there would be significant indirect effects on the environment.  Smoke from the burning cities would rise into the stratosphere and reduce warming sunlight for ten years, which would lower average surface temperatures, reduce growing seasons and lead to global famine that could kill hundreds of millions of people. 


    That would be the result of a small nuclear war, using less than one percent of the operationally deployed nuclear weapons on the planet.  A nuclear war between the US and Russia could lead to the extinction of most or all complex life on Earth, including human life.  As we celebrate Earth Day this year, 20 years after the end of the Cold War, both the US and Russia maintain hundreds of launch-ready, land-based inter-continental ballistic missiles on high-alert status, ready to be fired in moments.


    We who are alive today are the trustees of this planet for future generations.  We’re failing in our responsibility to pass it on intact.  We need a new Earth ethic that embraces our responsibility for fairness to each other and to the future.  We need new ways of educating that do not simply accept the status quo.  We need to trade in our patriotism for a global humatriotism.  We need a new approach to economics based on what is truly precious – life and the conditions that support it. 


    Earth Day will have its greatest value if it reminds us to care for our Earth and each other all the other days of the year, individually and through our public policy.  We need to inspire people throughout the world, young and old alike, with a vision of the beauty and wonder of the Earth that we can now enjoy, restore and preserve for future generations if we tend to our planet with the discipline of the little prince. 

  • Nuclear Weapons as Instruments of Peace?

    Richard FalkA few days ago I was a participant in a well-attended academic panel on ‘the decline of violence and warfare’ at the International Studies Association’s Annual Meeting held this year in San Diego, California. The two-part panel featured appraisal of the common argument of two prominent recent publications: Steven Pinker’s best-selling The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence has Declined and Joshua Goldstein’s well-researched, informative, and provocative Winning the War on War: The Decline of Armed Conflict Worldwide. Both books are disposed to rely upon quantitative data to back up their optimistic assessments of international and domestic political behavior, which if persuasive, offer humanity important reasons to be hopeful about the future. Much of their argument depends on an acceptance of their interpretation of battlefield deaths worldwide, which according to their assessments have declined dramatically in recent decades. But do battlefield deaths tell the whole story, or even the real story, about the role and dangers of political violence and war in our collective lives?


    My role was to be a member of the Goldstein half of the panel. Although I had never previously met Joshua Goldstein I was familiar with his work and reputation as a well regarded scholar in the field of international relations.  To offer my response in the few minutes available to me I relied on a metaphor that drew a distinction between a ‘picture’ and its ‘frame.’ I found the picture of war and warfare presented by Goldstein as both persuasive and illuminating, conveying in authoritative detail information about the good work being doing by UN peacekeeping forces in a variety of conflict settings around the world, as well as a careful crediting of peace movements with a variety of contributions to conflict resolution and war avoidance. Perhaps, the most enduringly valuable part of the book is its critical debunking of prevalent myths about the supposedly rising proportion of civilian casualties in recent wars and inflated reports of casualties and sexual violence in the Congo Wars of 1998-2003. These distortions, corrected by Goldstein, have led to a false public perception that wars and warfare are growing more indiscriminate and brutal in recent years, while the most reliable evidence points in the opposite direction.


    Goldstein is convincing in correcting such common mistakes about political violence and war in the contemporary world, but less so when it comes to the frame and framing of this picture that is conveyed by his title ‘winning the war on war’ and the arguments to this effect that is the centerpiece of his book, and accounts for the interest that it is arousing. For one thing the quantitative measures relied upon do not come to terms with the heightened qualitative risks of catastrophic warfare or the continued willingness of leading societies to anchor their security on credible threats to annihilate tens of millions of innocent persons, which if taking the form of a moderate scale nuclear exchange (less than 1% of the world’s stockpile of weapons) is likely to cause, according to reliable scientific analysis, what has been called ‘a nuclear famine’ resulting in a sharp drop in agricultural output that could last as long as ten years and could be brought about by the release of dense clouds of smoke blocking incoming sunlight.  <http://www.nucleardarkness.org/index2.php>


    Also on the panel were such influential international relations scholars as John Mearsheimer who shared with me the view that the evidence in Goldstein’s book did not establish that, as Mearsheimer put it, ‘war had been burned out of the system,’ or that even such a trend meaningfully could be inferred from recent experience. Mearsheimer widely known for his powerful realist critique of the Israeli Lobby (in collaboration with Stephen Walt) did make the important point that the United States suffers from ‘an addiction to war.’ Mearsheimer did not seem responsive to my insistence on the panel that part of this American addiction to war arose from role being played by entrenched domestic militarism a byproduct of the permanent war economy that disposed policy makers and politicians in Washington to treat most security issues as worthy of resolution only by considering the options offered by thinking within militarist box of violence and sanctions, a viewpoint utterly resistant to learning from past militarist failures (as in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Iran). In my view the war addiction is real, but can only be treated significantly if understood to be a consequence of this blinkering of policy choice by a militarized bureaucracy in nation’s capital that is daily reinforced by a compliant media and a misguided hard power realist worldview sustained by high paid private sector lobbyists and the lure of corporate profits, and continuously rationalized by well funded subsidized think tanks such as The Hoover Institution, The Heritage Foundation, and The American Enterprise Institute. Dwight Eisenhower in his presidential farewell speech famously drew attention to the problem that has grown far worse through the years when he warned the country about ‘the military-industrial complex’ back in 1961.


    What to me was most shocking about the panel was not its overstated claims that political violence was declining and war on the brink of disappearing, but the unqualified endorsement of nuclear weapons as deserving credit for keeping the peace during Cold War and beyond. Nuclear weapons were portrayed as if generally positive contributors to establishing a peaceful and just world, provided only that they do not fall into unwanted hands (which means ‘adversaries of the West,’ or more colorfully phrased by George W. Bush as ‘the axis of evil’) as a result of proliferation. In this sense, although not made explicit in the conversation, Obama’s vision of a world without nuclear weapons set forth at Prague on April 5, 2009 seems irresponsible from the perspective of achieving a less war-prone world. I had been previously aware of Mearsheimer’s support for this position in his hyper-realist account of how World War III was avoided in the period between 1945-1989, but I was not prepared for Goldstein and the well regarded peace researcher, Andrew Mack, blandly to endorse such a conclusion without taking note of the drawbacks of such ‘a nuclear peace.’ Goldstein in his book writes on p.42, “[n]uclear deterrence may in fact help to explain why World War III did not occur during the Cold War—certainly an important accomplishment.” Goldstein does insist that this role of nuclear weapons has problematic aspects associated with some risk of unintended or accidental use and cannot by itself explain other dimensions of the decline of political violence, which rests on a broader set of developments that are usefully depicted elsewhere in the book. These qualifications are welcome but do not offset a seeming willingness to agree that nuclear weapons seemed partly responsible for the avoidance of World War III or the liberal internationalist view, perhaps most fully articulated by Joseph Nye, that an arms control approach is a sufficient indication that the threat posed by the possession and deployment of nuclear weaponry is being responsibly addressed. [Nye, Nuclear Ethics (New York: Free Press, 1986)] 


    Steven Pinker in his book takes a more nuanced position on nuclear weapons, arguing that if it were indeed correct to credit nuclear weapons with the avoidance of World War III, there would be grounds for serious concern. He correctly asserts that such a structure of peace would be “a fool’s paradise, because an accident, a miscommunication, or an air force general obsessed with precious bodily fluids could set off an apocalypse.”  Pinker goes on to conclude that “[t]hankfully, a closer look suggests that the threat of nuclear annihilation deserves little credit for the Long Peace.” (p.268) Instead, Pinker persuasively emphasizes the degree to which World War III was discouraged by memories of the devastation experienced in World War II combined with the realization that advances in conventional weaponry would make a major war among leading states far more deadly than any past war even if no nuclear weapons were used.


    Pinker also believes that a ‘nuclear taboo’ developed after World War II to inhibit recourse to nuclear weapons in all but the most extreme situations, and that this is the primary explanation of why the weapons were not used in a variety of combat settings during the 67 years that have passed since a single atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. But Pinker does not raise deeply disturbing questions about the continued possession and threat to use such weaponry that is retained by a few of the world’s states. Or if the taboo was so strong, why this weaponry remains on hair trigger alert more than 20 years after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, and why on several occasions a threat to use nuclear weapons was used to discourage an adversary from taking certain actions. (see for instance, Steven Starr, “On the overwhelming urgency of de-alerting US & Russian missiles, http://ifyoulovethisplanet.org/?p=3358) And it the taboo was so valued, why did the United States fight so hard, it turns out unsuccessfully, to avoid having the International Court of Justice pronounce on the legality of nuclear weapons? (see ICJ Advisory Opinion, 8 July 1996; < http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/files/95/7495.pdf>) And why has the United States, along with some of the other nuclear weapons states, refused to declare ‘a no first use policy.’ The taboo exists, to be sure, but it is conditional and has been contested in times of international crisis, and its strength rests on the costs associated with any further use of nuclear weapons, including creating a precedent that might work against future interests.


    Most surprising than these comments on how the presence of nuclear weapons dissuaded the United States and the Soviet Union from going to war, was the failure of my co-panelists to surround their endorsement of the war-avoiding presence of nuclear weapons with moral and prudential qualifiers. At minimum, they might have acknowledged the costs and risks of tying strategic peace so closely to threatened mass devastation and civilizational, and perhaps species, catastrophe, a realization given sardonic recognition in the Cold War by the widely used acronym MAD (mutually assured destruction). The questions put by the audience also avoided this zone of acute moral and prudential insensitivity, revealing the limits of rational intelligence in addressing this most formidable challenge if social and political construction of a humane world order was recognized as a shared goal of decent people. It is unimaginable to reach any plateau of global justice without acting with resolve to rid the world of nuclear weaponry; the geopolitical ploy of shifting attention from disarmament to proliferation does not address the moral depravity of relying on genocidal capabilities and threats to uphold vital strategic interests of a West-centric world (Chinese nuclear weapons, and even those few possessed by North Korea, although dangerous and morally objectionable, at least seem acquired solely for defensive and deterrent purposes).


    I doubt very much that such a discussion of the decline of war and political violence could take place anywhere in the world other than North America, and possibly Western Europe and Japan. Of course, this does not by itself invalidate its central message, but it does raise questions about what is included and what is excluded in an Americans only debate (Mack is an Australian). Aside from the U.S. being addicted to war I heard no references in the course of the panel and discussion to the new hierarchies in the world being resurrected by indirect forms of violence and intervention after the collapse of colonialism, or of structural violence that shortens life by poverty, disease, and human insecurity. I cannot help but wonder whether some subtle corruption has seeped into the academy over the years, especially at elite universities whose faculty received invitations to work as prestigious consultants by the Washington security establishment, or in extreme cases, were hosts to lucrative arrangements that included giving weapons labs a university home and many faculty members a salary surge. Princeton, where I taught for 40 years, was in many respects during the Cold War an academic extension of the military-industrial complex, with humanists advising the CIA, a dean recruiting on behalf of the CIA, a branch of the Institute for Defense Analysis on campus doing secret contract work on counterinsurgency warfare, and a variety of activities grouped under the anodyne heading of ‘security studies’ being sponsored by outside financing. Perhaps, such connections did not spillover into the classroom or induce self-censorship in writing and lecturing, but this is difficult to assess.


    The significance of this professional discussion of nuclear weaponry in 2012, that is, long after the militarized atmosphere of the Cold War period has happily passed from the scene, can be summarized: To witness otherwise perceptive and morally motivated scholars succumbing to the demons of nuclearism is a bad omen; for me this nuclearist complacency is an unmistakable sign of cultural decadence that can only bring on disaster for the society, the species, and the world at some indeterminate future point. We cannot count on our geopolitical luck lasting forever! And we Americans, cannot possibly retain the dubious advantages of targeting the entire world with these weapons of mass destruction without experiencing the effects of a profound spiritual decline, which throughout human history, has always been the prelude to political decline, if not collapse. David Krieger, President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, and I explore this range of issues in our recently published book, The Path to Zero: Dialogues on Nuclear Dangers (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2012).

  • For Nuclear Security Beyond Seoul, Eradicate Land-Based ‘Doomsday’ Missiles

    This article was originally published by the Christian Science Monitor.

    David KriegerPresident Obama and other world leaders gathered at the Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul, South Korea, this week to address threats posed by unsecured nuclear material. If Mr. Obama is truly concerned about nuclear safety, he should seriously consider doing away with the 450 inter-continental ballistic missiles deployed and ready to fire at Russia on a moment’s notice.

    Last month we were among 15 protesters who were arrested in the middle of the night at Vandenberg Air Force Base, some 70 miles north of Santa Barbara, Calif. We were protesting the imminent test flight of a Minuteman III inter-continental ballistic missile.

    The Air Force rationale for doing these tests is to ensure the reliability of the US nuclear deterrent force; but launch-ready land-based nuclear-armed ballistic missiles are the opposite of a deterrent to attack. In fact, their very deployment has the potential to launch World War III and precipitate human extinction – as a result of a false alarm.

    We’re not exaggerating. Here’s why: These nuclear missiles are first-strike weapons – most of them would not survive a nuclear attack. In the event of a warning of a Russian nuclear attack, there would be an incentive to launch all 450 of these Minuteman missiles before the incoming enemy warheads could destroy them in their silos.

    If the warning turned out to be false (there have been many false warnings), and the US missiles were launched before the error was detected, World War III would be underway. The Russians have the same incentive to launch their land-based missiles upon warning of a perceived attack.

    Both US and Russian land-based missiles remain constantly on high-alert status, ready to be launched within minutes. Because of the 30-minute flight times of these missiles, the presidents of both the US and Russia would have only approximately 12 minutes to decide whether to launch their missiles when presented by their military leaders with information indicating an imminent attack (after lower-level threat assessment conferences).

    That’s only 12 minutes or less for the president to decide whether to launch global nuclear war.  While this scenario is unlikely, it is definitely possible: Presidents have repeatedly rehearsed it, and it cannot be ruled out due to the graveness of its potential consequences.

    Russia came close to launching its missiles based on a warning that came Jan. 25, 1995. President Yeltsin was awakened in the middle of the night and told a US missile was headed toward Moscow. Fortunately, Yeltsin was sober and took longer than the time allocated for his decision on whether to launch Russian nuclear-armed missiles in response.

    In the extended time, it became clear that the missile was a weather sounding rocket from Norway and not a US missile headed toward Moscow. Disaster was only narrowly averted.

    Here is the really compelling part of the story: If all 450 US land-based Minuteman III missiles with thermonuclear warheads were ever launched at Russia – with many of the targets in or near cities, as now planned – most Americans would die as a result, along with most of humanity.  Our own weapons would contribute as much or more to these deaths in America and the rest of the globe as any Russian warheads launched.

    This is because smoke from the enormous nuclear firestorms created by even a “successful” US nuclear first-strike would cause catastrophic disruption of global climate and massive destruction of the Earth’s protective ozone layer, leading to global famine.

    Recent peer-reviewed studies, done by atmospheric scientists Alan Robock (Rutgers), Brian Toon (University of Colorado-Boulder), Richard Turco (UCLA) and colleagues, predict that such an attack would create immense firestorms that would quickly surround the planet with a dense stratospheric smoke layer.

    The black smoke would be heated by the sun, lofted like a hot air balloon, and would remain in the stratosphere for at least 10 years. There it would block and prevent a large fraction of sunlight from reaching the Earth’s surface. The sharp reduction of warming sunlight would rapidly produce global Ice Age weather conditions. This would eliminate or dramatically reduce growing seasons for a decade and would likely cause the starvation of most or all humans.

    Along with other effects – including prolonged destruction of the ozone layer – most complex life on Earth could be destroyed. Scientists say the process would be similar to when an asteroid hit the Earth some 65 million years ago, raising a global dust cloud that reduced sunlight, lowering temperatures and killing vegetation. That caused the extinction of the dinosaurs and 70 percent of the Earth’s species.

    The cause of extinction in our case would not be an external, celestial event, but rather the launching of thermonuclear weapons we had created by our own cleverness, supposedly for our own security.

    The Minuteman III missile tests from Vandenberg Air Force Base are thus really tests of an American Nuclear Doomsday Machine.

    Nuclear weapons do not make the US or the world more secure. In particular, the Minuteman III missiles – land-based, vulnerable, on high alert, and susceptible to being triggered by a false alarm – make us less secure. Anyone who cares about humankind having a future should protest these tests and call for the elimination of all nuclear-armed inter-continental ballistic missiles as an initial step toward the total abolition of nuclear weapons.

    If the US did away now with its nuclear-armed land-based missile force, it would still have 288 invulnerable submarine-launched ballistic missiles (armed with approximately 1,152 warheads) to act as a retaliatory threat to nuclear attack. But it would no longer have tempting targets for the Russians to strike preemptively in a time of tension or in the event of a false warning of attack.

    It would still be imperative to reduce US (and Russian) total warheads to levels that do not threaten the possibility of causing human extinction.

    And even the smaller existing nuclear arsenals of India and Pakistan threaten global disaster. Professor Robock and his colleagues have estimated that in a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan in which each side used 50 Hiroshima-size bombs (each side now has more than that number), the smoke rising into the stratosphere could cause a global reduction of sunlight and destruction of ozone leading to crop failures and global famine.

    By comparison, the launch-ready thermonuclear forces of the US and Russia contain roughly 500 times the explosive power of the 100 atomic bombs of India and Pakistan.

    Now is the time for the people and nations of the world to stand up against the potential extinction of the human species and demand that political leaders pursue the path to zero nuclear weapons, a path mandated by the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the International Court of Justice. Until then, protest and civil resistance will be necessary.

    We should seek two principal goals: first, a commitment by the existing nuclear weapon states to forego launch-on-warning and first use of nuclear weapons under any circumstances; and second, good faith negotiations for a new treaty for the phased, verifiable, irreversible, and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons.

    It is our hope that by committing nonviolent civil resistance, being arrested, going to federal court, and explaining our actions to the public, we will help to awaken and engage the American people on this issue of utmost importance to our common future.

  • References on High Alert and Nuclear Famine Dangers

    Bruce Blair, “Keeping Presidents in the Nuclear Dark,” Bruce Blair’s Nuclear Column (Episode #2:  The SIOP Option that Wasn’t), Feb. 16, 2004. Retrieved from http://www.cdi.org/blair/launch-on-warning.cfm

    Bruce G. Blair,”A Rebuttal of the U.S. Statement on the Alert Status of U.S. Nuclear Forces,” October 13, 2007. Retrieved from http://lcnp.org/disarmament/opstatus-blair.htm

    Bruce G. Blair, Harold Feiveson and Frank N. von Hippel, “Who’s Got the Button? Taking Nuclear Weapons off Hair-Trigger Alert,” Scientific American, November 1997. Retrieved from http://www.cdi.org/aboutcdi/SciAmerBB

    False Warnings of Soviet Missile Attacks during 1979-80 Led to Alert Actions for U.S. Strategic Forces; National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 371 Posted – March 1, 2012. Retrieved from http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nukevault/ebb371/index.htm

    Eliminating Nuclear Threats: A Practical Agenda for Global Policymakers, Report of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, Gareth Evans and Yoriko Kawaguchi, Co-Chairs. Retrieved from http://icnnd.org/Reference/reports/ent/part-ii-2.html

    Nathan Hodge and Sharon Weinberger, “The Ever-Ready Nuclear Missileer,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 64, No. 3, pp. 14-21 DOI: 10.2968/064003005. Retrieved from http://www.thebulletin.org/files/064003005.pdf

    ICAN Nuclear Weapons Convention: http://icanw.org/nuclear-weapons-convention

    M.Mills, O. Toon, R. Turco, D. Kinnison and R. Garcia, “Massive Global Ozone Loss Predicted Following Regional Nuclear Conflict,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), Apr 8, 2008, Vol 105(14), pp. 5307-12. Retrieved from http://www.pnas.org/content/105/14/5307.abstract

    A. Robock, L. Oman and G. Stenchikov, “Nuclear Winter Revisited with a Modern Climate Model and Current Nuclear Arsenals: Still Catastrophic Consequences,” Journal of Geophysical Research – Atmospheres, Vol. 112, No. D13, 2007. Retrieved from http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/RobockNW2006JD008235.pdf

    A. Robock, L. Oman, G. L. Stenchikov, O. B. Toon, C. Bardeen and R. Turco, “Climatic Consequences of Regional Nuclear Conflicts,” Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, Vol. 7, 2007, p. 2003-2012. Retrieved from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.org/7/2003/2007/acp-7-2003-2007.pdf

    O.B.Toon, R. Turco, A. Robock, C. Bardeen, L. Oman, and G. Stenchikov, “Atmospheric effects and societal consequences of regional scale nuclear conflicts and acts of individual nuclear terrorism”, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, Vol. 7, 2007, pp. 1973-2003. Retrieved from http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/acp-7-1973-2007.pdf

    O.B. Toon and A. Robock, “2010:  Local Nuclear War, Global Suffering,”  Scientific American, 302, 74-81. Retrieved from http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/RobockToonSciAmJan2010.pdf

    O. Toon, A. Robock and R. Turco, “The Environmental Consequences of Nuclear War,” Physics Today, vol. 61, No. 12, 2008. Retrieved from http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/ToonRobockTurcoPhysicsToday.pdf

    S. Starr, “Catastrophic Climatic Consequences of Nuclear Conflict,” International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, December 2009. Retrieved from http://icnnd.org/Documents/Starr_Nuclear_Winter_Oct_09.pdf

    S. Starr, “Launch-Ready Nuclear Weapons: A Threat to All Nations and Peoples,” Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, August 2011. Retrieved from https://wagingpeace.davidmolinaojeda.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/2011_06_24_starr.pdf

    http://www.nucleardarkness.org

  • Consequences of a Single Failure of Nuclear Deterrence

    Only a single failure of nuclear deterrence is required to start a nuclear war, and the consequences of such a failure would be profound.  Peer-reviewed studies predict that less than 1% of the nuclear weapons now deployed in the arsenals of the Nuclear Weapon States, if detonated in urban areas, would immediately kill tens of millions of people, and cause long-term, catastrophic disruptions of the global climate and massive destruction of Earth’s protective ozone layer. The result would be a global nuclear famine that could kill up to one billion people.  A full-scale war, fought with the strategic nuclear arsenals of the United States and Russia, would so utterly devastate Earth’s environment that most humans and other complex forms of life would not survive.


    Yet no Nuclear Weapon State has ever evaluated the environmental, ecological or agricultural consequences of the detonation of its nuclear arsenals in conflict. Military and political leaders in these nations thus remain dangerously unaware of the existential danger which their weapons present to the entire human race. Consequently, nuclear weapons remain as the cornerstone of the military arsenals in the Nuclear Weapon States, where nuclear deterrence guides political and military strategy.   


    Those who actively support nuclear deterrence are trained to believe that deterrence cannot fail, so long as their doctrines are observed, and their weapons systems are maintained and continuously modernized. They insist that their nuclear forces will remain forever under their complete control, immune from cyberwarfare, sabotage, terrorism, human or technical error. They deny that the short 12-to-30 minute flight times of nuclear missiles would not leave a President enough time to make rational decisions following a tactical, electronic warning of nuclear attack.


    The U.S. and Russia continue to keep a total of 2000 strategic nuclear weapons at launch-ready status – ready to launch with only a few minutes warning.   Yet both nations are remarkably unable to acknowledge that this high-alert status in any way increases the probability that these weapons will someday be used in conflict.  How can strategic nuclear arsenals truly be “safe” from accidental or unauthorized use, when they can be launched literally at a moment’s notice?  A cocked and loaded weapon is infinitely easier to fire than one which is unloaded and stored in a locked safe.


    The mere existence of immense nuclear arsenals, in whatever status they are maintained, makes possible their eventual use in a nuclear war.  Our best scientists now tell us that such a war would mean the end of human history.  We need to ask our leaders:  Exactly what political or national goals could possibly justify risking a nuclear war that would likely cause the extinction of the human race?


    However, in order to pose this question, we must first make the fact known that existing nuclear arsenals – through their capacity to utterly devastate the Earth’s environment and ecosystems – threaten continued human existence.  Otherwise, military and political leaders will continue to cling to their nuclear arsenals and will remain both unwilling and unable to discuss the real consequences of failure of deterrence.  We can and must end the silence, and awaken the peoples of all nations to the realization that “nuclear war” means “global nuclear suicide”.


    A Single Failure of Nuclear Deterrence could lead to:



    • A nuclear war between India and Pakistan;
    • 50 Hiroshima-size (15 kiloton) weapons detonated in the mega-cities of both India and Pakistan (there are now 130-190 operational nuclear weapons which exist in the combined arsenals of these nations);
    • The deaths of 20 to 50 million people as a result of the prompt effects of these nuclear detonations (blast, fire and radioactive fallout);
    • Massive firestorms covering many hundreds of square miles/kilometers (created by nuclear detonations that produce temperatures hotter than those believed to exist at the center of the sun), that would engulf these cities and produce 6 to 7 million tons of thick, black smoke;
    • About 5 million tons of smoke that would quickly rise above cloud level into the stratosphere, where strong winds would carry it around the Earth in 10 days;
    • A stratospheric smoke layer surrounding the Earth, which would remain in place for 10 years;
    • The dense smoke would heat the upper atmosphere, destroy Earth’s protective ozone layer, and block 7-10% of warming sunlight from reaching Earth’s surface;
    • 25% to 40% of the protective ozone layer would be destroyed at the mid-latitudes, and 50-70% would be destroyed at northern and southern high latitudes;
    • Ozone destruction would cause the average UV Index to increase to 16-22 in the U.S, Europe, Eurasia and China, with even higher readings towards the poles (readings of 11 or higher are classified as “extreme” by the U.S. EPA). It would take 7-8 minutes for a fair skinned person to receive a painful sunburn at mid-day;
    • Loss of warming sunlight would quickly produce average surface temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere colder than any experienced in the last 1000 years;
    • Hemispheric drops in temperature would be about twice as large and last ten times longer then those which followed the largest volcanic eruption in the last 500 years,  Mt. Tambora in 1816. The following year, 1817, was called “The Year Without Summer”, which saw famine in Europe from massive crop failures;
    • Growing seasons in the Northern Hemisphere would be significantly shortened.  It would be too cold to grow wheat in most of Canada for at least several years;
    • World grain stocks, which already are at historically low levels, would be completely depleted; grain exporting nations would likely cease exports in order to meet their own food needs;
    • The one billion already hungry people, who currently depend upon grain imports, would likely starve to death in the years following this nuclear war;
    • The total explosive power in these 100 Hiroshima-size weapons is less than 1% of the total explosive power contained in the currently operational and deployed U.S. and Russian nuclear forces.


    A. Robock, L. Oman, G. L. Stenchikov, O. B. Toon, C. Bardeen, and R. Turco, “Climatic consequences of regional nuclear conflicts”, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, Vol. 7, 2007, p. 2003-2012.
    B. M. Mills, O. Toon, R. Turco, D. Kinnison, R. Garcia, “Massive global ozone loss predicted following regional nuclear conflict”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), Apr 8,2008, vol. 105(14), pp. 5307-12.
    C. I. Helfand, ”An Assessment of the Extent of Projected Global Famine Resulting From Limited, Regional Nuclear War”, 2007, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Leeds, MA.
    D. Starr, S. (2009) “Deadly Climate Change From Nuclear War: A threat to human existence.”


    A Single Failure of Nuclear Deterrence could lead to:



    • The launching of 1000 U.S. and 1000 Russian strategic nuclear weapons which remain on launch-ready, high-alert status, capable of being launched with only a few minutes warning;
    • These 2000 weapons – each 7 to 85 times more powerful than the Hiroshima-size (15 kiloton) weapons of India and Pakistan – would detonate in the United States and Russia, and probably throughout the member states of NATO;
    • The detonation of some fraction of the remaining 7700 deployed and operational U.S. and Russian nuclear warheads/weapons would then follow;
    • Hundreds of large cities in the U.S., Europe and Russia would be engulfed in massive firestorms . . . the explosion of each weapon would instantly ignite tens or hundreds of square miles or kilometers of the land and cities beneath it;
    • Many thousands of square miles of urban areas simultaneously burning would produce up to 150 million tons of thick, black smoke;
    • The smoke would rise above cloud level and form an extremely dense stratospheric layer of smoke and soot, which would quickly engulf the Earth;
    • The smoke layer would remain for at least 10 years, and block and absorb sunlight, heating the upper atmosphere and producing Ice Age weather on Earth;
    • The smoke would block up to 70% of the sunlight from reaching the Earth’s surface in the Northern Hemisphere, and up to 35% of the sunlight in the Southern Hemisphere, producing a profound “nuclear darkness”;
    • In the absence of warming sunlight, surface temperatures on Earth become as cold or colder than they were 18,000 years ago at the height of the last Ice Age;
    • There would be rapid cooling of more than 20°C over large areas of North America and of more than 30°C over much of Eurasia;
    • Average global precipitation would be reduced by 45% due to the prolonged cold;
    • 150 million tons of smoke in the stratosphere would cause minimum daily temperatures in the largest agricultural regions of the Northern Hemisphere to drop below freezing every night for 1 to 3 years;
    • Nightly killing freezes and frosts would occur, no crops could be grown;
    • Growing seasons would be virtually eliminated for at least a decade;
    • Massive destruction of the protective ozone layer would also occur, allowing intense levels of dangerous UV-B light to penetrate the atmosphere and reach the surface of the Earth; as the smoke cleared, the UV-B would grow more intense;
    • Massive amounts of radioactive fallout would be generated and spread both locally and globally. The targeting of nuclear reactors would significantly increase global radioactive fallout of long-lived isotopes such as Cesium-137;
    • Gigantic ground-hugging clouds of toxic smoke would be released from the fires; enormous quantities of industrial chemicals would also enter the environment;
    • It would be impossible for many living things to survive the extreme rapidity and degree of changes in temperature and precipitation, combined with drastic increases in UV light, massive radioactive fallout, and massive releases of toxins and industrial chemicals;
    • Already stressed land and marine ecosystems would collapse;
    • Unable to grow food, most humans would starve to death;
    • A mass extinction event would occur, similar to what happened 65 million years ago, when the dinosaurs were wiped out following a large asteroid impact with Earth (70% of species became extinct, including all animals greater than 25 kilograms in weight);
    • Political and military leaders living in underground shelters equipped with many years worth of food, water, energy, and medical supplies would probably not survive in the hostile post-war environment.

    1. O. Toon , A. Robock, and R. Turco, “The Environmental Consequences of Nuclear War”, Physics  Today, vol. 61, No. 12, 2008, p. 37-42.
    2. A. Robock, L. Oman, G. Stenchikov, “Nuclear winter revisited with a modern climate model and current nuclear arsenals: Still catastrophic consequences”, Journal of Geophysical Research – Atmospheres, Vol. 112, No. D13, 2007. p. 4 of 14.
    3. S. Starr, “Catastrophic Climatic Consequences of Nuclear Conflict”. (2009). ICNND


    See www.nuclearfamine.org or www.nucleardarkness.org for detailed sources of information on the environmental consequences of nuclear war.