Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: nuclear war

  • Nobel Laureates’ Statement on the Urgent Need to Prevent Nuclear War

    Nobel Laureates’ Statement on the Urgent Need to Prevent Nuclear War

    Since August 1945, when the US detonated the first atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded eight times to individuals and organizations for their work to prevent nuclear war and to rid the world of the scourge of nuclear weapons.

    Yet in 2019—almost 75 years after this dire warning that nuclear weapons threaten our very existence—nuclear-armed states are engaging in expensive and aggressive arms races unlike anything we’ve seen since the Cold War between the US and the former Soviet Union. For the past two years, the Doomsday Clock has been set at two minutes to midnight—the closest it has been during the entire nuclear age.

    Just within the past several months, the US has withdrawn from the multinational agreement that prevents an Iranian nuclear weapons program; both the US and Russia have walked away from the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF); five Russian scientists were killed and radiation was released in an explosion during a test of a new hypersonic cruise missile designed to evade US missile defenses; the US began development of a new low-yield warhead and a nuclear-armed, sea-launched cruise missile; and North Korea has conducted several missile tests which the government has called a direct response to “double-dealing” by South Korea and the US.

    Direct and indirect threats to use nuclear weapons have multiplied, even as the nuclear-armed states spend billions of dollars to make nuclear weapons that are more accurate and more usable.

    As Nobel Peace Laureates, we have repeatedly warned about the catastrophic consequences of nuclear war, and we are compelled to do so again.

    A large scale nuclear war between the United States and Russia, , in which thousands of warheads were detonated, would kill hundreds of millions and would produce a nuclear winter, which would kill the vast majority of the human population and which might lead to our extinction as a species.

    A war in South Asia would also be a catastrophe for the entire planet.  New studies, which will be published in coming weeks, show that a nuclear war between India and Pakistan could kill more than 75 million people directly and cause worldwide climate disruption dropping temperatures across the planet an average of 4o C.  The resulting declines in agricultural output would trigger a famine that could put more than two billion people at risk of starvation.

    We urgently call on the leaders of India and Pakistan to resolve their differences and forswear any use of nuclear weapons, and we call on the entire international community to lend its good offices to the efforts to avoid a nuclear disaster in South Asia.

    Looking beyond the immediate crisis, we call on world leaders to take decisive action to eliminate the danger of nuclear war. The entry into force of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, negotiated more than 20 years ago, is urgently needed.  In July 2017, the United Nations adopted a landmark Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons by a vote of 122-1. The TPNW, in a long-overdue step, finally places the world’s worst weapons on the same legal footing as chemical and biological weapons, antipersonnel landmines and cluster munitions, declaring them illegal on the grounds of their unacceptable humanitarian consequences.

    The TPNW has passed the halfway point toward the 50 ratifications needed to bring it into force. The Treaty itself is only a first step. The States Parties to the treaty must make full use of its legal, political, and moral norms to bring the nuclear-armed states into compliance, despite their current reticence. We support efforts, such as the Back from the Brink campaign in the United States, to bring about fundamental policy change in the nuclear armed state. We commend the States that have already signed and ratified the TPNW, and we urge all other states—including the nuclear-armed states—to do so as soon as possible, and to get on with the urgent task of eliminating nuclear weapons once and for all.

  • What Factors Make Nuclear War More Likely?

    This article was originally published by The Hill.

    We know that the risk of nuclear war is not zero. Humans are not capable of creating foolproof systems. Nuclear weapons systems are particularly problematic since the possession of nuclear weapons carries an implicit threat of use under certain circumstances. In accord with nuclear deterrence theory, a country threatens to use nuclear weapons, believing that it will prevent the use of nuclear weapons against it.

    Nearly 15,000 nuclear weapons are currently under the control of nine countries. Each has a complex system of command and control with many possibilities for error, accident or intentional use.

    Error could be the result of human or technological factors, or some combination of human and technological interaction. During the more than seven decades of the Nuclear Age, there have been many accidents and close calls that could have resulted in nuclear disaster. The world narrowly escaped a nuclear war between the United States and Soviet Union during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

    Human factors include miscommunications, misinterpretations and psychological issues. Some leaders believe that threatening behavior makes nuclear deterrence more effective, but it could also result in a preventive first-strike launch by the side being threatened. Psychological pathologies among those in control of nuclear weapons could also play a role. Hubris, or extreme arrogance, is another factor of concern.

    Technological factors include computer errors that wrongfully show a country is under nuclear attack. Such false warnings have occurred on numerous occasions but, fortunately, human interactions (often against policy and/or orders) have so far kept a false warning from resulting in a mistaken “retaliatory” attack. In times of severe tensions, a technological error could compound the risks, and human actors might decide to initiate a first strike.

    There are many other factors that affect the risk of nuclear war. These include an increase in the number of countries possessing nuclear weapons and a greater number of nuclear weapons in each country’s nuclear arsenal. Both of these factors increase complexity and make the risk greater. Additionally, the higher the alert status of a country’s nuclear arsenal, the shorter the decision time to launch and the greater the risk of nuclear war. The risks are compounded when tension levels increase between nuclear-armed countries, increasing the likelihood of false assumptions and precipitous action.

    Nuclear policies of the nuclear-armed countries can also raise the risk level of nuclear war. Policies of first use of nuclear weapons may make an opponent more likely to initiate a first strike and thus make a nuclear war more likely. First use is generally a default policy, if a country does not specifically pledge a policy of no first use, as have China and India. Policies of launch-on-warning cut into decision time for leaders to decide whether or not to launch a “retaliatory” strike to what may be a false warning The deployment of land-based missiles also raises the risk level due to the “use them or lose them” nature of these stationary targets.

    In addition to identifiable risks of nuclear war, there are also unknown risks — those that cannot be identified in advance. Unknown risks include little-understood possibilities for cyber-attacks on nuclear weapons systems, attacks that could potentially either activate or deactivate nuclear-armed missile launches.

    Given the catastrophic consequences of nuclear war, including destruction of civilization and human extinction, identifying and eliminating the factors making nuclear war likely or even possible is imperative. There are simply too many possibilities for failure in such a complex system of interactions.

    This leads to the conclusion that the risks are untenable, and all nations should move rapidly to negotiate the elimination of all nuclear arms. While doing so, nations would be well served to adopt and declare policies of no first use and no launch-on-warning, and to eliminate vulnerable land-based missiles from their arsenals.

  • 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.

  • Clinging to Mass Violence

    Is the human race determined to snuff itself out through mass violence? There are many signs that it is.

    The most glaring indication lies in the continued popularity of war. Despite well over a hundred million deaths in World Wars I and II, plus the brutal military conflicts in Korea, Indochina, Hungary, Algeria, Lebanon, Angola, Mozambique, the Philippines, the Congo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere, wars continue to rage across the globe, consuming vast numbers of lives and resources. In 2012, worldwide military spending reached $1.75 trillion. Moreover, the most lavish spenders for weaponry, war, and destruction were the supposedly “civilized” nations of NATO, with $1 trillion in military expenditures. By far the biggest military spender in 2012 was the United States, which accounted for 39 percent of the world total.

    Nor has this pattern shifted since that time. Currently, the U.S. government is pouring $7 billion a month into its twelve-and-a-half-year-long war in Afghanistan. Elsewhere, drones are rapidly becoming the U.S. weapons of choice in the worldwide “War on Terror,” with America’s largest spy drone, the Global Hawk, costing $220 million each. In recent months, as the U.S. House of Representatives voted to end food stamps for the poor, continued the sequestration that slashed meals for sick and homebound seniors, and moved toward ending Saturday mail delivery, it rejected a 1 percent cut in military spending and, then, voted for a national defense authorization that provided for billions of dollars more than the Pentagon requested.

    Furthermore, a nation’s armed forces often engage in violent behavior quite unrelated to their national security. Commanded by military officers viewing themselves as the saviors of their countries, they have staged bloody coups against own governments, terrorizing and massacring civilians in large numbers, as they did in Indonesia, Burma, Nigeria, Brazil, Greece, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, and many other countries. At the moment, in fact, the Egyptian armed forces, having deposed a democratically-elected, civilian government, are busy gunning down thousands of Egyptians.

    In fairness to the official armed forces, it should be noted that the mass violence in many societies goes far beyond them. Terrorism, gang wars, and religious massacres continue to plague nations around the globe. In the United States, lynching has declined dramatically, but gun-related killings are quite common. More than 30,000 Americans die in gun violence each year and – in a society with over 300 million firearms in the hands of civilians – it seems unlikely that such violence will decline. Indeed, massacres by gunmen – for example, the murder of 20 children and 6 teachers at the Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut – have become almost routine.

    Admittedly, the Sandy Hook massacre was the work of a mentally-deranged individual. But the NRA’s response to a series of mass killings – opposition to all gun control legislation and a stubborn insistence that wider availability of guns will reduce violence – makes the Newtown maniac look relatively sane. And what is one to say about the mental state of the pro-gun zealots who, this August, made plans to turn up, fully-armed, at a Starbucks in Newtown — and were foiled only when the horrified management shut down the coffee house?

    The acceptability of mass violence is demonstrated on a much larger scale by national governments’ ongoing preparations for nuclear war. Sixty-eight years after the U.S. government employed atomic bombs to exterminate the populations of two Japanese cities and it became clear to all but the mentally feeble that nuclear war meant global annihilation, over 17,000 nuclear weapons remain in existence, with 94 percent of them in the arsenals of the U.S. and Russian governments. Despite numerous claims by national leaders that they are committed to building a nuclear weapons-free world, the United States, Russia, China, India, and Pakistan are currently modernizing their nuclear weapons, with the United States and Russia spending about $75 billion a year between them on this project. Meanwhile, the North Korean government threatens to attack the United States with its small nuclear arsenal, while the Iranian government continues a uranium enrichment process that might enable it to enter the nuclear club. Appropriately enough, the famous “Doomsday Clock” of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientistsstands at five minutes to midnight.

    There are, of course, important countervailing trends. Responding to the development of modern, mechanized warfare, mass-based peace movements began to appear in the nineteenth century. During the twentieth century, these movements grew even larger, particularly after the advent of nuclear weapons. In place of war, they championed international arbitration, global cooperation, arms control and disarmament, and the development of global governance. The World Court, the United Nations, and other international institutions owe much to this public pressure. Within individual nations, as well, critics of mass violence fostered new, more cooperative modes of education, non-violent resistance, conflict resolution, innovative therapies, peace studies programs, and gun control campaigns.

    But resorting to violence is a long-term, deeply-ingrained habit in human history, and is not easily discarded. To shake it probably requires less attention to a royal childbirth or the latest sex scandal and more attention to the dangers of mass violence in an age of modern weaponry and war. This was certainly what the French writer, Albert Camus, meant when, in the immediate aftermath of World War II and the first use of nuclear weapons, he offered a simple but powerful challenge: “All I ask is that, in the midst of a murderous world, we agree to reflect on murder and to make a choice.”

    Lawrence S. Wittner (http://lawrenceswittner.com) is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany. His latest book is a satirical novel about university life, What’s Going On at UAardvark? (Solidarity Press).

  • A Response to the Deadly Consequences of Nuclear War

    You may ask, how can we respond to something so overwhelming, so huge, so threatening that there is nowhere to hide except in denial? We’ve been trying that for almost 70 years. The numbers of weapons are down, their accuracy and lethality are up. It is time to try something new.

    We now know that Nuclear Winter, ozone layer destruction, phytoplankton reduction and other effects of a nuclear exchange would threaten health and life  everywhere on Earth in addition to the warring peoples. The people of the world are held hostage to the passions of the nine nuclear-weapons nations. We are no longer talking about deterring a potential adversary; we are talking about poisoning or ending Life on Earth. This new knowledge potentially adds billions of people to those already determined to abolish nuclear weapons.

    After the disaster of Fukushima, several nations, including Germany, abandoned nuclear generation because of its dangers. But thirteen nations are now constructing new power reactors. The problem is that the refinement of nuclear reactor fuel, if carried further, becomes weapons grade highly enriched uranium. The operation of nuclear plants results in the byproduct of plutonium, which also can be used to make a bomb.

    Since 1970 the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) has succeeded in slowing the  proliferation of nuclear weapons. The original deal was that the nuclear weapons states (NWS)  would work at abolishing their weapons, while the nuclear-weapons-free states (NWFS) would refrain from obtaining them. However, the weapons-free states are growing increasingly impatient with the deal, as they realize that they are endangered and that the nuclear weapons states are making little progress toward abolition.

    The Role of the U.S.

    Since 9/11/01 the U.S. has been following a policy of expanding its influence  through military bases around the world, particularly in Central Asia,  Africa and the Pacific. This process is greatly aided by the presence of our vast stockpile of nuclear warheads and far-reaching delivery systems, a fearful “deterrent” to any potential resistance. .

    At the same time, the manufacture and maintenance of nuclear warheads and the missiles, planes and submarines to deliver them anywhere in the world has grown into a huge business. Estimated at $50 billion a year, this business, including Air Force bases, nuclear laboratories, manufacturing plants and other facilities,  employs people in almost every Congressional District. The corporations that manufacture and manage these facilities spend millions a year in campaign contributions and lobbyists persuading our Representatives in Congress not to cut the budget from any part of this huge “defense” conglomerate.

    For other nations of the Nuclear Nine, the possession of nuclear weapons supplements their limited conventional forces when compared to those of a potential enemy. They will resist relinquishing their nuclear weapons, unless there is a reduction in all military forces. But it can be managed.

    Slicing Through the Gordian Knot

    In 1996 the World Court of Justice considered nuclear weapons and concluded that their use was illegal, except as the last resort of an endangered nation. We now know that any use of these weapons threatens Life on Earth. It would be useful if the nuclear-weapons-free nations could persuade the Court to label the manufacture, maintenance, support and any and all preparations for the use of nuclear weapons to be criminal activities. It seems obvious that any activity that threatens the indiscriminate incineration or poisoning of human beings is a Crime Against Humanity. For the millions involved in this work, or profiting from it, it is high time that they face the criminal nature of their employment, management, study or investment. This potential suicide of the human race cannot be disguised as a military deterrent, a patriotic duty or an acceptable activity for any reason. It is a crime beyond all measure. It must be stopped!

    There is now a draft convention for the abolition of nuclear weapons at the United Nations, similar to those that ended chemical and germ warfare. As the step-by-step disarmament process has resulted in the current “modernization” of existing weapons, it is time  to take another approach. The more than 180 nuclear-weapons-free nations should move to finalize this convention with or without the NWS participation. In the final analysis, if the nuclear nations continue to resist abolition, they may be subject to sanctions of the NWFN.

    There is no time to hesitate on the abolition of these weapons. As more nations get nuclear plants, refined uranium fuel and basic technology, the Non Proliferation Treaty will lose its force and the number of nations having nuclear weapons will increase.

    As the United States developed nuclear weapons, is the only nation to have used them, and has one of the greatest stockpiles of warheads, it is important that we take the lead in their abolition. We have an election every two years for all of our Representatives in Congress and a third of our Senators. Can we not demand that all of these elected officials Pledge in their campaigns to Oppose any funding for any part of our nuclear weapons and delivery systems? Can we not ask all those who fund these elections to abstain from funding candidates who will not take the Pledge of Opposition? Can we not disinvest in those corporations that are active in the nuclear weapons business and support the self-perpetuating nuclear weapons lobbies in Washington?

    The choice is clear. Either we exert ourselves to achieve and enforce a Convention to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, or we leave to our children the awsome possibility that they will be poisoned by fallout or incinerated by these criminal weapons.

    Peter G Cohen was a freshman at the U Chicago when Fermi developed the chain reaction. He was on a troopship bound for Japan when the bomb was detonated over Hiroshima. He is the author of the website www.nukefreeworld.com.

  • Protecting Whistleblowers

    The world urgently needs a system of international laws for protecting whistleblowers. There are many reasons for this, but among the most urgent is the need for saving civilization and the biosphere from the threat of a catastrophic nuclear war.

    It is generally recognized that a war fought with nuclear weapons would be a humanitarian and environmental disaster, affecting neutral nations throughout the world, as well as combatants. For example, on 4-5 March 2013 the Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Espen Barth Eide hosted an international Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons.

    The Conference provided an arena for a fact-based discussion of the humanitarian and developmental consequences of a nuclear weapons detonation. Delegates from 127 countries as well as several UN organisations, the International Red Cross movement, representatives of civil society and other relevant stakeholders participated.

    The Austrian representatives to the Oslo Conference commented that “Austria is convinced that it is necessary and overdue to put the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons at the center of our debate, including in the NPT. Nuclear weapons are not just a security policy issue for a few states but an issue of serious concern for the entire international community. The humanitarian, environmental, health, economic and developmental consequences of any nuclear weapons explosion would be devastating and global and any notion of adequate preparedness or response is an illusion.”

    China stated that “China has always stood for the complete prohibition and thorough destruction of nuclear weapons, and [has] actively promoted the establishment of a world free of nuclear weapons. The complete prohibition and total elimination of nuclear weapons, getting rid of the danger of nuclear war and the attainment of a nuclear-weapon-free world, serve the common interests and benefits of humankind.”

    Japan’s comment included the words: “As the only country to have suffered atomic bombings during wartime, Japan actively contributed to the Oslo Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons in March. With strengthened resolve to seek a nuclear-weapons-free world, we continue to advance disarmament and non-proliferation education to inform the world and the next generation of the dreadful realities of nuclear devastation.” Many other nations represented at the Oslo Conference made similarly strong statements advocating the complete abolition of nuclear weapons.

    Recently UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has introduced a 5-point Program for the abolition of nuclear weapons. In this program he mentioned the possibility of a Nuclear Weapons Convention, and urged the Security Council to convene a summit devoted to the nuclear abolition. He also urged all countries to ratify the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty.

    Three-quarters of all nations support UN Secretary-General Ban’s proposal for a treaty to outlaw and eliminate nuclear weapons. The 146 nations that have declared their willingness to negotiate a new global disarmament pact include four nuclear weapon states: China, India, Pakistan and North Korea.

    Nuclear disarmament has been one of the core aspirations of the international community since the first use of nuclear weapons in 1945. A nuclear war, even a limited one, would have global humanitarian and environmental consequences, and thus it is a responsibility of all governments,including those of non-nuclear countries, to protect their citizens and engage in processes leading to a world without nuclear weapons.

    Now a new process has been established by the United Nations General Assembly, an Open Ended Working Group (OEWG) to Take Forward Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament Negotiations. The OEWG convened at the UN offices in Geneva on May 14, 2013. Among the topics discussed was a Model Nuclear Weapons Convention.

    The Model Nuclear Weapons Convention prohibits development, testing, production, stockpiling, transfer, use and threat of use of nuclear weapons. States possessing nuclear weapons will be required to destroy their arsenals according to a series of phases.

    The Convention also prohibits the production of weapons usable fissile material and requires delivery vehicles to be destroyed or converted to make them non-nuclear capable.

    Verification will include declarations and reports from States, routine inspections, challenge inspections, on-site sensors, satellite photography, radionuclide sampling and other remote sensors, information sharing with other organizations, and citizen reporting. Persons reporting suspected violations of the convention will be provided protection through the Convention including the right of asylum.

    Thus we can see that the protection of whistleblowers is an integral feature of the Model Nuclear Weapons Convention now being discussed. As Sir Joseph Rotblat (1908-2005, Nobel Laureate 1995) frequently emphasized in his speeches, societal verification must be an integral part of the process of “going to zero” ( i.e, the total elimination of nuclear weapons). This is because nuclear weapons are small enough to be easily hidden. How will we know whether a nation has destroyed all of its nuclear arsenal? We have to depend on information from insiders, whose loyalty to the whole of humanity promts them to become whistleblowers. And for this to be possible, they need to be protected.

    In general, if the world is ever to be free from the threat of complete destruction by modern weapons, we will need a new global ethic, an ethic as advanced as our technology. Of course we can continue to be loyal to our families, our localities and our countries. But this must be suplemented by a higher loyalty: a loyalty to humanity as a whole.

    John Avery is a leader in the Pugwash movement in Denmark.

  • Still Preparing for Nuclear War

    This article was originally published by History News Network.

    Nearly a quarter century after the disappearance of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the U.S. government is still getting ready for nuclear war.

    This fact was underscored on June 19, 2013, when the Pentagon, on behalf of President Barack Obama, released a report to Congress outlining what it called the U.S. government’s “Nuclear Employment Strategy.” Although the report indicated some minor alterations in U.S. policy, it exhibited far more continuity than change.

    In 2010, the administration’s Nuclear Posture Review declared that it would work toward making deterrence of nuclear attack the “sole purpose” of U.S. nuclear weapons. The 2013 report, however, without any explanation, reported that “we cannot adopt such a policy today.” Thus, as in the past, the U.S. government considers itself free to initiate a nuclear attack on other nations.

    In addition, the 2013 “Nuclear Employment Strategy” continued U.S. government reliance on a “nuclear triad” of ground-launched intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched intercontinental ballistic missiles, and bomber-launched nuclear weapons. Although the need for one or more legs of this “triad” has been debated since the early 1990s, the 2013 report concluded that “retaining all three triad legs will best maintain strategic stability.”

    The 2013 “Nuclear Employment Strategy” also retained another controversial aspect of U.S. nuclear policy: counterforce strategy. Designed to employ U.S. nuclear weapons to destroy an enemy nation’s nuclear weapons, delivery systems, and associated installations, counterforce is potentially very destabilizing, for it provides an incentive to nations caught up in a crisis to knock out the opponent’s nuclear weapons before they can be used. And this, in turn, means that nations are more likely to initiate nuclear war and to desire large numbers of nuclear weapons to avoid having their weapons totally destroyed by a preemptive attack. Consequently, as Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists has noted, the report’s emphasis on counterforce “undercuts efforts to reduce the role and numbers of nuclear weapons.”

    Furthermore, despite a growing desire among Western nations to have the U.S. government remove an estimated 200 nuclear-armed B61 gravity bombs — weapons dating back to the 1960s — deployed in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey, the Pentagon report made no proposal along these lines. These Cold War relics, too, remain untouchable.

    One shift in emphasis indicated in the “Nuclear Employment Strategy” is a presidential directive to Pentagon officials to “reduce the role of `launch under attack.’” Currently, it is U.S. policy to fire nuclear weapons at an opponent on short notice if there are signs that a nuclear strike is under way against the United States or its allies. But this reduction in the likelihood of sliding into a full-scale nuclear war would be more reassuring if the President’s directive did not also command the Pentagon to retain a launch-under-attack capability, in case the President decided to use it.

    But what about Obama’s lofty rhetoric of April 2009, in Prague, where he stated that the U.S. government was committed to building a nuclear-weapons-free world? Also, didn’t he renew that approach in his Berlin speech of June 19, 2013, only hours before the issuance of the Pentagon’s “Nuclear Employment Strategy,” when he called for nuclear disarmament negotiations with the Russians?

    Yes, the rhetoric of 2009 was very inspiring, landing Obama a Nobel Peace Prize and raising hopes around the world that the nuclear menace was on the verge of extinction. But fairly little came of it, with the modest exception of the New START Treaty with Russia.

    The Berlin speech, too, was substantially over-rated. Although many media reports implied that Obama had proposed decreasing the Russian and American nuclear arsenals by a third, the reality was that the President suggested his readiness to support a reduction of “up to” a third of deployed Russian and American strategic nuclear weapons. Under the New START Treaty, the limit to the number of these kinds of weapons in each nation is 1,550. Thus, in reality, Obama announced that he favored an agreement for each nation to eliminate 1 to 517 of them. From the standpoint of nuclear disarmers, that reduction would certainly be welcome — if, in the face of Republican resistance, it is ever consummated. But, it should be noted that, at present, the U.S. government possesses approximately 7,700 nuclear weapons.

    Another indication that the Obama administration is in no hurry to fulfill its promises about building a nuclear weapons-free world is found in its fiscal 2014 budget proposal to Congress. Here, amid sharp cuts for a broad variety of programs, there is a proposed 9 percent increase in federal funding for the Energy Department’s U.S. nuclear weapons activities, including upgrading nuclear warheads (like the B61 gravity bomb, slated for a $10 billion makeover) and modernizing nuclear weapons production facilities.

    This administration unwillingness to discard the immensely dangerous, outdated nuclear policies of the past flies in the face of public support for abolishing nuclear weapons, whether expressed in public opinion polls or in the resolutions of mainstream bodies like the National Council of Churches and the U.S. Conference of Mayors. But, unless there is a substantial public mobilization to end the American government’s reliance on nuclear war, it seems likely that U.S. officials will continue to prepare for it.

    Dr. Lawrence Wittner (http://lawrenceswittner.com) is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany. His latest book is Working for Peace and Justice: Memoirs of an Activist Intellectual (University of Tennessee Press).

  • Regional Nuclear War Can Spur Climate Change, Famines Around the World: Scientist

    Before 2015, many scientists knew that a “nuclear winter” theoretically could bring major climate change to the world and create famines in many countries. But it wasn’t until the aftermath of the use of a hundred atomic bombs by Pakistan and India – in what was later named the South Asian Nuclear War – that people everywhere began to comprehend the longer-term, global effects of nuclear exchanges. They then understood, to their horror, that there was no such thing as a strictly “regional” nuclear conflict.

    International panels and historians would try with scant success to construct a narrative to explain the unprecedented mass destruction of that summer weekend. The early events of the conflict appear plain enough: Pakistan’s government spent July complaining that India was increasingly engaging in cyber attacks aimed at testing the vulnerability of its neighbor’s nuclear command-and-control computer systems. As tensions mounted, Pakistani troops were dispatched into the Kargil district of the Ladakh region in Jammu and Kashmir — an area officially on India’s side of the “line of control” that divided the restive, mountainous Himalayan state. As with a similar incursion in 1999, India responded with intense air and artillery assaults using conventional weapons.

    While other governments urged calm, several major Pakistani government buildings in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad were destroyed by explosive devices. Indian leaders vehemently denied all culpability. They asserted Pakistani militants or religious extremists likely were trying to take advantage of the latest tumultuous period to provoke a nuclear Armageddon between the rival nations.

    Indian Army and paramilitary forces confronted large crowds in the streets of Srinager, the overwhelmingly Islamic summer capital of Kashmir, as well as other large cities in the region. Two Pakistani military officers then sparked an uproar in India’s media: One  said publicly his nation was ready and willing to give field commanders the authority to use arsenals of small, tactical nuclear weapons to repel any invasion of his country by Indian soldiers. Another leaked word to reporters that Pakistan was mulling the option of detonating a “demonstration” nuclear warhead, far above a large Indian city, to prove it had no squeamishness about using the bombs it possessed.

    July turned to August, and Indian and Pakistani military forces went on full nuclear alert. In preparation for total war, both sides increased the pace of marrying nuclear warheads with missiles and aircraft so they could be used quickly, if needed. Startling the world, India aired TV and radio messages telling citizens to move to their basements – makeshift shelters where many families had already stored emergency food and water after New Delhi recommended it in 2013.

    A high-level team of peace envoys from the U.S., whose jet was heading to the region, was urgently mediating with the two sides by telephone over the Atlantic. Diplomats told a relieved world that tensions between India and her neighbor actually were easing and that more a serious conflict probably could be headed off.

    But subsequent events are much less clear. Dozens of missiles in both nations remained on hair-trigger alert, with a strategic “window” of about three minutes for politicians and officers to decide if an early warning sign was a real attack. Then, a monumental wild card: A meteor the size of a refrigerator, it was later determined, shattered Earth’s atmosphere 80,000 feet over Jaipur, a city of 3 million in northwest India. Breaking thousands of windows, it exploded in the sky with a sonic boom and an approximate blast power of 250 kilotons (compared to the 12.5-kiloton bomb that destroyed Hiroshima).

    The nuclear phase of the war began just eight minutes after the meteor struck. The connection between the meteor and use of missiles by both countries, if any, remains a topic of endless debate. The exchange of missiles persisted for two full days. Approximately 100 nuclear explosions, centering mainly on urban centers, took millions of lives in each country on account of the blasts themselves but also the radiation, hunger and disease that followed. No clear winner emerged.

    The significance of the war for the rest of the world soon dawned. After massive pillars of black smoke and dust rose above the remains of dozens of burned cities, unprecedented pollution traveled around the world and ascended 25 miles to the stratosphere. There the soot was trapped, immune to disruption by rain below. Skies turn from blue to gray.

    Major declines in temperature in all parts of the world followed. Average rainfall declined. Growing seasons in both hemispheres immediately got shorter, as farmers from New England to China saw some crops yield much less than expected and other crops fail altogether.

    Meanwhile, ozone in the atmosphere became massively depleted, and harmful ultraviolet rays at the planet’s surface increased, further injuring plants, causing greater incidence of human illness such as skin cancer, and playing havoc with the biosphere in countless ways.

    The effects would last years. The World Famine of 2015-2025 ultimately was considered the worst catastrophe in mankind’s history – a tragedy affecting billions who had no connection whatsoever to the war that had been its cause. The grime high in the atmosphere lingered for years, absorbing sunlight necessary for plants, animals and people to survive and thrive — and serving to remind an appalled world, every day, of the dark potential of its nuclear technology.

    *

    The above scenario is hypothetical. What’s real, already, is the work of scientists over the past few years who have reinvestigated and revised the theories of nuclear winter that captured world attention in the 1980s. Most Americans probably haven’t thought about nuclear winter since that era, when an all-out war between the U.S. and Soviet Union looked plausible. Back then, everyone from ordinary citizens to journalists to world leaders joined the discussion about how the use of nuclear arms could imperil world ecology and, in the worst case, cause the extinction of all species.

    Alan Robock, now a senior professor in environmental science at Rutgers University, was  a young scientist studying nuclear winter at that time. Today, the 63-year-old researcher is warning anyone who will listen that although the Cold War ended in the early 1990s, and the risk of a Third World War now appears to be reduced, the danger of nuclear winter persists.

    Robock and a few colleagues have been using cutting-edge computer models to try to foretell the climatic consequences of nuclear explosions in an era when a “local” exchange of nuclear weapons – say, between India and Pakistan – appears more probable than a general world war.

    Scientists such as Robock are asking if we can safely stop viewing nuclear weapons as an ominous threat to the world environment, merely because the arsenals of emerging nuclear powers are relatively small. Robock says absolutely not. To him, the latest ecological predictions are just as chilling as they were three decades ago. They point to prolonged, major climate damage affecting many regions on Earth, with widespread deaths from hunger in many countries. This appears true even if the usage of a “small” number of nuclear weapons was the triggering event.

    NAPF spoke with Robock about his new research, and why he thinks his findings are just as urgent as the well-known nuclear winter studies of the 1980s. He also discusses his frustration that his efforts to stir the interest of government officials, and even fellow scientists, often have been met with what appears to be apathy. The following is an edited version of the conversation.

    KAZEL: Dr. Robock, if you were speaking to a group of Americans who remember scientists’ warnings about nuclear winter back in the 1980s, what would you tell them about your more recent theories and how they’re relevant to today’s world?

    ROBOCK: Thirty years ago, we discovered that a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union could produce a nuclear winter with temperatures plummeting below freezing during the summertime, destroying agriculture around the world and producing a global famine. The indirect effects of nuclear war would be much greater than the direct effects, as horrible as they would be.

    This helped to end the nuclear arms race. Mikhail Gorbachev has been quoted in multiple interviews saying he knew about the work on nuclear winter, which was being done jointly by American and Russian scientists. That was a strong message to him to end the arms race.

    But that was 30 years ago. Now we’re asking two questions. One, even though the arms race is over and the number of weapons is coming down, could we still produce a nuclear winter with the current arsenals? And the answer to that is yes. Even after the New START agreement is implemented in 2017, there will still be enough nuclear weapons in the American and Russian arsenals to produce a full nuclear winter with temperatures below freezing in the summer and global famine. Most people think that the problem has been solved, but it has not.

    The second question is, what would be the consequences of nuclear war between some new nuclear powers, such as India and Pakistan? Imagine…a nuclear war ensues between India and Pakistan, each of them using only 50 Hiroshima-size nuclear weapons. Their weapons might be bigger than that, but we know that’s the simplest to build. So we did a scenario by which each side used 50 Hiroshima-sized weapons. This will be much less than 1 percent of the global nuclear arsenal, and less than half of each of their arsenals.

    It would be horrible. Twenty million people would die. As horrible as that would be, it would produce about 5 million tons of smoke, which would go up in the atmosphere, last for more than a decade, and cause cooling at the Earth’s surface… It would be the coldest temperatures ever experienced in recorded history – temperatures colder than the “Little Ice Age” a couple of hundred years ago, in which there was famine around the world.

    This would cause devastation in the world food market. People would stop trading. There would be a famine and we estimate up to a billion people might die.

    So, we’re in a terrible situation. People don’t realize that the use of nuclear weapons is still the greatest danger that the planet faces. And we have to solve this problem so that we can have the luxury of worrying about global warming – which is also a problem.

    KAZEL: Why have you tended the emphasize the example of India and Pakistan as a possible place where a nuclear war might break out, rather than other areas of the world?

    ROBOCK: There are nine nuclear nations now – the current members of the [U.N.] Security Council – the first five to get nuclear weapons, the U.S., Russian, China, France and England. Then there’s four more. There’s Israel, who doesn’t admit [possessing nuclear weapons], India, Pakistan and North Korea. People think, “Oh, that’s on the other side of the world. We don’t have to worry about it. They only have a few weapons. We can forget about it.” But it’s not true.

    We wanted to emphasize the danger of even a small number of weapons because nuclear proliferation is still a big problem. There are other countries that want to have them.

    There are 40 countries it the world that have highly enriched uranium or plutonium and could make nuclear weapons, if they wanted to. Everybody knows how to make them. Why have they chosen notto? How can we keep them [from choosing otherwise]?  Why doesn’t Japan or Germany or Belgium or Brazil or Argentina have nuclear weapons? They could if they wanted to.

    We wanted to emphasize that it’s much more dangerous to have them than it is to not have them.

    People still thinks it’s “mutually assured destruction” – if Country A attacks Country B, Country B will retaliate, and that’s why we don’t attack them. But it turns out it would be suicide to use nuclear weapons. If you attacked a country, and produced all these fires and smoke, it would come back to haunt you. It would affect your agricultural production.

    KAZEL: Do you see much interest today among researchers around the world in nuclear winter – for example, in Russia and China, or, in particular, India and Pakistan, since this is data that’s especially relevant to them?

    ROBOCK: Unfortunately no, we don’t. We write journal articles, we give talks at conferences. I just gave two talks at a conference in Europe a couple of weeks ago. Colleagues in Switzerland have recently completed a similar climate-model study…The Swiss government has given us a small amount of funding to do this work. But we would like to identify colleagues in Russia to this, and we don’t see any interest.

    I talked to a Pakistani colleague at Princeton and he said, “You know, they’re really proud of this accomplishment, of being able to make nuclear weapons. If you started doing research into this [in Pakistan] to show that they can’t be used [because of environmental dangers], you would be a pariah. People would criticize you as being unpatriotic.”

    Everyone who hears [my findings] gets kind of shocked by the results. Again, it’s kind of an emotional reaction and they don’t really want to hear it. But I’ve not gotten any pushback in terms of the science. Nobody’s been able to find a flaw in our science.

    KAZEL: I noticed in one of your papers you expressed impatience with Global Zero because they haven’t put a spotlight on environmental dangers when they’ve campaigned against nuclear weapons. Do you think antinuclear groups have a responsibility to spread the word about nuclear winter now?

    ROBOCK: Absolutely. That was [an impetus] to the end of the arms race. The first results were quite controversial. Carl Sagan was going around talking about it a lot and there was a lot of debate about it. That made people look again at the direct effects of nuclear weapons and how horrible the direct effects would be.

    People had been ignoring it, and Russia and the U.S. had just been building more and more weapons. This discussion really shocked people into realizing how crazy the arms race was.

    You know, this is an easier problem to solve than global warming. The solution to global warming is to stop putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and that threatens a tremendous economic base of the fossil fuel companies and the energy infrastructure of the planet. It’s a tough struggle, and it’s slow. But nuclear weapons, there’s only a few thousand of them around the world. It’s a small part of the world economy. So this can change much more easily than solving the global warming problem.

    Obama has said he wants to get rid of all nuclear weapons. He is trying to reduce our arsenal, but he could reduce our arsenal unilaterally without waiting for the Russians – and make us safer. Of course, you’ve got to educate people about what nuclear weapons really are in order for them to understand this.

    My senator, Robert Menendez [D-New Jersey], is now the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I’m going down to Washington next month to try to do some lobbying and try to talk him into having a hearing about this.

    KAZEL: How active should the scientists of today be in prescribing policy changes? In 2007, you [and a co-author] called for de-alerting of nuclear missiles, elimination of tactical nuclear weapons, ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, and phasing out the use of highly enriched uranium. You’ve also said that U.S. and Russian arms reductions have been insufficient and that we could go down to a basic deterrence force of a few hundred nuclear weapons. Are you more willing now to recommend specific policies rather than just supply data to the government and the military?

    ROBOCK: As far as specific policy recommendations, I’m not an expert. I’m an expert in climate. I remember in the 1980s, I was talking to another scientist about this, and he said, our job is just to provide the information and data and let the policymakers decide on the policy. I thought about that and I said, you know, the policymakers spend their careers deciding how to target nuclear weapons, how to use them, how to threaten with them. If they actually accepted our science, they would be out of a job.

    The clear policy implication [of our research] is that you can’t use nuclear weapons, you have to get rid of them. If they accepted that, they’d have to find another line of work. So how can we expect them to change the policy when they have a self-interest in continuing the policy? That’s why I think it’s important for scientists to speak out.

    It’s frustrating because we’re trying to get some more money to support the research. There are a lot of details that still need to be understood. We thought maybe the Department of Defense, which has the nuclear weapons and might use them, or the Department of Energy, which makes the nuclear weapons, or the Department of Homeland Security…might want to fund such studies. In every case, the program managers say, “It’s not my job. It’s somebody else’s job to look at that problem.”

    Obama understands these issues and wants to do the right thing, but he needs somebody to push him. He needs a movement. He needs a lot of people to be concerned about it. People think that [the nuclear weapons] problem has faded away and there are more important concerns in their lives. They don’t feel threatened like they did in the past.

    KAZEL: Apparently there is a common misconception that nuclear winter theories have been, at some point in the past, discredited or overstated. You’ve written about this.

    ROBOCK: As Bob Dylan says, “How does it feel?” It feels better to believe it’s not going to be winter, even though it’s wrong. Because the arms race is over, because nobody talks about it anymore, people think the problem has disappeared.

    We had this new modern-climate model, with which we did the India-Pakistan case with. We said, let’s go back and see, is it really nuclear winter? People said maybe it wouldn’t be nuclear winter, maybe it would be nuclear “fall.” We found the smoke would stay [in the upper atmosphere] for many years. Nobody knew that before. We found that indeed it would get below freezing in the summertime.

    We [also] repeated the simulations we did 30 years ago. Those used a third of the nuclear arsenals on the U.S. and Russian side and produced 150 million tons of smoke. So we said, how much smoke would only 4,000 weapons produce – 2,000 on each side? And we could still get 150 million tons of smoke, the same as you’d get with the much larger arsenals of the past. You’d still produce nuclear winter. So it’s still way too many weapons.

    KAZEL: In trying to demonstrate the gravity of nuclear winter, how do you convey to the public that this is potentially catastrophic? For instance, after a regional nuclear exchange, you predict average cooling would decrease two to three degrees Fahrenheit for several years. Some crops would have their growing season shortened by a couple of weeks. Those numbers may not seem dramatic to a non-scientist.

    ROBOCK: We found a 10 to 20 percent reduction in the corn and soybean crop in the United States for years [following an India-Pakistan nuclear war]. We found the same thing for rice production in China for years. That brings rice production in China down to what it was when there were 300 million fewer Chinese people.

    Everyone wouldn’t instantly die of starvation, but the food supplies in grain-growing regions would shrink around the world by 20 percent for a decade. That would put a huge strain on the global food trade.

    Ira Helfand [co-president of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War] wrote an article saying there might be a billion people at risk of starvation because they’re now living marginal existences. They depend on imported food. There would be nobody to come in to help them. There would be no stores of food.

    KAZEL: In looking back at the media attention paid to nuclear winter in the 1980s, a huge spotlight was placed on Carl Sagan. He first warned about it in an article in Parademagazine. He was on “The Tonight Show” dozens of times and testified before committees of Congress. He was called “the people’s scientist.” Do you think the strong interest in nuclear winter at that time was an anomaly because he was so charismatic and well known, whereas today there’s no scientist like that who can stir up interest?

    ROBOCK: Yes. We’ve thought about and we agree with that. We thought to get [astrophysicist] Neil deGrasse Tyson interested. He’s going to be doing a new version of the “Cosmos” show with Carl’s widow, [writer-producer] Ann Druyan. He’s the only scientist I know who even comes close to Carl.

    We also tried to get Al Gore interested, because he’s got a global audience when he talks about climate. But he wasn’t interested.

    So yes, we need somebody like that to give the message. We’re trying to get a Hollywood screenplay written, and do a movie about this. I think using popular culture would get a lot of people’s attention. We haven’t gotten there yet.

    KAZEL: That’s interesting. Could it possibly take a blockbuster movie, like [the 1980s nuclear-war TV special] “The Day After,” to shock people into caring again?

    ROBOCK: Yes, absolutely. We met a guy who’s a scientist but also writes screenplays. He’s working on it for us. We’ll see how that goes.

    KAZEL: In a previous interview, you criticized the mainstream media for how it covers science. You said the media spread errors, that general-assignment reporters are allowed to write about science even though they lack the knowledge for it, and that coverage of science is often sensational. You also said scientists should stop relying on the media and find their own ways to reach the public.

    ROBOCK: Sagan didn’t rely on reporters. He had his own TV show, “Cosmos.” As you say, he went on “The Tonight Show” and talked directly to the audience, without reporters involved. He wrote a book [in 1990, The Path Where No Man Thought: Nuclear Winter and the End of the Arms Race, with UCLA atmospheric scientist Richard Turco]. He wrote articles.

    But the people don’t want to hear this. So you need somebody like Carl. It would be great if we had somebody like him around to give this message.

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

  • 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.

  • Youth Program on the Humanitarian Dimensions of Nuclear Disarmament

    In early September 2012, with the generous support of the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, students from Austria, Brazil, Germany, Mexico, Switzerland, Iran, Italy, Palestine, and Romania participated in the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Youth Program on the Humanitarian Dimensions of Nuclear Disarmament. These students met with members of civil society and representatives from different states. They further participated in a seminar on the humanitarian dimensions of nuclear disarmament and an informational workshop about the Ban All Nukes Generation’s tentative program, entitled “Claim your voice. Ban the Bomb,” a youth empowerment program that will be held during the conference in Oslo.


    Prior to the program, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation established an international coordinating group for this program. This international coordinating group assembled a background document, which contained references to reports from NGOs and statements by states, including Switzerland, about the humanitarian dimensions of nuclear disarmament.


    Participants in the humanitarian program


    When the students arrived to Geneva on September 4, 2012, they participated in a roundtable discussion with members of the NGO Committee for Disarmament, a substantive committee of the Conference of NGOs with Consultative relationship with the United Nations Committee, that is composed of Reaching Critical Will, International Peace Bureau, Mayors for Peace, World Council of Churches, Soka Gakkai International (SGI), Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, and the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. During this meeting, participants asked the members of the NGO Committee about the international disarmament machinery, the role of religious organizations in promoting nuclear disarmament, and the humanitarian dimensions of nuclear disarmament.


    After the roundtable discussion with members of the NGO Committee for Disarmament, Mr. Christian N. Ciobanu distributed information about different states’ views on nuclear disarmament to the students. He also underscored the importance of the Swiss joint statement on the humanitarian dimensions of nuclear disarmament to the participants.


    Once the participants received an adequate background on the humanitarian dimensions of nuclear disarmament, the participants met with representatives from Non-Nuclear Weapon States. Most of these representatives explained to them why their governments either supported or did not support the joint statement on the humanitarian dimensions of nuclear disarmament.


    In the afternoon of September 5, the participants attended the NGO Committee for Disarmament’s Seminar on the Humanitarian Dimensions of Nuclear Disarmament in which Mr. Colin Archer, the Secretary-General of the International Peace Bureau served as the moderator. During this seminar, the participants heard statements from Mr. Peter Herby, head of the legal division of the International Committee of the Red Cross; Dr. Daniel Plesch, Director of the School of Oriental and African Studies’ Center for International Studies and Diplomacy (CISD); Mr. Magnus Lovold, a representative of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN); and Mr. Christian N. Ciobanu, Geneva Representative of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. Finally, based on the feedback from the participants, they enjoyed Lovold and Ciobanu’s views on how the humanitarian disarmament process can help raise awareness about the need for the international community to support a nuclear weapons convention and the devastating environmental impacts of nuclear weapons.


    On September 6, the final day of the program, the Ban All Nukes Generation convened an informational workshop about the “Claim your voice. Ban the Bomb.” In addition, as part of the workshop, the representatives of Ban All Nukes Generation underscored the need for young people to become empowered citizens and attend the program in Oslo in March 2013. The program would also tentatively give young European people an opportunity to make an impact at the conference in Oslo. Specifically, it will provide them with the methodological tools they need to become actively involved at the local, national and European levels to resolve both the global political and environmental impacts of nuclear weapons.