Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: nuclear weapons

  • Nagasaki Peace Declaration 2005

    Today the bells of Nagasaki echo in the sky, marking 60 years since the atomic bombing. At 11:02 a.m. on August 9, 1945, a single atomic bomb was dropped from an American warplane, exploding in this same sky above us, instantly destroying the city of Nagasaki. Some 74,000 people were killed, and another 75,000 wounded. Some of the victims never knew what happened. Others pleaded for water as death overtook them. Children, so burned and blackened that they could not even cry out, lay with their eyes closed. Those people who narrowly survived were afflicted with deep physical and mental wounds that could never be healed. They continue to suffer from the after-effects of the bomb, living in fear of death.

    To the leaders of the nuclear weapons states: Nuclear weapons must never be used for any reason whatsoever. This we know from painful experience. For sixty years we have repeated our plea, “No more Hiroshima! No more Nagasaki!” International society has also been exerting effort for the prohibition of nuclear weapons tests and the establishment of nuclear-weapon-free zones. In 2000, the nuclear weapons states themselves promised an “unequivocal undertaking” for the “elimination of their nuclear arsenals.”

    Nevertheless, at the end of the Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons held at United Nations headquarters in May of this year, no progress was achieved. The nuclear weapons states, and the United States of America in particular, have ignored their international commitments, and have made no change in their unyielding stance on nuclear deterrence. We strongly resent the trampling of the hopes of the world’s people.

    To the citizens of the United States of America: We understand your anger and anxiety over the memories of the horror of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Yet, is your security actually enhanced by your government’s policies of maintaining 10,000 nuclear weapons, of carrying out repeated sub-critical nuclear tests, and of pursuing the development of new “mini” nuclear weapons? We are confident that the vast majority of you desire in your hearts the elimination of nuclear arms. May you join hands with the people of the world who share that same desire, and work together for a peaceful planet free from nuclear weapons.

    To the government of Japan: Our nation deeply regrets the last war, and our government has supposedly resolved not to engage in actions that might lead to the tragedy of war again. The peaceful ideals of our constitution must be upheld, and the threefold non-nuclear principle of neither possessing, manufacturing, nor allowing nuclear arms within our borders must be enacted into law without delay. The efforts of concerned countries for nuclear disarmament on the Korean peninsula, combined with the concomitant results of the threefold non-nuclear principle, will pave the way for a Northeast Asia nuclear-weapon-free zone. We urge you to adopt a stance that does not rely upon the “nuclear umbrella,” and to take a leading role in nuclear abolition.

    We would also point out that the atomic bomb survivors have become quite elderly. We further call upon the Japanese government to provide greater assistance to those who continue to suffer from the mental anguish caused by the bombing, and to extend sufficient aid to survivors who now reside overseas.

    Here in Nagasaki, many young people are learning about the atomic bombing and about peace, and are engaged in activities that they themselves have originated. To our young people: Remember always the miserable deaths of the atomic bomb victims. We ask each of you to earnestly study history and to consider the importance of peace and the sanctity of life. The citizens of Nagasaki stand behind your efforts. May you join hands with the world’s citizens and NGOs, that the bells of peace will ring loud and clear in the sky over Nagasaki.

    Today, as we mark 60 years since the atomic bombing, we pray for the repose of the souls of those who died, even as we declare our commitment, together with Hiroshima, never to abandon our efforts for the elimination of nuclear weapons and the establishment of lasting world peace.

    Iccho Itoh Mayor The City of Nagasaki

  • The Time of the Bomb

    When he was told on August 6, 1945, that America’s new atom bomb had destroyed its first target, the Japanese city of Hiroshima, U.S. President Harry Truman declared “This is the greatest thing in history.” Three days later, on August 9, another atom bomb destroyed the city of Nagasaki.

    The coming of the bomb brought pain and death. A 1946 survey by the Hiroshima City Council found that from a civilian population of about 320,000 on the day of the explosion: over 118,000 were killed, over 30,000 seriously injured, with almost 49,000 slightly injured, and nearly 4,000 people were missing. In December 1945, the Nagasaki City Commission determined that because of the bombing there, almost 74,000 people had been killed and 75,000 injured. The injured continued to die for months and years later, one of the reasons being radiation sickness. Pregnant women who were affected produced children who were severely physically and mentally retarded. The Japanese created a new word — hibakusha, — a survivor of the atom bomb.

    In the sixty years since the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we have been spared the horror of a nuclear weapon attack on another city. But nuclear weapons have grown in their destructive power; each can now be tens of times, or even hundreds of times, more powerful that those used to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The number of nuclear weapons has grown; there are now tens of thousands. Where there was one country with the bomb, there are now perhaps nine (US, Russia, UK, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea). There are many more political and military leaders who, like Truman in 1945, see the bomb as “the greatest thing in history”.

    From the very beginning, there has also been opposition to the bomb. The French writer and activist Albert Camus wrote on August 6, 1945: “technological civilization has just reached its final degree of savagery… Faced with the terrifying perspectives which are opening up to humanity, we can perceive even better that peace is the only battle worth waging.”

    The American sociologist and critic Lewis Mumford wrote: “We in America are living among madmen. Madmen govern our affairs in the name of order and security. The chief madmen claim the titles of general, admiral, senator, scientist, administrator, Secretary of State, even President.” There are many more of these madmen now. They all mumble the same nonsense about “threats,” and “national security,” and “nuclear deterrence,” and try to scare everyone around them.

    Protest and resistance against the madness of nuclear weapons has brought together some of the greatest figures of our times with millions of ordinary men and women around the world. Albert Einstein and the philosopher Bertrand Russell gave the reason most simply and clearly. They published a manifesto in 1955 in which they identified the stark challenge created by nuclear weapons: “Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war?”

    The only way forward for humanity, Einstein and Russell said, was that “We have to learn to think in a new way. We have to learn to ask ourselves, not what steps can be taken to give a military victory to whatever group we prefer, for there no longer are such steps; the question we have to ask ourselves is: what steps can be taken to prevent a military contest of which the issue must be disastrous to all parties?” Their 1955 manifesto led to the formation of the Pugwash movement of scientists. It was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for its work against nuclear weapons in 1995. There are now Pugwash groups in 50 countries, including in India and Pakistan.

    Global protests eventually forced an end to nuclear weapons testing in the atmosphere and under water. These explosions had been spewing radioactivity in the air, where it was blown around the world, poisoning land, water, food and people. But the “madmen” were blinded by the power of the ultimate weapon. They kept building more and bigger bombs and threatening to use them. They have been stopped from using them only by the determined efforts of peace movements and public pressure.

    The bomb and the madmen came to South Asia too. India tested a bomb in 1974 and Pakistan set about trying to make one. There was protest too. In 1985, a small group of people in Islamabad organised an event for Hiroshima Day, August 6, at the Rawalpindi Press Club. There was a slide show and talk about nuclear weapons and their terrible effects, with pictures of the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    Every picture brought gasps of horror and revulsion from the packed audience. The posters and placards and banners on the walls carried messages about the need to end war, to reduce military spending and increase spending on education and health, and to make peace between India and Pakistan. A small, short-lived peace group was born, the Movement for Nuclear Disarmament.

    That was twenty years ago. The Cold War is long over, the Soviet Union long gone, but there has been little relief. The United States still has five thousand weapons deployed, 2000 of which are ready to use within 15 minutes, and there are another five thousand in reserve. Russia has over 7000 weapons deployed and 9000 in reserve.

    The UK, France, and China are estimated each to have several hundred warheads, Israel may have almost as many, and India and Pakistan have a hundred or fewer. North Korea may have a handful. And, leaders are still mad; they send armies to attack and occupy other countries, and kill and maim tens of thousands. In America, they plan for newer and more useable nuclear weapons.

    In the meantime, India and Pakistan have also tested their nuclear weapons — which are about as powerful as the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They have threatened to use their weapons in every crisis since then. They are making more weapons and missiles as fast as they can. A nuclear war between Pakistan and India, in which they each used only five of their nuclear weapons, would likely kill about three million people and severely injure another one and a half million. What more proof is needed that we are ruled by madmen?

    If South Asia is to survive its own nuclear age, we shall need to have strong peace movements in both Pakistan and India. A beginning has been made. The Pakistan Peace Coalition was founded in 1999; it is a national network of groups working for peace and justice. In 2000, Indian activists established the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace. These movements will need all the help and support they can get to keep the generals and Prime Ministers in both countries in check. The leaders in both countries must be taught, over and over again, that the people will not allow a nuclear war to be fought. There should never be a word in any other language for hibakusha.

    Zia Mian, peace activist, is a physicist at Princeton University.

    A.H. Nayyar is a physicist, co-convener of Pugwash Pakistan, and president of the Pakistan Peace Coalition.

    Originally published by The News International

  • The World’s Worst Terrorist Act

    As the clock struck 8:15 a.m. in Japan this very day exactly 60 years ago, the world witnessed a wholly new kind and scale of brutality, leading to mass death. The entire city of Hiroshima was flattened by a single bomb, made with just 60 kg of uranium, and dropped from a B-29 United States Air Force warplane.

    Within seconds, temperatures in the city centre soared to 4,000 C, more than 2,500 higher than the melting point of iron. Savage firestorms raged through Hiroshima as buildings were reduced to rubble. Giant shock-waves releasing blast energy ripped through the city, wreaking more destruction.

    Within seconds, 80,000 people were killed. Within hours, over 100,000 died, most of them crushed under the impact of blast-waves and falling buildings, or severely burnt by firestorms. Not just people, the body and soul of Hiroshima had died.

    Then came waves of radiation, invisible and intangible, but nevertheless lethal. These took their toll slowly, painfully and cruelly. Those who didn’t die within days from radiation sickness produced by exposure to high doses of gamma-rays or poisonous radio-nuclides, perished over years from cancers and leukaemias. The suffering was excruciating and prolonged. Often, the living envied the dead. Hiroshima’s death toll climbed to 140,000.

    This was a new kind of weapon, besides which even deadly chemical armaments like mustard gas pale into insignificance. You could defend yourself against conventional-explosive bombs by hiding in an air-raid shelter or sandbagging your home. To protect yourself from a chemical attack, you could wear a gas mask and a special plastic suit. But against the nuclear bombs, there could be no defence –military, civil or medical.

    Nuclear weapons are unique for yet another reason. They are, typically, not meant to be used against soldiers, but are earmarked for use against unarmed non-combatant civilians. But it is illegitimate and illegal to attack non-combatant civilians. Attacking them is commonly called terrorism. Hence, Hiroshima remains the world’s worst terrorist act.

    Hiroshima’s bombing was followed three days later by an atomic attack on Nagasaki, this time with a bomb using a different material, plutonium. The effects were equally devastating. More than 70,000 people perished in agonising ways.

    US President Harry S. Truman was jubilant. Six days later, Japan surrendered. The US cynically exploited this coincidence. It claimed that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had saved thousands of lives by bringing the war to an early end. This was a lie. Japan was preparing to surrender anyway and was only waiting to negotiate the details of the terms. That entire country has been reduced to a wasteland. Most of its soldiers had stopped fighting. Schoolgirls were being drafted to perform emergency services in Japanese cities.

    American leaders knew this. Historians Peter Kuznick and Mark Selden have just disclosed in the British New Scientist magazine that three days before Hiroshima, Truman agreed Japan was “looking for peace”.

    General Dwight Eisenhower said in a 1963 Newsweek interview that “the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing”. Truman’s chief of staff, Admiral William Leahy, also said that “the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan.

    The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender”.

    The real function of the two bombs was not military, but political.

    It was to establish the US’s superiority and pre-eminence within the Alliance that defeated the Axis powers, and thus to shift the terms of the ensuing new power struggle in Washington’s favour.

    The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings inaugurated another rivalry: the Cold War, which was to last for four decades. They also triggered fierce competition among the other victors of the World War to acquire nuclear weapons. The insane arms race this launched but hasn’t ended yet.

    From a few dozen bombs in the early 1950s, the world’s nuclear arsenals swelled to several hundred warheads in a decade, and then several thousand by the 1970s. At the Cold War’s peak, the world had amassed 70,000 nukes, with explosive power equivalent to one million Hiroshimas, enough to destroy Planet Earth 50 times over.

    One-and-a-half decades after the Cold War ended, the world still has 36,000 nuclear weapons. Nothing could be a greater disgrace!

    Nuclear weapons are uniquely destructive and have never ceased to horrify people and hurt the public conscience. The damage they cause is hard to limit in space –thanks to the wind-transporting radioactivity over thousands of miles –or in time. Radioactive poisons persist and remain dangerous for years, some for tens of thousands of years. For instance, the half-life of plutonium-239, which India uses in its bombs, is 24,400 years. And the half-life of uranium-235, which Pakistan uses in its bombs, is 710 million years!

    Nuclear weapons violate every rule of warfare and every convention governing the conduct of armed conflict, they target non-combatant civilians. They kill indiscriminately and massively. They cause death in cruel, inhumane and degrading ways. And the destruction gets transmitted to future generations through genetic defects. That’s why nuclear weapons have been held to be incompatible with international law by the International Court of Justice.

    The world public overwhelmingly wants nuclear weapons to be abolished. The pro-abolition sentiment is strong and endorsed by 70 to 90 percent of the population even in the nuclear weapons-states (NWSs), according to opinion polls. More than 180 nations have forsworn nuclear weapons by signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). But a handful of states remain addicted to their “nuclear fix”. Led by the US, five NWSs refuse to honour their obligation under the NPT to disarm their nuclear weapons. And three of them, India, Pakistan and Israel, haven’t even signed the treaty.

    India and Pakistan occupy a special position within the group of NWSs. They are its most recent members. They are regional rivals too, with a half-century-long hot-cold war, which has made South Asia the world’s “most dangerous place”. There is an imperative need for India and Pakistan, rooted in self-preservation, to negotiate nuclear restraint and abolition of nuclear weapons. But the chances of this seem rather dim.

    Even dimmer is the possibility of the five major NWSs embracing nuclear disarmament. Their reluctance to do so largely springs from their faith in nuclear deterrence. This is a dangerously flawed doctrine. It makes hopelessly unrealistic assumptions about unfailingly rational and perfect behaviour on the part of governments and military leaders and rules out strategic miscalculation as well as accidents. The real world is far messier, and full of follies, misperceptions and mishaps. Yet, the deterrence juggernaut rolls on.

    Today, the system of restraint in the global nuclear order is on the verge of being weakened. The US-India nuclear deal (discussed here last week) is a bad precedent. But even worse are US plans to develop nukes both downwards (deep-earth penetrators or bunker-busters) and upwards (“Star Wars”-style space-based Ballistic Missile Defence). If the US conducts nuclear tests in pursuit of this, that will impel others to follow suit, and encourage some non-nuclear states to go overtly nuclear, raising the spectre of another Hiroshima.

    Sixty years on, that would be a disgrace without parallel. Humankind surely deserves better.

    The writer is a Delhi-based researcher, peace and human rights activist, and former newspaper editor.

    Originally published by The News International.

  • Hiroshima Peace Declaration 2005

    This August 6, the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombing, is a moment of shared lamentation in which more than 300 thousand souls of A-bomb victims and those who remain behind transcend the boundary between life and death to remember that day. It is also a time of inheritance, of awakening, and of commitment, in which we inherit the commitment of the hibakusha to the abolition of nuclear weapons and realization of genuine world peace, awaken to our individual responsibilities, and recommit ourselves to take action. This new commitment, building on the desires of all war victims and the millions around the world who are sharing this moment, is creating a harmony that is enveloping our planet.

    The keynote of this harmony is the hibakusha warning, “No one else should ever suffer as we did,” along with the cornerstone of all religions and bodies of law, “Thou shalt not kill.” Our sacred obligation to future generations is to establish this axiom, especially its corollary, “Thou shalt not kill children,” as the highest priority for the human race across all nations and religions. The International Court of Justice advisory opinion issued nine years ago was a vital step toward fulfilling this obligation, and the Japanese Constitution, which embodies this axiom forever as the sovereign will of a nation, should be a guiding light for the world in the 21st century.

    Unfortunately, the Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty this past May left no doubt that the U.S., Russia, U.K., France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and a few other nations wishing to become nuclear-weapon states are ignoring the majority voices of the people and governments of the world, thereby jeopardizing human survival.

    Based on the dogma “Might is right,” these countries have formed their own “nuclear club,” the admission requirement being possession of nuclear weapons. Through the media, they have long repeated the incantation, “Nuclear weapons protect you.” With no means of rebuttal, many people worldwide have succumbed to the feeling that “There is nothing we can do.” Within the United Nations, nuclear club members use their veto power to override the global majority and pursue their selfish objectives.

    To break out of this situation, Mayors for Peace, with more than 1,080 member cities, is currently holding its sixth General Conference in Hiroshima, where we are revising the Emergency Campaign to Ban Nuclear Weapons launched two years ago. The primary objective is to produce an action plan that will further expand the circle of cooperation formed by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the European Parliament, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and other international NGOs, organizations and individuals worldwide, and will encourage all world citizens to awaken to their own responsibilities with a sense of urgency, “as if the entire world rests on their shoulders alone,” and work with new commitment to abolish nuclear weapons.

    To these ends and to ensure that the will of the majority is reflected at the UN, we propose that the First Committee of the UN General Assembly, which will meet in October, establish a special committee to deliberate and plan for the achievement and maintenance of a nuclear-weapon-free world. Such a committee is needed because the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva and the NPT Review Conference in New York have failed due to a “consensus rule” that gives a veto to every country.

    We expect that the General Assembly will then act on the recommendations from this special committee, adopting by the year 2010 specific steps leading toward the elimination of nuclear weapons by 2020.

    Meanwhile, we hereby declare the 369 days from today until August 9, 2006, a “Year of Inheritance, Awakening and Commitment.” During this Year, the Mayors for Peace, working with nations, NGOs and the vast majority of the world’s people, will launch a great diversity of campaigns for nuclear weapons abolition in numerous cities throughout the world.

    We expect the Japanese government to respect the voice of the world’s cities and work energetically in the First Committee and the General Assembly to ensure that the abolition of nuclear weapons is achieved by the will of the majority.

    Furthermore, we request that the Japanese government provide the warm, humanitarian support appropriate to the needs of all the aging hibakusha, including those living abroad and those exposed in areas affected by the black rain.

    On this, the sixtieth anniversary of the atomic bombing, we seek to comfort the souls of all its victims by declaring that we humbly reaffirm our responsibility never to “repeat the evil.”

    “Please rest peacefully; for we will not repeat the evil.”

    Tadatoshi Akiba Mayor The City of Hiroshima

    Tadatoshi Akiba, the mayor of Hiroshima and the president of Mayors for Peace, serves on the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Advisory Council. The Mayors for Peace received the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s 2004 World Citizenship Award.

  • Hiroshima, America, and Humanity’s Future

    We are again in the season of Hiroshima. Many will gather at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park to remember that fateful day 60 years ago when an atomic weapon was first used on a human population and obliterated the city of Hiroshima.

    In America, unfortunately, far too few individuals will take note of this anniversary. Many of those who do remember Hiroshima will recall it as an event of triumph, not disaster.

    Throughout most of the world, the name Hiroshima has come to represent man’s technological capacity for massive destruction. Hiroshima was the culmination of the high-altitude bombing and long-range killing that came increasingly to characterize World War II.

    Hiroshima opened the door upon a new world, a world in which it is possible for humanity to destroy itself by its own inventions of highly destructive weaponry. Hiroshima was the world’s first look at a technology that could destroy countries, end civilization, and foreclose a human future.

    Following the bombing on August 6, 1945, Hiroshima was a wasteland. It might have been left this way as a monument and reminder of the new dangers confronting humanity. But that wasn’t to be.

    The bombed Hiroshima is the Hiroshima of death. It is a harbinger of what may befall humanity. It is a warning, but a warning that seems far distant in our fast-moving, materialistic world.

    The physical evidence of the crime has been largely covered over and a thriving new Hiroshima has been built from the ruins – a Hiroshima that demonstrates humanity’s capacity for healing and rebuilding. Sixty years after the bombing, Hiroshima itself is a place of hope. It is a city resurrected, and filled with life.

    What remains of the destroyed Hiroshima can now be found in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and in the hearts of the hibakusha, the survivors of the atomic bombings. They cling to the message, “Never Again! Nuclear weapons and human beings cannot co-exist.” They also cling to the hope that humanity can rise above its destructive impulses.

    The rebirth of Hiroshima reflects the power of the human spirit, but the problem presented to humanity by Hiroshima has not gone away. As the leading scientists who signed the Russell-Einstein Manifesto put it fifty years ago: “There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge and wisdom. Shall we instead choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels?”

    Many of the scientists who created nuclear weapons in the Manhattan Project thought that they should not be used on human populations. They warned that if nuclear weapons were used on Japan, the result would be a nuclear arms race. They unsuccessfully tried to convince US political leaders that the atomic bomb should first be demonstrated to Japanese leaders in a remote, uninhabited place, in order to allow them a chance to surrender. But the pleas of the scientists were unsuccessful. They had lost control of their creation, and government leaders chose to use the bomb before the Soviets entered the war in the Pacific.

    The atomic bombing of Hiroshima occurred at the end of a terrible war, but it marked the beginning of a new collective madness that would result in the US and USSR each threatening the other with tens of thousands of nuclear weapons. Today the numbers of weapons is lower than at the height of the Cold War, but the collective insanity continues.

    Fifteen years after the breakup of the Soviet Union, the US and Russia have friendly relations. Yet, each side still maintains more than 2,000 long-range nuclear weapons targeted on the other on hair-trigger alert, ready to be fired in moments. Can this be described in any other way than collective madness?

    Do the people of the world, particularly Americans and Russians, understand what this means? Opinion polls indicate that 85 to 90 percent of people everywhere would choose to eliminate nuclear weapons, so long as all countries do so. They understand that it would improve their security, as well as be morally and legally correct. But among politicians, there is little movement toward a nuclear weapons-free world.

    In the year 2000, the parties to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) agreed to 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament, including an “unequivocal undertaking…to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals….” It seemed to be a significant breakthrough. Yet, five years later, at the 2005 NPT Review Conference, the United States had fulfilled none of its obligations under the 13 Practical Steps, and refused to allow an agenda for the conference that even made reference to them.

    The Bush administration wants funding for new nuclear weapons, particularly earth penetrating nuclear weapons or “bunker busters.” They want a world in which there is no place outside the range of their nuclear weapons. It is a frighteningly dangerous world in which the United States would remain reliant upon nuclear weapons and continue to threaten their use for the indefinite future.

    At Hiroshima, the bomb dropped by the United States killed 140,000 people, mostly civilians, and it was celebrated in the US as a military victory. In doing so, the US made victims not only of the people of Hiroshima, but of all humanity, including ourselves. In today’s world, any city anywhere is subject to being destroyed at a moment’s notice.

    It is painful, yet necessary, to recall details of that fateful day. On the morning of August 6, 1945, people in Hiroshima set off to work or school. Earlier a US plane had flown over the city, and an alarm had sounded. Then came the all-clear signal. Then another plane, this one the US B-29, Enola Gay. It dropped its single bomb, which fell for 43 seconds, and at 8:15 a.m. the city of Hiroshima was destroyed. Individuals close to the epicenter were incinerated. Those further away were killed by blast and fire. Many of the initial survivors developed “radiation sickness,” and died in the coming days, weeks, months and years of cancers and leukemias.

    On August 9, 1945, three days after the bombing of Hiroshima, Nagasaki was bombed and destroyed with another atomic weapon. On the same day, Harry Truman told the American people about Hiroshima. He struck a religious note in talking about the bomb, “We thank God that it has come to us, instead of to our enemies; and we pray that He may guide us to use it in His ways and for His purposes.”

    Herbert Hoover, a former American president, had a far different reaction: “The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul.”

    Leading American generals and admirals were equally appalled by the use of atomic weapons. Eisenhower later said, “It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.” Admiral William D. Leahy, Truman’s Chief of Staff, wrote: “…the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender…. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children….”

    Nuclear weapons do not discriminate. They kill men, women and children. In this way, among others, they are illegal under International Humanitarian Law, as the International Court of Justice ruled in 1996.

    Nuclear weapons are the ultimate weapon of cowards. Those who would possess nuclear weapons need only find men and women willing to make them, service them and press the button to release them.

    Nuclear weapons destroy the destroyers. Reflecting on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Gandhi said, “What has happened to the soul of the destroying nation is yet too early to see. Forces of nature act in a mysterious manner.”

    As Americans look back at the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we, too, should be reflecting on what has happened to our collective soul. We should be reflecting on who we are, as we cling to our weapons of massive destruction, and lead the world in opposing nuclear disarmament.

    It may be a dangerous world, but our future lies in forgiveness and decency, not force of arms. In the US, we spend half of the world’s total military expenditure, more than $500 billion annually, and we still are not secure. We seek inexpensive sources of oil, and we pay the price in blood, our own but mostly that of others.

    If we continue on the path we are on, an American Hiroshima will be in our future. It is inevitable. If the disillusioned and disaffected extremists of the world obtain nuclear weapons, they will use them and the US will be a likely target. The irony of this is that none of our thousands of nuclear weapons will make us any safer. In fact, they make us less secure by creating a situation in which others will also keep nuclear weapons and some of these may end up in the hands of extremists.

    But when it comes to nuclear weapons, there are no moderates. All nuclear policies are dangerous and extreme, except those that contribute to the elimination of nuclear weapons. All possessors of nuclear weapons are extremists. If terrorism is threatening or killing innocent civilians, then nuclear weapons are the ultimate weapon of terrorism and those who possess them are the ultimate terrorists.

    How are we to change? Perhaps Hiroshima provides a place to begin. The horrors of Hiroshima are not only the past, but potentially in the future as well. We can begin with finding our sorrow. We can begin with recognizing the suffering we have caused and are causing still. We can begin with apologies and forgiveness.

    Hiroshima has largely recovered from its wounds. The city has been rebuilt. The flowers have returned. The survivors have made it their mission to end the nuclear weapons threat to humanity. They have forgiven the crime.

    But America will not heal from the trauma of the devastation we have caused and continue to cause until Americans say No to wanton power, No to nuclear weapons, No to war and No to leaders who lie us into war. Until we summon the power to resist, we will continue to be victims of our own massive and unbridled power. It is within our power to change, but not without ending our addiction to power and our double standards that support this addiction. America must reassert its commitment to decency, not destruction.

    The 1955 Russell-Einstein Manifesto – issued ten years after the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as thermonuclear weapons were being developed and tested – concluded with these words: “We appeal as human beings to human beings: Remember your humanity and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death.”

    We have a choice, and where there is choice there is hope. If we do nothing, we will remain on the path of universal death. If we choose to change the world, it is within our power to do so. Hiroshima is our past; it doesn’t need to be our future. We can join with the survivors of Hiroshima in committing ourselves to assuring that atomic weapons will never again be used by taking the sensible and reasonable step of abolishing these instruments of genocide.

    Unfortunately what is reasonable is not always possible. To end the threat to humanity and other forms of life created by nuclear weapons, there are two different sets of problems to be solved. The first is to articulate what needs to be done. The second is to overcome the obstacles that stand in the way of accomplishing these goals.

    Let us look first at what needs to be done. At the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, we have proposed the following eight commitments by the nuclear weapons states.

    1. Commitment to good faith negotiations to achieve total nuclear disarmament.
    2. Commitment to a timeframe for marking progress and achieving the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons.
    3. Commitment to No First Use of nuclear weapons against other nuclear weapons states and to No Use against non-nuclear weapons states.
    4. Commitment to irreversibility and verifiability of disarmament measures.
    5. Commitment to standing down nuclear forces, removing them from high alert status.
    6. Commitment to create no new nuclear weapons.
    7. Commitment to a verifiable ban on the production of fissile materials, and placing existing materials under strict international control.
    8. Commitment to accounting, transparency and reporting to build confidence and allow for verification of the disarmament process.

    We view these as a minimal level of commitment to demonstrate the “good faith” effort to achieve the total elimination of nuclear weapons that is required by international law. Other commitments could be added to these, such as support for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and agreement to refrain from weaponizing outer space.

    Essentially, the international community knows what needs to be done to achieve the phased elimination of nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, the larger problem is with not what is needed but what is politically possible. This leaves behind the realm of what is reasonable and sensible, and enters the realm of prerogatives of political decision makers.

    Despite the threat to humanity and despite reason, none of the commitments above have been acted on by the United States, the world’s most powerful nuclear weapons state. Without US commitment to these goals, it is unlikely that less powerful nuclear weapons states will commit to them. Thus, progress on nuclear disarmament is stalled by US intransigency. The US is not the leader in nuclear disarmament, but rather its major obstacle. This was apparent at the 2005 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, where the US pointed the finger at others, such as Iran and North Korea, but was unwilling even to discuss its own obligations to achieve nuclear disarmament under the treaty and under international law in general.

    Within the US, democracy is the province of the people and their representatives, with the mass media playing a critical role in educating the people so that they may make reasoned political choices and give their informed consent to the actions of leaders. It is the political leaders of the US who have been the obstacle to global nuclear disarmament, and for the most part the people are unaware of this because they do not learn about it from the mass media.

    The only way to change the policies of the government is for the people to voice their concerns, but largely the people are not informed of the positions of their government on nuclear issues. Nor are they given reasonable analyses of the pros and cons of US nuclear policies because the media has been lax in doing its job.

    Humanity’s best hope for ending the nuclear weapons threat that confronts us all is for the American people to engage this issue as if their lives depended upon its outcome. The truth is that our lives, and those of people throughout the world, do depend upon US nuclear policies. We cannot wait for leaders who will recognize and solve these problems for us. We must speak up and we must educate our neighbors and our elected officials.

    The choices are clear. One way is to continue on the disastrous path we are on, a path on which our nuclear arsenal plays a pivotal role in providing a false sense of security. Or we can change the direction of our policies, with the US seeking to strengthen its own security and global security by providing leadership to achieve the phased and total elimination of nuclear weapons. To move to this path, the American people are going to have to wake up and demand that their government, acting in their names, end its reliance on nuclear weapons and fulfill its moral and legal obligations to end the nuclear weapons era.

    David Krieger is the President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is the author of Today Is Not a Good Day for War.

  • Renewal at Los Alamos Weapons Lab Resurrects Deeper Debate

    While a bidding war for control of the US’s top nuke facility pairs two state universities with two corporations, critics are asking questions that won’t appear in either team’s proposal.

    As the 60th anniversary of the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki approaches, one of the nation’s top nuclear weapons laboratories is seeking new management. Or more accurately, the Department of Energy is sponsoring a competitive bidding war for control of the Los Alamos National Laboratory – the first since the lab’s secretive genesis during World War II as the Manhattan Project, the birthplace of the bombs that devastated out those Japanese cities.

    But the contest over who will run the nation’s premier nuclear arms facility has prompted activists to ask harder questions than just those concerning who will operate the facility safer and more efficiently. Some critics challenge the very wisdom of what they see as an administration trudging headlong into another nuclear arms race.

    On one side of the contract face-off is the University of California, which has run Los Alamos for over 60 years. UC is paired up with Bechtel, the global engineering firm best known for its enormous, largely unfulfilled contracts to help rebuild Iraq’s war-torn public infrastructure.

    On the other side of the bidding war is the University of Texas, which has aggressively sought management of a national lab since 1996. UT is joined by Lockheed-Martin, the world’s top defense contractor and manager of Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

    Both groups have also added smaller contractors with experience managing components of the nuclear weapons complex as junior partners. Meanwhile, the UT-Lockheed team has involved thirty universities listed as an “Alliance Academic Network” in its portfolio. Proposals from the two consortiums were due July 19, and the Department of Energy will pick a new management team by December 1.

    The bidding war for Los Alamos has shaken the lab community and inspired a debate over who can best run the $2.2 billion a year operation. Most Los Alamos employees are not concerned with questions about the country’s weapons policy, according to Greg Mello with the Los Alamos Study Group, a research organization that promotes disarmament. Instead, said Mello, they “are mostly concerned about pensions, working conditions, and their identities as scientists.”

    There are misgivings among some employees at the lab about working for a corporation, said Mellow, who claimed most people there prefer to consider their workplace an academic institution. “People say, ‘If I wanted to work for a corporation, I would have done so earlier in my career,’” relayed Mello.

    But many anti-nuclear activists and lab watchers see the debate over who should manage Los Alamos as obscuring a critical discussion of the role nuclear weapons play in the world today.

    Hugh Gusterson, an MIT anthropologist who has written two books based on his experience living and studying the culture of nuclear weapons labs, sees both bids as “conservative” in that they are headed by people entrenched in the weapons bureaucracy. “The real question is, ‘Do you need two nuclear weapons labs?’” Gusterson added, referring to Los Alamos and its “sister” lab in California, Lawrence-Livermore.

    Arjun Makhijani, an engineer and president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, a nonprofit organization that strives to make science accessible to laypersons, is even more blunt. “I have a date when I think the [ University of California] should have gotten out of the nuclear weapons business,” Makhijani said. “December, 1944 – when it was discovered that Germany did not have the Bomb.”

    Los Alamos is a flashpoint for arms control advocates because the facility is responsible for an estimated 80 percent of the nuclear weapons ever designed in the United States. In addition, lab administrators have historically had a hand in championing nuclear weapons and pooh-poohing arms control agreements and bans on testing, said Jackie Cabasso of the Western States Legal Foundation, an advocacy organization that specializes in supporting anti-nuclear activism.

    Paul Robinson, who stepped down as the CEO of the Sandia operation to run the UT-Lockheed bid and will be director of Los Alamos if his team wins, has been a proponent of new, low-yield nuclear weapons such as so-called “mini-nukes” and “bunker-buster” warheads designed to take out deeply entrenched targets. In a 2001 “white paper” Robinson argued for a transformation of the nuclear stockpile, including the re-design of existing warheads and the development of low-yield nukes, to deal with “To Whom It May Concern” enemies, a term applied to any non-Russian states or terrorist groups

    Naturally, Robinson also backed President Bush’s push – and Congress’s 2003 decision – to repeal the 1994 ban on low-yield nuclear weapons. Because the national labs rely almost entirely on federal funding, officials such as Robinson often find themselves promoting nuclear weapons to lawmakers.

    Los Alamos National Laboratory and the companies associated with whichever team wins the bidding war are positioned to benefit from the largesse of a nuclear arms revival. President Bush has consistently asked Congress to fund new nuclear weapons; increased production of plutonium pits, the part of the bomb that renders it atomic; and a facelift to the Nevada Test Site in order to reduce the amount of time it would take to resume underground nuclear testing.

    But Congress has trimmed most of the Bush administration’s requests for the past four years.

    Still, many arms control advocates fear that the Los Alamos competition is designed, in part, to make way for a resumption of warhead production. Several Los Alamos critics have fingered plutonium pit production as a key to Los Alamos’s future. As part of the competition, bidders will be rewarded for demonstrating how they will meet the perceived need for more plutonium pits – ones that could go to refresh older warheads or be installed in new ones.

    Currently, the lab is the only site in the US that can produce a pit certified for installation in a functional nuclear weapon. But a “Modern Pit Facility,” capable of producing up to 450 pits per year, could find a home at Los Alamos. “The sense in Congress is that Los Alamos is really troubled,” said Carah Ong, director of the Washington DC office of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and a lobbyist for that organization. Congress thinks Los Alamos “needs some results-oriented focus,” she told The NewStandard.. “That’s where pit production comes in because it gives Los Alamos the unique value that Congress is looking for.”

    Some Los Alamos critics are not sitting on the sidelines for the lab war games. Nuclear Watch in New Mexico and Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment (CAREs) in California have joined forces and sent the Department of Energy their alternative plan for the lab. Unlike UT-Lockheed and UC-Bechtel, the two watchdog groups are making their proposal public.

    “Our emphasis is a pretty radical mission change by truly discouraging the proliferation of nuclear weapons through concrete example,” Jay Coghlan of the activist group Nuclear Watch New Mexico told TNS. “We are proposing a fundamental realignment of the nuclear weapons program,” he explained, by creating an Associate Directorship of Nuclear Nonproliferation. That position would be “responsible for encouraging and verifying compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty.” Nuclear weapons-related projects would have to answer to the nonproliferation director.

    This restructuring aligns with Nuclear Watch and Tri-Valley CAREs’ “proposed program of maintaining [but not advancing] nuclear weapons while they await dismantlement,” according to the organizations’ press release.

  • In the Spirit of Einstein: Scientists Advancing Nuclear Weapons Abolition

    In 1955, fifty years ago and ten years after the harsh inception of the Nuclear Age at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein issued an appeal, known as the Russell-Einstein Manifesto. It is the last public document signed by Einstein before his death. In addition to Russell and Einstein, the document was signed by nine other prominent scientists. The appeal warned that powerful new nuclear weapons raised the possibility of “universal death” in an all-out war, and called for the renunciation of war itself. “Here, then, is the problem which we present to you, stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war?” The appeal concluded: “Remember your humanity and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death.”

     

    Over the ensuing decades of the Cold War and beyond it, many scientists and citizens throughout the world have grown complacent in the face of continuing nuclear dangers. The Cold War may have ended in the early 1990s, but nuclear dangers to humanity have not abated. In some respects, the dangers have increased. Among the scientists who have banded together to educate the public and offer constructive solutions to the nuclear dangers that threaten humanity are those who are or have been associated with the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs (Pugwash) and the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility (INES).

     

    Many scientists have been involved in both organizations. Pugwash, which grew directly from the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, began in 1957 and has tended to work in more closed circles of scientists in the hopes of being viewed by governments as more trustworthy. Pugwash shared the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize with its founder, Sir Joseph Rotblat. INES, by contrast, which was established at a large scientific meeting in Berlin in 1991, has been far more open to interactions with other civil society organizations and with the general public. One of the principal aims of INES has been to achieve the abolition of nuclear weapons. This aim has been carried out by an extraordinarily dedicated group of scientists, engineers and experts in the INES project, the International Network of Scientists and Engineers Against Proliferation (INESAP). In the remainder of this article, I will discuss INESAP’s activities that have sought to move beyond the Non-Proliferation Treaty and other efforts to halt proliferation and to achieve the total elimination of nuclear weapons.

     

    INESAP was formed in 1993 by three young German scientists: Wolfgang Liebert, Martin Kalinowski and Juergen Scheffran. From its inception, the network focused on the central issue of the Nuclear Age: achieving total nuclear disarmament. The principal objectives of INESAP are “to promote nuclear disarmament, to tighten existing arms control and non-proliferation regimes, [and] to implement unconventional approaches to curbing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and to controlling the transfer of related technology.”

     

    The founding conference of INESAP took place in Germany in August 1993, and was entitled, “Against Proliferation: Towards General Disarmament.” Some 50 scientists, engineers and other experts from 20 countries participated. In 1994, INESAP established a Study Group on non-proliferation, called “Beyond the NPT,” referring to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The work of the Study Group led to the publication of a document in early 1995, “Beyond the NPT: A Nuclear Weapon-Free World.” The document was prepared by some 50 authors from 17 countries, including soon-to-be Nobel Peace Laureate Joseph Rotblat.

     

    Among the conclusions of this study were that the Non-Proliferation Treaty was insufficient to control nuclear proliferation, and that the 1995 Review and Extension Conference of this treaty should be followed by multilateral negotiations to achieve a Nuclear Weapons Convention. The document proposed that the parties to the treaty, along with the few states still outside the treaty, should begin immediate negotiations on a Nuclear Weapons Convention, a framework treaty for the abolition of nuclear weapons. The Executive Summary of “Beyond the NPT” stated, “In its Final Document the NPT Review and Extension Conference should, in its call for decisive steps towards a NWFW [nuclear weapons-free world], include a mandate for the Conference on Disarmament to start negotiations on a Nuclear Weapons Convention (NWC). The pattern has to be that which has already been set by the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) and the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) – a total ban.”

     

    The 1995 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review and Extension Conference was held at United Nations headquarters in New York. It was one of the most important meetings in the then 25-year history of treaty and may turn out to be one of the significant events of the Nuclear Age, with broad implications for the future of civilization. At issue during the conference was whether the treaty should be extended indefinitely or for periods of time. The United States and other nuclear weapons states were strong supporters of indefinite extension, their goal being to prevent nuclear proliferation while maintaining the two-tier structure of nuclear “haves” and “have-nots.” Many civil society organizations, along with some non-nuclear weapons states, argued against indefinite extension on the basis that it would be like giving a blank check to parties (the nuclear weapons states) who were notorious for overdrawing their accounts and could not be trusted to keep their promises.

     

    The essential bargain of the NPT was that non-nuclear weapons states would not develop or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons, and the nuclear weapons states would cease the nuclear arms race and engage in good faith negotiations for nuclear disarmament. From the perspective of the non-nuclear weapons states, the treaty was never meant to establish permanent nuclear double standards, making nuclear weapons acceptable for the small minority while prohibiting them to the vast majority.

     

    INESAP was a leader among the civil society organizations at the 1995 NPT Review and Extension Conference pressing the point that preventing proliferation was not sufficient and that it was necessary to move expeditiously toward a nuclear weapons-free world. In cooperation with other leading international organizations, INESAP sponsored a two-day forum on the abolition of nuclear weapons, based upon its study, “Beyond the NPT: A Nuclear Weapon-Free World.” The INESAP forum provided an opportunity to present a variety of proposals on how to attain a nuclear weapons-free world and for civil society representatives from around the world to debate strategies for moving forward.

     

    The NPT Review and Extension Conference ended with a victory for the nuclear weapons states and a sound defeat for humanity. The treaty was extended indefinitely with no further requirements that the nuclear weapons states fulfill their obligations under the treaty to achieve nuclear disarmament. Having achieved the indefinite extension of the treaty, the nuclear weapons states showed no inclination to proceed with negotiations for a treaty to ban nuclear weapons, as INESAP had proposed.

     

    The outcome of the NPT Review and Extension Conference created a strong reaction by civil society organizations and an increased determination among them to work for the abolition of nuclear weapons. INESAP and other civil society groups coalesced to form Abolition 2000, a global network for the abolition of nuclear weapons, which has now grown to over 2,000 organizations and municipalities throughout the world.

     

    In 1996, a year after the conclusion of the NPT Review and Extension Conference, civil society organizations played a significant role in bringing the issue of the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the world’s highest court. The ICJ issued an opinion in which the court unanimously declared: “There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.”

     

    By 1997, INESAP, along with two other important international organizations – the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (IALANA) and the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) – put forward a comprehensive text for a Model Nuclear Weapons Convention. The text, relying heavily on the technical information provided by INESAP, provided for a system of societal and technical verification that would make it possible for the nuclear weapons states to fulfill their obligation under international law for the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals. This would not only make the world far safer, but would be the only truly effective way to assure against nuclear proliferation. The Model Nuclear Weapons Convention was introduced to the United Nations as a discussion paper by Costa Rica in 1997.

     

    Since then, INESAP has continued its efforts to promote a Nuclear Weapons Convention. In a 1999 Briefing Paper (No. 7/1999), it explored the question, “Has the Time Come for the Nuclear Weapons Convention?” During that same year, INESAP continued its collaboration with IALANA and IPPNW in producing a book: Security and Survival: The Case for a Nuclear Weapons Convention. In the year 2000, INESAP put out an edited book on Global Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. The book, emphasizing scientific expertise, provides analysis of the deadlock in achieving progress on the elimination of nuclear weapons and on the means of overcoming the obstacles.

     

    The Model Nuclear Weapons Convention has provided a basic tool for the global nuclear abolition movement. It has been used over the years by Abolition 2000 and its constituent organizations as an example of how countries, if they had the political will to do so, could proceed toward the elimination of nuclear weapons. Most recently, the model convention has been used by the Mayors for Peace, led by the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in their Emergency Campaign to Ban Nuclear Weapons. This campaign calls for negotiations on a Nuclear Weapons Convention to commence in 2005, to be completed by 2010, and for the elimination of nuclear weapons by the year 2020.

     

    In 2000, INESAP organized a workshop entitled “Abolition of Nuclear Weapons” at the Stockholm Congress of the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility. Intensive discussions at this meeting gave rise to a new INESAP program, initiated in cooperation with the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, to explore the control and elimination of missile technologies for warlike purposes. The project, Moving Beyond Missile Defense, has held four international conferences over the past five years, in Santa Barbara, Shanghai, Berlin and Hiroshima, focusing on regional and global issues of nuclear disarmament and missile control.

     

    Einstein warned, “The splitting of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” The scientists, engineers and other experts associated with INESAP have worked to bring about such a change in thinking. They have exemplified a commitment to social responsibility by raising their voices to warn of continuing dangers and by using their scientific and technical expertise to propose solutions to the gravest danger confronting humanity. They carry on in the tradition of truth and courage exemplified by Albert Einstein.

     

    David Krieger is the president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org), and the Deputy Chair of the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility (www.inesglobal.org). He is a leader in the global effort to abolish nuclear weapons.

  • The 50-Year Shadow

    Fifty years ago, I joined Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell and eight others in signing a manifesto warning of the dire consequences of nuclear war. This statement, the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, was Einstein’s final public act. He died shortly after signing it. Now, in my 97th year, I am the only remaining signatory. Because of this, I feel it is my duty to carry Einstein’s message forward, into this 60th year since the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which evoked almost universal opposition to any further use of nuclear weapons.

    I was the only scientist to resign on moral grounds from the United States nuclear weapons program known as the Manhattan Project. On Aug. 6, 1945, I switched on my radio and heard that we had dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. I knew that a new era had dawned in which nuclear weapons would be used, and I grew worried about the future of mankind.

    Several years later, I met Bertrand Russell on the set of the BBC Television program “Panorama,” where we discussed the new hydrogen bomb. I had become an authority on the biological effects of radiation after examining the fallout from the American hydrogen bomb test in Bikini Atoll in 1954. Russell, who was increasingly agitated about the developments, started to come to me for information. Russell decided to persuade a number of eminent scientists from around the world to join him in issuing a statement outlining the dangers of thermonuclear war and calling on the scientific community to convene a conference on averting that danger.

    The most eminent scientist alive at that time was Albert Einstein, who responded immediately and enthusiastically to Russell’s entreaty. And so the man who symbolized the height of human intellect adopted what became his last message – this manifesto, which implored governments and the public not to allow our civilization to be destroyed by human folly. The manifesto also highlighted the perils of scientific progress in a world rent by the titanic struggle over communism. I was the youngest of the 11 signatories, but Russell asked me to lead the press conference in London to present the manifesto to the public.

    The year was 1955, and cold war fears and hostilities were at their height. We took action then because we felt that the world situation was entering a dangerous phase, in which extraordinary efforts were required to prevent a catastrophe.

    Now, two generations later, as the representatives of nearly 190 nations meet in New York to discuss how to advance the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, we face the same perils and new ones as well. Today we confront the possibilities of nuclear terrorism and of the development of yet more new nuclear warheads in the United States. The two former superpowers still hold enormous nuclear arsenals. North Korea and Iran are advancing their capability to build nuclear weapons. Other nations are increasingly likely to acquire nuclear arsenals on the excuse that they are needed for their security. The result could be a new nuclear arms race.

    Fifty years ago we wrote: “We have to learn to think in a new way. We have to learn to ask ourselves, not what steps can be taken to give military victory to whatever group we prefer, for there no longer are such steps; the question we have to ask ourselves is: what steps can be taken to prevent a military contest of which the issue must be disastrous to all parties?” That question is as relevant today as it was in 1955. So is the manifesto’s admonition: “Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.”

    Joseph Rotblat, a physicist and emeritus president of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995.

    Originally published in the New York Times

  • Vanunu Should Get Nobel Peace Prize

    UNITED NATIONS — U.S. whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg says Mordechai Vanunu should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for revealing Israel’s nuclear arsenal and be allowed to travel the world to promote the abolition of nuclear weapons.

    Ellsberg, whose disclosure of secret Pentagon documents about the Vietnam war helped crystallize anti-war sentiment in the United States in the early 1970s, urged delegates from 188 countries attending a conference to review the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to strongly protest Israel’s restrictions on Vanunu’s speech and travel and his likely return to prison.

    Vanunu, a former technician at Israel’s nuclear plant in the southern town of Dimona, served 18 years in prison for divulging information about Israel’s secretive atomic program to a British newspaper in 1986. He has been barred from leaving the country until at least April 2006 and went on trial last month for allegedly violating a condition of his 2004 release that banned contacts with foreigners.

    Ellsberg, who said he recently spent five days with Vanunu in Israel, dismissed the government’s claim that Vanunu still has secrets that could endanger national security as “absurd.”

    “It’s clearly an attempt to prolong his sentence indefinitely, sending him back to prison for years,” Ellsberg told reporters Wednesday before addressing the review conference.

    “The message this sends to potential Vanunus in other states is very clear, and the question at this conference is whether the nations of the world should encourage or strongly protest that message,” he said. “The fact is more Vanunus are urgently needed in this world.”

    Ellsberg said that if, for instance, an Indian technician had revealed the country’s plan for a nuclear test, international pressure might have prevented it — and “how much better India, Pakistan and the world would be.”

    In the early 1960s, Ellsberg said he was working in the Pentagon on command and control of nuclear weapons and nuclear war plans and should have done what Vanunu did and “tell my country and the world the insanity and moral obscenity of our war planning, which remains the same today.”

    “I regret profoundly that I did not reveal that fact publicly, with documents,” he said.

    Ellsberg, who spoke on behalf of the non-profit Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, which promotes the abolition of nuclear weapons, said Israel today is probably the third or fourth-largest nuclear state — behind the United States and Russia, and possibly France.

    He said Vanunu is reported to have revealed in 1986 that Israel had about 200 nuclear weapons. Vanunu has estimated that at the same rate of production Israel had when he left Dimona in 1985, the country should have close to 400 weapons today, Ellsberg said.

    That’s more than Britain, China, India and Pakistan, and probably more than France, he said.

    Israel neither acknowledges nor denies having a nuclear weapons program, following a policy of nuclear ambiguity.

    Ellsberg said British nuclear scientist Joseph Rotblat, who won the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize for his work against nuclear weapons with the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, has repeatedly nominated Vanunu for the award.

    “He should get the Nobel Peace Prize as Joseph Rotblat has frequently recommended,” he said.

  • Reviving Nuclear Disarmament in the Non-Proliferation Regime Opening Remarks

    This panel on “Reviving Nuclear Disarmament in the Non-Proliferation Regime” is of tremendous importance to the outcome of this Seventh Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference. Beyond that, it may prove vital to the present and future security of our planet. I am very pleased to be a part of it.

    Although the public is largely unaware of this, it is no secret to any of you that nuclear disarmament is a central component of the non-proliferation bargain. On the one hand, this treaty provides obligations to halt nuclear proliferation; on the other, it provides obligations to achieve nuclear disarmament.

    This makes perfect sense, of course, for the two obligations are highly interlinked. Without fulfilling disarmament obligations, it will not be possible to prevent proliferation. And should there be further nuclear proliferation, nuclear disarmament will be all the more difficult.

    There has been much emphasis in the news – a subject with which I have some familiarity – about the dangers of nuclear proliferation. Unfortunately, the nuclear disarmament obligations of the nuclear weapons states receive far less attention in news reporting, (at least within the United States). This may well be simply because a degree of isolationism still exists across the breadth of our land. That manifests itself in a down-playing of international news. Too often there is only minimum attention given by our local news media, print and broadcast, to the deeper, more intricate stories about our global community, its problems and hopes.

    I’m afraid that a far too large percentage of our population does not recognize that nuclear disarmament is an essential component of the non-proliferation bargain. It is reason for us to worry. It seems that the United States and the other nuclear weapons states are trying to evade their obligations and responsibilities under this critical treaty.

    These countries have in the first instance behaved as though the “unequivocal undertaking” which they made five years ago at the 2000 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, was subject to being discarded at will. They commit a similar affront to the non-proliferation treaty community by ignoring other of their promises.

    Such behavior strains the credibility of these countries and puts the outcome of this Review Conference in jeopardy of failure. That outcome, of course, would be a tragedy for the world.

    In this 60th year of the Nuclear Age, we must all be thinking about what can be done to assure a future for human beings on our planet. As the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, have continually warned – “Nuclear weapons and human beings cannot co-exist.”

    As a species, we are neither smart enough nor careful enough to continue to live with nuclear weapons in our midst. So far we have been lucky in that since the end of World War II, nuclear weapons have not been used again in war. But there is no telling how long this luck will last. We certainly cannot count on it to last indefinitely.

    Therefore, we must get back to basics. We must return to the nuclear disarmament part of the Non-Proliferation Treaty bargain. And we must do so with clarity of purpose and determination to succeed. This is what my very distinguished fellow panelists are here to talk about today. The panelists include both representatives of civil society and of government. They all have worked on these issues with extraordinary dedication for a very long time.

    I urge the delegates to this treaty conference to listen to them carefully – and to act with certainty that the future of humanity, including yet unborn generations, is dependent upon your success – right here and right now! You have a very important responsibility and the future is in your hands.

    I trust that you will act with the foresight, courage and resolve that our current situation demands.

    Walter Cronkite is an eminent broadcast journalist and recipient of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s 2004 Distinguished Peace Leadership Award.