Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: nuclear threat

  • May: This Month in Nuclear Threat History

    May 3, 1983 – The U.S. Catholic Bishops Pastoral Letter on War and Peace, promulgated by sixty distinguished bishops, noted that, “Nuclear weaponry has drastically changed the nature of warfare and the arms race poses a threat to human life and human civilization which is without precedent.”  In their conclusions the bishops asserted that, “The [nuclear] arms race is one of the greatest curses on the human race.”  The letter called for the elimination of nuclear weapons and global militarization.  Today, there still exists tens of thousands of nuclear weapons in the world including strategic, tactical, reserve, and standby warheads. The arms race may not be growing uncontrollably as it did during the Cold War, but it is not inexorably moving toward Global Zero either.  Recent tensions in Russian-American relations hint that a renewed Cold War may be possible.  (Source:  Philip Louis Cantelon, Richard Hewitt, and Robert C. Williams, editors.  “The American Atom:  A Documentary History of Nuclear Policies from the Discovery of Fission to the Present.”  University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991, second edition, pp. 267-68.)

    May 5, 1962 – Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, at a speech before NATO ministers in Athens warned the representatives that “NATO should never be forced to choose between suffering a military defeat or starting a nuclear war.”  He also expressed concern that the existence of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in Europe increased the threat of nuclear war.  In 2014, especially with increased tension levels with the Russian Federation over the Crimea-Ukraine Crisis, there remain serious concerns about U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe.  There are still about 200 U.S. nuclear weapons stored in Turkey, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands for use by NATO aircraft.  And, of course, Russia also has tactical nuclear weapons deployed close to their borders with Europe and Turkey. (Source:  Eric Schlosser.  “Command and Control:  Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Incident, and the Illusion of Safety.” New York:  Penguin Press, 2013, pp. 287, 476-77.)

    May 15, 1957 – The United Kingdom tested its first thermonuclear weapon at a Christmas Island test site in the Pacific.  The Grapple 1/Short Granite test produced a yield of 200-300 kilotons.  It was one of 45 nuclear weapons tests by Britain in the Pacific region along with another 24 conducted in the U.S. at the Nevada Test Site.  Those tests were a small sample of thousands of nuclear weapons tests conducted by the U.S., Russia, China, and other members of the Nuclear Club.   As of this writing, according to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization’s website, 183 nations have signed and 162 countries have ratified a treaty that bans all nuclear testing.  The CTBT was initially signed by the U.S., U.K., and almost seventy other nations on September 24, 1996.  (Source:  Jack Mendelsohn and David Grahame, editors.  “Arms Control Chronology” Washington, DC:  Center for Defense Information, 2002, pp. 4, 6, and CTBT Organization’s website, www.ctbto.org accessed April 14, 2014.)

    May 16, 2000 – New York Times journalist William Broad reported the release of declassified documents relating to a staff study by the U.S. Air Force Special Weapons Center conducted in January of 1959.  One of the participants in the study, the late astronomer-physicist Carl Sagan, was among several scientists tasked to assess the feasibility of conducting a nuclear weapons test on the lunar surface.  Sagan and the other participants concluded that the blast would “ruin the pristine environment of the moon.”  On January 27, 1967, the multilateral Outer Space Treaty was signed and the agreement was later entered into force on October 10 of that same year.  The treaty prohibits the placement of weapons of mass destruction in orbit, on the moon, or on any celestial body.  The only recent dilution of the international consensus to prevent nuclear weapons from being deployed or exploded outside Earth’s atmosphere has been debate about utilizing nuclear weapons, as a last resort, to prevent a possible future asteroid or comet collision with our planet.  (Source:  B612 Foundation, www.b612foundation.org accessed April 14, 2014.)

    May 22, 2011 – Islamic militants attacked, penetrated the defensive perimeter, and seized at least one building at a naval aviation base, PNS Mehran, outside Karachi, Pakistan. It took approximately one day for Pakistani military forces to kill or capture the assailants.  While it is believed that there were no nuclear weapons stored at this base, a similar attack staged about 15 miles away at a suspected nuclear weapons storage facility near Masroor could result in the theft of nuclear warheads or materials which could be used in a future WMD attack on Pakistan, India, or any nation including the United States.  Nuclear terrorism represents perhaps the most likely threat that would be dramatically reduced or eliminated if global nuclear arsenals were reduced to less than 200-500 warheads.  (Source:  Combating Terrorism Center, U.S. Military Academy, West Point, NY, www.ctc.usma.edu accessed April 14, 2014.)

    May 26, 1972 – In Moscow, President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev signed the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT I) Interim Agreement which placed a ceiling on strategic offensive nuclear weapons.  Also signed was the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM-I) which limited strategic anti-ballistic missile defenses.  More recently, building on the SALT I and II as well as START and SORT agreements, the two nations signed on to the New START Treaty on April 8, 2010.  That treaty entered into force on February 5, 2011.  This agreement limited the number of deployed strategic nuclear warheads to 1,550 while also limiting each side’s deployed strategic missiles and bombers to 700.  However, President George W. Bush’s December 13, 2001 announced withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, which was culminated six months later, combined with deployments of missile defense systems in Europe during the Bush and Barack Obama administrations has helped introduce a significant level of strategic instability into nuclear relations between Russia and America.  The U.S. and NATO have justified ABM systems as a way to circumvent breakout by Iran and the possible launching of future nuclear-capable ballistic missiles by that nation.   However, Russia views U.S. plans for missile defenses in Europe as a threat to Moscow.  Recently, because of the Crimea-Ukraine Crisis, both sides have either delayed or cancelled planned future discussions/negotiations on the matter leading many to believe that a possible Cold War II may be eminent.   (Source:  Jack Mendelsohn and David Grahame, editors.  “Arms Control Chronology.” Washington, DC:  Center for Defense Information, 2002, pp. 2, 4.)

  • More on the Ukraine

    martin_hellman1This article, along with Hellman’s full series on the Ukraine crisis, can be found at his blog Defusing the Nuclear Threat.

    With the Crimea voting today on whether to secede from the Ukraine, and early returns indicating strong support for secession, the following perspectives on the crisis are particularly relevant. As before, I am emphasizing unusual perspectives not because the mainstream view (“It’s  Russia’s fault!”) doesn’t have some validity, but because it over-simplifies a complex issue. And, when dealing with a nation capable of destroying us in under an hour, it would be criminally negligent not to look at all the evidence before imposing sanctions or taking other dangerous steps.

    In his blog, Russia: Other Points of View, Patrick Armstrong asks, “If, as seems to be generally expected, tomorrow’s [now today’s] referendum in Crimea produces a substantial majority in favour of union with the Russian Federation, what will Moscow’s reaction be?” It will be interesting to assess his answer a week from now, when time will tell if he was right:

    I strongly expect that it will be……

    Nothing.

    There are several reasons why I think this. One is that Moscow is reluctant to break up states. I know that that assertion will bring howls of laughter from the Russophobes who imagine that Putin has geography dreams every night but reflect that Russia only recognised the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia after Georgia had actually attacked South Ossetia. The reason for recognition was to prevent other Georgian attacks. Behind that was the memory of the chaos caused in the Russian North Caucasus as an aftermath of Tbilisi’s attacks on South Ossetia and Abkhazia in the 1990s. Russia is a profoundly status quo country – largely because it fears change would lead to something worse – and will not move on such matters until it feels it has no other choice. We are not, I believe, quite at that point yet on Crimea let alone eastern Ukraine.

    Moscow can afford to do nothing now because time is on its side. The more time passes, the more people in the West will learn who the new rulers of Kiev are.

    To show “who the new rulers of Kiev are,” Armstrong then quotes from a Los Angeles Times article, which starts off:

    It’s become popular to dismiss Russian President Vladimir Putin as paranoid and out of touch with reality. But his denunciation of “neofascist extremists” within the movement that toppled the old Ukrainian government, and in the ranks of the new one, is worth heeding. The empowerment of extreme Ukrainian nationalists is no less a menace to the country’s future than Putin’s maneuvers in Crimea. These are odious people with a repugnant ideology.

    Read the rest of the article to learn more.

    And a Reuters dispatch shows how the interim Ukrainian government is making it more likely that Crimea’s desire to secede and re-join Russia will be honored by Russia:

    Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk vowed on Sunday to track down and bring to justice all those promoting separatism in its Russian-controlled region of Crimea “under the cover of Russian troops”.

    “I want to say above all … to the Ukrainian people: Let there be no doubt, the Ukrainian state will find all those ringleaders of separatism and division who now, under the cover of Russian troops, are trying to destroy Ukrainian independence,” he told a cabinet meeting as the region voted in a referendum on becoming a part of Russia.

    We will find all of them – if it takes one year, two years – and bring them to justice and try them in Ukrainian and international courts. The ground will burn beneath their feet.”

    Given that the Ukrainian opposition demanded amnesty for even the violent protesters in Kiev, how can the new government possibly expect the more peaceful Crimean opposition not to secede under such threats? It is also worth noting that this new government was installed by force in violation of an agreement worked out between Yanukovych and the political leaders of the Ukrainian opposition.

  • March: This Month in Nuclear Threat History

    March 1, 1954 – In the Pacific Ocean’s Marshall Islands, the U.S. military conducted the BRAVO nuclear weapons test, one of thousands conducted by Nuclear Club Members, in the atmosphere, on the ground, and underground, during the Cold War and Post-Cold War period.  The yield, of approximately 15 megatons from the solid fuel lithium deuteride fusion warhead, was 2-3 times what was expected and unusual prevailing winds carried the radioactive fallout to unexpected places including a Japanese fishing trawler, Lucky Dragon sailing outside the exclusion zone.  All 23 Japanese crewmen were later hospitalized and one of the unfortunate men died as a result of radioactive exposure from an immense blast that produced a fireball four miles wide and a mushroom cloud 60 miles wide.  (Source:  Chuck Hansen.  “The Swords of Armageddon.”  Chuklea Publications:  Sunnyvale, CA, 2007.)

    March 4, 1969 – MIT and 30 other universities called for a national research stoppage to alert the public to how the “misuse of science and technology knowledge presents a major threat to the existence of mankind.”  Concerns not only about nuclear weapons, radioactive and chemical toxic leaks from U.S. military and civilian nuclear production and bombmaking sites but also about Agent Orange, and biological/chemical WMDs led scientists and academics to sign on to this pledge.  (Source:  Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick.  “The Untold History of the United States.”  New York:  Gallery Books, 2012.)

    March 11, 2011 – After a historically large earthquake and tsunami struck northeast Japan, three of the six nuclear reactors at Tokyo Electrical Power Company’s Fukushima Dai-chi facility suffered partial meltdowns resulting in the evacuation of tens of thousands of nearby residents.  The accident was the worst nuclear meltdown since the April 1986 Chernobyl Incident.  Nearly three years later, large volumes of radioactive-contaminated water continue to spill into the Pacific Ocean from the plant site as a long-term solution to the crisis has yet to be reached. (Source:  Various news media reports including Democracy Now, 2011-2014).

    March 22, 1963 – At a broadcast press conference, President John F. Kennedy speaks about the possibility that by the 1970s “…of the U.S. having to face a world in which 15 or 20 or 25 nations may have these [nuclear] weapons…I regard that as the greatest possible danger and hazard.”  While those fears were not quite realized, it is nevertheless true that nuclear proliferation in Iran, North Korea, and elsewhere remains a deadly serious problem in the 21st century.  Some experts believe that only by phasing out nuclear power in the next few decades, can the world head off the actualization of our 35th President’s worst fears.
    (Source:  Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick.  “The Untold History of the United States.”  New York:  Gallery Books, 2012.)

    March 23, 1983 – In a nationally televised speech, President Ronald Reagan expressed the desire to “make nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete” by committing the U.S. to develop a national missile defense system based on the ground and in outer space.   Media critics derisively referred to the plan as “Star Wars” and hundreds of billions of dollars were spent on attempts to deploy modest theater and national missile defenses in the coming decades.  In 2001, President George W. Bush withdrew from the 1972 ABM Treaty with Moscow signaling a new destabilizing, uncertain strategic defensive arms race that continues today.  (Source:  Bradley Graham.  “Hit to Kill:  The New Battle Over Shielding America From Missile Attack.”  New York:  Public Affairs, 2001.)

  • Castle Bravo: Sixty Years of Nuclear Pain

    As the trustee of the United Nations Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, the United States had an obligation to protect the health and welfare of the Marshall Islanders.  Instead, the U.S. conducted 67 nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands between 1946 and 1958.  These 67 nuclear tests had an explosive power equivalent to 1.6 Hiroshima bombs daily for 12 years.  In short, the U.S. used these islands shamefully, and the Marshallese people continue to suffer today as a result.

    Castle Bravo Nuclear ExplosionMarch 1, 2014 marks the 60th anniversary of the Castle Bravo nuclear test, the largest and most devastating nuclear test ever conducted by the U.S.  At 15-megatons, this single blast at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands was 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.  Because the Castle Bravo test was done near ground level, the radiation fallout was far greater than that at either Hiroshima or Nagasaki, where the bombs were exploded well above ground level.

    According to a report presented to the U.N. Human Rights Council in September 2012 by Special Rapporteur Calin Georgescu, “Radiation from the testing resulted in fatalities and in acute and long-term health complications.  The effects of radiation have been exacerbated by near irreversible environmental contamination, leading to loss of livelihoods and lands.  Moreover, many people continue to experience indefinite displacement.”

    The Castle Bravo nuclear test rained down radiation like soft snow on the people of the Marshalls, who were located on islands outside the designated danger zone.  It was several days before the U.S. evacuated these people away from the radioactive danger, resulting in 60 years of pain, suffering and stillbirths.

    Radiation from the blast traveled over 100 miles to irradiate the Japanese fishing boat, Lucky Dragon.  The boat’s chief radio operator, Aikichi Kuboyama, died less than six months later of radiation poisoning.  He is thought to be the first Japanese victim of a hydrogen bomb.  Kuboyama’s last words were, “I pray that I am the last victim of an atomic or hydrogen bomb.”  This was not to be.

    March 1st will be solemnly remembered this 60th anniversary year in Asia and the Pacific.  In the Marshall Islands, flags will be flown at half-mast during the Nuclear Memorial and Survivors Remembrance Day.

    In the U.S., flags will not fly at half-mast.  Most people will go about their business with little awareness of the tragedy we left in the wake of our nuclear testing, either in the Pacific or on the lands of indigenous peoples in Nevada.  Again, on this 60th anniversary, there will be no apology.  Nor will there be adequate compensation provided to the people of the Marshall Islands for the pain and injury they have suffered from U.S. nuclear testing.

    The anniversary of Castle Bravo is an acute reminder that nuclear weapons leave a legacy of horror.  We must wage all-out peace until we reach Nuclear Zero.  For the sake of the seven billion of us who share this Earth and for the people of the future, we must strive to achieve Nuclear Zero, the only number that makes sense.  Nukes are nuts.

    David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • Bravo: 60 Years of Suffering, Cover-Ups, Injustice

    Sixty years ago on March 1 in the heart of the Pacific Ocean, the United States detonated the most powerful nuclear weapon in its history.

    Codenamed Bravo, the 15-megaton hydrogen bomb was 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb that devastated Hiroshima nine years earlier. The Bravo blast “represented as revolutionary an advance in explosive power over the atomic bomb as the atomic bomb had over the conventional weapons of World War II,” historian-lawyer Jonathan Weisgall notes.

    Castle Bravo Nuclear ExplosionAlso unlike Hiroshima’s A-bomb, Bravo was laced with plutonium, a most toxic element with a radioactive existence of half a million years that may be hazardous to humans for at least half that time.

    And, unlike the atomic airburst above Hiroshima, Bravo was a shallow-water ground burst.  It vaporized three of the 23 islands of tiny Bikini Atoll, 2,600 miles southwest of Hawaii, and created a crater that is visible from space.

    A fireball nearly as hot as the center of the sun sucked unto itself water, mud and millions of tons of coral that had been pulverized into ash by the incredible explosion; these clung to tons of radioactive uranium fragments.  The fireball swooshed heavenwards, forming a shimmering white mushroom cloud that hovered over the proving grounds of Bikini and Enewetak atolls, whose inhabitants had earlier been evacuated.

    Wafting eastward, the cloud powdered 236 islanders on Rongelap and Utrik atolls and 28 U.S. servicemen. The islanders played with, drank and ate the snowflake-like particles for days and began suffering nausea, hair loss, diarrhea and skin lesions when they were finally evacuated to a U.S. military clinic.

    These islanders had become a unique medical case. As scientist Neal Hines explains, “Never before in history had an isolated human population been subjected to high but sublethal amounts of radioactivity without the physical and psychological complexities associated with nuclear explosion.”

    Bravo bequeathed the world a new word: fallout.  Even before Bravo, experts—but not the public–knew that the radioactive dust of atmospheric nuclear weapons explosions was invisibly powdering the continental U.S. and touching others worldwide. But Bravo for the first time revealed to the world a new kind of invisible menace, a danger that could not be smelled, seen, felt or tasted.  Bravo exposed radioactive fallout as, what Weisgall calls, “a biological weapon of terror.” It visibly ushered in the globalization of radioactive pollution.

    For these islanders, Bravo also ushered in 60 years of sufferings and a chain reaction of U.S. cover-ups and injustices, as detailed below.  Over the decades, their pleas for just and adequate compensation and U.S. constitutional rights they had been promised were rejected by the U.S. courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, by Congress and by executive-branch administrations headed by presidents of either party.

    SNUBBED BY “AMERICA’S FIRST PACIFIC PRESIDENT”

    The silence by today’s administration of President Obama is acutely embarrassing, given that shortly after his election he described himself as “America’s first Pacific president,” and promised to “strengthen and sustain our leadership in this vitally important part of the world.”

    Since then, Obama has initiated a “pivot” to the Pacific by beefing up and re-positioning U.S.  military units in the region.  But he failed to acknowledge or recognize that these remote Pacific atolls had served after World War II as proving grounds vital for U.S. superpower status today.  They provided sites for nuclear-weapons tests too powerful and unpredictable to be detonated in the 48 contiguous states and for tests enabling the transition in nuclear delivery systems from conventional bombers to intercontinental missiles—Star-War-like tests that still continue.

    More recently, also ignoring the moral implications undergirding Marshallese pleas, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel called on U.S. military leaders to better instill ethics in their services so as to ensure “moral character and moral courage.”

    He issued his instructions for more accountability in the wake of investigations into cheating scandals on proficiency and training tests given to nuclear-related personnel in the Navy and Air Force. The Pentagon is also investigating possible illegal drug violations by 11 Air Force officers, including some responsible for launching America’s deadly nuclear missiles.

    U.N. CRITICIZES U.S. ON HUMAN RIGHTS

    If U.S. nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific is un-remembered by the American government, it has not been forgotten internationally.  While the U.S. regularly castigates the governments of China and Russia for human rights abuses or violations, a special United Nations report urges the U.S. government to remedy and compensate Marshall Islanders for its nuclear weapons testing that has caused “immediate and lasting effects” on their human rights.

    “Radiation from the testing resulted in fatalities and in acute and long-term health complications,” according to the report presented to the U.N. Human Rights Council in September 2012 by Special Rapporteur Calin Georgescu.  “The effects of radiation have been exacerbated by near-irreversible environmental contamination, leading to the loss of livelihoods and lands.  Moreover, many people continue to experience indefinite displacement.”

    The report also urged the U.S. to provide more compensation and to consider issuing a presidential acknowledgment and apology to victims adversely affected by its tests.

    The international community and the U.N. “has an ongoing obligation to encourage a final and just resolution for the Marshallese people,” the report reads, because they placed the Marshallese under the U.S.-administered strategic trusteeship for 40-plus years from 1947 until 1990. These international groups might consider a more comprehensive compilation of scientific findings “on this regrettable episode in human history.”

    As the sole administrator for the U.N.-sanctioned trust territory, the U.S. government pledged in 1947 “to protect the inhabitants against the loss of their lands and resources.”  Instead, the U.S. from 1946 to 1958 conducted 67 atomic and hydrogen tests in the Marshall Islands, with a total yield of 108 megatons, which is 98 times greater than the total yield of all the U.S. nuclear tests conducted in Nevada and is equivalent to 7,200 Hiroshima-size bombs.  That works out to an average of more than 1.6 Hiroshima-size bombs per day for the 12 years.

    In addition, the U.S. as the trust administrator was obliged “to protect the health of the inhabitants.” But the Bravo blast, more than any other single detonation, made visible to the world the adverse health and environmental effects these islanders suffered.  Bravo was the first  U.S. hydrogen device that could be delivered by airplane and was designed to catch up with the Soviets who had six months earlier exploded their aircraft-deliverable hydrogen bomb.

    A CHAIN REACTION OF COVER-UPS & “ASHES OF DEATH”

    A U.S. cover-up began just hours after the Bravo weapon was detonated.   Hardly a “routine atomic test” as it was officially described, Bravo initially created a radioactive, leaf-shaped plume that turned into a lethal zone covering 7,000 square miles—that is, the distance from Washington to New York. Then, radioactive snow-like particles began descending 100 to 280 miles away over lands, lagoons and inhabitants of Rongelap and Utrik atolls.  Within three days, 236 islanders were evacuated to a U.S. Navy clinic.

    The U.S. had hoped to keep the evacuation secret but a personal letter from Corporal Don Whitaker to his hometown newspaper in Cincinnati shared his observations of the distraught islanders arriving at the clinic.  The U.S. then issued a press release saying the islanders were “reported well.”  But gripping photographs taken at the time and later published in the Journal of the American Medical Association documented a 7-year-old girl whose hair had tufted out and a 13-year-old boy with a close-up of the back of the head showing a peeling off of the skin, a loss of hair and a persistent sore on his left ear. Others had lower blood counts that weaken resistance to infections.  Decades later, in 1982, a U.S. agency described Bravo as “the worst single incident of fallout exposures in all the U.S. atmospheric testing program.”Just days after the Cincinnati newspaper expose, another surprise stunned the U.S. government and the world. News accounts reported 23 crew members of a Japanese tuna trawler, the No. 5 Fukuryu Maru (the “Lucky Dragon”) had also been Bravo-dusted with what is known in Japan as shi no hai, or “ashes of death.”

    When the trawler reached home port near Tokyo two weeks after the Bravo explosion, the crews’ radiation sickness and the trawler’s radioactive haul of tuna shocked U.S. officials and created panic at fish markets in Japan and the West Coast. The Japanese government and public described the Lucky Dragon uproar as “a second Hiroshima” and it nearly led to severing diplomatic relations.

    A U.S. doctor dispatched by the government to Japan predicted the crew would recover within a month.  But, six months later, the Lucky Dragon’s 40-year-old radio operator, Aikichi Kuboyama, died.  The New York Times described him as “probably the world’s first hydrogen-bomb casualty.”

    The U.S. cover stories for Bravo’s disastrous results plus subsequent official cover-ups at the time—and continuing today–were that the might of the Bravo shot was greater than had been expected and that the winds shifted at the last minute unexpectedly to waft radioactivity over inhabited areas.  Both cover stories have since been rebutted by revelations in once-secret official documents and by testimonies of two U.S. servicemen who were also Bravo-dusted on Rongerik Atoll.

    A STRING OF UNENDING INJUSTICES

    Within days after the Bravo shot, the U.S. cover-up had secretly taken a more menacing turn.  In an injustice exposing disregard for human health, the Bravo-exposed islanders were swept into a top-secret project in which they were used as human subjects to research the effects of radioactive fallout.

    A week after Bravo, on March 8, at the Navy clinic on Kwajalein, E.P. Cronkite, one of the U.S. medical personnel dispatched there shortly after the islanders’ arrival, was handed a “letter of instruction” establishing “Project 4.1.” It was titled the “Study of Response of Human Beings Exposed to Significant Beta and Gamma Radiation Due to Fallout from High Yield Weapons.” To avoid negative publicity, the document had been classified as “Secret Restricted Data” until 1994, four years after the end of U.S. responsibilities for its trusteeship at the U.N. and when the Clinton Administration began an open-government initiative.
    It would be 40 years before islanders learned the true nature of Project 4.1.  Documents declassified since 1994 show that four months before the Bravo shot, on November 10, 1953, U.S. officials had listed Project 4.1 to research the effects of fallout radiation on human beings as among 48 experiments to be conducted during the test, thus seeming to indicate that using islanders as guinea pigs was premeditated. However, an advisory commission appointed by President Clinton in 1994 indicated “there was insufficient evidence to demonstrate intentional human testing on Marshallese.”

    For this human-subject research, the islanders had neither been asked nor gave their informed consent—which was established as an essential international standard when the Nuremberg code was written following the war crimes convictions of German medical officers.

    Under Project 4.1, the exposed Rongelapese were studied yearly and so were the Utrik Islanders after thyroid nodules began appearing on them in 1963. The islanders began complaining they were being treated like guinea pigs in a laboratory experiment rather than sick humans deserving treatment.  A doctor who evaluated them annually came close to agreeing when he wrote 38 years after Bravo, “In retrospect, it was unfortunate that the AEC [Atomic Energy Commission], because it was a research organization, did not include support of basic health care of populations under study.”

    During this time, Bravo-dusted islanders developed one of the world’s highest rates of thyroid abnormalities; one third of the Rongelapese developed abnormalities in the thyroid, which controls physical and mental growth, and thus resulted in some cases of mental retardation, lack of vigor and stunted development. Islanders complained of stillborn births, cancers and genetic damage.

    Seven weeks after Bravo, on April 21, Cronkite recommended to military officials that exposed Marshallese generally “should be exposed to no further radiation” for at least 12 years and probably for the rest of their natural lives.

    Yet, three years later, U.S. officials returned the Rongelapese to their radioactive homeland after they had spent three months at the Kwajalein military facility and at Ejit Island.  Besides being Bravo-dusted, their homeland by 1957 had accumulated radioactivity from some of the 34 prior nuclear explosions in the Marshall Islands.  Utrik Islanders were returned home by the U.S. shortly after their medical stay on Kwajalein.

    For 28 years the Rongelapese lived in their radioactive homeland until 1985.  Unable to get answers to their questions, they discounted U.S. assurances that their island was safe.  Failing to provide the Rongelapese “information on their total radiation condition, information that is available, amounts to a coverup,” according to a memo dated July 22, 1985 written by Tommy McCraw of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Safety.

    In mid-1985, when the U.S. refused to move them, 300 Rongelapese persuaded the environmental organization Greenpeace to transport them and 100 tons of their building materials 110 miles away to Majetto Island. Many of them have since stayed there because they fear their homeland is still too radioactive even though the U.S. has funded resettlement facilities.

    NEW AGREEMENTS BUILT ON U.S. SECRECY

    In 1986, President Reagan signed the Compact of Free Association with related agreements after its ratification by the central government of the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) and the U.S. Congress, thus ending bilaterally America’s trusteeship arrangement, which was continued by the U.N. Security Council until 1990.

    The Compact recognizes RMI as a sovereign, self-governing independent nation in terms of internal management and international relations but with significant U.S. economic aid and services and continues to reserve to the U.S. government sole military access to RMI’s 700,000 square miles used still for long-range missile tests.

    Yet, during the Compact negotiations, the U.S. government failed to disclose material information about its testing program to the Pacific Islanders.  Not until 1994 did the U.S. government respond favorably to RMI’s Freedom of Information Act request for details about the total number of nuclear tests conducted in its territories as well as the kind and yield of each test.  Newly declassified information then also revealed that more islanders were exposed to radiation than previously admitted by the U.S.  As late as June 2013 the U.S. gave RMI officials 650-plus pages detailing freshly declassified fallout results of 49 Pacific hydrogen-bomb blasts with an explosive force equal to 3,200 Hiroshima-size bombs conducted in only two years–1956 and 1958.

    While the Marshallese were kept in the dark during negotiations about material information, the U.S. crafted Compact agreements that included a provision prohibiting those inhabitants from seeking future legal redress in the U.S. courts and dismissing all current court cases in exchange for a $150 million compensation trust fund to be administered by a Nuclear Claims Tribunal.

    However, that trust fund is now depleted. That fund proved inadequate to pay $14 million in monies already awarded for personal health claims and 712 of those granted awards (42%) have died without receiving their full payments. The nuclear-weapons tests are presumed by the U.S. to have afflicted many Marshallese with various kinds of cancers and other diseases. A Congressional Research Service Report for Congress in March 2005 indicates that “as many as 4,000 claims may have yet to be filed among persons alive during testing.”

    A Marshallese petition sent to the House Speaker and President Bush on Sept. 11, 2000 states that circumstances have changed since the initial agreements and the Marshallese government demands far more in just and adequate compensation for health and property claims.  But those demands for justice have thus far gone unanswered.

    March 1 will be solemnly remembered in Asia and the Pacific.  In the Marshall Islands flags are flown at half-mast during the Nuclear Memorial and Survivors Remembrance Day. Last year on the anniversary of the Bravo shot, Marshallese President Christopher J. Loeak described March 1 as “a day that has and will continue to remain in infamy in the hearts and minds of every Marshallese.” He renewed his call for President Obama and the U.S. government for justice.

    This year President Loeak is scheduled in February for a state visit to Japan. He will meet with Emperor Akhito and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and journey to the Hiroshima Peace Park and Memorial Museum.

    With the approaching 60th anniversary of the Bravo blast, Loeak might also visit a pavilion exhibiting the hull of the ill-fated Lucky Dragon fishing trawler and a marker commemorating its 450 tons of radioactive tuna that touched off worldwide alarms.

    The Lucky Dragon and Hiroshima beseech “America’s first Pacific president” and the world to reflect on the catastrophic horror of nuclear weapons and to rectify their bitter legacy of lingering injustices.

    Beverly Deepe Keever is author of News Zero: The New York Times and the Bomb and of Death Zones and Darling Spies: Seven Years of Vietnam War Reporting.

  • Speech in House of Representatives

    Earl BlumenauerMr. Speaker, before turning to the subject at hand, I really hope that people look at the CBO report that was referenced by my good friend from Pennsylvania, and you will find that the 2 million people who would no longer be working, are not going to increase unemployment. The unemployment rate will be lower. There are people who are trapped in the workforce now because they can’t afford health care. The Affordable Care Act will actually enable some people to retire who want to retire or stop working a second job. Read the report and find out that this is actually a very positive signal.

    But, Mr. Speaker, I am here today to reference something else that was in the newspapers. The papers are filled with scandal about the nuclear weapons program. The real scandal is not the cheating or drug use by people with their finger on the nuclear button. The scandal is that these people are there on the job at all, with these nuclear weapons; jobs and nuclear weapons that should no longer exist.

    Don’t get me wrong. The alleged drug use by the people who stand watch daily with a finger on the nuclear trigger, or that were cheating on their proficiency exams, is outrageous, but it is scandalous that we are frozen in time linked to a nuclear Cold War past and committed to wildly wasteful spending.

    These are weapons that have never been used in 69 years, that did not deter the 9/11 attackers, and cannot help us in our major strategic challenges today. They have never been used in battle since World War II, but they have almost been used by miscalculation and mistake.

    In Eric Schlosser’s recent book called “Command and Control,” there are terrifying examples of what were termed “broken arrows,” nuclear mishaps.

    A nuclear bomb was accidentally released over South Carolina, landing in Walter Greg’s backyard, leaving a 75-foot wide, 30-foot crater, leveling his home. Luckily, it failed to trigger the nuclear explosion.

    In North Carolina, a B-52 fell into a tailspin carrying two hydrogen bombs, each 250 times more powerful than Hiroshima.

    There were numerous instances when our bomber fleet, which used to be on the runway idling, on alert 24/7, was prone to catching on fire while packed with nuclear bombs.

    A few years ago, there was a B-52 which flew across the country unknowingly carrying six nuclear-armed air-launched missiles.

    By no stretch of the imagination, do we need these 450 intercontinental ballistic missiles on alert, plus nuclear armed bombers, all on top of our nuclear submarine-based missiles? We don’t need a fraction of this weaponry. At most, we need perhaps one scaled-down system. There is nobody left to deter. We are competing in Russia in the Winter Olympics right now.

    A small portion of one of these delivery systems is all the nuclear deterrence we could ever possibly need. The larger and more complex the infrastructure is not just more expensive, but more prone to mistake.

    We are talking about upwards of $700 billion over the next 10 years in operations, modernization, new systems, new nuclear submarines. It is outrageous. It is dangerous. Let me put that in context. $750 billion is more than the Federal Government will spend on education in its entirety in the next 5 years.

    It is time for Congress and the American people to put an end to this.
    Earl Blumenauer is a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, representing Portland, Oregon.

  • The Fragility of Our Complex Civilization

    The rapid growth of knowledge

    john_averyCultural evolution depends on the non-genetic storage, transmission, diffusion and utilization of information. The development of human speech, the invention of writing, the development of paper and printing, and finally, in modern times, mass media, computers and the Internet: all these have been crucial steps in society’s explosive accumulation of information and knowledge. Human cultural evolution proceeds at a constantly-accelerating speed, so great in fact that it threatens to shake society to pieces.

    In many respects, our cultural evolution can be regarded as an enormous success. However, at the start of the 21st century, most thoughtful observers agree that civilization is entering a period of crisis. As all curves move exponentially upward, population, production, consumption, rates of scientific discovery, and so on, one can observe signs of increasing environmental stress, while the continued existence and spread of nuclear weapons threaten civilization with destruction. Thus, while the explosive growth of knowledge has brought many benefits, the problem of achieving a stable, peaceful and sustainable world remains serious, challenging and unsolved.

    Our modern civilization has been built up by means of a worldwide exchange of ideas and inventions. It is built on the achievements of many ancient cultures. China, Japan, India, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, the Islamic world, Christian Europe, and the Jewish intellectual traditions, all have contributed.   Potatoes, corn, squash, vanilla, chocolate, chili peppers, and quinine are gifts from the American Indians.

    The sharing of scientific and technological knowledge is essential to modern civilization. The great power of science is derived from an enormous concentration of attention and resources on the understanding of a tiny fragment of nature. It would make no sense to proceed in this way if knowledge were not permanent, and if it were not shared by the entire world.

    Science is not competitive. It is cooperative. It is a great monument built by many thousands of hands, each adding a stone to the cairn. This is true not only of scientific knowledge but also of every aspect of our culture, history, art and literature, as well as the skills that produce everyday objects upon which our lives depend. Civilization is cooperative. It is not competitive.

    Our cultural heritage is not only immensely valuable; it is also so great that no individual comprehends all of it. We are all specialists, who understand only a tiny fragment of the enormous edifice. No scientist understands all of science. Perhaps Leonardo da Vinci could come close in his day, but today it is impossible. Nor do the vast majority people who use cell phones, personal computers and television sets every day understand in detail how they work. Our health is preserved by medicines, which are made by processes that most of us do not understand, and we travel to work in automobiles and buses that we would be completely unable to construct.

    The fragility of modern society

    As our civilization has become more and more complex, it has become increasingly vulnerable to disasters. We see this whenever there are power cuts or transportation failures due to severe storms. If electricity should fail for a very long period of time, our complex society would cease to function. The population of the world is now so large that it is completely dependent on the the high efficiency of modern agriculture. We are also very dependent on the stability of our economic system.

    The fragility of modern society is particularly worrying, because, with a little thought, we can predict several future threats which will stress our civilization very severely. We will need much wisdom and solidarity to get safely through the difficulties that now loom ahead of us.

    We can already see the the problem of famine in vulnerable parts of the world. Climate change will make this problem more severe by bringing aridity to parts of the world that are now large producers of grain, for example the Middle West of the United States. Climate change has caused the melting of glaciers in the Himalayas and the Andes. When these glaciers are completely melted, China, India and several countries in South America will be deprived of their summer water supply. Water for irrigation will also become increasingly problematic because of falling water tables. Rising sea levels will drown many rice-growing areas in South-East Asia. Finally, modern agriculture is very dependent on fossil fuels for the production of fertilizer and for driving farm machinery. In the future, high-yield agriculture will be dealt a severe blow by the rising price of fossil fuels.

    Economic collapse is another threat that we will have to face in the future. Our present fractional reserve banking system is dependent on economic growth. But perpetual growth of industry on a finite planet is a logical impossibility. Thus we are faced with a period of stress, where reform of our growth-based economic system and great changes of lifestyle will both become necessary.

    How will we get through the difficult period ahead? I believe that solutions to the difficult problems of the future are possible, but only if we face the problems honestly and make the adjustments which they demand. Above all, we must maintain our human solidarity.

    The great and complex edifice of human civilization is far too precious to be risked in a thermonuclear war. It has been built by all humans, working together. By working together, we must now ensure that it is handed on intact to our children and grandchildren.

    John Avery is a leader in the Danish Pugwash movement.

  • Statement on the Catastrophic Humanitarian Consequences of Nuclear Weapons

    I am taking the floor on behalf of the following Member States, Afghanistan, Algeria, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Austria, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belize, Benin, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chile, Colombia, Congo, Costa Rica, Côte d’Ivoire, Cuba, Cyprus, DR Congo, Denmark, Djibouti, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Fiji, Gabon, Georgia, Ghana, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Haiti, Honduras, Iceland, Indonesia, Iraq, Ireland, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kiribati, Lao PDR, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Liechtenstein, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Malta, Marshall Islands, Macedonia, Mexico, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nauru, Nepal, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Norway, Palau, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Qatar, Rwanda, Samoa, San Marino, Senegal, Serbia, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Solomon Islands, South Africa, South Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland, Switzerland, Tanzania, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Tuvalu, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, Uruguay, Vanuatu, Viet Nam, Yemen, Zambia, my own country, New Zealand, and the Observer State the Holy See.

    Our countries are deeply concerned about the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons. Past experience from the use and testing of nuclear weapons has amply demonstrated the unacceptable humanitarian consequences caused by the immense, uncontrollable destructive capability and indiscriminate nature of these weapons. The fact-based discussion that took place at the Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons convened by Norway last March allowed us to deepen our collective understanding of those consequences. A key message from experts and international organisations was that no State or international body could address the immediate humanitarian emergency caused by a nuclear weapon detonation or provide adequate assistance to victims.

    The broad participation at the Conference, with attendance by 128 States, the ICRC, a number of UN humanitarian organisations and civil society, reflected the recognition that the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons are a fundamental and global concern. We warmly welcome Mexico’s announcement of a follow-up Conference, scheduled for 13-14 February 2014. We firmly believe that it is in the interests of all States to participate in that Conference, which aims to further broaden and deepen understanding of this matter, particularly with regard to the longer-term consequences of a nuclear-weapon detonation. We welcome civil society’s ongoing engagement.

    This work is essential, because the catastrophic consequences of nuclear weapons affect not only governments, but each and every citizen of our interconnected world. They have deep implications for human survival; for our environment; for socio-economic development; for our economies; and for the health of future generations. For these reasons, we firmly believe that awareness of the catastrophic consequences of nuclear weapons must underpin all approaches and efforts towards nuclear disarmament.

    This is not, of course, a new idea. The appalling humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons became evident from the moment of their first use, and from that moment have motivated humanity’s aspirations for a world free from this threat, which have also inspired this statement. The humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons have been reflected in numerous UN resolutions, including the first resolution passed by this Assembly in 1946, and in multilateral instruments, including the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty. The world’s most eminent nuclear physicists observed as early as 1955 that nuclear weapons threaten the continued existence of mankind and that a war with these weapons could quite possibly put an end to the human race. The First Special Session of the General Assembly devoted to Disarmament (SSOD-1) stressed in 1978 that “nuclear weapons pose the greatest danger to mankind and to the survival of civilisation.” These expressions of profound concern remain as compelling as ever. In spite of this, the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons have not been at the core of nuclear disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation deliberations for many years.

    We are therefore encouraged that the humanitarian focus is now well established on the global agenda. The 2010 Review Conference of the NPT expressed “deep concern at the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons”. That deep concern informed the November 26 2011 resolution of the Council of Delegates of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, and the decision last year of this General Assembly to establish an open-ended working group to develop proposals to take forward multilateral nuclear disarmament negotiations. It underlies the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States’ call to the international community, in August 2013, to emphasise the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons during any discussion of nuclear issues. Last month, at the High-Level Meeting on Nuclear Disarmament, numerous leaders from around the world again evoked that deep concern as they called for progress to be made on nuclear disarmament. Today, this statement demonstrates the growing political support for the humanitarian focus.

    It is in the interest of the very survival of humanity that nuclear weapons are never used again, under any circumstances. The catastrophic effects of a nuclear weapon detonation, whether by accident, miscalculation or design, cannot be adequately addressed. All efforts must be exerted to eliminate the threat of these weapons of mass destruction.

    The only way to guarantee that nuclear weapons will never be used again is through their total elimination. All States share the responsibility to prevent the use of nuclear weapons, to prevent their vertical and horizontal proliferation and to achieve nuclear disarmament, including through fulfilling the objectives of the NPT and achieving its universality.

    We welcome the renewed resolve of the international community, together with the ICRC and international humanitarian organisations, to address the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons. By raising awareness about this issue, civil society has a crucial role to play side-by-side with governments as we fulfil our responsibilities. We owe it to future generations to work together to do just that, and in doing so, to rid our world of the threat posed by nuclear weapons.

  • What On Earth are Nuclear Weapons For?

    Eric Schlosser’s hair-raising new book about actual and potential accidents with nuclear weapons, “Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety,” sharpens the dialogue, such as it is, between the anti-nuclear peace movement and nuclear strategists who maintain that these weapons still enhance the security of nations.

    We can imagine a hypothetical moment somewhere in time. No one can say when exactly, but for my money it is definitely far in the past. Before that moment—perhaps it was the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, or perhaps one of the terrifying incidents Schlosser describes, when computer glitches caused the Soviets or the Americans to misperceive that nuclear missiles had been launched—realists could argue that the deterrent effect of the balance of terror was preventing world war. After that moment, the more nuclear weapons, the more risk and insecurity for the planet as a whole and therefore for all nations whether they have the weapons or not.

    One of the important points that Schlosser makes, one which former Secretary of Defense William Perry has also emphasized, is that our present moment is not less dangerous because the Cold War has passed and treaties have reduced the overall numbers of warheads, but much more dangerous—because military service in the nuclear weapons sector is considered a career dead-end, and the very lack of post-cold-war tension increases potential carelessness. At least General Curtis Lemay, whom John Kennedy had to restrain from launching World War III by attacking Cuba in 1962, pushed the Strategic Air Command to adhere to strict protocols for the safer handling of the weapons. Still, even that additional rigor was insufficient to prevent some of the near-disasters that Schlosser chronicles in such vivid detail.

    The ultimate absurdity of the whole system of security-by-nukes is the potential of nuclear winter, which posits that it would only take the detonation of a small percentage of the total warheads on the planet to loft enough soot into the atmosphere to shut down world agriculture for a decade—in effect a death-sentence for all peoples and nations. Wherever the hypothetical line is before which nuclear weapons enhanced international security, the possibility of nuclear winter demonstrates irrefutably that we are on the other side of that line.

    If some superior intelligence equipped with an interstellar version of the Diagnostical and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders looked closely at the accepted order of things on our planet, they would have serious misgivings about our mental health. As such a visit from aliens seems unlikely to happen, we come to the question of authority here on earth. Ever since Oppenheimer and other scientists gave us nuclear weapons, other deep thinkers like Herman Kahn in his book “Thinking about the Unthinkable” and Henry Kissinger have tried to make rational the permanently irrational subject of mass death. In retirement, Kissinger has thrown up his hands and works now for total abolition. He does this because he knows from experience that nuclear weapons put us in the realm of Rumsfeld’s unknown knowns—no matter what experts may assert, we do know that no one knows how a nuclear war might begin. We have a somewhat clearer idea of how it would end, and “victory” is not one of the words that we associate with such an end.

    No one defined more exactly the reasons why we have been so slow to acknowledge our own madness than Dag Hammarskjold:

    “It is one of the surprising experiences of one in the position of the Secretary-General of the United Nations to find in talks with leaders of many nations, both political leaders and leaders in spiritual life, that the view expressed, the hopes nourished, and the trust reflected, in the direction of reconciliation, go far beyond what is usually heard in public. What is it that makes it so difficult to bring this basic attitude more effectively to bear upon the determination of policies? The reasons are well known to us all. It might not be understood by the constituency, or it might be abused by competing groups, or it might be misinterpreted as a sign of weakness by the other part. And so the game goes on—toward an unforeseeable conclusion.”

    On Thursday, September 26, 2013, the UN hosted the first ever High-Level Meeting on Nuclear Disarmament. Russia and the United States boycotted the meeting.

    The urgent and primary task is educational, and that is where you and I can do our small but necessary part, with letters to our newspapers and our legislators. The task is to seed into worldwide discourse the complete dysfunctionality of “realist” nuclear rhetoric—an act of love on behalf of our beautiful and deeply threatened planet. If we succeed in changing the paradigm, a moment in time will come, again a hypothetical, indefinable moment, when the majority of the world’s people and leaders, Obama and Putin and Netanyahu and Hasan Rouhani, the new head of Iran, the thinkers and the generals of the nine nuclear powers, the corporations who make money off these weapons, all will come to realize the futility of the course we are on. And together we will begin to change. God help us, may no fatal accident or misinterpretation happen before that moment arrives.

  • Eliminating Nuclear Weapons is Just as Important as Eliminating Chemical Weapons

    Lawrence WittnerThe apparent employment of chemical weapons in Syria should remind us that, while weapons of mass destruction exist, there is a serious danger that they will be used.

    That danger is highlighted by an article in the September/October 2013 issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Written by two leading nuclear weapons specialists, Hans Kristensen and Robert Norris of the Federation of American Scientists, the article provides important information about nuclear weapons that should alarm everyone concerned about the future of the planet.

    At present, the article reports, more than 17,000 nuclear warheads remain in the possession of nine nations (the United States, Russia, Britain, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea). Over 90 percent of that inventory consists of U.S. and Russian warheads. These weapons, of course, are incredibly destructive, and almost all of them can massacre populations far more effectively than did the atomic bomb that obliterated the city of Hiroshima. Indeed, a single one of these weapons can slaughter hundreds of thousands of people.

    Although U.S., Russian, British, and French stockpiles of nuclear weapons have been declining since the end of the Cold War, those of the five other nuclear nations have been growing. Consequently, as Kristensen and Norris observe, with the possible exception of North Korea, all of these countries “have sufficient numbers of warheads and delivery systems to inflict enormous destruction over significant ranges with catastrophic humanitarian and climatic consequences in their regions and beyond.”

    Furthermore, many of these deadly weapons stand ready for almost instant use. As the authors state, “roughly 1,800 U.S. and Russian warheads are on high alert atop long-range ballistic missiles that are ready to launch 5 to 15 minutes after receiving an order.”

    But surely these terrible weapons are being phased out, aren’t they? After all, the major nuclear powers, plus most nations, have formally committed themselves to building a nuclear weapons-free world. And it is certainly true that the number of nuclear weapons on the world scene has dropped very significantly from the roughly 70,000 that existed in 1986.

    Even so, there are numerous signs that the nuclear disarmament momentum is slowing. Not only have nuclear disarmament negotiations between the United States (with 7,700 nuclear warheads) and Russia (with 8,500 nuclear warheads) apparently run aground, but none of the nuclear powers seems to take the rhetoric about a nuclear weapons-free world seriously. Kristensen and Norris note: “All the nations with nuclear weapons continue to modernize or upgrade their nuclear arsenals, and nuclear weapons remain integral to their conception of national security.”

    For example, the United States is modifying its existing nuclear warheads while planning production of warheads with new designs. Russia is phasing out its Soviet-era missiles and submarines and deploying newer missiles, as well as additional warheads on its missiles. France is deploying new nuclear missiles on its fighter-bombers and submarines. China is upgrading its missile force, while India and Pakistan are locked in a race to deploy new types of nuclear weapons. Although Israel is the most secretive of the nuclear powers, rumors are afloat that it is equipping some of its submarines with nuclear-capable cruise missiles. North Korea reportedly lacks operational nuclear weapons, but its hungry citizens can take heart that it is working to remedy this deficiency.

    In addition, of course, it is quite possible, in the future, that other nations will develop nuclear weapons, terrorists will obtain such weapons from national stockpiles, or existing nuclear weapons will be exploded or launched accidentally.

    In these very dangerous circumstances, surely the safest course of action would be to have the international community agree on a treaty requiring the destruction of all existing stocks of nuclear weapons and a ban on their future production. Nuclear disarmament discussions along these and other lines have recently been concluded by a UN Open Ended Working Group, and will be continued in late September by a UN High Level Meeting and later this fall by the UN General Assembly First Committee.

    But, to judge from past government behavior, it does not seem likely that disarmament discussions among government officials will get very far without substantial public pressure upon them to cope with the nuclear weapons menace. And it is a menace — one at least as dangerous to the future of world civilization as the existence of chemical weapons. So pressing world leaders for action on nuclear disarmament seems thoroughly appropriate.

    The alternative is to throw up our hands and wait, while power-hungry governments continue to toy with their nuclear weaponry and, ultimately, produce a catastrophe of immense proportions.

    This article was originally published by History News Network.