Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: Nukes Are Nuts

  • Ten Reasons Why Nukes Are Nuts

    There are many reasons why nukes are nuts. Here are my top ten:

    They are insanely powerful. A single nuclear weapon can destroy a city. A few nuclear weapons can destroy a country. A relatively small regional nuclear war can cause a nuclear famine, taking 2 billion lives globally. An all-out nuclear war could end civilization and cause the extinction of most complex life on the planet.

    Nukes Are Nuts

    Nuclear weapons kill indiscriminately. Their effects cannot be contained in time or space. They are an equal-opportunity destroyer, killing and maiming men, women and children. The radioactive materials in nuclear weapons keep killing long after the blast, heat and fire of the explosive force have taken their toll. They are capable of causing genetic mutations and killing or injuring new generations of innocent victims, as was the case with the repeated US atmospheric nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands.

    There is no defense against nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons are a technological spear against which there is no shield. Without defense, there is only nuclear deterrence, the threat of massive nuclear retaliation against innocent people. But such retaliation is not defense; it is retaliatory vengeance, pure and simple.

    Nuclear deterrence requires rational leaders. A rational political leader would be unlikely to use nuclear weapons if he understood that the consequences might be a retaliatory nuclear strike on his country. But not all leaders behave rationally at all times and under all conditions. In fact, some leaders behave irrationally much of the time. Would you gamble on humanity’s future resting solely on the rational behavior of all political leaders of all nuclear-armed countries at all times?

    Accidents happen. Human beings are fallible creatures, and their technological creations are not impervious to serious error. Powerful examples of mixing human fallibility with technological imperfection have occurred with accidents at nuclear power plants, including at Three Mile Island in the United States, Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union and Fukushima Dai-ichi in Japan. There have been many false alarms and near disasters with nuclear weapons as well, involving the weapons inadvertently falling from US bombers and being in plane crashes, coming very near to catastrophic nuclear detonations. The Department of Defense has put out a report listing 32 serious nuclear accidents from 1950 to 1980. It confirms that accidents with nuclear weapons do happen and that the world has been very fortunate that such accidents have not resulted in serious nuclear detonations.

    Perfection is an impossible standard. The US intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) force tries to maintain perfection as its standard. As a result, a culture has developed in which young officers cheat on their examinations, take drugs and cover up for the lax standards of other officers. The head of the US ICBM force was recently fired from his post for drunkenness and cavorting with Russian women on an official trip to Moscow.

    Possession encourages proliferation. When some countries maintain possession of nuclear weapons and base their military strategies on those weapons, surely that provides an incentive for the proliferation of nuclear weapons to other countries. There are few expert analysts who would argue that nuclear proliferation is a global good (even though some experts would argue for almost anything). The United States, United Kingdom and Soviet Union originally negotiated and promoted the Non-Proliferation Treaty to try to prevent other countries from developing or acquiring nuclear arsenals. In the treaty, though, these nuclear weapon states, and others who later became parties to the treaty (France and China), agreed to level the playing field by pursuing negotiations in good faith for a cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and for nuclear disarmament. Because “an early date” has long since passed and because these countries are continuing to modernize their nuclear arsenals and because there are no multilateral negotiations for nuclear disarmament taking place, many countries believe the five NPT nuclear weapon states are not acting in good faith. These conditions are ripe for nuclear proliferation.

    Nuclear arsenals are extremely costly. The nine nuclear weapon states plan to spend more than $1 trillion in the next decade on maintaining and modernizing their nuclear arsenals. The United States alone plans to spend $1 trillion in the next 30 years on its nuclear arsenal. These extraordinarily large sums could be far better used for alleviating poverty in the countries possessing nuclear weapons and throughout the world. Nuclear weapons are Cold War relics that endanger all complex life on the planet and deserve to be dismantled and to rust in peace. Surely, we can put humanity’s resources and brain power to better use than perfecting the means of our own annihilation.

    They are a coward’s weapon. Nuclear weapons are long-distance killing devices that make cowards of their possessors. There is nothing about them that is soldierly or brave. They can be used only to threaten annihilation or to cause it. This is a likely contributing factor, along with boredom and lack of career advancement opportunities, to the widely reported low morale among Air Force missile launch officers.

    Their threat or use would be a crime against humanity. Under international humanitarian law, there are limitations to what force can be used in warfare. Weapons that kill indiscriminately, cause unnecessary suffering or are disproportionate to a prior attack are prohibited. Committing a crime against humanity is punishable criminally under international law. Just as the Nazi leaders were held to account for crimes against humanity at Nuremberg after World War II, those who threaten or use nuclear weapons should also be subject to criminal accountability.

    Given that nukes are nuts, steps should be undertaken urgently to assure that nuclear weapons are never used again – by accident, miscalculation or design. Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and customary international law require the pursuit of negotiations in good faith for nuclear disarmament in all its aspects. These negotiations should commence immediately and take the form of a new international treaty, similar to the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Biological Weapons Convention. It would be a Nuclear Weapons Convention, a treaty to achieve Nuclear Zero by means of the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons. The sooner such a treaty is negotiated and implemented, the safer all humanity will be.

    This article was originally published by Truthout. David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • Nukes Are Nuts: The Sequel

    David KriegerNuclear weapons are monstrous – obscene – explosive devices that have no function other than to threaten or cause mass annihilation. They kill indiscriminately and cause unimaginable suffering. The world knows well the death, destruction and lingering pain caused by these weapons used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nuclear weapons could end civilization and have no place in a civilized society. Nukes are nuts!

    Nuclear weapons are very effective killing devices. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki demonstrated that a single, small nuclear weapon is capable of destroying a city and causing mass death and suffering beyond any society’s capacity to cope with such a humanitarian tragedy. The City of Hiroshima 2013 Peace Declaration, issued 68 years after a single atomic weapon destroyed the city, reflected on the effects of the US atomic bomb: “Indiscriminately stealing the lives of innocent people, permanently altering the lives of survivors, and stalking their minds and bodies to the end of their days, the atomic bomb is the ultimate inhumane weapon and an absolute evil.” Nuclear weapons corrupt our humanity. Nukes are nuts!

    Atmospheric scientists inform us of what would happen in a relatively small regional nuclear war between India and Pakistan, in which each side used 50 Hiroshima-size nuclear weapons on the other side’s cities. It would result in putting enough soot into the upper stratosphere to restrict warming sunlight, shorten growing seasons and cause crop failures leading to global nuclear famine and the deaths by starvation of some 2 billion people. Nukes are nuts!

    The possibility of nuclear famine is horrendous, but even more terrifying would be an all-out nuclear war, which could send the planet into another ice age and make precarious the continued existence of human life. Nuclear weapons threaten not the planet itself, for the planet can recover after hundreds of thousands of years. They threaten the human species and all other forms of complex life. The nuclear-armed countries are playing Russian roulette with the human future. Nukes are nuts!

    In November 2013, the Council of Delegates of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement passed a resolution on “Working towards the elimination of nuclear weapons: Four-year action plan.” The council reiterated “its deep concern about the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons, including the unspeakable human suffering that their use would cause and the threat that such weapons pose to food production, the environment and future generations.” Nukes are nuts!

    By any measure, the possession, threat or use of nuclear weapons is immoral and exceedingly dangerous. Continued reliance on these weapons of mass annihilation by the nine nuclear-armed countries encourages nuclear proliferation and keeps open the door for terrorists to obtain nuclear arms. A nuclear war could be initiated by accident, miscalculation or design. Nukes are nuts!

    Those of us privileged to be alive on the planet now have responsibilities to be good stewards of the planet and its varied life forms, and to pass the planet on intact to new generations. What kind of stewards are we? Are we fulfilling our responsibilities to future generations of humans who are not yet here to speak for themselves? Nukes are nuts!

    Is it not extreme hubris for the leaders of nuclear-armed states to assert that the manufacture, possession, deployment, modernization, threatened use and use of these weapons, capable of omnicide, the death of all, can be controlled by human beings without proliferating to other countries or being used by accident or design, putting at risk all that we treasure, including the future of the human species? Nukes are nuts!

    Nuclear weapons are creations of the human mind that came into being through political decisions and scientific and technological expertise. While these weapons are products of human invention and effort, our human capacity to control the destructive uses of this technology, by means of law or morality, has been grossly inadequate. We need to change our mindsets about nuclear weapons. They do not protect us but, rather, bring us to the precipice of catastrophe. Nukes are nuts!

    Humanity cannot afford a sequel to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We must learn from our past and assure that nuclear weapons and nuclear war are not our legacy to the future. Nukes are nuts!

    This article was originally published by Truthout.

    Find out more about Nukes are Nuts at www.nukesarenuts.org.

  • Nukes Are Nuts

    When asked by a reporter why nuclear weapons are useless, Colin Powell, former US secretary of state and four-star general said: “Because they’re such horrible weapons. And so no sane leader would ever want to cross that line to using nuclear weapons. And, if you are not going to cross that line, then these things are basically useless.” In other words, one could say, nukes are nuts.

    There are innumerable global security issues that need to be addressed, some of which are poverty, terrorism, the climate crisis, pollution of the oceans, loss of biodiversity and forest depletion. Not one of these issues can be addressed with nuclear weapons. In fact, nuclear weapons draw much-needed resources away from solving these global problems. Nukes are nuts.

    Nuclear weapons are justified by their possessors for nuclear deterrence, but nuclear deterrence is only a hypothesis about human behavior. While “no sane leader would ever want to cross that line,” even the best of political and military leaders can be less than rational at times, particularly when they are under stress. Nuclear deterrence is only as sound as the craziest political or military leader with a finger on the nuclear button. Does the name Kim Jong-un raise any concerns? Nukes are nuts.

    Nuclear weapons are weapons of vast overkill. They are equal-opportunity destroyers of men, women and children. The radioactive effects of these weapons cannot be contained in time or space. They affect not only the living, but generations yet to be born. Their radioactive material will affect countless future generations. Even a small regional nuclear war could result in a global nuclear famine, killing a billion people. Nukes are nuts.

    Nuclear weapons can destroy everything we hold dear and love most. They can destroy every special thing, every sacred thing that has ever been created. Nuclear weapons are anti-human weapons: they threaten us all, even their possessors, and place all of humanity at risk of annihilation. But they also place all of complex life at risk of destruction. The possession of these weapons makes us irresponsible stewards of our environment and of all the creatures dependent upon our stewardship. Nukes are nuts.

    Nuclear weapons are extremely costly, with anticipated global expenditures for the next decade at over $1 trillion. The US plans to modernize its B61 bombs, which it deploys in five European countries, at a cost that is more than two times that of building them out of solid gold. Nuclear weapons take away resources from the education of the world’s children, medical treatment from the world’s sick and infirm and food from the world’s hungry. Nukes are nuts.

    Nuclear weapons divide us when we need to unite to find cooperative, diplomatic and nonviolent solutions to the great global issues of the 21st century. Only nine countries have nuclear weapons and, of these, only two countries, the US and Russia, possess more than 90 percent of the more than 17,000 nuclear weapons in the world. Nukes are not useful, nor are they status symbols. Nukes are nuts.

    Every man, woman and child on the planet can understand that nukes are nuts. So, if we understand that, what are we going to do about it? My answer is to wage all-out peace with a sense of urgency until the last nuclear weapon is eliminated from the planet. We would be nuts to settle for anything less.

    This article was originally published on Truthout.