Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: nuclear weapons

  • The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence Today: International Law as Anchoring Ground

    Ladies and gentlemen:

    I am very happy to be speaking with you this evening. I want to express my gratitude to Zeit-Fragen for publishing the German language edition of my book The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence (Clarity Press: 2002) which comes out now on the anniversary of the end of the Second World War.  At this time 65 years ago, Japan surrendered to the United States after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the incineration of 250,000 completely innocent human beings.

    My father was a Marine who invaded Saipan, Tinian, and Okinawa, and was preparing to invade Mainland Japan. I was brought up to believe that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had saved my father’s life and thus made mine possible, although my father never raised me to be anti-Japanese or anti-German.  But when I came to study international relations, I realized: This simply was not true.  Indeed it was total propaganda by the United States government to justify nuclear terrorism and the mass-extermination of a quarter of a million human beings. Even Justice Pal in his dissent to the Tokyo Judgment said that the Japanese war criminals had nothing to their discredit as the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which you can only compare to Nazi Acts.

    Today the world is at a precipice of another world war. The United States government has committed acts of aggression against Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, and has authorized, armed, equipped, and supplied Israel to commit acts of aggression, crimes against humanity, and outright genocide against Lebanon and Palestine. Today the United States government is threatening to attack Iran under the completely bogus pretext that they might have a nuclear weapon, which the International Atomic Energy has said is simply not true. If they attack Iran with the Israelis, a British think-tank has predicted they could exterminate 2.8 million Iranians! They are fully prepared — the Americans and the Israelis — to use tactical nuclear weapons.

    Indeed today tactical nuclear weapons have been fully integrated into U.S. armed forces and tactical training and programs. I have read the manual myself.  Nukes are now treated — starting with the Bush Junior administration — as if they were just another weapon.

    We must remember when President Putin was in Iran and he said he did not believe the Iranians had a nuclear weapon, President Bush Jr. publicly got up and threatened World War III. Remember that threat! He threatened World War III! I cannot recall in my lifetime a threat of this nature. You would have to go back to Hitler and Mussolini and Tojo to find high level government officials threatening a world war.

    What did this threat mean? It was saying to Russia: “You had better stand back if we attack Iran.” It wasn`t a threat to Iran; that would not produce a world war attacking Iran, but just a slaughter.  But saying to Russia: “You had better stand back, we are prepared to risk World War III if you don’t let us get our way with Iran.” An attack on Iran would set this entire region of the world on fire, from Egypt over to India, from Uzbekistan down to Diego Garcia. And as my friend and my colleague, Hans von Sponeck pointed out yesterday with his map: We see the counter-alliance to NATO: Russia, China and the so-called Central Asia Collective Security Organization. If you read about the origins World War I or World War II an attack on Iran could clearly set off World War III – remember Bush threatened it. And it could easily become nuclear. I kid you not on the dangers we are facing us all as human beings today.

    We stand on a nuclear precipice, and any attempt to dispel this ideology of nuclearism and its myth propounding the legality and morality of nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence must come to grips with the fact that the nuclear age was conceived in the original sins of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These weapons have always been criminal!  Remember they were developed to deal with the Nazis, out of fear that the Nazis would get them first. And yet for some reason they used them on the Japanese to make a point, to terrorize the rest of the world.

    The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki constituted war crimes and crimes against humanity as defined by the Nuremberg Charter of August 8th 1945 — right after the United States bombed Hiroshima, and the day before they bombed Nagasaki — that condemned the wanton destruction of cities, towns, and villages; and applied it to the Nazi leaders, but of course never applied it to themselves. In my book The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence there is an entire chapter on the criminality of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and I list all the legal violations there, up to and including the United States Department of War Field Manual 27-10 (1940).  So these bombings, and also the firebombing of Tokyo, exterminating 100,000 civilians, were war crimes. Even as recognized officially by the United States government itself.

    The start of any progress towards resolving our nuclear predicament as human beings must come from the realization that nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence have never been legitimate instruments of state policy, but have always constituted instrumentalities of internationally lawless and criminal behaviour. And those states that wield nuclear weapons, their government officials are criminals in accordance with the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles, and the Tokyo Charter and Judgment that the Allies applied to the Nazi war criminals and the Japanese war criminals after World War II.  So I’m not talking here about applying any principle of law that the United States government and the other victors of World War II applied to their enemies to hold them accountable.

    The use of nuclear weapons in combat is contemplated now by the United States and Israel against Iran. How many times have we heard U.S. government officials involved in the Bush Junior administration and now the Obama administration say: “All options are on the table.”  They mean it: not just the use the force but the use of nuclear weapons as well. These are prohibited by conventional and customary international law, including the Genocide Convention of 1948, designed to prevent a repetition of the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews, the Poles, the Russians, the Ukrainians. The use of nuclear weapons would also violate Resolutions of the U.N. General Assembly that repeatedly condemned their use as an international crime.  We must understand that when dealing with nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence: They are not simply immoral, they are not simply illegal, but they are criminal across the board!

    The Swiss Foreign Ministry a commissioned a study of nuclear deterrence by three American authors, I read it, and I agree with what they said. They pointed out that the critical factor is the delegitimisation of nuclear weapons in the minds of the people. Having litigated nuclear weapons protest cases in the United States, Canada, Britain, and elsewhere since 1982, for me the critical factor in winning these cases is to explain to the common, ordinary people on juries that nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence are criminal. Not simply illegal, not simply immoral, but criminal!

    Yet the government officials in all the nuclear weapon states, not just the United States — they are the worst of them — but also Russia, France, Britain, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea: They are the criminals! For threatening to exterminate all humanity! For threatening Nuremberg crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide. That’s what nuclear deterrence really is: threatening mass extermination.  And in the Advisory Opinion by the International Court of Justice on nuclear weapons, the World Court ruled that the threat stands or falls on the same legal grounds as the actual use.  If mass extermination of human beings is a crime, the threat to commit mass extermination is also a crime.

    It is as if the leaders of the nuclear weapon states have all taken out a gun, cocked the trigger, and held it at the heads of all humanity! In any system of criminal justice today that activity is criminal! In the United States it would be attempted murder, and you would be prosecuted for it.  Yet today U.S. government officials threaten murder to millions of people around the world. And now especially in Iran.

    According to the Nuremberg Judgment soldiers would be obliged to disobey criminal orders to launch and wage a nuclear war. And yet, how many soldiers have been educated to understand these principles? A few have educated themselves, acted on it, and have been prosecuted by the United States government.  I have helped to defend them, with a good deal of success, but not complete success. You can read about this in my latest book Protesting Power: War Resistance and Law (Rowman & Littlefield: 2008). How we defended military resisters in our all-volunteer Armed Forces who refused to fight in illegal, criminal wars waged by the United States government, going back to Gulf War I by Bush Senior, Haiti by Clinton, Gulf War II by Bush Junior.

    All government officials and military officers who might launch or wage a nuclear war would be personally responsible for the commission of crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide. And such individuals whether statesmen or high level military personnel would not be entitled to any defenses of superior orders, act of state, tu quoque, self-defense, presidential authority, etc. All those defenses were made by lawyers for the Nazi defendants at Nuremberg and they were rejected. And yet today in the United States of America starting with the Bush Junior administration and now continuing with Obama you will hear international lawyers working for the government, and many in the private sector, making Nazi arguments to justify what the United States government is doing around the world. That’s how desperate the situation is!

    The whole Bush Doctrine of preventive warfare, which is yet to be officially repealed by Obama now after 18 months, was made by the Nazi lawyers for the Nazi defendants at Nuremberg, and it was rejected. And the argument by Nuremberg was: There is no such thing as preventive self-defense or things of this nature. What is self-defense can only be determined by reference to international law. And the test is clearly: the necessity of self-defense must be instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, no moment for deliberation. Certainly not Afghanistan or Iraq or Lebanon or Palestine or Iran or Somalia or Yemen or Pakistan. And yet all victims of this Nazi doctrine of preventive self-defense that is now justified by all these prostituted international lawyers on the payroll of the United States government, leaving government service, now they infiltrate into American academia where they likewise try to justify these doctrines and policies that were condemned as criminal at Nuremberg.

    Article 2, paragraph 4 of the United Nations Charter prohibits both the threat and the use of force except in cases of legitimate self-defense. And there is a standard for self-defense. Article 51 of the U.N. Charter, and as supplemented by Nuremberg, that clearly rejects the wars against Afghanistan as aggression – explained in my book in greater detail — against Iraq, against Pakistan, which by the way has nuclear arms.  The Obama administration has now escalated to a war against Pakistan, trying to set off civil war and destabilize Pakistan, just as they did in Yugoslavia, just as they did in Iraq, just as they did in Afghanistan. As we lawyers say: “The modus operandi is the same.”

    The Empire does not change from one administration to the next! In America the government is run by elites who are either liberal imperialists, conservative imperialists, or reactionary imperialists, like the Neocons. But they are all imperialists! And they believe in the god-given right to the American Empire. That’s the way America started. Remember, how did the United States of America start? White European settlers coming over to North America, exterminating millions of indigenous people, and robbing their land, and building an Empire. The process just continues today as we speak.

    The threat to use nuclear weapons, what we call “nuclear deterrence” — I would call “nuclear terrorism” — constitutes ongoing international criminal activity: planning, preparation, solicitation, and conspiracy to commit Nuremberg crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide.  These are what we lawyers call inchoate crimes, not the substantive offences themselves, but crimes leading up to the commission of the substantive offences. They were made criminal at Nuremberg in order to establish a bright line and that we would punish even walking up to that bright line as criminal.

    In the case of nuclear weapons once a nuclear war starts I doubt very seriously we are going to be having another war crimes tribunal for anyone.  So what that means then is that it is up to us citizens of the world to stop and prevent a nuclear war, and to stop and prevent the threat, conspiracy, solicitation of the use of nuclear weapons. “Everything is on the table” — clearly a threat to use nuclear weapons, clearly a criminal threat under the World Court Advisory Opinion, against Iran.

    As I explain in more detail in my book, the design, research, testing, production, manufacture, fabrication, transportation, deployment, installation, storing, stockpile, sale, and purchase and the threat to use nuclear weapons are criminal under well-recognized principles of international law.  And I know the German government has finally asked the United States, NATO, to take its nukes out of Germany. And Mrs. Clinton has said: “We don’t support it.” Well is the German government going to cave in? Or will it use law and international law and the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment and Principles to get American criminal nukes out of Germany? I guess we will find out this Fall.

    Those government decision-makers in all nuclear weapon states with command responsibility for nuclear weapons are responsible today for personal criminal activity under the Nuremberg Principles for this practice of nuclear deterrence/nuclear terrorism, that they inflict on all states and peoples in the world today.  And in particular counter-ethnic targeting for the United States, destroying Russians just because they are Russian.

    Also counter city-targeting!  When I worked on the case of the U.K. nuclear weapons in Scotland we established that the entire purpose of the U.K. nuclear weapons force, under the control and allocated to NATO, was to destroy the city of Moscow, seven million human beings! It had no other purpose. Needless to say, once we did that we got all of our defendants off for four counts each of malicious destruction of property when they destroyed a tender servicing the U.K. Trident II nuclear weapons submarines with these weapons of mass extermination. They might have destroyed the tender, but they did not act maliciously.  They acted for the perfectly lawful reason to stop the nuclear extermination of seven million human beings.

    So, I argue in my book, the simple idea of the criminality of nuclear weapons and deterrence can be used to pierce through the ideology of nuclearism, to which so many citizens in the nuclear weapon states and around the world have succumbed — by means of propaganda techniques, propagated by the governments, going back to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. At the time of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki the U.S. government tried to present this as positive to the American people and in particular that it was necessary to end a war to avoid an invasion of Japan, which of course was not going to happen, because the Japanese were already defeated and were trying desperately to negotiate a surrender.

    It is with this simple idea of the criminality of nuclear weapons that people can easily comprehend the illegitimacy and fundamental lawlessness of these policies that their governments pursue in their names — or allied governments as well. And to those living in the NATO states today: Their leaders are all accomplices, they go along with nuclear policies as well. They send their generals over to NATO headquarters to be integrated into NATO’s strategy.

    I remember after the Berlin Wall fell, the German Branch of International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms had a big conference in Berlin and I gave the keynote address along these lines. And they asked the German General of the Bundeswehr in charge of liaison with NATO on nuclear weapons to respond to me. And he got up and he said: “Well, we all know that Nuremberg is soft law.”

    I had two reactions to that. One: “Mister General, we hanged your predecessors at Nuremberg, under the Nuremberg laws. How can you say it is soft law?”  Not that I support the death penalty even for major war criminals like Bush Junior and Tony Blair.

    But the second reaction I had to this notion of soft law like Joe Nye’s “soft power”: “Soft law’”, I said, “you know, he got that from us.” So we Americans have convinced German generals that Nuremberg is soft law in order to pursue our nuclear policies with the cooperation of the next generation of German generals whose predecessors we hanged at Nuremberg.

    After the public speech I discussed this matter with him, and he agreed with me but he said: “Look, we have no alternative but to do what the Americans tell us to do.” And I quoted to him a passage from the Bible saying: “Yes, and the blind shall lead the blind.”  And the German General said:  “We have to trust that the Americans are doing the right thing.”  Right over the nuclear precipice! The German people have to stand up here and say: “Enough! We want your nukes out of Germany for sure and we are no longer going to cooperate with you on nuclear weapons policies.”

    Humankind must abolish nuclear weapons before nuclear weapons abolish humankind!  Nevertheless there are a small number of governments in the world that continue to maintain their nuclear weapons systems despite the rules of international criminal law to the contrary. I would respond in a very simple way: Since when has a small gang of criminals — the leaders of the nuclear weapons states — been able to determine what is illegal or legal for the rest of the world by means of their own criminal behaviour? What right do nuclear weapons states have to argue that by means of their own criminal behaviour — nuclear deterrence/nuclear terrorism — they have made criminal acts legitimate? No civilized state would permit a small gang of criminal conspirators to pervert its domestic legal order in this way. Indeed both the Nuremberg Tribunal and the Tokyo Tribunal made it clear that a conspiratorial band of criminal states has no right to opt-out of the international legal order by means of invoking their own criminal behaviour as the least common denominator of international deportment. It’s a basic rule of international law: Right cannot arise out of injustice! Ex iniuria ius non oritur!

    The entire human race has been victimized by an international conspiracy of ongoing criminal activity carried out by the nuclear weapons states and their leaders under this doctrine of nuclear deterrence which is really a euphemism for nuclear terrorism. And the expansion of NATO has now drawn in almost all of Europe. They have broken down – the United States and NATO – even the traditionally neutral states. Sweden today acts as if it were a de facto but not yet de jure member of NATO. Finland has basically abandoned its neutrality. Austria, with a constitutional obligation to be neutral, has basically abandoned its neutrality. Even Ireland, little bitty Ireland – I have dual nationality with Ireland.  The Americans have forced and compelled Ireland to join up to the Partnership for Peace (PFP) which is one step away from NATO membership, and have forced Ireland then under PFP to put some troops in Afghanistan to help them wage an illegal and criminal war of aggression against Afghanistan.

    The only state in Europe still holding out is Switzerland. Yes, it signed up for Partnership for Peace which it should never have done. But at least Switzerland is holding out, it has no troops in Afghanistan or Iraq. And Switzerland must continue to hold out. And that is exactly why it is been subjected to so much pressure! Including an attack on its banking and financial system to bring Switzerland into line with NATO and the United States, exactly as every other country in Europe has done and succumbed.  That is really what’s at stake here. Are you, the Swiss, going to join up – either de facto or de jure – with NATO and the Americans, so that if and when they attack Iran and perhaps set off a new world war, you and your children will get sucked into it? Switzerland avoided the last two world wars. I certainly hope Switzerland will avoid the next one by having nothing to do with the United States and NATO. And somehow working your way out of Partnership for Peace.

    This international criminal conspiracy of nuclear deterrence/nuclear terrorism, is no different from any other conspiracy by a criminal gang or band. They are the outlaws. We are the sheriffs — the citizens of the world. So it is up to us to repress and dissolve this international criminal conspiracy by whatever non-violent means are at our disposal and as soon as possible.  As I said: If we all don’t act now, Obama and his people could very well set off a Third World War over Iran, that has already been threatened publicly by Bush Junior.

    Every person around the world has a basic human right to be free from the criminal practice of nuclear deterrence/nuclear terrorism, and its specter of nuclear extinction. All human beings in our capacities as creatures of God possess the basic right under international law to engage in civil resistance for the purpose of preventing, impeding or terminating the ongoing commission of these international crimes.

    And this is not civil disobedience.  It’s civil resistance! We have disobeyed nothing! We are obeying the dictates of international law! It is the government officials in the nuclear weapons states and their allied states that are disobeying international law. They are the criminals! We are the sheriffs! And it is up to us to stop them!

    Every citizen of the world community has the right and the duty to oppose the existence of nuclear weapons systems by whatever non-violent means are at his or her disposal. Otherwise the human race will suffer the same fate as the dinosaurs. And the planet earth will become a radioactive waste-land. And it very well could happen in our life-time.

    The time for preventive action is now! And civil resistance by all of us human beings is the way to go.

    Thank you.

  • Public Mobilization for a Nuclear-Free World

    This article was originally published by Foreign Policy in Focus.

    One of the ironies of the current international situation is that, although some government leaders now talk of building a nuclear weapons-free world, there has been limited public mobilization around that goal — at least compared to the action-packed 1980s.

    However, global public opinion is strikingly antinuclear. In December 2008, an opinion poll conducted of more than 19,000 respondents in 21 nations found that, in 20 countries, large majorities — ranging from 62 to 93 percent — favored an international agreement for the elimination of all nuclear weapons. Even in Pakistan, the one holdout nation, 46 percent (a plurality) would support such an agreement. Among respondents in the nuclear powers, there was strong support for nuclear abolition. This included 62 percent of the respondents in India, 67 percent in Israel, 69 percent in Russia, 77 percent in the United States, 81 percent in Britain, 83 percent in China and 87 percent in France.   

    But public resistance to the bomb is not as strong as these poll figures seem to suggest.

    Supporting the Bomb

    For starters, a portion of society agrees with their governments that they’re safer when they are militarily powerful. Some people, of course, are simply militarists, who look approvingly upon weapons and war. Others genuinely believe in “peace through strength,” an idea championed by government officials, who play upon this theme.

    Furthermore, popular resistance to nuclear weapons tends to wane when progress toward addressing nuclear dangers occurs. For example, the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963 not only halted most contamination of the Earth’s atmosphere by nuclear tests, but also convinced many people that the great powers were on the road to halting their nuclear arms race. As a result, the nuclear disarmament movement declined. A similar phenomenon occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the United States and the Soviet Union signed the INF Treaty. U.S.-Soviet nuclear confrontation eased and the Cold War came to an end. Although public protest against nuclear weapons didn’t disappear, it certainly dwindled.

    Indeed, today, the public in many nations seems complacent about the menace of nuclear weapons. While opposition to nuclear weapons is widespread, it does not run deep. For example, those people who said in late 2008 that they “strongly” favored a treaty to abolish nuclear weapons constituted only 20 percent of respondents in Pakistan, 31 percent in India, 38 percent in Russia, 39 percent in the United States, and 42 percent in Israel — although, admittedly, majorities (ranging from 55 to 60 percent) took this position in Britain, France, and China. Another sign support for a nuclear-free world is weaker than implied by its favorability ratings is that an April 2010 poll among Americans found that, although a large majority said they favored nuclear abolition, 87 percent considered this goal unrealistic.

    Yet another sign of the shallowness of popular support is that, despite widespread peace and disarmament movement efforts to mobilize supporters of nuclear abolition around the U.N.’s nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference this past May, the level of public protest fell far short of the antinuclear outpourings of the 1980s. Indeed, even with the encouragement of U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the organizing efforts of numerous peace groups, the best turnout the worldwide nuclear abolition movement could manage was some 15,000 antinuclear demonstrators on May 2.

    That the nuclear disarmament issue does not have the same salience today as in earlier periods can be attributed, in part, to people feeling less directly threatened by nuclear weapons preparations and nuclear war. After all, the present U.S.-Russian nuclear confrontation seems far less dangerous than the U.S.-Soviet nuclear confrontation of the past. Today, nuclear war seems more likely to erupt in South Asia, between India and Pakistan. People living far from these nations find it easy to ignore this dangerous scenario.

    Lack of Information

    The public is also very poorly informed about what is happening with respect to nuclear weapons. Although the mass media devoted enormous air time and column space to Iraq’s alleged nuclear weapons capability, they have devoted scant resources to educate the public on the nuclear weapons that do exist and on the dangers they pose to human survival. A 2010 survey of people from their teens through thirties in eight countries found that large majorities didn’t know that Russia, China, Britain, France and other nations possessed nuclear weapons. In fact, only 59 percent of American respondents knew that their own country possessed nuclear weapons. Among British respondents, just 43 percent knew that Britain maintained a nuclear arsenal.

    Public ignorance of nuclear issues occurs largely thanks to the commercial mass media’s focus on trivia and sensationalism. This emphasis on lightweight entertainment often reflects the interests of the media’s corporate owners and sponsors, who do their best to avoid fanning the flames of public discontent — or at least discontent with corporate and military elites. But the public is complicit with the blackout on nuclear matters, for many people prefer to avoid thinking about nuclear weapons and nuclear war.

    Thus, although there is widespread opposition to nuclear weapons, it lacks intensity and the global publics are ill-informed about nuclear dangers and nuclear disarmament.

    Lessons for Peace and Disarmament Groups

    The first is that nuclear disarmament and nuclear abolition have majority public support. Second, this support must be strengthened if progress is to be made toward a nuclear-free world.

    To strengthen public support, these organizations could emphasize the following themes:

    Nuclear weapons are suicidal. Numerous analysts have observed there will be no winners in a nuclear war. A nuclear exchange between nations will kill many millions of people on both sides of the conflict and leave the survivors living in a nuclear wasteland, in which — as Soviet party secretary Nikita Khrushchev once suggested — the living might well envy the dead. Even longtime nuclear enthusiast Ronald Reagan eventually concluded, “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”

    There are no safe havens from a nuclear war. Even in the event of a small-scale nuclear war — a regional conflict with relatively few nuclear weapons — the results would be catastrophic. A study published in the January 2010 issue of the Scientific American concluded that, should such a war occur between India and Pakistan, the consequences would not be confined to that region. The firestorms generated by the conflict would put massive amounts of smoke into the upper atmosphere and create a nuclear winter around the globe. With the sun blocked, the Earth’s surface would become cold, dark, and dry. Agriculture around the world would collapse, and mass starvation would follow.

    Nuclear weapons possession does not guarantee security. This contention defies the conventional wisdom of national security elites and a portion of the public. Yet consider the case of the United States. It was the first nation to develop atomic bombs, and for some time had a monopoly of them. In response, the Soviet government built atomic bombs. Then the two nations competed in building hydrogen bombs, guided missiles, and missiles with multiple warheads. Meanwhile, seven other nations built nuclear weapons. Each year, all these nations felt less and less secure. And they were less secure, because the more they increased their capacity to threaten others, the more they were threatened in return.

    Concurrently, these nations also found themselves entangled in bloody conventional wars. Their adversaries — the Chinese, the Koreans, the Algerians, the Vietnamese, the Afghans, the Iraqis, and other peoples — were not deterred by the nuclear weapons of their opponents. “Throughout the wide range of our foreign policies,” recalled Dean Rusk, the former U.S. Secretary of State, “I was struck by the irrelevance of nuclear weapons to decision making.”

    Nor do nuclear arsenals protect a country from external terrorist assault. On September 11, 2001, nineteen men staged the largest terrorist attack on the United States in its history. Given that terrorists are not state actors, it is difficult to imagine how nuclear weapons could be used strategically in the “war on terror” as either a deterrent or in military conflict.

    There is a significant possibility of accidental nuclear war. During the Cold War and  subsequent decades, there have been numerous false alarms about an enemy attack. Many of these came close to triggering a nuclear response, which would have had devastating consequences. In addition, emerging nuclear states may not have the same safeguards in place that were developed during the U.S.-Soviet nuclear arms race, widening the possibilities of an inadvertent nuclear response. Furthermore, nuclear weapons can be exploded accidentally during their maintenance or transportation.

    As long as nuclear weapons exist, there will be a temptation to use them. Warfare has been an ingrained habit for thousands of years, and it’s unlikely this practice will soon be ended. As long as wars exist, governments will be tempted to draw upon nuclear weapons to win them.

    Nuclear weapons emerged in the context of World War II. Not surprisingly, the first country to develop such weapons, the United States, used them to destroy Japanese cities. President Harry Truman later stated, when discussing his authorization of the atomic bombing, “When you have a weapon that will win the war, you’d be foolish if you didn’t use it.” Recalling his conversation with Truman about the bomb, at Potsdam, Winston Churchill wrote, “There was never a moment’s discussion as to whether the atomic bomb should be used.” It was “never even an issue.”

    Of course, nuclear-armed nations have not used nuclear weapons in war since 1945. But this reflects the effectiveness of popular pressure against nuclear war, rather than the effectiveness of nuclear deterrence. Indeed, if nuclear deterrence worked, governments would not be desperately trying to stop nuclear proliferation and deploy missile defense systems. Thus, we cannot assume that, in the context of bitter wars and threats to national survival, nuclear restraint will continue forever. Indeed, we can conclude, the longer nuclear weapons exist, the greater the possibility they will be used in war.

    As long as nuclear weapons exist, terrorists can acquire them. Terrorists cannot build nuclear weapons by themselves. The creation of such weapons requires vast resources, substantial territory and a good deal of scientific knowledge. The only way terrorists will attain a nuclear capability is by obtaining the weapons from the arsenals of the nuclear powers — either by donation, by purchase or by theft. Therefore, a nuclear-free world would end the threat of nuclear terrorism.

    Expanding educational outreach to the public along these lines will not be easy, given corporate control of the mass communications media. Nevertheless, the internet provides new possibilities for grassroots communication. Even within the corporate press, more could be done to encourage letters to the editor and the placement of op-ed pieces. In addition, nuclear disarmament groups could reach broad audiences by working through the very substantial networks of sympathetic organizations, such as religious bodies, unions, environmental groups, and professional associations.

    Intensifying the level of popular mobilization can in turn push reluctant governments further down the road toward a nuclear weapons-free world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that can do so.

  • Ratification of New START is Necessary

    In April 2009, President Obama went to Prague and spoke out for a world free of nuclear weapons.  “I state clearly and with conviction,” he said, “America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”  He indicated that he was prepared to take necessary steps to advance this cause.  In order “to reduce our warheads and stockpiles,” he promised to negotiate a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with the Russians during the year.  This treaty, known as New START, took longer than anticipated to negotiate and was signed by Presidents Obama and Medvedev on April 8, 2010.  The next month, the treaty was submitted to the Senate for ratification.

    While the agreement was being negotiated, the first START agreement expired, ending the provisions for verification between the US and Russia.  Since December 2009, there have been no verification procedures in place for conducting inspections of the other side’s nuclear arsenal.  This is a gap that many analysts have noted badly needs filling.  It is one of the principal arguments in favor of ratification.  Beyond this, though, failure to ratify would be a serious setback in US-Russian relations, and would indicate that further progress on nuclear disarmament is stalled and unlikely to proceed.

    The principal provisions of the new treaty would lower the number of deployed strategic nuclear warheads on each side to 1,550 (down about a third from current requirements under the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty) and the number of deployed delivery vehicles to 700.  There are some nuances to the counting that affect the final numbers, such as counting each bomber as one nuclear warhead despite the fact that each bomber could carry up to 24 warheads.  The Russians also expressed concerns over US plans to continue to deploy missile defenses in Europe, which the Russians believe affect the strategic balance between the two countries in a manner unfavorable to them.  They indicated that, at some point, US deployment of missile defenses could cause them to withdraw from the treaty.  

    A number of conservatives in the US, including Senator Jim DeMint, have expressed the view that the Russian position opposing deployment of US missile defenses should not constrain the US missile defense program.  Others, including Senator Jon Kyl, have taken the position that the US should devote more resources over the next ten years to modernizing the nuclear arsenal and infrastructure and the means for delivery of nuclear weapons.  President Obama has sought to head off these concerns preemptively by committing to $80 billion for modernizing nuclear weapons over the next ten years and $100 billion for improving nuclear weapons delivery systems.  These funds will be added to the more than $50 billion annually already committed to supporting the US nuclear arsenal, a larger amount than during the Cold War.  

    The US nuclear modernization program will increase our capacity to produce new nuclear weapons and will send a message to the world that the US continues to rely upon its nuclear arsenal for security. Even with this extra $180 billion commitment, some conservatives are unlikely to ever be satisfied with the treaty.  John Bolton, a former US Ambassador to the United Nations in the George W. Bush administration, has called New START “unilateral disarmament.”  He has worried publicly that the agreement “will severely limit our small-war capabilities.”

    Against this background, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on September 16, 2010 voted 14 to 4 in favor of sending the New START agreement to the full Senate for debate.  The majority included three Republicans, more than was expected.  Does this bode well for Senate ratification of the treaty?  This remains unclear.  It suggests, though, that all Republicans will not vote as a block against ratification, which would sink the treaty.  Senator Richard Lugar showed leadership, along with Senator John Kerry, in pushing the treaty to the Senate floor.  Their joint leadership, along with that of President Obama, will remain important in seeking the 67 votes needed for the treaty’s ratification.  

    Failure to ratify would be a major setback not only for the Obama administration, but also for the prospects of achieving President Obama’s vision, and that of many other committed leaders, of a world without nuclear weapons.  Failure to ratify the New START agreement would diminish the prospects for a future free of nuclear catastrophe and even of a human future.  The promise of continuing to modernize the US nuclear arsenal has already been pledged as a price extracted for Senate ratification.  If this price is paid and there is no Senate ratification, it would signal the worst of all possible outcomes for those who seek an end to the nuclear weapons threat to humanity.

  • Syria’s Challenge to Nuclear Proliferation and What IAEA Could Do

    This article was originally published by the Huffington Post.

    “Syria has not cooperated with the Agency since June 2008 in connection with the unresolved issues related to the Dair Alzour site and the other three locations allegedly functionally related to it. As a consequence, the Agency has not been able to make progress towards resolving the outstanding issues related to those sites.”

    So concludes the September 6, 2010 International Atomic Agency report revealing the nuclear investigative dead end bearing on suspect Syrian nuclear activities. Simply reissuing the conclusion, as IAEA does on a quarterly basis, marks a policy to nowhere. The time is long overdue for the nuclear watchdog to take a more assertive stand not simply to hold Damascus accountable for past and continued nuclear cheating but to use Syria as an example to buttress the flailing nonproliferation regime. IAEA can start this week at the Board of Governors meeting.

    Syria’s nuclear weapons ambitions came to light in September 2007 when Israeli aircraft destroyed what had been a concealed nuclear weapons reactor. Subsequent revelations by American intelligence and media uncovered a number of troubling facts. First, IAEA safeguards had failed to detect even a inkling of Syria’s nuclear cheating. The failure continues a pattern found elsewhere–Iraq (in the 1980s), Libya and Iran–raising troubling questions about NPT safeguards generally. Second, even when evidence reveals a nuclear violator, Syria demonstrates IAEA impotence to force transparency or reverse behavior. Indeed, Damascus has done Tehran one better: following its sole material concession–granting inspectors access to the bombed reactor site, but only after Syrian engineers had carted away debris and placed a new building over the plant’s footprint to conceal evidence–it repeatedly has said “no” to IAEA requests to provide additional information about past and current nuclear activity and gotten away with it.

    The collusion of other countries in Syria’s venture remains equally troubling. North Korea provided reactor technology and Iran, financing. Tehran’s contribution marks the first time an NPT party helped another to develop a weapons capacity.

    The implications for the region are not hard to foresee. Fast forward a decade or two. Nuclear energy has spread across the Middle East implementing plans begun in 2010 or earlier: Jordan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and others have in place the skeleton for a weapons program shrouded by “peaceful” energy reactors. Suspicions mount. Rumors spread about hidden weapons activities. IAEA either remains clueless or inspectors report concerns to a sclerotic Board of Governors. Governments and pundits express dismay: how did we get to this point?

    This week IAEA’s Board of Governors can act to promote a different history by confronting Syria. The Board has the ability to do so by calling for a “special inspection” of all suspect Syrian sites as provided by the safeguards agreement the Agency entered into with Damascus: “If the Agency considers that information made available by the State, including explanations from the State and information obtained from routine inspections, is not adequate for the Agency to fulfill its responsibilities under the Agreement…” it may order “special inspection.” Discovery of nuclear contraband would demand elimination.

    Were Syria to balk, the Board of Governors should declare Damascus in noncompliance and send the matter to the Security Council to take action including sanctions. No doubt the course will bring out the cynic in many of us. After all, Iran’s continuing sanctions defiance and North Korea’s success in detonating a nuclear weapon despite economic penalties and political isolation suggest sanctions offer little.

    But this may misread history. At times, sanctions worked to halt nuclear efforts. They helped defeat Iraq’s inclinations after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. They stunted Libya’s nuclear program. And because Syria remains economically weak, sanctioning Damascus can bring results. Swift and robust application–rather than the Council’s historic incremental approach–can make the strategy work. The alternative–more toothless IAEA reports–will only set the stage for a proliferating world none of us can wish for.

  • The Moral Challenge of a Nuclear-Free World

    This article was originally published by the Wall Street Journal.

    This May, delegations from more than 180 countries gathered in New York, at the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, to discuss how to free the world from nuclear weapons. Despite the positive momentum that flowed from President Barack Obama’s 2009 speech on the issue in Prague, there was enormous pressure on the conference. With a spirit of cooperation and flexibility from all delegates, however, the conference lived up to its expectations.

    As foreign ministers, we draw two conclusions from this. First, it is remarkable that all delegates agreed on the conference’s action plan, which includes various new and important commitments on nuclear disarmament as well as concrete measures to implement the 1995 Middle East Resolution, which called for the a weapons of mass destruction-free zone in the region. We should do everything possible to implement this agreement.

    Our second conclusion is that the agreement is extremely fragile.

    Without an intensive concerted effort, states will not honor it. The irreconcilable views expressed throughout the conference-on such issues as the Iranian nuclear program and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty’s rules for how signatories withdraw-will not fade away.

    ØPrior to the conference, major nuclear-weapons states took some remarkable steps. The U.S. and Russia agreed to further cut their strategic nuclear weapons. The U.S. also presented a new approach in its Nuclear Posture Review, published in April, which provided strong negative security assurances (that is, assurances that it would not use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states).

    We welcome and support the Obama administration’s commitment to achieving a world without nuclear weapons and strengthening nuclear security. Together with nuclear-weapons states, including the U.S., we are ready to discuss how to reduce the role of nuclear weapons-by, for example, committing to possess them only for the purpose of deterring others from using them. Even if nuclear states cannot immediately agree to abandon their nuclear weapons, they can take practical measures to reduce clear and present risks.

    It is also necessary to make the possession of nuclear weapons unattractive. North Korea and Iran must understand that acquiring nuclear weapons in contradiction of their nonproliferation obligations would never be tolerated and would not elevate their status in the international community.

    Like climate change, nuclear disarmament raises the question of whether mankind can feel a sense of responsibility across national borders and generations. Nuclear disarmament asks whether mankind can act to reduce the risks of self-destruction posed by “God’s fire.” We should never forget how human beings and buildings vanished in the tremendous flash of light and heat in Hiroshima and Nagasaki 65 years ago. This is a global issue that tests our sense of responsibility and morality.

    Morality has recently played an important role in bringing about the success of treaties on land mines and cluster munitions. It is thus no coincidence that the Final Document of May’s conference cited the need for states to comply with international humanitarian law.

    Some may ask themselves why Japan and Germany are seeking to pursue nuclear disarmament with such vigor when both countries rely on the United States for nuclear deterrence. Our countries have long been advocates of disarmament. Since re-emerging from total devastation in the second world war, both countries have pursued a peaceful and stable world and the total elimination of nuclear weapons. It is in such a shared conviction that we find a common role. And we believe that pursuing nuclear disarmament is the path that will most reliably minimize nuclear risks and enhance international security.

    The 21st century will be about managing our planet. History will remember favorably those countries that respond with a sense of global responsibility. Let us set upon the realistic and responsible path towards a world without nuclear weapons. It is a moral responsibility.

  • It’s Time for the Senate to Vote on New START

    This article was originally published by the Washington Post.

    The Senate should promptly vote to approve the New Strategic Arms Reductions Treaty (New START) with Russia for one reason: It increases U.S. national security. This is precisely why Defense Secretary Robert Gates declared at the outset of Senate consideration of the treaty that it has “the unanimous support of America’s military leadership.”

    The treaty reduces and caps the Russian nuclear arsenal. It reestablishes and makes stronger the verification procedures that allow U.S. inspectors to conduct on-site inspections and surveillance of Russian nuclear weapons and facilities. It strengthens international efforts to prevent nuclear terrorism, and it opens the door to progress on further critical nonproliferation efforts, such as reducing Russian tactical nuclear weapons.

    Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has urged the Senate to ratify the treaty, and seven former Strategic Command (STRATCOM) chiefs have called on Senate leaders to move quickly.

    In addition to our military leadership, there is overwhelming bipartisan support for the treaty among national security experts. Also, officials from the past seven administrations, Republican and Democrat alike, testified before Senate committees in support of the treaty. In fact, the number of Republican former officials testifying outnumbered the number of Democrats.

    We were part of a group of 30 former national security leaders from both political parties — including former secretary of state Colin Powell, former defense secretary Frank Carlucci and former national security adviser Sandy Berger — who published an open letter in support of the treaty.

    The Senate has done its due diligence: Over the course of 21 hearings and briefings during the last five months, senators have had the opportunity to ask questions and put to rest concerns. From the director of the Missile Defense Agency, Lt. Gen. Patrick O’Reilly, senators learned that the treaty in no way limits the ability of our military to deploy the missile defenses it needs or wants. From STRATCOM Commander Kevin Chilton, they learned that with the treaty in place, the United States will retain a strong and reliable deterrent. Sen. John Kerry, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, even delayed the committee vote on the treaty to give senators an extra month to review background materials and seek answers to their questions.

    Now it is time to act.

    While substantive questions about the treaty have been put to rest, some senators are trying to delay consideration of it based on an unrelated funding issue, namely, claims that future funding for the U.S. nuclear arsenal might be insufficient.

    This is wrong for two reasons.

    First, these claims fly in the face of the considered opinions of Chilton and National Nuclear Security Administration head Thomas D’Agostino, the men charged with overseeing our nuclear weapons and weapons laboratories. They, along with Gates and Mullen, have made clear that the administration’s 10-year, $80 billion plan to modernize our nuclear infrastructure, which would result in a 15 percent increase over current spending levels, represents the funding level that is needed and can be executed in a timely manner.

    More important, delaying this treaty over an unrelated matter undermines our national security.

    By the time the Senate Foreign Relations Committee votes Sept. 16 on whether to send the treaty to the Senate floor for ratification, it will have been more than 280 days and counting since the United States lost the ability to conduct on-site inspections, monitoring and verification of Russia’s nuclear arsenal. This ability will not begin again until the treaty is ratified.

    As Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) told the committee, “The problem of the breakdown of our verification, which lapsed Dec. 5, is very serious and impacts our national security.”

    Given the national security stakes and the overwhelming support from the military and national security community, we hope that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will send the treaty to the floor with robust bipartisan backing and that senators will promptly ratify it with the kind of resounding margin such measures have historically enjoyed.

    Senate approval of New START would send a strong message to the world that the United States can overcome partisan differences and take concrete, practical action to reduce the nuclear threat and enhance our nation’s security.

  • Nuclear Detonation: Fifteen Scenarios

    Many people are complacent about nuclear weapons.  They would prefer to deny the nuclear threat and put nuclear dangers out of their minds.  Unfortunately, this is a dangerous approach to a serious threat to humanity. There are many ways in which a nuclear detonation could take place, including accident, miscalculation and intentional use.  Any use of nuclear weapons, including by accident or miscalculation, could lead to the destruction of a city as occurred at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Further, a nuclear weapon detonation could trigger a retaliatory response leading to nuclear war and even broader devastation, including the annihilation of complex life on the planet.  Listed below are 15 possible scenarios for a nuclear detonation.  These are 15 arguments against complacency and for engagement in seeking a world without nuclear weapons.

    1. False Alarm:  A false alarm triggers a decision to launch a nuclear attack.
    2. Unauthorized Launch: Launch codes are obtained by hackers, espionage agents or coercion and used to launch high alert forces.  This could involve the physical takeover of a mobile missile, or the use of codes obtained via pre-delegation.
    3. Accidental Nuclear War:  An accidental launch leads to an escalation into a nuclear war.
    4. Control and Communications failure:  A rogue field commander or submarine commander falls out or deliberately puts himself out of communications with his central command and launches a nuclear attack on his own authority.
    5. “Dr. Strangelove” Nuclear War:  The launch of a nuclear attack by a rogue field or submarine commander leads to a retaliatory strike that escalates into a nuclear war.
    6. A Terrorist Bomb:  A terrorist group obtains nuclear materials and creates an unsophisticated nuclear device or obtains a bomb and succeeds in detonating it in a large city.
    7. Terrorist Bomb Triggers Nuclear War:  A terrorist nuclear attack is disguised in such a way as to appear to come from another nuclear weapons state, leading to a “retaliatory strike” that escalates into nuclear war.
    8. Preemptive Attack:  Believing one’s country to be under nuclear attack or about to be under such attack, a leader of a nuclear weapon state launches a preemptive nuclear attack.
    9. Preventive Nuclear War:  A nuclear weapons state launches an unprovoked nuclear attack against another country perceived to pose a future threat.  An example would be the use by Israel of a small tactical nuclear weapon against deeply buried nuclear facilities in Iran.
    10. Escalation of Conventional War:  India and Pakistan, for example, engage in further conventional war over Kashmir.  The conflict escalates into a nuclear exchange of approximately 100 Hiroshima-sized nuclear weapons, resulting in potentially a billion deaths.
    11. Military Parity:  In a conventional war, Russia defaults to nuclear weapons due to its deteriorating conventional military capability.
    12. Irrational Leader:  An unstable and paranoid leader, fearing attack and/or regime change, launches a nuclear attack against perceived adversaries.  There are no democratic controls.
    13. Rational Leader:  A leader, making what he deems to be rational calculations, launches a nuclear attack against perceived adversaries to assure the survival of his country.  There are no democratic controls.
    14. Prompt Global Strike:  The US proceeds with plans to place conventional weapons on some of its inter-continental ballistic missiles.  When launching one of these missiles, it is mistaken for a nuclear-armed warhead, resulting in a retaliatory nuclear attack.
    15. Intentional Nuclear War:  Tensions and conflict between major nuclear powers mount, leading to an intentional nuclear war.  Civilization is destroyed and complex life on Earth is ended.

  • Countdown to Zero Neglects the Greatest Nuclear Danger of All

    The greatest nuclear danger today is not Countdown to Zero‘s nuclear “accident” or “miscalculation” or “madness.” The greatest nuclear danger today, still, like 65 years ago, is nuclear war.

    Two weeks before the 65th anniversaries of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, followed just six days later by the end of the Second World War, Magnolia Pictures released a new film, Countdown to Zero. It was made by some of the same people who made An Inconvenient Truth, and the filmmakers unapologetically expressed the hope that it would change the game on nuclear disarmament much as their previous film did on climate change.

    The film quite shrewdly bases its argument on a single sentence, uttered by President John F. Kennedy nearly half a century ago. In his first speech before the United Nations, on September 25, 1961, the president said, “Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident, or miscalculation, or by madness.”

    (Damocles was a court sycophant to the 4th Century BC tyrant Dionysius II of Syracuse. When Dionysius invited him one day to come and sit on his powerful throne, Damocles noticed, to his horror, a deadly sword suspended directly above, point down, held only by a single strand of the hair of a horse. In this way, Damocles learned the truth about the life of a ruler in the ancient world — or, as JFK wisely discerned, the life of everyone in the nuclear age.)

    Countdown then, quite persuasively, details how, nearly half a century later, those three nuclear dangers remain quite imminent.

    It reveals just how close both the United States and the Soviet Union came, more than once, to launching not just one, but perhaps 101 nuclear-tipped missiles — utterly by accident. (The filmgoer is left to guess the likelihood that we can dodge that particular nuclear bullet indefinitely in a world of nine nuclear-armed nations, with perhaps soon more.)

    It examines episodes like the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 (and others almost wholly unknown to the public), when miscalculation, misinformation, or misunderstanding brought us to the brink of a civilization-ending nuclear war. (The filmgoer can perform the same exercise here.)

    And it illuminates just how many efforts have already been made, by non-state terrorists, to obtain or build a nuclear weapon, transport it to a major world city, and set it off — and just how likely it is that, eventually, somebody is going to pull that off.

    However, Countdown neglects to mention a fourth scenario by which the actual detonation of nuclear weapons might come about sometime in the next century, or the next decade, or the next year.

    Don’t get me wrong. The film is excellent, especially as a vehicle for growing the nuclear disarmament movement, and preaching beyond the choir. This is a sin of omission, not commission.

    But during this week when we commemorate the 65th anniversaries of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the end of the Second World War, one is compelled to point out that the scenario the film omits is, ironically, another Hiroshima. Another Nagasaki. Another conscious, intentional launching of a nuclear weapon. Another calm, sober initiation of nuclear war.

    Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which were instantaneously obliterated by the American atomic bombs “Little Boy” and “Fat Man” on August 6th and 9th, 1945 (devices perhaps a hundred times less powerful than many of the nuclear weapons deployed in arsenals today), were not, of course, atomic attacks carried out by the “madness” of non-state terrorists. Nor were they “accidents.” Nor were they “miscalculations.”

    The White House was not in a panic in August 1945. The orders to dispatch the B-29’s carrying the atomic bombs were not issued in error. President Harry S. Truman and his advisors were not rushed into hurriedly deciding that if we didn’t immediately launch a nuclear attack upon the Japanese, Tokyo would launch a nuclear attack (or, indeed, any kind of an attack) on us.

    No, the United States government made a cool, composed, calculated decision that it could bring about a precisely-defined political aim by employing nuclear weapons as an act of war.

    And that kind of nuclear eventuality, today, may be at least as likely as the three others described in Countdown to Zero.

    After the end of the Cold War, and before its corpse had even grown cold in the grave, the Clinton Administration astonishingly chose not to diminish, but instead to expand the role of nuclear weapons in American national security doctrines. Now these weapons were designated for the first time as “counterproliferants.”

    They were to be used not only in retaliation, but as a tool of pre-emption against “rogue states” and non-state actors. And they were to used to prevent them from acquiring not only nuclear weapons, but chemical weapons and biological weapons as well.

    The Bush Administration, in its Nuclear Posture Review of December 2001, specifically articulated several scenarios where the United States might employ America’s vast nuclear arsenal. Like the Clinton doctrines, many of these would be carried out not only not in response to a nuclear attack, but indeed not in response to any attack upon us at all. The Bush document even named seven particular states as the possible targets of a preemptive American nuclear attack upon them.

    The Obama Administration, in its Nuclear Posture Review of April 2010, stated plainly that it anticipated far fewer contingencies where the United States might actually use its nuclear weapons in combat.

    However, many nuclear policy experts had urged the new Administration to adopt an explicit policy of “No First Use” — a statement that our country would never employ nuclear weapons except to retaliate for the use of nuclear weapons against our allies or ourselves.

    China, despite laughably less powerful military forces than the United States, both conventional and nuclear, has long maintained such a policy of “No First Use.”

    But President Obama refused. His Administration insists that still, in certain circumstances, the president of the United States might need to authorize an American nuclear first strike. His Administration explicitly maintains the policy option for America to start a nuclear war.

    In addition, for at least the past half decade, speculation has run rampant that either the United States or Israel, or both, might launch a preemptive attack on all elements of the Iranian nuclear complex, to forestall the (hypothetical) future possibility that Iran might someday obtain a nuclear arsenal of its own. Just this month, on Sunday August 1, the lead article in the Washington Post Sunday Outlook section, by Steven Simon and Ray Takeyh, was called, “A Nuclear Iran. Would America Strike to Prevent It?”

    Such a preemptive strike, of course, might be undertaken exclusively with conventional military forces. Or, it might not.

    In the April 17, 2006 issue of the New Yorker magazine, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh alleged that to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons perhaps 5-10 years down the road, Pentagon planners were preparing not just military strikes on that country, but nuclear strikes.

    In the July 10, 2006 issue, Hersh reported that after lengthy and heated internal military debates, the Pentagon brass had concluded that, for the time being, a nuclear attack on Iran would be “politically unacceptable.”

    But then on January 7, 2007, the Times of London reported that Israel had begun laying the groundwork for a series of nuclear strikes on the Iranian nuclear infrastructure — perhaps utilizing tactical nuclear weapons supplied by the United States, and perhaps too in conjunction with American forces.

    If all that were not worrisome enough, in a CNN presidential debate on June 5, 2007, no less than four of the Republican presidential candidates indicated that to forestall a nuclear Iran, they would consider launching an American nuclear first strike against Iran.

    But that all took place during the last Administration, right? Right. But in the press conference announcing the Obama Nuclear Posture Review on April 6, 2010, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, asked directly about “No First Use,” said that the Administration was unwilling to “limit ourselves so explicitly.”

    And when asked directly about Iran and North Korea, he said that despite the limitations on American nuclear employment doctrines in the new document, with regard to those two states in particular, “all options are on the table.” Live on C-Span. Three separate times.

    Accident. Miscalculation. Madness. The creators of Countdown to Zero are quite correct in asserting that these contemporary nuclear perils are quite real, and, indeed, that they could come to pass today “at any moment.”

    But all the nine nuclear-armed nations must also embrace the principle that nuclear weapons can serve no purpose other than to deter the use of nuclear weapons by others (a purpose that will disappear if, someday, we can achieve at last universal nuclear disarmament).

    The nuclear-armed nations cannot continue to conjure contingencies for employing nuclear weapons on any hypothetical field of battle, or to fantasize that starting a nuclear war could ever serve either their own national interests or the interests of the human community.

    If they do continue to do so, then we may just be on a countdown not to nuclear zero, but to something else nuclear entirely.

    After all, said President Kennedy, in the very next sentence he uttered after his “nuclear Damocles” at the United Nations on September 25, 1961, “The weapons of war must be abolished, before they abolish us.”

  • Nuke U: How the University of California Is Helping to Blow Up the World

    This article was originally published by The Bohemian.

    On my way to the Los Alamos National Laboratory a few years ago, I found it listed in a New Mexico phone book—under “University of California.”

    Since the early 1940s, UC has managed the nation’s top laboratories for designing nuclear bombs. Today, California’s public university system is still immersed in the nuclear weapons business.

    Sixty-five years after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug. 6 and 9, 1945, the University of California imprimatur is an air freshener for the stench of preparations for global annihilation. Nuclear war planners have been pleased to exploit UC’s vast technical expertise and its image of high-minded academic purpose.

    During most of WWII, scientists labored in strict secrecy at the isolated Los Alamos lab in the New Mexico desert, making possible the first nuclear weaponry. After the atomic bombings of Japan, UC continued to manage Los Alamos. And in 1952, when the government opened a second nuclear bomb generator, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory east of San Francisco, UC won the prize to manage operations there, too.

    A few years into the 21st century, security scandals caused a shakeup. UC lost its exclusive management slots at Los Alamos and Livermore, but retained major roles at both laboratories.

    In mid-2006, the Los Alamos lab went under a new management structure, widened to also include Bechtel and a couple of other private firms. A year later, a similar team, likewise including UC and Bechtel, won a deal to jointly manage Livermore.

    At Los Alamos, I learned that the new management team was, legally speaking, an LLC, a limited liability corporation. I’m still trying to wrap my mind around the concept of “limited liability” for managers of a laboratory that designs nuclear weapons.

    Weird, huh? But not any stranger than having the state of California’s top system of higher education devoted to R&D for designing better ways to blow up the planet.

    Yes, those laboratories do some nifty ecological research and other laudable things. But nuclear weapons remain central to the labs’ mission. And, lofty rhetoric aside, the federal government is pouring billions more dollars into the continuous high-tech pursuit of nuclear weapons “modernization.”

    Last spring, the White House announced plans for this decade that include investing $80 billion “to sustain and modernize the nuclear weapons complex”—in addition to “well over $100 billion in nuclear delivery systems to sustain existing capabilities and modernize some strategic systems.”

    In fact, the U.S. government is now on a jag to boost spending for its nuclear arsenal. As the Livermore-based organization Tri-Valley CAREs noted weeks ago, “the 2011 budget request for nuclear weapons is the largest in our nation’s history; bigger than under George W. Bush and a whopping 40 percent higher than the amount spent for nuclear weapons activities on average during the Cold War.”

    Credit where due: the UC-managed laboratories for nuclear bombs have been on the cutting edge of digital advancement. Their record recalls a comment from Martin Luther King Jr., who noted the proliferation of “guided missiles and misguided men.”

    When I interviewed Los Alamos press officer Kevin Roark, he explained that “this laboratory has been at the forefront of computing research and development” from the Manhattan Project days of slide rules and punch cards to the lab’s present-day computers, with one able to do upwards of 100 trillion calculations per second.

    An official website of the University of California boasts that “UC has been involved in the management of these laboratories since their inception—a relationship spanning seven decades—as a public service to the nation.” With a lab on the UC Berkeley campus included in the mix, “the three laboratories have a combined workforce of more than 21,000 and operate on federally financed budgets totaling more than $4 billion.”

    For sure, there’s plenty of money sloshing around to reward the masters—and academic servants—of the nuclear weapons industry. But should the University of California be managing laboratories that design the latest technologies for nuclear holocaust? 

  • Peace Declaration

    In the company of hibakusha who, on this day 65 years ago, were hurled, without understanding why, into a “hell” beyond their most terrifying nightmares and yet somehow managed to survive; together with the many souls that fell victim to unwarranted death, we greet this August sixth with re-energized determination that, “No one else should ever have to suffer such horror.”

    Through the unwavering will of the hibakusha and other residents, with help from around Japan and the world, Hiroshima is now recognized as a beautiful city.  Today, we aspire to be a “model city for the world” and even to host the Olympic Games.  Transcending the tortures of hell, trusting in the peace-loving peoples of the world, the hibakusha offer a message that is the cornerstone of Japan’s Peace Constitution and a beacon to the world.

    The results of the NPT Review Conference held this past May testify to that beacon’s guiding influence.  The Final Document expresses the unanimous intent of the parties to seek the abolition of nuclear weapons; notes the valuable contribution of civil society; notes that a majority favors the establishment of timelines for the nuclear weapons abolition process, and highlights the need for a nuclear weapons convention or new legal framework.  In doing so, it confirms that our future depends on taking the steps articulated by Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the more than 4,000 city members of Mayors for Peace, and the two-thirds of all Japanese municipalities that formally supported the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Protocol.

    That our cry of conscience, the voice of civil society yearning for a future free from nuclear weapons, was heard at the UN is due in large measure to the leadership of His Excellency Ban Ki-moon, who today has become the first UN Secretary-General to attend our Peace Memorial Ceremony.  President Obama, the United States government, and the 1,200-member U.S. Conference of Mayors also wielded their powerful influence.

    This ceremony is honored today by the presence of government officials representing more than 70 countries as well as the representatives of many international organizations, NGOs, and citizens’ groups.  These guests have come to join the hibakusha, their families, and the people of Hiroshima in sharing grief and prayers for a peaceful world.  Nuclear-weapon states Russia, China and others have attended previously, but today, for the first time ever, we have with us the U.S. ambassador and officials from the UK and France.

    Clearly, the urgency of nuclear weapons abolition is permeating our global conscience; the voice of the vast majority is becoming the preeminent force for change in the international community.

    To seize this unprecedented opportunity and actually achieve a world without nuclear weapons, we need above all to communicate to every corner of our planet the intense yearning of the hibakusha, thereby narrowing the gap between their passion and the rest of the world.  Unfortunately, many are unaware of the urgency; their eyes still closed to the fact that only through luck, not wisdom, have we avoided human extinction.

    Now the time is ripe for the Japanese government to take decisive action.  It should begin to “take the lead in the pursuit of the elimination of nuclear weapons” by legislating into law the three non-nuclear principles, abandoning the U.S. nuclear umbrella, legally recognizing the expanded “black rain areas,” and implementing compassionate, caring assistance measures for all the aging hibakusha anywhere in the world.

    In addition, the Prime Minister’s wholehearted commitment and action to make the dreams of the hibakusha come true would lead us all by 2020 to a new world of “zero nuclear weapons,” an achievement that would rival in human history the “discovery of zero” itself.  He could, for example, confront the leaders of the nuclear-weapon states with the urgent need for abolition, lead them to the table to sign a nuclear weapons convention, and call on all countries for sharp reductions in nuclear and other military expenditures.  His options are infinite.  

    We citizens and cities will act as well.  In accordance with the Hiroshima Appeal adopted during last week’s Hiroshima Conference for the Total Abolition of Nuclear Weapons by 2020, we will work closely with like-minded nations, NGOs, and the UN itself to generate an ever-larger tidal wave of demand for a world free of nuclear weapons by 2020.

    Finally, on this, the 65th anniversary of the atomic bombing, as we offer to the souls of the A-bomb victims our heartfelt condolences, we hereby declare that we cannot force the most patiently enduring people in the world, the hibakusha, to be patient any longer.  Now is the time to devote ourselves unreservedly to the most crucial duty facing the human family, to give the hibakusha, within their lifetimes, the nuclear-weapon-free world that will make them blissfully exclaim, “I’m so happy I lived to see this day.”