Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: nuclear threat

  • Stumbling in the Dark, Reaching for the Light

    This article was originally published by Human Rights in Australia / Right Now.

    I had a dream, which was not all a dream.

    The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars

    Did wander darkling in the eternal space,

    Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth

    Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;

    Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day,

    And men forgot their passions in the dread

    Of this their desolation; and all hearts

    Were chill’d into a selfish prayer for light:

    And they did live by watchfires—and the thrones,

    The palaces of crowned kings—the huts,

    The habitations of all things which dwell,

    Were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed,

    And men were gather’d round their blazing homes

    To look once more into each other’s face;  …

    Lord Byron’s evocative and prescient poem “Darkness” was written in 1816, the “year without a summer”, following the 1815 volcanic eruption of Mt Tambora in Indonesia. Byron “wrote it … at Geneva, when there was a celebrated dark day, on which the fowls went to roost at noon, and the candles were lighted as at midnight”. Average global cooling in 1816 from the volcanic debris blasted into the atmosphere was 0.7°C, enough to cause widespread crop failures in North America and famine across Europe and India, despite good harvests in 1815 and 1817.

    Just 100 Hiroshima-sized nuclear bombs, less than one per cent of the global nuclear arsenal, would generate more than five million tons of soot and smoke if targeted at cities. In addition to local devastation and widespread radioactive contamination, the climate impact would be catastrophic. Global cooling would be twice as large as following the Tambora explosion, and would persist not a couple of years but for over a decade, decimating global agriculture. On top of that would come the effects of price hikes; hoarding of food; food riots; intrastate and potential interstate conflicts over food supplies; the disease epidemics that inevitably spread through malnourished populations; disruption to trade and the complex international supply chains for agricultural inputs – seed, fertiliser, pesticides, fuel and machinery.

    World grain reserves currently range between 60 and 70 days supply. The 925 million people chronically malnourished today, and the additional 300+ million highly dependent on imported food, could not be expected to survive such a prolonged global food shortage.

    Famine on a scale never before witnessed would worst affect poor and malnourished people even on the other side of the world from the nuclear explosions. Such global nuclear famine is well within the capacity not only of the US and Russian arsenals, with between them more than 90 per cent of the world’s 17,300 nuclear weapons, but also the smaller arsenals of China, France, UK, India, Israel and Pakistan – in fact all the current nine nuclear-armed states except for North Korea.

    That the smaller nuclear arsenals of tens of hundreds of weapons pose not only a regional threat but a global danger has profound implications. It is not widely understood that the most acute risk of abrupt and dangerous climate change is from nuclear weapons. The extent of our collective vulnerability is illustrated by the fact that the nuclear warheads carried on a single US Ohio class submarine, if targeted on Chinese cities, could produce not 5 but 23 million tons of smoke. The US has 14 such submarines; Russia 10 similar ones.

    The fundamental realities of nuclear weapons are as profound as they are clear. Nuclear weapons are by far the most destructive, indiscriminate, persistently toxic weapons ever invented. Single nuclear weapons have been built with more destructive power than all explosives used in all wars throughout human history. In its landmark Resolution 1 of 2011, the Council of Delegates of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, its highest governing body, “finds it difficult to envisage how any use of nuclear weapons could be compatible with the rules of international humanitarian law, in particular the rules of distinction, precaution and proportionality”. They cannot be used in any way compliant with international law. While they exist, there is a danger they will be used. The only way to eliminate this danger is to eradicate nuclear weapons. While some nations possess them, others will inevitably seek to acquire them, or the means to produce them in short order. These means are now readily accessible around the world, even to isolated and impoverished countries like North Korea. The lifetimes of uranium and plutonium isotopes, which can fuel bombs, are measured over tens of thousands to millions of years. Human intent, nation-states and politics can change on a dime. Hence stocks of fissile materials, the capacity to create more, and nuclear weapons themselves are the problems, irrespective of the intentions of their custodians at any point in time.

    Whatever their ostensible justification or purpose, a nuclear weapon is a nuclear weapon – once detonated, whether through accident, cyberattack, in retaliation when deterrence fails, or any other human or technical failing, the searing catastrophe they would unleash is dictated by the laws of physics alone. Even a single nuclear weapon exploded over a city would cause a humanitarian catastrophe to which no effective response capacity exists or is feasible. If nuclear weapons were used, nuclear retaliation and escalation are likely to follow. It will not matter whose nuclear weapons were used first, second or third; the weapons of our allies will kill us just as surely and indiscriminately as any others.

    Einstein reflected that “The splitting of the atom has changed everything, save our way of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” From any vantage, there is a massive dinosaur in the room. Tiptoeing around hoping it might go away if we ignore it is not a viable strategy for survival, for sustainability, for health, for the progressive realisation of human rights, for anything that matters in the thin shell of planet earth in which all living things known to us dwell. Since nuclear weapons entered our world, everything has changed; whether we like it or not; ready or not.

    There are three major sets of existential challenges we collectively need to navigate. These go beyond the wellbeing, life and death of individuals and populations alive at any one time, and speak to the habitability of earth; to whether there will be a place for future generations. One is collision of the earth with a large celestial body. Such collisions have been the main cause of previous major extinctions, like that of the dinosaurs. The second is environmental change, and degradation and depletion of vital resources – rampant global warming posing the greatest such challenge. The third, more acute, is the danger of nuclear war. The World Health Organization, the world’s leading health agency, has concluded that nuclear weapons “constitute the greatest immediate threat to human health and welfare”. Preventing use of nuclear weapons necessitates their eradication, a necessary, urgent and feasible precondition for securing global health and sustainability.

    Two of these great challenges are of human origin, needing human solutions. In all our evolutionary history , we are among the first generations to face such existential challenges. While the extraordinary responsibility we bear is a difficult burden, it is also a precious gift. Few people in all of human history have had as great an opportunity as we now have to avert harm and do good for humanity and for all the denizens of planet earth with whom we are intertwined.

    The last few decades have seen major progress on the elimination of other indiscriminate and inhumane weapons – chemical and biological weapons, landmines and cluster munitions. It represents a profound failure of the global community that the worst weapons of all – nuclear weapons – remain the only ones not subject to a specific legal prohibition. It is 68 years since the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 43 years since the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) entered into force, and 17 years since the judges of the International Court of Justice held unanimously that “there exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.” Yet we still have no binding, verifiable, legal framework to eradicate nuclear weapons. And we have no international controls on uranium enrichment or the reprocessing of spent nuclear reactor fuel, both of which can provide the feedstock for nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, all the nuclear-armed states are investing massively in the modernisation of their nuclear arsenals, and justifying their planned retention indefinitely.

    In addressing such momentous challenges, we need wisdom from all cultures, faiths and ethical traditions; lessons, insights, tools and perspectives from every field of human endeavor; and the recognition that whatever our core business, eradicating nuclear weapons is part of everyone’s business. Like respect for universal human rights, like addressing global warming on the scale and urgency demanded. Nuclear weapons are a critical human rights issue; the most urgent development issue; the paramount sustainability issue; potentially the most egregious violation of international humanitarian law; the most urgent environmental issue; the most profound ethical issue; the greatest blasphemy.

    Two perspectives key to progress on complex global challenges like nuclear weapons and climate change are a global view transcending tribalism of all kinds, whether cultural, religious, ethnic or nation-state based; and a long-term, ecological perspective, that recognises human dependence on ecosystem services and custodial responsibilities for the biosphere. These both have strong roots in ancient wisdoms from many traditions, particularly indigenous ones, and are also increasingly underscored by scientific evidence and the ever-growing realities of global interdependence. There are few frames as powerful in a global view of human affairs and interests as the affirmation of universal human rights.

    The right to life is, after all, the precondition for the enjoyment of all other rights. If nuclear weapons are used, everything else could become tragically irrelevant in an afternoon. Law, politics and culture have yet to fully catch up with the reality of the existential threats faced by not only those alive today but all those who might follow us. The rights of future generations and of the myriad living things other than human beings, and of the biosphere, a far more complex and wondrous thing than the sum of its parts, barely get a mention in any of the widely-accepted human rights instruments.

    Nor is prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons high on the agenda of international human rights organisations. For example, the section on weapons and human rights on the Amnesty International website focuses only on conventional weapons, and the only specific recent Amnesty statement regarding nuclear weapons readily identifiable in a Google search is a (welcome) single sentenceaddressing the last question in a 10 April 2013 Q&A on the North Korea human rights crisis: “Amnesty International opposes the use, possession, production and transfer of nuclear weapons, given their indiscriminate nature.”

    Some recent initiatives have brought a human rights focus to nuclear issues. One is a 2012 report to the UN Human Rights Council by the Special Rapporteur on the implications for human rights of the environmentally sound management and disposal of hazardous substances and wastes,
Calin Georgescu, on the ongoing recognition, care and compensation needs of Marshall Islanders harmed by US atmospheric nuclear tests on and near their islands in the 1950s, and the long-term continuing environmental monitoring and clean-up needs.

    A second is the landmark 2012 report of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission established by Japan’s national Diet (parliament). The Commission highlights the lack of priority given to the wellbeing and safety of all Japanese citizens, the first responsibility of any government. Among the conclusions of the Commission: the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident accident “was the result of collusion between the government, regulators and TEPCO … They effectively betrayed the nation’s right to be safe from nuclear accidents.” “The Commission concludes that the government and regulators are not fully committed to protecting public health and safety; that they have not acted to protect the health of the residents and to restore their welfare.”

    A third is an excellent report to the UN Human Rights Council by the UN Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, Anand Grover, who addresses the right to health for those affected by the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Grover makes recommendations to redress the various ways in which the health and safety of people has been neglected in order to reduce the eventual compensation bill.

    There are fundamental human rights dimensions to nuclear technology, whether weapons or power generation. A so-called “inalienable right” of nations to the “use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes” articulated in Article IV of the NPT in reality means exposing people and other living things worldwide to a risk of indiscriminate, catastrophic radioactive contamination at any time. Nuclear power erodes the health and rights of future generations. Through its inevitable generation of plutonium, and the intrinsic potential of uranium enrichment plants to enrich uranium beyond reactor grade to weapons grade, it exacerbates the danger of nuclear war and its catastrophic human consequences. Nuclear power thus undermines fundamental human and biosphere rights, responsible custodianship and human security.

    Were the Universal Declaration of Human Rights being drafted today, one would hope that additional rights would be front and centre: the right to live free from the threat of indiscriminate, inhumane weapons, most of all nuclear weapons; the rights of future generations; the rights of people everywhere to access benign, renewable energy sources; and to be protected from preventable, indiscriminate, transgenerational radioactive contamination. These human rights urgently need to become prominent in the global human rights agenda.

    To quote Albert Einstein again: “There is no secret and there is no defense; there is no possibility of control except through the aroused understanding and insistence of the peoples of the world.”

    Dr Tilman Ruff is an infectious diseases and public health physician, with particular involvement in the urgent public health imperative to abolish 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.

  • Lessons from the U.S.-Korea Nuclear Crisis

    David KriegerThe high-profile nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula, pitting the reigning heavyweight nuclear champion, the United States, against the bantamweight nuclear contender, North Korea, is not finished and is deadly serious.  The posturing and exchanges that the world has been witnessing are capable of spiraling out of control and resulting in nuclear war.  Like the Cuban Missile Crisis more than half a century ago, this crisis demonstrates that nuclear dangers continue to lurk in dark shadows across the globe.

    This crisis, for which the fault is shared by both sides, must be taken seriously and viewed as a warning that nuclear stability is an unrealistic goal.  The elimination of nuclear weapons, an obligation set forth in the Non-Proliferation Treaty and confirmed by the International Court of Justice, must be a more urgent goal of the international community.  The continued evasion of this obligation by the nuclear weapon states makes possible repeated nuclear crises, nuclear proliferation, nuclear terrorism and nuclear war.

    Lessons can be drawn from this most recent crisis about the dangerous reliance by nuclear-armed states on nuclear deterrence and the unrealistic quest for security through nuclear deterrence and nuclear crisis management.  Here are ten lessons:

    1. Nuclear deterrence encourages threatening words and actions that can escalate into a full-blown crisis.  For nuclear deterrence to be effective between nuclear-armed countries, each country must believe that the other is prepared to actually use nuclear weapons against it in retaliation for behavior considered prohibited (and this may not be clear).  Thus, the leader of each country must convince the other side that he is irrational enough to retaliate against it with nuclear weapons, knowing that the other will then retaliate in kind.  For each side to convince the other, threatening words and actions are employed.

    2. Nuclear deterrence requires leaders to act rationally, but also makes it rational to behave irrationally.  This is a conundrum inherent in nuclear deterrence.  A leader of a nuclear-armed country must be sufficiently rational to be deterred by a threat of nuclear retaliation; but he also must behave sufficiently irrationally to make the other side believe he is actually prepared to use nuclear weapons in retaliation against it.

    3. While deterrence theory requires that leaders be perceived as irrational enough to retaliate with nuclear weapons, they cannot be perceived as so irrational that they would mount a first-strike attack with nuclear weapons.  Should leaders of Country A be perceived by Country B as being ready to launch a preventive nuclear attack, it could lead to an earlier preventive attack by Country B.

    4. “War games” by Country B, held near Country A’s borders, are not-so-subtle threats, particularly when they involve nuclear capable delivery systems.  The US and South Korea conducted joint war games near the border of North Korea.  North Korean leaders became angry and threatening, escalating the crisis.  If a country conducted “war games” near the US border, one can only imagine the response.  To demonstrate how little countries appear to learn from such crises, the US cancelled a Minuteman III missile test in April at the height of the crisis, but has now rescheduled the provocative test for a date in May.

    5. When a nuclear crisis escalates, it can spin out of control.  In an environment of escalating threats, one side may believe its best option is to launch a preventive attack, thus setting in motion a nuclear war.

    6. Nuclear weapons are military equalizers; they provide greater benefit to the militarily weaker country.  A relatively small and weak country, such as North Korea, can hold a much more powerful country, such as the US, at bay with the threat to use nuclear weapons against it, its troops, and/or its allies.  On the other hand, when countries such as Iraq and Libya gave up their nuclear weapons programs, they were attacked by the US and its allies, their regimes were overthrown and their leaders killed.

    7. Nuclear power plants are attractive targets, since they can be turned into radiological weapons.  South Korea has 23 nuclear reactors within striking range of North Korea.  These plants could be intentionally or accidentally destroyed, leading to reactor and spent-fuel meltdowns, and the spread of radiation throughout the Korean Peninsula and beyond.

    8. The value of nuclear weapons, to the extent they have value, lies only in the bluff to use them.  If the nuclear bluff is called, it may lead to catastrophic results – “Game Over.”  That dangerous potential is always present in the bluff to use nuclear weapons.

    9. Cutting off communications increases the risks of misinterpreting an act or intention of the other side.  The two sides stopped speaking to each other except in the language of threat.  North Korea shut down the Crisis Hot Line, a communications device set up to prevent misunderstandings and misinterpretations of the acts of the two Koreas.

    10. Leaders in a nuclear crisis situation need to talk to each other and demonstrate rationality to reverse the escalation.  Leaders on both sides of the crisis should be making overtures to talk through their differences and resolve them rather than continuing to posture in threatening ways at a distance.

    One final lesson that applies to all nuclear crises is that the only way to assure that nuclear weapons are not used again is to abolish them.

    David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • Nuclear Roulette Has No Winners

    This article was originally published by Truthout.

    David KriegerThe United States and North Korea are playing a dangerous game of Nuclear Roulette.  The US is taking actions that threaten North Korea, such as conducting war games with US ally South Korea, including practice bombing runs that send nuclear-capable B-2 bombers from Missouri to the Korean Peninsula.  The North Koreans, in turn, are blustering, declaring they are in a state of war with South Korea, which technically is true since a truce and not a peace agreement ended the Korean War in 1953.  North Korean leaders have also cancelled the “hot line” with Seoul and are threatening nuclear attacks on the US, its troops and its allies.

    North Korea withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 2003 and has since tested nuclear devices on three occasions (2006, 2009 and earlier this year).  It has also tested medium- and long-range missiles and is developing capabilities to threaten the US and its allies with nuclear weapons.  The US has responded to the North Korean tests by holding talks with other countries in Northeast Asia and putting increasingly stringent sanctions on North Korea.  The US also continues to regularly test its long-range, nuclear-capable missiles from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.  Tensions in Northeast Asia continue to rise.

    Nuclear threats are an integral part of nuclear deterrence.  For nuclear deterrence to work effectively, it is necessary for an opponent to believe a nuclear threat is real.  When the US joins South Korea in playing war games with nuclear-capable aircraft on the Korean Peninsula, the message of threat is clear to the North Korean leaders.  Equally clear is the message from North Korea to the US with its nuclear tests and bluster: North Korea has a nuclear capability that could cause unacceptable harm to the US, its troops and its allies.

    From an objective perspective, each country has the capability to cause the other (or its troops or allies) horrific damage.  While they are pounding on their chests and demonstrating that they are in fact crazy enough to use nuclear weapons, they are engaged in a drama that hopes to dissuade the other side from actually doing so.  Both countries should take note of this.

    The dangerous game of Nuclear Roulette is built into the nuclear deterrence paradigm.  Each time the hammer of the gun is cocked and the gun is pointed at the other side’s head, the barrel of the opponent’s gun is also pointed at one’s own head.  An accident or miscalculation during a time of tension could trigger a nuclear holocaust.

    Yes, of course the United States is the stronger of the two countries and would fare better, perhaps far better, in a nuclear war, but that isn’t good enough.  Yes, North Korea could be destroyed as a functioning country, but at what cost?  In addition to the terrible cost in lives of North Koreans, the US and its allies would also pay a heavy price: first, in the deaths of US troops stationed in the Northeast Asian region; second, in the deaths and devastation of US allies, South Korea and Japan, and possibly of the US itself; and third, in the loss of stature and credibility of the US for having engaged in nuclear warfare that destroyed the lives of potentially millions of innocent North Koreans.

    Nuclear Roulette has no winners.  It is a game that no country should be playing.  But the leaders of countries with nuclear weapons tend to believe these weapons make their own country more secure.  They do not.  They risk everything we hold dear, all we love, and they undermine our collective sense of decency.  The only way out of the Nuclear Roulette dilemma is to unload the gun and assure that it cannot be used again by any side.

    We can do far better than we are doing.  For the short term, the US should stop conducting provocative war games in the region and instead offer some diplomatic carrots rather than sticks.  The US would go far to defuse a dangerous situation by again offering to support North Korea in providing food and energy for its people.  For the longer term, the US should lead the way forward by using its convening power to commence negotiations for a new treaty, a global Nuclear Weapons Convention, to achieve the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons.

    David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • The Man in the TNT Vest

    This article was originally published at the Nuclear Risk website

    Imagine a man wearing a TNT vest were to come into the room and, before you could escape, managed to tell you that he wasn’t a suicide bomber. He didn’t have the button to set off the explosives. Rather, there were two buttons in very safe hands. One was with President Obama and the other was with President Medvedev, so there was nothing to worry about. You’d still get out of that room as fast as you can!

    Just because we can’t see the nuclear weapons controlled by those two buttons, why do we stay in this room? As we would if confronted by the man in the TNT vest, we need to be plotting a rapid escape. Instead, we have sat here complacently for roughly 50 years, trusting that because Earth’s explosive vest hasn’t yet gone off, it never will.

    Before society will look for an escape route, we have to overcome its mistaken belief that threatening to destroy the world is somehow risk free. Changing societal thinking is a huge task, but as with achieving the seemingly impossible goals of ending slavery and getting women the vote, the first step in correcting this misperception is for courageous individuals to speak the truth: The nuclear emperor has no clothes — except for that stupid vest!

    You have an advantage that the abolitionists and the suffragettes did not. You can propagate the needed message to all your friends merely by emailing them a link to this page http://nuclearrisk.org/email21.php, or whatever you think would be most effective. While communicating with friends may seem trivial compared to the immense task we face, as explained in the resource section below, at this early stage of the process it is the essential action. I hope you will consider doing that, so that Earth’s explosive vest can become but a distant nightmare to future generations.

     

    Illustration is ©2009 NewsArt.com

    Martin E. Hellman is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and Professor Emeritus at Stanford University. His current project applies risk analysis to nuclear deterrence, and is described in detail at NuclearRisk.org.

  • Leading Nuclear and Climate Scientists: Act in Second Term to Avoid Cataclysms

    Is the world any closer to destroying itself now than it was a year ago? According to the nuclear and world-climate experts who advise the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the answer is a complicated yes and no. But the complexity didn’t deter the organization from sending President Barack Obama a letter that’s critical of the progress his Administration is making on preventing global catastrophe.

    Last year, the scientists wrote to Obama, “was a year in which the problems of the world pressed forward, but too many of its citizens stood back. In the U.S. elections the focus was ‘the economy, stupid,’ with barely a word about the severe long-term trends that threaten the population’s well-being to a far greater extent: climate change, the continuing menace of nuclear oblivion, and the vulnerabilities of the world’s energy sources.”

    Each year, the Chicago-based Bulletin convenes a forum of scientists to help decide whether to adjust the hand of the Doomsday Clock, a warning symbol that has appeared on the cover of the magazine, and now its Web site, since 1947. At the beginning of 2012, the Bulletin announced it would move the clock’s hand from 6 minutes to midnight to 5 minutes to midnight – a warning that, all risks taken together, civilization was inching steadily closer to annihilation. Risks now considered are nuclear war, global warming, the threat of nuclear power plant mishaps, and potential emerging threats such as bioterrorism.

    The annual “Doomsday Clock Symposium” was held in late November, and the decision of the organization’s Science and Security Board to keep the clock’s hand at 5 minutes to midnight, at least for another year, was announced in January. The reasoning behind the decision not to change the clock, despite the progressive worsening of certain global risks, was outlined in an open letter from the Bulletin to President Obama. It was the first time that the decision regarding the clock took the form of a letter to a U.S. president. The communication to the president largely was an appeal for bolder, more decisive action rather than congratulations for what he already may have achieved.

    While the Bulletin did praise Obama for his continued support of New START (the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty), the nuclear arms reduction agreement between the U.S. and Russia that became effective in February 2011, the group’s leaders were critical of “unrealized opportunities” to make even more serious cuts in nuclear stockpiles. The Bulletin also said the U.S. should make more progress to take its nuclear weapons off high-alert status, and to stop the spread of fissile materials that can be used by terrorists or hostile nations to make weapons of mass destruction.

    The Bulletin is calling on the U.S. to cut nuclear stockpiles beyond the terms of New START so that each side has fewer than 1,000 deployed strategic warheads. Under the treaty, the U.S. and Russia are permitted to have a total of 1,550 warheads deployed on intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs). The organization also is calling for quantities of non-deployed strategic warheads to be “significantly reduced,” and for tactical nuclear warheads to be completely put out of commission.

    Tactical nuclear weapons, which generally are less powerful and are considered “battlefield” weapons, are not covered by New START. According to the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, the U.S. in 2011 was thought to have about 500 tactical nuclear warheads deployed in Europe, as well about 700 to 800 more tactical nuclear warheads in storage. It was estimated by the Federation of the Atomic Scientists that Russia had as many as 2,000 tactical nuclear warheads deployed and more than 3,000 in storage or retired in 2010.

    In addition, the Bulletin wants the Obama administration to seriously question if all three legs of the nation’s nuclear “Triad” – ICBMs, bomber jets, and nuclear submarines – are necessary to national defense, arguing that maintaining redundant systems is “an expensive legacy of a bygone era.” The administration should “fundamentally restructure” the Triad as a way of making more extreme reductions in the nation’s deployed nuclear warheads, the Bulletin told Obama. This process should include cuts in the number of warheads on submarines and bombers as a signal to the world that the U.S. is interested in peace, the magazine said.

    The letter to Obama did not address international concerns that Iran is moving closer to achieving nuclear weapons capability. At the symposium in November in Washington, however, John Polanyi, chemistry professor at the University of Toronto, recipient of the Nobel Prize in 1986, and a leading arms control advocate, said proliferation of nuclear weapons to more countries, including Iran, “surely adds to the risk of nuclear war.”

    Nonetheless, Polanyi told fellow scientists that Obama’s recent assurances that the U.S. will do whatever’s necessary to prevent Iran from gaining such weapons do not add to the cause of peace, and that preemptive strikes to prevent other countries from gaining nuclear weapons are based on the philosophy that “might makes right” or “the law of the jungle.” Polanyi noted that the U.S. refrained from taking military action to prevent nations such as the Soviet Union, India, Pakistan or North Korea from obtaining nuclear weapons.

    Polanyi added that the notion that all nuclear nations might someday peacefully agree to international control over their weapons stockpiles may seem hard to imagine, but is “not preposterous.” There is no “divine right of nations to behave as they please,” he said, noting that in 1945 the original member states of the United Nations agreed to the UN Charter’s specification that nations are prohibited from attacking other UN member states – a recognition that war must only be declared for purposes of self-defense.  Thus, there is precedent that national leaders may be willing to give up power to ensure international peace and security, Polanyi said.

    On the issue of preventing fissile materials from falling into hostile hands, the Bulletin called for the U.S. to “rejuvenate and expand” international efforts to get control of both civilian and military stores of plutonium and highly enriched uranium. The organization warned that approximately 2,000 tons of fissile materials are not yet safeguarded, and that theoretically such an amount could be incorporated into “several hundred thousand” nuclear bombs.

    The U.S. needs to put all missile materials not currently in warheads under the control of international monitoring and, in cooperation with other nuclear nations, declare a moratorium on making more fissile materials for weapons until a permanent Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty is signed, the Bulletin told Obama.

    The cut-off treaty is a proposal to ban worldwide any more production of materials that can be used to make nuclear weapons and related devices. Although in the early 1990s the UN General Assembly voted that such a treaty should be negotiated internationally, the agreement has failed to become reality as various nations have disagreed on verification and other terms.

    The organization also addressed the dangers of climate change, reminding Obama that 2012 was the hottest year on record for the continental U.S.  While praising the U.S. government for spurring some progress in promoting alternative energy sources, those advances have been “dwarfed” by unchecked expansion in fossil fuel production, such as coal, tar sands, oil shale, and shale gas, the Bulletin said.

    Obama must pursue the expansion of natural gas resource development, tempered by careful regulation to prevent methane leakage, water pollution, and other harmful environmental side effects, the letter said.

    The president in general needs to “confidently face those who irresponsibly argue that climate change science is not relevant” and instead listen attentively to knowledgeable experts who are charged with making recommendations to the government about climate change, it said.

    Daniel Kammen, professor of public policy and nuclear engineering at the University of California at Berkeley, told symposium attendees that China and the U.S. lead the world in greenhouse gas pollution, with China releasing the most pollutants overall but the U.S. leading by far in per capita pollution. In 2007, China emitted nearly 7,000 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, while the U.S. emitted almost 6,000 million metric tons. When figured per capita, however, the U.S.  was responsible for about 23 tons of carbon dioxide per person, as opposed to just 5 tons per person for China (2005 figures).

    China has declared a goal of reaching 11.4 percent of its national energy consumption from non-fossil fuels by 2017, through increasing use of such alternative fuel sources as wind turbines, various types of solar energy, and hydroelectric power. Kammen said it’s unclear if that goal can be reached.

    The Doomsday Clock has been adjusted 20 times since 1947 to reflect increasing or decreasing perceived dangers to world peace, and, more recently, climatic stability. It was initially set at 7 minutes to midnight in 1947, and reached its closest position to “doomsday” in 1953, when the Bulletin set it at 2 minutes to midnight to convey alarm and dread over the explosion of the first thermonuclear device by the U.S. in 1952, followed in suit by the Soviets with a test of an H-bomb several months later.  The farthest the clock’s hand has been moved away from midnight was in 1991, after the Cold War ended, arms limitations agreements were reached between the U.S. and Russia, and each nation removed most missiles and bombers from high alert.

    The clock was moved from 6 minutes to midnight to 5 minutes to midnight in January 2012 because, the Bulletin said, “the potential for nuclear weapons use in regional conflicts in the Middle East, Northeast Asia and South Asia are alarming; safer nuclear reactor designs need to be developed and built, and more stringent oversight, training, and attention are needed to prevent future disasters; [and] the pace of technological solutions to address climate change may not be adequate to meet the hardships that large-scale disruption of the climate portends.”

    Robert Kazel is a Chicago-based freelance writer and was a participant in the 2012 NAPF Peace Leadership Workshop.

  • The Myth of Nuclear Safety

    Martin HellmanIn memory of the first anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear meltdown, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda acknowledged that his government had failed by believing in “a myth of safety” about nuclear power. Before an even worse tragedy befalls us, we need to disabuse society of a similarly dangerous myth regarding the safety afforded by nuclear weapons. Political and military leaders, routinely talk of maintaining a safe, secure nuclear arsenal, as if just uttering those words makes it so. 


    As one example, consider President Obama’s famous 2009 Prague speech in which he committed America “to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” He goes on to say, “I’m not naive. … As long as these weapons exist, the United States will maintain a safe, secure and effective arsenal to deter any adversary, and guarantee that defense to our allies.” (emphasis added)


    How safe is it to threaten to destroy civilization in order to achieve much less important national objectives? If you agree that the myth of nuclear safety might apply to nuclear weapons as well as Fukushima, please sign my petition asking Congress to authorize a risk analysis of nuclear deterrence, and encourage friends to do the same. Let’s not make the same mistake twice, with even more horrific consequences.

  • Scenarios for Nuclear Catastrophe

    In a recent article that I wrote, “British Petroleum, Imagination and Nuclear Catastrophe,” I argued we should use the occasion of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to imagine scenarios in which a nuclear catastrophe could take place.  The reason for imagining such scenarios should be obvious: to keep them from occurring.  

    Here is a proposition: Continued offshore oil drilling runs the risk of future offshore oil leak catastrophes that will destroy large aquatic and shoreline habitats.  Applied to nuclear weapons, the proposition could be restated in this way: Continued reliance on nuclear weapons runs the risk of future nuclear catastrophes that will destroy cities, countries and civilization.

    In my article, I proposed four of many possible scenarios that could be envisioned.  These scenarios involved a terrorist bomb on a major city somewhere in the world; an Indo-Pakistan nuclear war; an accidental nuclear launch by Russia, leading to a nuclear exchange with the US; and a nuclear attack by North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il on Japan and South Korea.  

    These scenarios elicited responses that I would like to share.  The first response, from South Korea, expressed the opinion that Kim Jong-Il would not make a preemptive nuclear attack.  The writer said, “I agree with your imagined scenarios except for the following: …Kim Jong-Il is not so irrational that he would attack Japan and South Korea for not receiving development assistance.  He and North Korean officials usually say that they would attack only in the case of being attacked….”  This may be true, but it remains difficult to predict which leaders will act rationally and which will not.  It seems certain, though, that all leaders will not act rationally at all times with regard to nuclear weapons, and that deterrence theory, at a minimum, requires rational decision makers.

    The second and third responses imagine other scenarios.  The second response focuses on Israel: “You forget one other horrible scenario: Israel decides to preemptively bomb Tehran and Isfahan, because they ‘fear for their own safety.’ Armed with nukes, and in the name of ‘Civil Defense,’ rogue Israel thumbs its nose at the world again and takes out parts of Iran….”  Would Israel initiate a nuclear attack under certain circumstances, such as a major threat from Arab countries?  The truth is that we do not know under what conditions Israel, or any other nuclear weapon state, would initiate such an attack.

    The third response, from South Africa, focuses on the possibility of a US initiated nuclear attack: “In your scenarios you do not imagine the US pressing the nuclear button.   The United States is beyond question the most aggressive nation in the world and remains among the most recalcitrant in signing peace and environmental protocols.  As a person who lives outside the United States, I feel most threatened by the US.  The US does not negotiate, at the heart of which is compromise for the greater good.   Narrow interests are pursued relentlessly – even to the detriment of US citizens.”

    The response continued, “I was appalled to receive by email photos of a US warship recently launched.   It was built from the scrap metal of the Twin Towers and named ‘Never Forget’ or some such title.   I don’t believe that honors the lives lost.  What would have honored them would be a ship custom built to deliver aid, medical services, etc. to disaster areas and developing countries.   I do believe citizens in the US, so many of whom are brought up on the myth that the US is always in the right, should recognize their own potential to be the ultimate aggressors in the use of nuclear weapons.  They use every other weapon of destruction – Agent Orange, cluster bombs, etc.  Why should they hold back on nuclear weapons?”

    Would the US initiate a nuclear attack?  The answer is the same for the US or any other nuclear weapon state: We don’t know.  What we do know is that the leaders of countries that possess nuclear weapons are essentially holding the world, including their own citizens, hostage to the potential catastrophic consequences of using these weapons.

    Deterrence can fail in many ways, some of which we cannot foresee, and it may be the unforeseeable scenarios that are most dangerous.  We don’t know what the trigger may be, only that we are playing with nuclear fire.  The Gulf of Mexico recovery from the British Petroleum oil spill may take decades.  For civilization to recover from nuclear war could take centuries and might not be possible.  The oil spill in the Gulf has provided us an opportunity to awaken to the nuclear dangers that confront us and to act.  The question remains: Will we seize this opportunity?

  • Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament: Shifting the Mindset (Executive Summary)

    To download a full copy of this briefing booklet, click here.

    Executive Summary

    Throughout the Nuclear Age, leaders of the United States, Russia, United Kingdom, France and China – the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, known as the P5 – have been locked in old ways of thinking about security.  They believe that nuclear deterrence in a two-tier structure of nuclear haves and have-nots can hold indefinitely without significant nuclear proliferation and further use of nuclear weapons.  This way of thinking continues to place not only the P5 and their allies in danger of nuclear annihilation, but threatens global catastrophe for civilization, the human species and most forms of life. 

    The policies of the nuclear weapon states have favored going slow on achieving a world free of nuclear weapons, preferring arms control and non-proliferation measures to nuclear disarmament.  They have placed emphasis on small steps rather than taking a comprehensive approach to the elimination of nuclear weapons.  While reducing their nuclear arsenals, they have simultaneously modernized them, and thus have demonstrated their continued reliance upon these weapons in their security policies.

    However, cracks in this old and dangerous way of thinking have begun to show in the statements of former high-level policy makers in the United States and other countries and in the vision of a nuclear weapon-free world expressed by U.S. President Barack Obama.

    This briefing booklet explores new ways of thinking in relation to the 2010 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference.  It presents the case that nuclear weapons abolition is the only rational and sane position to adopt toward current nuclear threats.  In light of the overwhelming threat posed by nuclear weapons, all conference participants are urged to bear in mind the following in preparing for their deliberations:

    •    Nuclear weapons continue to present a real and present danger to humanity and other life on Earth.

    •    Basing the security of one’s country on the threat to kill tens of millions of innocent people, perhaps billions, and risking the destruction of civilization, has no moral justification and deserves the strongest condemnation.

    •    It will not be possible to prevent proliferation of nuclear weapons without fulfilling existing legal obligations for total nuclear disarmament. 

    •    Preventing nuclear proliferation and achieving nuclear disarmament will both be made far more difficult, if not impossible, by expanding nuclear energy facilities throughout the world. 

    •    Putting the world on track for eliminating the existential threat posed by nuclear weapons will require a shift in thinking about this overarching danger to present and future generations. 

    The briefing sets forth a spectrum of perspectives on nuclear weapons, from Nuclear Believers at one end to Nuclear Abolitionists at the other.  Between them are three other groups, the largest being the Nuclear Disempowered.  This group is composed of most of the general public who are often ignorant, confused and apathetic about nuclear weapons as a result of government secrecy and manipulation of information about the role of these weapons in security policies and the consequences of persisting plans for their use.  It is this critical group that must be made more aware of the nuclear threats to our common future and must make their voices heard in a new and vigorous global dialogue on nuclear policy. 

    The booklet reviews a number of proposals to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and sets forth five priorities for agreement at the 2010 NPT Review Conference:

    1.    Each signatory nuclear weapon state should provide an accurate public accounting of its nuclear arsenal, conduct a public environmental and human assessment of its potential use, and devise and make public a roadmap for going to zero nuclear weapons.

    2.    All signatory nuclear weapon states should reduce the role of nuclear weapons in their security policies by taking all nuclear forces off high-alert status, pledging No First Use of nuclear weapons against other nuclear weapon states and No Use against non-nuclear weapon states.

    3.    All enriched uranium and reprocessed plutonium – military and civilian – and their production facilities (including all uranium enrichment and plutonium separation technology) should be placed under strict and effective international safeguards.

    4.    All signatory states should review Article IV of the NPT, promoting the “inalienable right” to nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, in light of the nuclear proliferation problems posed by nuclear electricity generation.

    5.    All signatory states should comply with Article VI of the NPT, reinforced and clarified by the 1996 World Court Advisory Opinion, by commencing negotiations in good faith on a Nuclear Weapons Convention for the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons, and complete these negotiations by the year 2015.

    The briefing then considers issues of double standards and concludes that such standards will result in predictable catastrophes.  A more just and secure future for humanity will require leaders of all countries, and especially those in the nuclear weapon states, to exercise sound judgment and act for the benefit of all humanity.  A thorough rethinking of nuclear policy is needed, with the goal of moving from minimal acceptable change to a comprehensive plan for achieving a nuclear weapon-free future.

    A full copy of the briefing booklet can be downloaded
    from our website at https://wagingpeace.davidmolinaojeda.com/goto/nptbooklet. To request a
    hard copy, please call our office at (805) 965-3443.

  • Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament: Shifting the Mindset

    2010_03_19_npt_briefing.pdf