Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: peace

  • Daisaku Ikeda’s Perseverance and Passion for Peace

    David KriegerDaisaku Ikeda is a man with a great heart and a great vision for humanity’s future.  I admire not only his passion for peace, as expressed in his annual Peace Proposals, but also his perseverance.  He does not give up.  He has a deep well of creativity.  His words have power because he is a man of conviction and action.


    This year’s Peace Proposal is titled, “Toward a World of Dignity for All: the Triumph of the Creative Life.”  I share a passion for the world Daisaku Ikeda envisions, a world of dignity for all.  I once rewrote the US Pledge of Allegiance as a World Citizens’ Pledge.  It said, “I pledge allegiance to the Earth and to its varied life forms; one world, indivisible, with liberty, justice and dignity for all.”  We should not be satisfied until the least among us is able to live a life of dignity.


    Daisaku Ikeda has correctly highlighted the importance of the eight Millennium Development Goals.  These goals are not sufficient, but they are necessary steps on the path to “dignity for all.”  If they are to be fulfilled, we must stop spending so lavishly on the world’s military forces and transfer a reasonable percentage of these resources toward ending poverty and disease while promoting education, environmental protection and the rights of women.


    I agree strongly with Daisaku Ikeda about leadership: in the “absence of international political leadership, civil society should step in to fill the gap, providing the energy and vision needed to move the world in a new and better direction.” 


    In recent weeks, we have seen wonderful examples of tens of thousands of people in Middle East countries taking to the streets and providing the leadership to oust dictators and demand new governments capable of assuring dignity for all citizens.  These citizen leaders have inspired each other and people throughout the world with their courage, compassion and commitment.


    The goal of abolishing nuclear weapons should be high on the agenda for achieving human dignity.  These weapons, with their implicit threat of indiscriminate mass murder, devalue the human species by their very existence.  They have also taken precious financial and human resources from human development goals. 


    I agree with Daisaku Ikeda’s perspective that “it is necessary to thoroughly challenge the theory of deterrence upon which nuclear weapons possession is predicated.”  Nuclear deterrence is a theory of human behavior, and it has many flaws that could result in the catastrophic use of nuclear weapons.


    Recently, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation held a conference on “The Dangers of Nuclear Deterrence.”  Out of that conference, we created a “Santa Barbara Declaration,” a call to action to reject nuclear deterrence.  The Declaration lists eight major problems with nuclear deterrence and states, “Nuclear deterrence is discriminatory, anti-democratic and unsustainable.  This doctrine must be discredited and replaced with an urgent commitment to achieve global nuclear disarmament.  We must change the discourse by speaking truth to power and speaking truth to each other.”


    Nuclear weapons have no place in a world that values human dignity.  My great goal in life is to see these weapons totally abolished.  This would represent a change of heart and orientation for humanity.  It would mean that we had come together in common cause to assure that these weapons could not destroy the civilizations we have so painstakingly built and maintained over many millennia. 


    I concur with Daisaku Ikeda and his mentor, Josei Toda, that nuclear weapons represent an “absolute evil,” one that cannot be tolerated if we are to fulfill our responsibility to ourselves and to future generations.  Ikeda points out that standing between our existing world and a world free of nuclear weapons are “walls of apathy.” 


    Our great challenge today is to break down these walls of apathy and replace them with gardens of creativity.  Upon such creativity can be built a shining world of “dignity for all,” one in which nuclear weapons exist only as a historical memory and powerful lesson about humanity’s capacity to overcome great threats by joining hands in common purpose.

  • The Eighth Anniversary of the Iraq War

    David KriegerOn this eighth anniversary of the Iraq War, I feel a deep sense of sadness mixed with anger, along with regret for what might have been.  We’ve had eight years of futile war in Iraq and nearly ten years of the same in Afghanistan.


    Following September 11, 2001, the world stood with the US.  We had a choice then: to respond legally, morally and with wisdom; or, like a helpless giant, to flail out with our vast arsenal of weapons.  To our shame, our leaders, then and now, have taken the latter course. 


    Before this war began, many of us marched for peace.  People all over the world marched for peace, but peace was not to be.


    Dick Cheney said, “We will be greeted as liberators.”


    Donald Rumsfeld said, in effect, that the war would pay for itself: “The bulk of the funds for Iraq’s reconstruction will come from Iraqis – from oil revenues, recovered assets, international trade, direct foreign investment….”


    George W. Bush said, we will attack “at a time of our choosing.”  He dismissed the United Nations, saying “The United Nations Security Council has not lived up to its responsibilities.  So we will rise to ours.”  He chose to attack Iraq on the evening of March 19, 2003, and he did so with shock and awe, but without legality under international law. 


    Less than two months later, Bush dressed up in a flight suit, landed on the aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, stood under a sign that said “Mission Accomplished,” and boasted with his usual shortsightedness, “In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.”  The people of the world will have prevailed when Mr. Bush is on trial at the International Criminal Court.
     
    The result of our Global War on Terror is that we have spent more than $780 billion on the Iraq War and more than $387 billion on the Afghanistan War, a total of over $1.167 trillion.  These wars have cost California $147 billion, and have cost our 23rd Congressional District $2.6 billion.  These numbers grow by the day.  Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Laureate in Economics, has predicted that the total cost of the war in Iraq to the Federal government and to society will conservatively exceed $3 trillion.


    It is long past time to end this drain of our resources, which might have gone instead of war and massacre to support the poorest among us, to schools, to health care, and to improve our infrastructure. 


    The Global War on Terror, along with other excesses of capitalism, including massive fraud, has resulted in some 400 families in the US having assets exceeding those of the poorest 50 percent of Americans, some 155 million people.  Four hundred families versus half our population.  And many of our political representatives have fought for tax breaks for the very rich, while seeking to end the collective bargaining rights of the unions for public employees – teachers, nurses, firefighters and policemen.  This is just plain wrong.  But it is what we have become as a nation.


    Across this nation, people still haven’t connected the dots to understand the toll war takes on our society.


    Of course, the money wasted is only a part of the outrage that has weakened our country.  More importantly, some 4,500 American soldiers have died in Iraq. Of these, 4,300 Americans died since George Bush dressed up in his flight suit and gave his victory speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln.  But the death toll of Americans is dwarfed by that of Iraqis.  By some estimates, more than a million and a half Iraqis have died in the Iraq War.  Four million have been displaced from their homes.


    In Afghanistan, 1,498 American soldiers have died and 2,361 total coalition forces have died.  In 2010 alone, 2,777 civilians died in Afghanistan.  Of these, 1,175 were children and 555 were women.


    It is tempting to say that they all died because George Bush lied.  But George Bush’s lies were only one factor.  They also died because so many good Americans were silent in the face of these wars.  They also died because, in the case of Afghanistan, Barack Obama escalated the war and made it his own.


    Let me conclude with a poem I wrote about the war, titled “Worse than the War.”



    WORSE THAN THE WAR


    Worse than the war, the endless, senseless war,
    Worse than the lies leading to the war,


    Worse than the countless deaths and injuries,
    Worse than hiding the coffins and not attending funerals,


    Worse than the flouting of international law,
    Worse than the torture at Abu Ghraib prison,


    Worse than the corruption of young soldiers,
    Worse than undermining our collective sense of decency,


    Worse than the arrogance, smugness and swagger,
    Worse than our loss of credibility in the world,
    Worse than the loss of our liberties,


    Worse than learning nothing from the past,
    Worse than destroying the future,
    Worse than the incredible stupidity of it all,


    Worse than all of these,
    As if they were not enough for one war or country or lifetime,
    Is the silence, the resounding silence of good Americans.


    When will we say that we’ve had enough?  When will America try to regain its conscience, its soul, its decency and its honor?  When will we become a force for peace in the world?  The answer is: It’s up to us!  It’s up to us to take back our country and put it on the path to peace.

  • The Ultimate Weapon of Terrorism

    Nuclear weapons are the ultimate weapon of terrorism, whether in the hands of a terrorist organization or those of the leader of a country.  They are weapons of mass annihilation that kill indiscriminately – men, women and children.  Most people fear the possibility of these weapons falling into the hands of terrorist organizations, but never stop to consider that in any hands they are terrorist weapons. 


    Given the terrorist nature of nuclear weapons and their capacity to destroy civilization, what makes them acceptable to so many people?  Or, at a minimum, what makes so many people complacent in the face of nuclear threats?  These are questions I have grappled with for many decades.  


    The acceptability of nuclear weapons is rooted in the theory of nuclear deterrence, which its proponents argue has kept and will keep the peace.  This theory is based upon many assumptions concerning human behavior.  For example, it assumes the rationality of political and military leaders.  It seems quite evident that not all leaders behave rationally at all times and under all circumstances.  The theory requires clear communications and the threat to use nuclear weapons in retaliation must be believed by opposing leaders, but as we know communications are not always clear and misperceptions may inform beliefs.


    There is a “madman” theory of nuclear deterrence.  It posits that to be truly believable, the leader of a nuclear armed state must exhibit behavior that appears sufficiently insane to lead opposing leaders to believe that he would actually use the weapons.  Thus, insanity, or at least the impression of it, is built into the system.  At a systems level, can anyone doubt that the reciprocal threats of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) were truly mad, as in insane?


    Another aspect of deterrence theory is that it requires a territory against which to retaliate.  Thus, the theory is not valid in relation to a non-state terrorist organization.  If a country has no place to retaliate, there can be no nuclear deterrence.  If a terrorist organization acquires a nuclear weapon, it will not be deterred by threat of nuclear retaliation.  This places a fuse on the nuclear threat, and means that there must be zero tolerance for a non-state terrorist organization to acquire a nuclear capability.


    There should also be zero tolerance for states to possess nuclear weapons.  I am not limiting this observation to states that seek to develop nuclear arsenals.  I mean all states and, most importantly, those already in possession of nuclear weapons.  Current nuclear arsenals may be used by accident, miscalculation or intention.  And so long as some states possess nuclear weapons and base their security upon them, there will be an incentive for nuclear proliferation.


    Widespread nuclear complacency is difficult to understand.  Most people are aware of the tremendous damage that nuclear weapons can do, but perhaps feel reassured that the weapons have not been used since 1945.  The weapons are largely out of sight and out of mind.  It is also possible that people feel impotent to influence nuclear policy and thus defer to experts and policy makers.  This is unfortunate because until large numbers of people assert themselves on the need to eliminate nuclear weapons, the countries with nuclear weapons will continue to rely upon them to their peril and to the world’s peril.


    The New START agreement between the US and Russia is a modest step forward in reducing the number of deployed strategic nuclear weapons on each side to 1,550 and the number of deployed delivery vehicles to 700.  The greatest value of the treaty may be in restoring inspections of each side’s nuclear arsenal by the other side.  But these steps provide only meager progress.  At the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation we advocate the following next steps forward:



    • Reducing the total number of nuclear weapons – strategic, tactical and reserve – to under 1,000 on each side. 

    • Making a binding commitment to “No First Use” of nuclear weapons and to never using nuclear weapons under any circumstances against non-nuclear weapon states. 

    • De-alerting all nuclear weapons so that there will be no use by accident, miscalculation or in a fit of anger. 

    • Placing limits on missile defense systems and banning space weapons. 

    • Commencing multilateral negotiations for a Nuclear Weapons Convention, which would ban all nuclear weapons worldwide in a phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent manner.

    These steps would be indications that the immorality, illegality and cowardice of threatening to use nuclear weapons were being met with a seriousness of purpose.  It is not necessary for ignorance, apathy and complacency to dominate the nuclear arena.  With due regard for the sanctity of life and for future generations, we can do better than to live with such inertia.  We can eliminate a weapon that threatens civilization and human survival; we can move to zero, the only stable number of nuclear weapons.  This is the greatest challenge of our time, a challenge that we must respond to with engagement and persistence.  It is time to replace Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) with Planetary Assured Security and Survival (PASS).

  • Civil Society Challenges Nuclear Deterrence Doctrine

    This article was published by Inter Press Service News Agency.


    UNITED NATIONS, Feb 24, 2011 (IPS) – As the world’s nuclear powers continue to drag their collective feet, stalling all attempts at nuclear disarmament, a group of peace activists and civil society organisations is vigourously challenging the long-held myth of “nuclear deterrence”.


    “Nuclear deterrence is a doctrine that is used as a justification by nuclear weapon states and their allies for the continued possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons,” says the coalition, which met in Santa Barbara, California last week.


    Jacqueline Cabasso, executive director of the Western States Legal Foundation and one of the participants at the meeting, told IPS that members of the coalition agreed that the longstanding doctrine must be discredited and replaced with an urgent commitment to achieve global nuclear disarmament.


    “Before another nuclear weapon is used, nuclear deterrence must be replaced by humane, legal and normal security strategies,” she said.


    A declaration adopted by the coalition states: “We call upon people everywhere to join us in demanding that the nuclear weapon states and their allies reject nuclear deterrence and negotiate without delay a Nuclear Weapons Convention for the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of all nuclear weapons.”


    The participants at the meeting ranged from representatives from the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy and the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation to Physicians for Social Responsibility and the Disarmament and Security Centre.


    The world’s five “declared” nuclear powers are the five veto-wielding permanent members of the U.N. Security Council: the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China.


    Additionally, there are four “undeclared” nuclear powers: India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel (which studiously maintains a “don’t ask, don’t tell” nuclear policy).


    Asked if a worldwide campaign for nuclear disarmament by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) would succeed – as it did in the campaign to ban anti-personnel landmines years ago – Peter Weiss, president of the Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy, told IPS the analogy with the international campaign against landmines and cluster munitions must not be overdone.


    Those weapons, unlike nukes, were never seen by the countries that had them as ways of projecting their power to their neighbours or throughout the world, even if they never used them, he said.


    He pointed out that the last word on the difficulty which nuclear weapons countries have in giving them up was spoken years ago by Juan Marin Bosch.


    In his capacity as Mexico’s ambassador for disarmament, he said, in refreshingly undiplomatic language: “The big boys are scared shit that we’re going to take away their toys,” recounted Weiss, who is also a vice president of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (IALANA).


    Alyn Ware, director of the New Zealand-based Peace Foundation, said during the past four decades the international community has achieved treaties prohibiting and eliminating inhumane weapons such as anti-personnel landmines, cluster munitions, biological weapons and chemical weapons.


    However, the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons, the most inhumane and destructive of all, remains elusive.


    Ware acknowledged the role played by civil society in achieving the mine ban treaty and the convention on cluster munitions. He said two key factors in the success were a focus on the humanitarian consequences of the use of these weapons, and the application of international humanitarian law.


    Ware also said that civil society action has been effective in changing public attitudes to nuclear weapons, especially in the states possessing nuclear weapons or covered by extended nuclear deterrence.


    Whereas public opinion polls in the 1980s indicated majority acceptance of nuclear weapons, recent public opinion polls indicate the majority now supports the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons, he noted.


    However, such a change in public opinion appears to have had only a minimal impact on government policy.


    But there has been a slight shift, in that most governments now accept the vision and responsibility for achieving a nuclear weapons-free world, he added.


    Nonetheless, said Ware, few of the nuclear weapons states or their allies are prepared to abandon nuclear deterrence, prohibit the threat or use of nuclear weapons, or commence negotiations on anything other than minimal steps towards disarmament.


    The real potential of civil society to effect change in nuclear weapons policy is probably somewhere in between two polarised perspectives: public pressure is not irrelevant to a political realist world, but nor is it a magic cure that will by itself deliver the abolition of nuclear weapons, Ware declared.


    Dr Mary-Wynne Ashford of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War said there are many NGOs working on the issue of nuclear disarmament, including the International Campaign Against Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).


    “Yes, an NGO campaign is practicable and feasible,” she said. “I think consistent pressure from civil society is essential to motivate the nuclear weapons states to move to zero.”


    Doctors continue to raise the issues of the health consequences of the entire nuclear cycle from mining to production of weapons, said Ashford, who is also an associate professor at the University of Victoria in Canada.


    Dr Dale Dewar, executive director of Physicians for Global Survival (PGS), told IPS her organisation has been sustained by donors for 30 years in its campaign for a nuclear weapons-free world.


    “It will continue to do so as long as a donor base is willing to support it,” she added.


    Nancy Covington, also of PGS, told IPS: “I personally don’t see any other option than to mobilise civil society.”


    “If there is enough public education (on nuclear disarmament), then maybe civil society can make a strong enough statement that we can be heard,” she declared.

  • Breaking Free from Nuclear Deterrence

    This speech was delivered by Commander Robert Green at the 10th Annual Frank K. Kelly Lecture on Humanity’s Future on February 17, 2011 in Santa Barbara, CA.


    Commander Robert GreenWhen David Krieger invited me to give this lecture, I discovered the illustrious list of those who had gone before me – beginning with Frank King Kelly himself in 2002. I was privileged to meet him the previous year when my wife Kate Dewes and I last visited Santa Barbara.  So I feel quite a weight on my shoulders. However, this is eased by an awareness of the uplifting qualities of the man in whose memory I have the huge honour of speaking to you this evening.


    As I do so, I invite you to bear in mind the following points made by Frank in his inaugural lecture:


    •  “I believe that we human beings will triumph over all the horrible problems we may face and over the bloody history which tempts us to despair.”


    • Some of the scientists who brought us into the Nuclear Age made us realize that we must find ways of living in peace or confront unparalleled catastrophes.


    • A nun who taught him warned him he would be tested, that he would “go through trials and tribulations.”


    As President Truman’s speechwriter, Frank discussed the momentous decisions Truman had to make – including this one:


    • “When I asked him about the decision to use atom bombs on Japan, I saw anguish in his eyes. He made it clear that he felt the weight of what he had done.”


    • “My experience in the Truman era indicated to me that the American people were not well informed about what was really going on in other countries and in the United States.”


    I have done my best to take all this wisdom to heart in what I now have to say about breaking free from nuclear deterrence.


    First, I will try to answer two challenging personal questions. People often ask why I am the only former British Navy Commander with experience of nuclear weapons to have come out against them. Others in the peace movement ask why it took me so long.


    A Child of the Nuclear Age


    In some ways, I am a child of the Nuclear Age. I was five days past my first birthday when 24-year-old Theodore Van Kirk, navigator of the Enola Gay, helped conduct the first nuclear atrocity, on Hiroshima. In 1968, I too was a 24-year-old bombardier-navigator when told that my Buccaneer strike jet pilot and I had been chosen as a nuclear crew in our squadron aboard the aircraft-carrier HMS Eagle. After being cleared to see top secret information, and indoctrinated about the honour and heavy responsibility of this role, we were given our target: a military airbase on the outskirts of Leningrad. We had to plan how to get there undetected from somewhere in the Norwegian Sea. This meant choosing the shortest route, over Sweden – a neutral country with very capable air defence. Our mission was to deliver a ten-kiloton WE177 tactical nuclear bomb, and then try to get back to our carrier, or at least bale out over Sweden or Norway. When I discovered there would not be enough fuel because the target was at the limit of our aircraft’s range, my pilot shrugged and said: “Well, Rob, if we ever have to do this, by then there won’t be anything to go back for.”  So we submitted our flight plan, and celebrated our initiation into the nuclear elite.


    Thirty years later, I was shocked to land at my target, to attend an anti-nuclear conference on European security on the eve of the 21st century. During the taxi drive into St Petersburg, I understood how my bomb would have caused massive civilian casualties from collateral damage. On TV that evening, I apologized to the citizens of Russia’s ancient capital. Then I told them I had learned that nuclear weapons would not save me – or them.


    Back in 1972, after retraining in anti-submarine warfare, I was appointed as senior bombardier-navigator of a Sea King helicopter squadron aboard the aircraft-carrier HMS Ark Royal. Our task was to use variable-depth sonar, radar and other electronic sensors, plus a variety of weapons, to detect and destroy enemy submarines threatening our ships. However, our lightweight anti-submarine torpedoes were not fast enough and could not go deep enough to catch the latest Soviet nuclear-powered submarines. So we were given a nuclear depth-bomb, an underwater variant of the WE177 design.


    The problem was that, if I had dropped one, it would have vaporized and irradiated one Soviet nuclear submarine, a large volume of ocean – and myself. This was because, unlike a strike jet, a helicopter was too slow to escape before detonation. So it would have been a suicide mission. Also, my leaders ignored the fact that there would have been heavy radioactive fallout from my bomb, plus the submarine’s nuclear power plant and any nuclear-tipped torpedoes it carried. And I might have escalated World War 3 to nuclear holocaust. All this, just to protect my aircraft-carrier.


    This time I did complain. I was reassured there would almost certainly be no need to use nuclear depth-bombs; no civilians would be involved; and the Soviets might not even detect it. Besides, I had a glittering career ahead of me, and did not want to spoil my prospects, did I? As I was ambitious, and no-one else raised concerns, I fell silent. In due course, I was promoted.


    However, the experience of such military incompetence and irresponsibility shocked me into a less trusting, more questioning frame of mind. That potent military tradition, carefully nurtured to carve out and hold down the British Empire, was immortalized in Tennyson’s Crimean war poem The Charge of the Light Brigade about an earlier suicide mission: “Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die.” That attitude was alive and well, in an all-volunteer Royal Navy. This was when I realized the significance of the fact that, unlike most of my colleagues, I had no military pedigree. My father worked in the Ministry of Agriculture. His father was a priest and divinity teacher at Trinity College, Dublin; and my paternal great-grandfather was an engineer. On my mother’s side, her father came from a line of professional gardeners and horticulturalists.


    UK Polaris Replacement and Falklands War


    In 1979, Margaret Thatcher swept into 10 Downing Street as Britain’s first woman Prime Minister. I was working just across the street as a newly promoted Commander, in the Ministry of Defence. In my position as Personal Staff Officer to the Assistant Chief of Naval Staff (Policy), I watched my Admiral facilitate the internal debate on replacing the four British Polaris nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarines. The nuclear submarine lobby insisted upon a scaled down version of the massively expensive, over-capable US Trident system, despite threatening the future of the Navy as a balanced, useful force. Mrs Thatcher rammed the decision through without consulting her Cabinet; and the Chiefs of Staff, despite misgivings, were brought into line.


    My final appointment was as Staff Officer (Intelligence) to Commander-in-Chief Fleet. It was a stimulating time to work in military intelligence in the command bunker in Northwood, just outside London, where operational control of the British Navy was coordinated. The Soviets had just invaded Afghanistan; the Polish trade union movement Solidarnosc was pioneering the East European challenge to them; and new Soviet warship designs were emerging almost every month. I ran the 40-strong team providing round-the-clock intelligence support to the Polaris submarine on so-called “deterrent” patrol, as well as the rest of the Fleet.


    In 1981, the Thatcher government, desperate to find savings because of her determination to have Trident, announced a major defence review. With projected cuts to the Royal Navy’s aircraft carriers, destroyers and frigates, my chances of commanding a ship – the next step to higher rank – were slim. So I took the plunge and applied for redundancy.


    Notification of my successful application came one week into the Falklands War. In 1982, Britain suddenly went to war with an erstwhile friend, Argentina; and the Royal Navy’s role was pivotal. So the war was directed from Northwood by my boss, Admiral Sir John Fieldhouse. At one point the outcome was in the balance: our ships were being sunk, and some friends and colleagues killed. If Argentine strike aircraft or submarines had sunk an aircraft-carrier or troopship before the landing force got ashore, the British might have risked defeat. What would Mrs Thatcher have done? Until then, she had been the most unpopular Prime Minister in British history. Now she had become the ‘Iron Lady’, and needed a military victory to save her political career.


    Polaris had not deterred Argentine President Galtieri from invading the Falkland Islands. With victory in his grasp, would he have believed, let alone been deterred by, a threat from Mrs Thatcher to use nuclear weapons against Argentina? Yet after I left the Navy I heard rumours of a very secret contingency plan to move the British Polaris submarine on patrol south within range of Buenos Aires. The submarine was fitted with 16 launch tubes, each housing an intercontinental ballistic missile equipped with three 200 kiloton warheads. Then came corroboration, from France. François Mitterrand was President in 1982. In 2005, his psychoanalyst’s memoirs revealed that in his first counselling session Mitterrand had just come from an extremely stressful phonecall with Thatcher. A French-supplied Exocet missile fired from a French-supplied Argentine Navy Super Etendard strike jet had sunk a British destroyer. Mrs Thatcher had threatened to carry out a nuclear strike against Argentina unless Mitterrand ordered his brother, who ran the Exocet factory, to release the missile’s acquisition system frequencies to enable the British to jam them. Mitterrand, convinced she was serious, had complied.


    These nightmarish rumours led me to confront the realities of operating nuclear weapons for a leader in such a crisis. Defeat would have been unthinkable for the British military, and would have ended Mrs Thatcher’s career. She was a true believer in nuclear deterrence. Yet if she had threatened Galtieri with a nuclear strike, he would have publicly called her bluff and relished watching President Reagan try to rein her in. The Polaris submarine’s Commanding Officer, briefed by me before going on patrol, would have been faced with a shift of target. Had he obeyed the order, Britain would have become a pariah state, its case for retaining the Falklands lost in the international outrage from such a war crime, especially against a non-nuclear state. Nuclear deterrence failure would have compounded the ignominy of defeat. 


    Redundancy, Roof-thatching and Murder


    Back in 1982, on terminal leave after the British retook the Falkland Islands, I was 38 years old, with no qualifications except my rank and experience. Tired of weekend commuting to high-pressure jobs in London, I decided to try my luck and find local work which allowed me to be home every night. So I became a roof thatcher, enduring many painful jokes with stunned former colleagues. For eight idyllic years, I loved working with my hands in the open air restoring fine old houses, with a bird’s eye view of some of the most picturesque parts of southwest England. 


    Thatching proved vitally therapeutic in 1984, when my beloved aunt Hilda Murrell was murdered. My mother’s unmarried elder sister, she had become my mentor and close friend after my mother died when I was a 19-year-old Midshipman. Hilda was a Cambridge University graduate, and a successful businesswoman who ran the family rose nurseries. In retirement she became a fearless environmentalist and opponent of nuclear energy and weapons. At the age of 78, she applied to testify at the first British public planning inquiry into a nuclear power plant. Mrs Thatcher was determined to introduce a programme of reactors of a design which failed at Three Mile Island. Hilda, who had a formidable network of establishment contacts, did her homework about the insoluble problems of nuclear waste. A true patriot, she was not prepared to let the nuclear industry ruin and poison her country – and potentially the rest of the planet with nuclear weapons.


    Rumours of nuclear conspiracy swirled around an incompetent police investigation into her bizarre murder. Then in December 1984, a maverick member of parliament announced in the House of Commons that I had been suspected of leaking secret documents about the controversial sinking of the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano in the Falklands War, and hiding them with my aunt. I had done nothing so stupidly treasonable; yet several reliable sources agreed that State security agents had allegedly searched her house. A cold case review resulted in the 2005 trial and conviction of a petty thief, who was 16 years old in 1984. I have evidence that he was framed; and I am completing a book about this. 


    First Gulf War and Breakout


    Implicating me in Hilda’s murder radicalized me. Then after Chernobyl, I took up her anti-nuclear energy torch. I learned that the nuclear energy industry had begun as a cynical by-product of the race to provide plutonium for nuclear weapons. My case for supporting nuclear deterrence crumbled with the Berlin Wall. However, it took the 1991 first Gulf War to break me out of my indoctrination.


    From the moment in November 1990 when the US doubled its original figure for ground forces to eject Iraqi forces from Kuwait, I realised this was to be a punitive expedition. My military intelligence training warned me that the US-led coalition’s blitzkrieg strategy, targeting Iraq’s infrastructure as well as the leadership and military, would give Saddam Hussein the pretext he needed to attack Israel in order to split the coalition and become the Arabs’ champion. If personally threatened, he could order the launch of Scud ballistic missiles with chemical or biological warheads. If such an attack caused heavy Israeli casualties, Prime Minister Shamir would come under massive pressure to retaliate with a nuclear strike on Baghdad. Even if Saddam Hussein did not survive (he had the best anti-nuclear bunkers Western technology could provide), the Arab world would erupt in fury against Israel and its allies, its security would be destroyed forever, and Russia would be sucked into the crisis…


    In January 1991, I joined the growing anti-war movement in Britain and addressed a crowd of 20,000 in Trafalgar Square. A week later, the first Scud attack hit Tel Aviv two days after the Allied blitzkrieg began. For the first time, the second city of a de facto nuclear state was attacked and its capital threatened. Worse still for nuclear deterrence, Iraq did not have nuclear weapons. The Israeli people, cowering in gas masks in basements, learned that night that their so-called ‘deterrent’ had failed in its primary purpose. Thirty-eight more conventionally armed Scud attacks followed, causing miraculously few casualties. When US satellites detected Israeli nuclear armed missiles being readied for launch, President Bush rushed Patriot missiles and military aid to Israel, which was congratulated on its restraint.


    Meanwhile, in Britain, the Irish Republican Army just missed wiping out the entire Gulf War Cabinet with a mortar-bomb attack from a van in central London. A more direct threat to the government could barely be imagined. What if instead they had threatened to use even a crude nuclear device? A counter-threat of nuclear retaliation would have had zero credibility.


    Coming out against nuclear weapons was traumatic. My conversion was no sudden Damascene experience. I knew about indoctrination, the Official Secrets Act and top security clearances, linked to the carrots and sticks of a career requiring me uncritically to accept the nuclear policies of my government. My circumstances were unique. I went through a process of cumulative experiences, including the murder of my aunt and mentor in which British state security agents were allegedly involved. Nuclear weapons and power seem to make superficially democratic governments behave badly.


    Belatedly forced to research the history of ‘the Bomb’, I learned that the British scientific-politico-military establishment initiated and spread the nuclear arms race. Having alerted the United States to the feasibility of making a nuclear weapon, Britain participated in the Manhattan Project. On being frozen out of further collaboration by the 1946 McMahon Act, it began to develop its own nuclear arsenal. Thus Britain became a role model for France, and later Iraq and India: the first medium-sized power with delusions of grandeur to threaten nuclear terrorism. Also, I learned that nuclear deterrence does not work; it is immoral and unlawful, and there are more credible and acceptable alternative strategies to deter aggression and achieve security.


    Legal Challenge to Nuclear Deterrence


    Having given up thatching as the 1991 Gulf War loomed, after my breakout I became Chair of the British affiliate of the World Court Project. This worldwide network of citizen groups helped persuade the United Nations General Assembly, despite desperate countermoves by the three NATO nuclear weapon states, to ask the International Court of Justice for its Advisory Opinion on the legal status of nuclear weapons. In 1996, the Court confirmed that the threat, let alone use, of nuclear weapons would generally be illegal. For the first time, the legality of nuclear deterrence had been implicitly challenged.


    One aspect of the Court’s decision was especially important. It confirmed that, as part of international humanitarian law, the Nuremberg Principles apply to nuclear weapons. This has serious implications for all those involved in operating nuclear weapons – particularly military professionals who, unlike a President or Prime Minister, really would have to “press the button”. What is at stake here is a crucial difference between military professionals and hired killers or terrorists: military professionals need to be seen to act within the law. Nuclear weapons should be stigmatized as chemical and biological weapons have been, so that no military professional is prepared to operate them.


    The next year, recently retired General Lee Butler spoke out far more powerfully than I could. He is still encouraging me to keep going. Then in 1999 I found myself with David Krieger in a delegation to Tokyo not only with Lee Butler, but Robert McNamara too. In a heretical team of that calibre, I knew what I was doing was right.


    Why Nuclear Deterrence is a Scam


    It was the American writer H L Mencken who quipped: “There’s always an easy solution to every problem: neat, plausible, and wrong.” Nuclear deterrence fits this nicely. To make it acceptable to political leaders and those in the military who have to operate them, the appalling effects of even the smallest modern nuclear weapon have been played down, and that “there would almost certainly be no need to use them.” In fact, they are not weapons at all. They are utterly indiscriminate devices combining the poisoning horrors of chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction, plus inter-generational genetic effects unique to radioactivity, with almost unimaginable explosive violence. Yet nuclear deterrence is not credible without the will to use them. This is why a state practising nuclear deterrence is actually conducting a deliberate policy of nuclear terrorism.


    My next fundamental objection relates to the fact that, if deterrence based on conventional weapons fails, the damage is confined to the belligerent states and the environment recovers. What is at stake from nuclear deterrence failure is the devastation and poisoning of not just the belligerents, but potentially most forms of life on Earth.


    Closely related to this is a crazy reality: nuclear deterrence is a scheme for making nuclear war less probable by making it more probable. The danger of inadvertent nuclear war is greater than we think, when nuclear deterrence dogma demands that the United States and Russia persist with over 2,000 nuclear warheads between them poised for launch at each other inside half an hour. What are they playing at, over twenty years after the Cold War ended and when they are collaborating in the so-called “war on terror”?


    I now suspect that nuclear deterrence is an outrageous scam, devised sixty years ago by the US military-industrial monster dominating US politics and foreign policy. President Barack Obama’s vision for a nuclear weapon-free world, in his Prague speech in April 2009, was immediately contradicted by a caveat. He said: “…as long as these weapons exist, we will maintain a safe, secure and effective arsenal to deter any adversary, and guarantee that defense to our allies…” This is old, muddled thinking, because a rational leader cannot make a credible nuclear threat against a nuclear adversary capable of a retaliatory strike. And a second strike is pointless, because it would be no more than posthumous revenge. This is why enthusiasm for a nuclear weapon-free world is hypocrisy if some nuclear weapons will be kept “for deterrence as long as anyone else has them.”


    The deception deepens when the nuclear weapon states, aware that extremists armed with weapons of mass destruction cannot be deterred, plan pre-emptive nuclear attacks in “anticipatory self-defence” of their “vital interests” – not last-ditch defence of their homeland. Thereby, their unprovable claim that nuclear deterrence averts war is cynically stood on its head.
    Extremists would not only not be deterred by nuclear weapons. They could provoke nuclear retaliation in order to turn moral outrage against the retaliator and recruit more to their nightmarish causes.


    Consequences of Nuclear Deterrence Failure


    With such an irresponsible example from the five recognised nuclear weapon states, it is no surprise that India and Pakistan are trying to emulate it, locked toe to toe in hostile rivalry. Indian governments became convinced that the fetishistic power of nuclear deterrence held the key to guaranteed security and acceptance as a great power; whereupon Pakistan promptly followed suit.


    I will never forget a public meeting in Islamabad in 2001. The nuclear physicist Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy had persuaded General Aslam Beg, one of the “fathers” of Pakistan’s Bomb, to join a panel with himself and me. Beg warned against raising awareness about the effects of a nuclear strike on a Pakistan city, “in case it scares the people.” He had a simplistic faith in nuclear deterrence, ignoring all the added dangers of a nuclear standoff with India. He is not alone: my experience is that most believers in nuclear deterrence refuse to discuss the consequences of failure. I will now confront them.


    Economic Consequences. In April 2005, an internal report for US Homeland Security appeared on the web. Titled Economic Consequences of a Rad/Nuc Attack, the report examined what it would take to recover from the detonation of just one nuclear device in various cities. Much depends on the size of bomb and level of decontamination, but the economic consequences for New York alone would be around $10 trillion. That is roughly the annual Gross Domestic Product of the entire US economy. Just one nuclear bomb, on one city.


    Environmental and Agricultural Consequences. A deeply disturbing article, published in January last year in Scientific American, reported on recent climate research about a regional nuclear war between India and Pakistan in which about only 100 Hiroshima-size nuclear devices would be detonated over cities. Apart from the mutual carnage and destruction across South Asia, enough smoke from firestorms – let alone radioactive fallout – would be generated to cripple global agriculture. Plunging temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere would cause hundreds of millions of people to starve to death, even in countries far from the conflict.


    Health Consequences. In 2004, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War published their findings regarding casualties from a Hiroshima-size nuclear warhead detonated over New York. Total fatalities were estimated at about 60,000.  Another 60,000 would be seriously but non-fatally injured. These would clearly utterly overwhelm any hospitals surviving the explosion. Again, this is just one nuclear weapon on one city.


    In 1985, the Pentagon accepted the theory of ‘nuclear winter’ was valid. However, its response was reflected in this statement to Congress by US Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle: “Rather than eliminating nuclear weapons, the most realistic method of preventing nuclear winter is to build enough weapons to make sure that the Soviets will be deterred from attacking.” Redundant warhead numbers have been cut, but little has changed in such thinking.


    Nuclear Deterrence Does Not Work


    In London in 2008, Kate and I attended one of the last public lectures by Sir Michael Quinlan. Known as the British high priest of nuclear deterrence, he advised successive governments on how to justify nuclear deterrence. Almost twenty years after the end of the Cold War, he asserted that rejecting any threat or use of nuclear weapons amounted to “full-blown pacifism”. Ignoring conventional deterrence options, Quinlan swept aside any objections that:



    • Nuclear deterrence has a credibility problem;

    • It incites nuclear arms racing and the spread of nuclear weapons;

    • Nuclear weapons cannot be used discriminately or proportionately; and

    • Nuclear weapon use would inevitably risk escalation.

    He failed to take into account the environmental and health consequences of even a limited nuclear exchange, avoiding any mention of the word “radioactivity”; and he dismissed abolition as unrealistic. In light of the World Court Advisory Opinion, Kate asked him for a legal use of nuclear weapons. Revealing his disturbing Cold War mindset, he gave the Russian naval base at Murmansk.
     
    The 2009 report Eliminating Nuclear Threats by the Australia-Japan International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament challenged the assumption that nuclear weapons have deterred major war. It acknowledged that avoidance of nuclear war has been due more to luck than deterrence. It agreed that nuclear weapons are worse than useless to deter terrorists.
    It correctly argued that, just because nuclear weapons cannot be uninvented, this does not mean they should not be outlawed and abolished as chemical and biological weapons have been.


    Surprisingly, the report, chaired by former Foreign Ministers of Australia and Japan, also questioned the need for extended nuclear deterrence, arguing that conventional deterrence was adequate. Yet, having admitted that extended nuclear deterrence undermines progress towards a nuclear weapon-free world, it failed to follow the logic of its criticisms. No doubt this was because, unlike New Zealand, Australia and Japan continue to fall for the hoax of nuclear deterrence. 


    The report should have concluded that extended nuclear deterrence does not make Japan or Australia secure, and is not credible. The misnamed “nuclear umbrella” has helped the US maintain its military alliances and bases in both countries for its own purposes. However, the “umbrella” is really a lightning rod for insecurity, because the US risks being pushed past the nuclear threshold when its own security is not directly threatened.


    Why would any state attack Australia or Japan, let alone with nuclear weapons? If it did, the US would almost certainly not respond with nuclear weapons because it would risk inevitable, uncontrollable escalation to full-scale nuclear war. Instead, if the US decided it was in its national interest to come to their defence, it would rely on its formidable conventional firepower.


    Nuclear deterrence has not prevented non-nuclear states from attacking allies of nuclear weapon states. Examples include China entering the Korean War when the US had a nuclear monopoly in 1950; Argentina invading the British Falkland Islands in 1982; and Iraq invading close US ally Kuwait in 1990, and attacking nuclear-armed Israel with Scud missiles in 1991. In all these cases nuclear deterrence failed. The US in Korea and Vietnam, and the USSR in Afghanistan, preferred withdrawal to the ultimate ignominy of resorting to nuclear weapons to secure victory or revenge against a non-nuclear state.


    Safer Security Strategies


    The main security threats in the 21st century include climate change, poverty, resource depletion and financial crises as well as terrorism. Nuclear deterrence, provoking hostility and mistrust, prevents rather than assists the global non-military cooperation required to solve them.


    For all these reasons, all but about 35 states feel more secure without depending on nuclear deterrence. After Japan and Australia’s admirable leadership through co-sponsoring their recent report, they, South Korea and NATO’s non-nuclear members should therefore join the 140 states now supporting negotiating a Nuclear Weapons Convention.


    In Britain, a defence budget crisis has revived the debate about replacing Trident, and uncritical British support for US foreign policy. Indeed, the black hole in defence spending has been caused by desperate attempts to keep up with the Americans. Such poor decisions were driven by British nuclear dependence on the US.


    Instead, making a virtue from necessity, the British government should reassert its sovereignty and announce that it will rescue the dysfunctional nuclear non-proliferation regime by becoming the first of the recognized nuclear weapon states to rely on safer and more cost-effective security strategies than nuclear deterrence.


    A new world role awaits the British. By far the best-placed candidate for ‘breakout’, Britain’s nuclear arsenal is the smallest of the five recognized nuclear weapon states; and they are deployed in just one system, a scaled down version of Trident. Its government has to decide by 2016 whether to replace Trident with whatever the US decides. The minority Liberal Democrats, in coalition with the Conservatives, oppose Trident replacement. The alternative – nuclear-tipped Cruise missiles launched from attack submarines – has been ruled out, because the Obama Administration is scrapping its nuclear-armed Tomahawk missiles.


    All Britain has to do is decide not to replace its four Vanguard class Trident-armed submarines. British ‘breakout’ would be sensational, transforming the nuclear disarmament debate overnight. In NATO, Britain would wield unprecedented influence leading the drive for a non-nuclear strategy. British leadership would create new openings for shifting the mindset in the US and France, the other two most zealous guardians of nuclear deterrence. This would heavily influence India, Israel, Pakistan and states intent on obtaining nuclear weapons. The way would then open for a major reassessment by Russia and China, for all nuclear forces to be stood down, and for negotiations to begin on a Nuclear Weapons Convention.


    The key is to see nuclear disarmament as a security-building process, moving from an outdated adversarial mindset to a co-operative one where nuclear weapons are recognized as an irrelevant security liability. Mikhail Gorbachev was the first leader of a nuclear weapon state to understand this. In 1986, three years before the Berlin Wall was torn down, he briefly broke the grip of Cold War security thinking. Tragically, the opportunity to abandon Mutual Assured Destruction at the Reagan/Gorbachev summit in Iceland was defeated by the US military-industrial complex’s vested interests over ballistic missile defence, and the spurious US need to extend nuclear deterrence to its allies. Here was an example of how nuclear deterrence undercuts the political stability its proponents claim it creates. 


    Conclusions


    To conclude, I hope I have explained why I rejected nuclear deterrence, and why it is the last major obstacle to a nuclear weapon-free world.  Finding our way back from the nuclear abyss, on the edge of which nuclear deterrence has held us hypnotised and terrorised for sixty-five years, will not be easy. As with all advances in human rights and justice, the engine for shifting the mindset has to come from civil society.


    I recall what Mahatma Gandhi said in 1938, as he launched the final push towards evicting the British from India: “A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.” The American anthropologist Margaret Mead added: “Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”


    A surprisingly small network of individuals drove the campaign to abolish slavery. As with nuclear deterrence, slavery’s leading apologists were the power elites of the United States, Britain and France. They argued that slavery was a “necessary evil”, for which there was “no alternative”. They failed, because courageous ordinary British, American and French citizens mobilised unstoppable public and political support for their campaign to replace slavery with more humane, lawful and effective ways to create wealth. The analogy holds for nuclear deterrence, which can and must be discarded for more humane, lawful and safer security strategies if civilisation and the Earth’s ecosystems are to survive.

  • Santa Barbara Declaration: Reject Nuclear Deterrence: An Urgent Call to Action

    Click here to sign the declaration.


    Vaya aquí para la versión española.


    Nuclear deterrence is a doctrine that is used as a justification by nuclear weapon states and their allies for the continued possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons. 


    Nuclear deterrence is the threat of a nuclear strike in response to a hostile action.  However, the nature of the hostile action is often not clearly defined, making possible the use of nuclear weapons in a wide range of circumstances.


    Nuclear deterrence threatens the murder of many millions of innocent people, along with severe economic, climate, environmental, agricultural and health consequences beyond the area of attack.


    Nuclear deterrence requires massive commitments of resources to the industrial infrastructures and organizations that make up the world’s nuclear weapons establishments, its only beneficiaries.


    Despite its catastrophic potential, nuclear deterrence is widely, though wrongly, perceived to provide protection to nuclear weapon states, their allies and their citizens.


    Nuclear deterrence has numerous major problems:  



    1. Its power to protect is a dangerous fabrication. The threat or use of nuclear weapons provides no protection against an attack.
    2. It assumes rational leaders, but there can be irrational or paranoid leaders on any side of a conflict.
    3. Threatening or committing mass murder with nuclear weapons is illegal and criminal.  It violates fundamental legal precepts of domestic and international law, threatening the indiscriminate slaughter of innocent people.
    4. It is deeply immoral for the same reasons it is illegal: it threatens indiscriminate and grossly disproportionate death and destruction.
    5. It diverts human and economic resources desperately needed to meet basic human needs around the world.  Globally, approximately $100 billion is spent annually on nuclear forces.
    6. It has no effect against non-state extremists, who govern no territory or population.
    7. It is vulnerable to cyber attack, sabotage, and human or technical error, which could result in a nuclear strike.
    8. It sets an example for additional countries to pursue nuclear weapons for their own nuclear deterrent force.

    Its benefits are illusory. Any use of nuclear weapons would be catastrophic.


    Nuclear deterrence is discriminatory, anti-democratic and unsustainable. This doctrine must be discredited and replaced with an urgent commitment to achieve global nuclear disarmament. We must change the discourse by speaking truth to power and speaking truth to each other.


    Before another nuclear weapon is used, nuclear deterrence must be replaced by humane, legal and moral security strategies.  We call upon people everywhere to join us in demanding that the nuclear weapon states and their allies reject nuclear deterrence and negotiate without delay a Nuclear Weapons Convention for the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of all nuclear weapons.
    _____________



    Initial Signers: Participants in The Dangers of Nuclear Deterrence Conference, hosted by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Santa Barbara, February 16-17, 2011.


    Blase Bonpane, Ph.D., Director, Office of the Americas
    Theresa Bonpane, Founding Director, Office of the Americas
    John Burroughs, Ph.D., Executive Director, Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy
    Jacqueline Cabasso, Executive Director, Western States Legal Foundation
    Kate Dewes, Ph.D., Co-Director, Disarmament and Security Centre, New Zealand
    Bob Dodge, M.D., Coordinator, Beyond War Nuclear Weapons Abolition Team
    Dick Duda, Ph.D., founding member, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation – Silicon Valley
    Denise Duffield, Associate Director, Physicians for Social Responsibility – Los Angeles
    Richard Falk, J.S.D., Chair, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
    Commander Robert Green (Royal Navy, ret.), Co-Director, Disarmament and Security Centre, New Zealand
    David Krieger, Ph.D., President, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
    Robert Laney, J.D., Secretary, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
    Steven Starr, Senior Scientist, Physicians for Social Responsibility
    Rick Wayman, Director of Programs, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
    Bill Wickersham, Ph.D., Adjunct Professor of Peace Studies, University of Missouri

  • Social and Psychological Obstacles to Nuclear Disarmament Education and Promotion

    Bill WickershamThe overarching goal of this conference is to examine the dangers of the theory known as nuclear deterrence, and to explore ways to successfully communicate the fallacies inherent in that theory to people everywhere. In this paper I will address several concrete examples of nuclear deterrence based errors, and will also describe some of the social and psychological obstacles which cause many people to ignore the distinct omnicidal nuclear threat to life on this Planet. Finally, I will suggest several excellent educational resources which are available to help nuclear disarmament advocates overcome these obstacles as they work to mobilize individuals and groups to eliminate the overall nuclear danger.


    First, let us define nuclear deterrence. According to the New American Foundation:
    “Nuclear deterrence is the belief that states can protect themselves by credibly threatening to impose unacceptable costs on an adversary in the event of an attack. Those unacceptable costs typically entail the wholesale slaughter of an adversary’s population centers (counter force) using nuclear weapons.
    (http://www.newamerica.net/events/2008/rethinking_nuclear_weapons)


    In their DVD ” The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence”, David Krieger, Rick Wayman and Eric Choquette detail the many flaws which underpin nuclear deterrence theory.
    (www.archive.org/details/The_Myth_of_Nuclear_Deterrence).


    In a summary of the DVD’s key points, Professor Martin Hellman says:


    • “Although often advanced as if it were proven fact, nuclear deterrence is really an unproven theory about human behavior.  That it works is a myth, and there is significant evidence to the contrary;
    • Nuclear deterrence cannot deter terrorists;
    • Nuclear deterrence assumes rational leaders.  That is a questionable          assumption when war looms;
    • If, as advertised, nuclear deterrence ensured peace, we would encourage global nuclear proliferation.  World peace would follow;
    • If military leaders really believed that nuclear deterrence worked, they          wouldn’t be so concerned with missile defense;
    • Belief in the myth of nuclear deterrence creates a false sense of security that hampers efforts to solve the real problems.  We need to move from Mutually Assured Destruction to Mutually Assured Survival.”
             (http://nuclearrisk.wordpress.com/2010/09/18/the-myth-of-nuclear–
              deterrence)


    One of the primary dangers of nuclear deterrence is its instability in terms
    of potential technical and human error. In a 1969 presentation at the Missouri Peace Study Institute, eminent economist and peace scholar Kenneth Boulding said of nuclear deterrence:  ” It is a threat system which says if you do bad to me, I will do bad to you. Therefore, no one will do bad to anyone.” In expanding that concept, Professor Boulding also noted, that for mutual threat systems to be viable, they also have to be completely stable.  Thus, such stability demands absolute control by the chief threateners, namely, the heads of state of the adversarial nations. Unfortunately, absolute control has been absent on many occasions since 1945. To make matters worse, there have also been numerous false alarms, accidents, miscommunications and other unanticipated events which came very close to triggering World War III, during the last 65 years.
    (see: http://www.nuclearfiles.org)


    In 1969, I interviewed several U.S. Air Force officers who were stationed at Whiteman Air Force Missouri, and whose job it was to launch nuclear weapons against the Soviet Union if so ordered.  One of those launch officers, a young captain, told me:  ” The fact is, it is possible for four officers in a Minuteman squadron to launch and start World War III without authorization from anyone.  If four officers, in two capsules decide to turn their keys and launch, then they can do so without orders from anyone.  There is no absolute guarantee that orders have to be followed.  Naturally, this would be ‘illegal”, but who would be around to punish them ?”


    Clearly this four man launch scenario ran counter to Kenneth Boulding’s stability criterion.  Fortunately, such unauthorized missile launches are said to be no longer possible.  Lets hope that is true for both U.S. and Russian nuclear missile systems. The point is that those who have long praised the past safety record of nuclear launch and control procedures might want to rethink that belief.


    In 1994, I wrote the late Congressman Ted Weiss of New York concerning the risk of an unauthorized nuclear weapons launch by a U.S. Trident submarine commander.  In a letter dated June 15, 1984, he said:  “In response to your request, I contacted the Congressional Liaison Office of the Department of the Navy.  An officer for the Navy Department informed me that with the support of as few as three other officers, the commander of a Trident submarine could launch an unauthorized attack against Soviet targets … (and) … a conspiracy to engineer an unauthorized launch of a Trident’s missiles could take as few as four officers to accomplish.  To be successful, however, such a conspiracy would require the support of the submarine’s radio operator and communications officer, who are responsible for receiving transmissions from the President, and the crew members responsible for actually preparing the missiles for launch.”


    Here, again, we had a situation which failed to meet the stability criterion for nuclear deterrence.  If such historical weaknesses existed with U.S. command and control, we must wonder what the situation was, and is, with Soviet and Russian ballistic missiles.  Are there similar weaknesses in those systems today?  We could go on at length concerning past miscommunications, errors and accidents related to nuclear weapons. (See:  www.nuclearfiles.org).  However, space will not permit an in depth look at all of those phenomena.  But, since this conference is primarily concerned with the imminent dangers of nuclear deterrence, I do want to note two past examples of those dangers. 


    On September 26, 1983, the alarms in a Soviet early warning bunker, just south of Moscow, sounded as a computer screens indicated that the United States had launched a nuclear strike against the Soviet Union.  The officer in charge of the bunker and its 200 officers and enlisted personnel was Lt. Colonel Stanislav Petrov. His job was to monitor incoming satellite signals and report directly to the Russian early-warning system headquarters if indicators revealed that a U.S. missile attack was underway.  “For several minutes, Col. Petrov held a phone in one hand and an intercom in the other as alarms continued blaring, red lights blinking, and the computers reporting that U.S. missiles were on their way.  In the midst of this horrific chaos and terror, with the prospect of the end of civilization itself, Petrov made a historic decision not to alert higher authorities, believing in his gut and hoping with all that is sacred, that contrary to what all the sophisticated equipment was reporting, this alarm was in error… As agonizing minutes passed, Petrov’s decision proved correct.  It was a computer error that signaled a U.S. attack.”  (Association of World Citizens News-letter, Fall 2004, p.1.)


    Had Col. Petrov obeyed standard operating procedures by reporting the erroneous information, it is likely that Soviet missiles would have devastated all major U.S. cities, and the Pentagon would have retaliated. Accordingly, we would not be here today to discuss the myth of nuclear deterrence, and how to put an end to that flawed concept.


    On January 25, 1995, another potentially disastrous early warning error occurred when a Russian radar mistook a U.S. scientific research rocket launched from Norway as an incoming nuclear strike from a U.S. Trident submarine.  Even though the United States had notified Russia it would launch a non-military research rocket, those in control of Russia’s strategic nuclear weapons did not receive the message.  Fortunately, Russian President Boris Yeltsin, a man with a drinking problem, who had three minutes to order a retaliatory strike, elected to “ride out” the crisis and did not launch the thousands of nuclear-tipped missiles available on his command. (http://www.trivalleycares.org/prnov99.htm)


    Given such close calls, why was there no great public outcry regarding the dangers of U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons?  First, these incidents were not widely publicized at the time of their occurrence.  Second, there are a host of social and psychological mechanisms which were operable then, as they are today, which prevent most individuals from directing serious attention to, and confronting the potential destruction of themselves, their children and people everywhere.


    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s DVD “Nuclear Weapons and the Human Future:  How You Can Help” discusses three such obstacles, namely: ignorance, fear and apathy.  My own research strongly supports the DVD’s assumptions regarding those factors.  With regard to psychological denial, it is the case that when a potentially horrific atrocity such as nuclear annihilation is discussed, many folks simply experience the “glazed eye” effect, and proceed to stick their heads in the sand (the Ostrich response). Such individuals usually ignore the problem and distance themselves from it by declaring that political, military and scientific experts  know how to handle the situation, and it is their job to do so. If the person’s denial runs deeply enough, it is very difficult to engage him or her in a serious dialogue regarding the nuclear threat. In some cases, however, a simple non-academic explanation of psychological denial as it applies to nuclear deterrence will increase the readiness, openness, and willingness of individuals and groups to carefully focus on the topic.


    Two other serious psychological blocks to nuclear disarmament dialogue were described by the late Professor Jerome D. Frank of the Johns Hopkins University Department of Psychiatry.  Dr. Frank described those mechanisms as “insensitivity to the remote”; and “habituation”.  Regarding insensitivity he said: 


    ” Human sense organs are magnificently equipped to detect tiny changes in the environment – a few parts of illumination gas in a million parts of air brings the housewife rushing into the kitchen; a match flaring a quarter of a mile away on a dark night instantly flags an onlooker’s attention.  Only the environmental events within the range of our sense organs matter, and like our ancestors, we have no biological need to detect and respond to stimuli that do not impinge on any sense organ.  With distant events becoming increasingly vital to our safety, this deficiency – “insensitivity to the remote” is a particularly important source of the general failure to respond with appropriate vigor to the dangers of nuclear weapons.”


    One way to deal with such insensitivity is to remind individuals and groups that decision making time for the launching of U.S. and Russian nuclear missiles is very short (as few as 3 minutes), and launch to landing times are 25 minutes or less.


    “The Timeline for Catastrophe” table attached to this paper contains such data, and is one tool that brings the threat of nuclear war out of the abstract into the concrete.


    Dr. Frank described “habituation” as follows: 


    “Habituation, another property of our biological equipment, also impedes adequate appreciation of the nuclear danger.  Survival in the wild requires the ability not only to detect tiny changes in the environment, but also to stop detecting them if nothing happens.  If an animal kept on attending to every stimulus, his capacity to sense possible fresh dangers would be swamped. Therefore continuing stimuli, except painful ones which represent a continuing danger, rapidly stop registering, thus freeing the sense organs to pick up new ones.  The phenomenon is familiar to all of us – a person moving to a busy street soon sleeps through the traffic noise that first kept him awake.  As long as it is not overwhelmingly unpleasant or dangerous, any persistent environmental feature gradually comes to be taken for granted.  One is reminded of Alexander Pope’s comment on vice:
    ‘A monster of such evil mien/as to be hated needs but to be seen/ but seen too oft, familiar with her face, /we first endure, then pity, then embrace’.”


    “As a new form of destructive power, the Hiroshima atom bomb, with an explosive equivalent of two thousand tons of TNT created considerable apprehension.  Since then, the size of available nuclear weapons has about doubled annually, until today (in 1967) the world’s stockpiles total at least 50 BILLION tons.  We should be terrified, but because of habituation and insensitivity to the remote we are not.”
    ( Frank, J.D., 1967.  Sanity and Survival in the Nuclear Age: Psychological Aspects of War and Peace: New York: Random House, pp.26-27).


    Linguistic Psychologist Charles Osgood also addressed the denial problem as a serious obstacle to nuclear disarmament education and promotion when he explained that many people simply refuse to think about negatives like nuclear extinction.  According to the professor, this is particularly prevalent when negatives “… seem remote in time, and are highly symbolic in nature.”   In such situations people are ” … less likely to try to do anything about them until it’s too late.  Seated in the backyard on a nice Spring day, watching the kids play and sipping a beer, the Neanderthal within us simply cannot conceive of trees suddenly blackened and the voice of the children stilled – or there being no more beer.”
    (GRIT: ” A Strategy for Survival in Mankind’s Nuclear Age” in W. Epstein, and B. Feld, eds. New Directions in Disarmament, New York, Praeger, 1981)


    Marc Pilisuk and Jaime Rowen have also addressed a number of social and psychological obstacles faced by nuclear disarmament advocates when they approach different audiences with their message.  In the introduction to their on-line, no-cost book USING PSYCHOLOGY TO HELP ABOLISH NUCLEAR WEAPONS, they state: 


    “The goal for this brief handbook is to be useful for the following audiences:


    • Abolition coalition activists and organizers;
    • Peace movement activists;
    • Supporters of other Progressive causes;
    • Psychologists who wish to apply their professional knowledge to the task of abolishing the dangerous threat of nuclear weapons; and,
    • Any member of the public concerned with preventing nuclear war.”


    “Our intentions here are to share some knowledge and ideas to increase the efficiency of people and groups working to abolish or reduce reliance on nuclear weapons, and to remind psychologists of some of the hurdles for professional involvement in this issue.  The Handbook allows you to look up a general group that you might wish to understand or to influence.  It also includes a list of psychological concepts that can be applicable to the tasks of both understanding and action in the human response to weapons of mass destruction.”


    The four main concept areas discussed in the book include:


    • Dealing with how beliefs and attitudes about nuclear weapons are formed
    • Attribution error, belief systems, cognitive dissonance, group think,             obedience;
    • Relevant to the motivations of people in the nuclear weapons establishment — Achievement motivation, addiction, aggression, and destructive motivation, decontextualized language, game theory, masculine identity, narcissism, patriarchy, professional identification;
    • Dealing with individuals coping with threats — Alienation, death wish and apocalyptic fantasies, denial, desensitization, dissociation, fear-arousing appeals, guilt, habituation, learned helplessness, paranoia, psychic numbing, repression;
    • Relevant to people opposed to nuclear weapons — Attitudes, empowerment, diffusion of information, self-actualization, social networks.


            (The aforementioned book was published by Psychologists for Social
            Responsibility.  To retrieve an on-line, no-cost copy, simply Google:
            Using Psychology to Help Abolish Nuclear Weapons) 


    For additional information on psychological blocks to nuclear disarmament education and citizen action, see my recent book CONFRONTING NUCLEAR WAR: THE ROLE OF EDUCATION, RELIGION, AND THE COMMUNITY, Chapter 7. The link to website for this on-line, no-cost book is: www.confrontingnuclearwar.com


    David Barash and Judith Eve Lipton have also provided an analysis of psychological issues surrounding the search for nuclear disarmament.  Their well written book, STOP NUCLEAR WAR: A HANDBOOK, includes a chapter titled: “Psychology: Thinking and Not Thinking About the Unthinkable”.  Topics include:


    • “The Neanderthal Mentality”: fighting pays; we win – you lose; either you’re with us, or you’re against us; it hasn’t happened yet, so it won’t happen.
    • “Cognitive Dissonance”;
    • “Nuclearism”, or the “Strangelove Syndrome”;
    • “Shall We Overcome?”: Religion, Morality, and Sanity; Beyond Psychic Numbing.
    (Barash, D.P. and Lipton, J.E. (1982). STOP NUCLEAR WAR; A HANDBOOK. New York: Grove Press. pp. 214-239)


    I highly recommend this book.          


    In late 2008 through mid 2009, three separate research organizations did studies which examined public understanding and acceptance of nuclear weapons:  Topos Partnership (done on behalf of the Union of Concerned Scientists), American Environics, and Greenberg, Quilan and Rosner.  The organization, U.S. in the World, issued a summary of findings of those studies which indicated that one of the biggest challenges peace and security advocates face is the American public’s perception of nuclear weapons as a “shield” and the “best/strongest” weapon in our arsenal.  Among the key recommendations of the study were two which focused directly on the dangers of nuclear deterrence:


    1. “Peace and security advocates should work to help the public think about nuclear weapons in a new way, i.e., ‘reframe’ the issue to help people see that it is the existence of the weapons themselves – not who has them – that poses the primary threat to global security and national security;
    2. “The fact that nuclear weapons are a source of risk – not the fact that they are morally wrong – should be presented as the underlying reason why the issue of nuclear weapons matters…. ‘morality’ arguments should not be key elements of advocates’ frame; for most of the public these are losing arguments … because they seem to place principles over safety.”


    The title of the U.S in the World paper is: “Talking About Nuclear Weapons with the Persuadable Middle”.  To view all of its recommendations simply Google that title.


    Despite the numerous psychological mechanisms which hinder public perception and action on behalf of nuclear disarmament, it is important to note that most Americans do have an unfocused concern with the nuclear danger.  A 2004 paper published by the Arms Control Association indicated that an overwhelming (84 percent) majority of U.S. citizens say that preventing the spread of nuclear weapons is a very important foreign policy goal of the United States.  And, an even higher 86 percent said the United States “… should do more to work with other powers toward eliminating their nuclear weapons.”
    (http://www.armscontrol.org/print/1580)


    A 2008 poll by World Public Opinion.org found that in five nations with large nuclear arsenals and advanced delivery systems, large majorities favor the elimination of nuclear weapons – the U.S (77%); Russia (69%); China (83%); and Great Britain (81%).  (To view the poll, Google:  World Public Opinion 2008 Poll on Nuclear Weapons)


    The above public attitudes regarding nuclear weapons are the good news.  The bad news is, that despite such favorable opinion for nuclear disarmament, there is no substantial evidence that personal action on behalf of nuclear disarmament is high on anybody’s list of things to do, except of course for nuclear disarmament activists. Many recent polls regarding perceived public problems and priorities indicate that nuclear war prevention is nowhere to be found on the list of concerns. Typical lists of U.S. public concerns include:  unemployment and jobs; federal deficit and spending; health care; war in Afghanistan; immigration, etc.


    When asked directly about nuclear war, people do express their concerns.  However, when asked to list problems which they feel are most pressing, nuclear war prevention is rarely mentioned.  My general impression is that nuclear war is an abstraction which is basically out of sight and out of mind.  And, for many, the threats of nuclear deterrence ended with the Cold War. Without question, this perception, along with the other aforementioned obstacles, has to be addressed if there is any real chance for U.S. and worldwide mobilization to end the myth of nuclear deterrence.  This is not to say that we must use psychological “overkill” to the point that we psychologize every issue related to the nuclear danger. However, a case can be made that the overall problem of nuclear deterrence is a psychological one which relates directly to human perception, human attitudes, and human behavior.


    Given the increasing amount of funds and resources being garnered by various NGOs for purposes of nuclear disarmament education and promotion, it would seem wise to incorporate sound psychological precepts in the preparation of all education materials, and with all other programming efforts, including those involving the mass media.

  • This is what peace looks like

    David Krieger(Egypt, 2011)


    the people in the streets and squares
    making demands by their presence


    the army refusing to shoot their guns
    into the crowds of people


    The people riding on army tanks
    raising their arms with signs of victory


    the dictator locked in his palace
    knowing he has lost his grip


    the people standing in the shadow
    of Gandhi and King


    the dictator cowering in the shadow
    of his own history

  • Ten Serious Flaws in Nuclear Deterrence Theory

    David KriegerNuclear deterrence is the threat of nuclear retaliation for a proscribed behavior, generally an attack upon the threatening state.  The theory of nuclear deterrence posits that such threat, if perceived as real and likely to cause sufficient devastation, will prevent an attack or other proscribed behavior from occurring. 


    The desire for a nuclear deterrent existed even before nuclear weapons were created.  Refugee scientists from Europe, concerned about the possible development of German nuclear weapons during World War II, encouraged the United States to explore the use of uranium for building nuclear weapons.  Albert Einstein was among the scientists who urged President Roosevelt to initiate a program to explore the feasibility of creating such weapons as a deterrent to the use of a German nuclear weapon, should the Germans succeed in their quest.  After the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he would consider this to be one of the great mistakes of his life.


    By the time the United States succeeded in developing nuclear weapons in July 1945, Germany was already defeated.  The US used its powerful new bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  In doing so, it sent a nuclear deterrent message to other states, particularly the Soviet Union, that the US possessed nuclear weapons and was willing to use them.  This would spur on the secret Soviet nuclear weapons program to deter future use of the US nuclear arsenal.  Other states would follow suit.  Britain and France developed nuclear arsenals to deter the Soviets.  China developed nuclear arms to deter the US and the Soviets.  Israel did so to assure its independence and deter potential interventions from the other nuclear weapon states.  India developed nuclear weapons to deter China and Pakistan, and Pakistan to deter India.  North Korea did so to deter the US.


    One steady factor in the Nuclear Age has been the adherence of the nuclear weapon states to the theory of nuclear deterrence.  Each country that has developed nuclear weapons has justified doing so by the pursuit of nuclear deterrence.  The security of not only the nuclear weapon states but of civilization has rested upon the reliability of the theory of nuclear deterrence.  Vast numbers of people throughout the world believe that nuclear deterrence contributes to the security of the planet and perhaps to their personal security and that of their family.  But does it?  What if nuclear deterrence is a badly flawed theory?  What if nuclear deterrence fails?  What if political and military leaders in all nuclear weapon states who have treated nuclear deterrence theory as sacrosanct and imbued it with godlike, but unrealistic, powers of protection are wrong?  The future itself would stand in grave danger, for the failure of nuclear deterrence could pose an existential threat to humanity. 


    As a former commander of the US Strategic Command, General George Lee Butler was in charge of all US nuclear weapons.  After retiring from the US Air Force, General Butler critiqued nuclear deterrence, stating that it “suspended rational thinking in the Nuclear Age about the ultimate aim of national security: to ensure the survival of the nation.”  He concluded that nuclear deterrence is “a slippery intellectual construct that translates very poorly into the real world of spontaneous crises, inexplicable motivations, incomplete intelligence and fragile human relationships.”


    As volcanoes often give off strong warning signals that they may erupt, so we have witnessed such signals regarding nuclear arsenals and the failure of nuclear deterrence theory over the course of the Nuclear Age.  Nuclear arsenals could erupt with volcano-like force, totally overwhelming the relatively flimsy veneer of “protection” provided by nuclear deterrence theory.  In the face of such dangers, we must not be complacent.  Nor should we continue to be soothed by the “experts” who assure us not to worry because the weapons will keep us safe.  There is, in fact, much to worry about, much more than the nuclear policy makers and theorists in each of the nuclear weapon states have led us to believe.  I will examine below what I believe are ten serious flaws in nuclear deterrence theory, flaws that lead to the conclusion that the theory is unstable, unreliable and invalid.


    1. It is only a theory.  It is not proven and cannot be proven.  A theory may posit a causal relationship, for example, if one party does something, certain results will follow.  In the case of nuclear deterrence theory, it is posited that if one party threatens to retaliate with nuclear weapons, the other side will not attack.  That an attack has not occurred, however, does not prove that it was prevented by nuclear deterrence.  That is, in logic, a false assumption of causality.  In logic, one cannot prove a negative, that is, that doing something causes something else not to happen.  That a nuclear attack has not happened may be a result of any number of other factors, or simply of exceptional good fortune.  To attribute the absence of nuclear war to nuclear deterrence is to register a false positive, which imbues nuclear deterrence with a false sense of efficacy.


    2. It requires a commitment to mass murder.  Nuclear deterrence leads to policy debates about how many threatened deaths with nuclear weapons are enough to deter an adversary?  Are one million deaths sufficient to deter adversary A?  Is it a different number for adversary B?  How many deaths are sufficient?  One million?  Ten million?  One hundred million?  More?  There will always be a tendency to err on the side of more deaths, and thus the creation of more elaborate nuclear killing systems.  Such calculations, in turn, drive arms races, requiring huge allocations of resources to weapons systems that must never be used.  Leaders must convince their own populations that the threat of mass murder and the expenditure of resources to support this threat make them secure and is preferable to other allocations of scientific and financial resources.  The result is not only a misallocation of resources, but also a diversion of effort away from cooperative solutions to global problems.


    3. It requires effective communications.  In effect, nuclear deterrence is a communications theory.  Side A must communicate its capability and willingness to use its nuclear arsenal in retaliation for an attack by adversary B, thereby preventing adversary B from attacking.  The threat to retaliate and commit mass murder must be believable to a potential attacker.  Communications take place verbally in speeches by leaders and parliamentary statements, as well as news reports and even by rumors.  Communications also take place non-verbally in the form of alliance formations and nuclear weapons and missile tests.  In relation to nuclear deterrence, virtually everything that each side does is a deliberate or inadvertent form of communication to a potential adversary.  There is much room for error and misunderstanding.


    4. It requires rational decision makers.  Nuclear deterrence will not be effective against a decision maker who is irrational.  For example, side A may threaten nuclear retaliation for an attack by adversary B, but the leader of side B may irrationally conclude that the leader of side A will not do what he says.  Or, the leader of side B may irrationally attack side A because he does not care if one million or ten million of his countrymen die as a result of side A’s nuclear retaliation.  I believe two very important questions to consider are these: Do all leaders of all states behave rationally at all times, particularly under conditions of extreme stress when tensions are very high?  Can we be assured that all leaders of all states will behave rationally at all times in the future?  Most people believe the answer to these questions is an unqualified No.


    5. It instills a false sense of confidence.   Nuclear deterrence is frequently confused with nuclear “defense,” leading to the conclusion that nuclear weapons provide some form of physical protection against attack.  This conclusion is simply wrong.  The weapons and the threat of their use provide no physical protection.  The only protection provided is psychological and once the weapons start flying it will become clear that psychological protection is not physical protection.  One can believe the weapons make him safer, but this is not the same as actually being safer.  Because nuclear deterrence theory provides a false sense of confidence, it could lead a possessor of the weapons to take risks that would be avoided without nuclear threats in place.  Such risks could be counterproductive and actually lead to nuclear war.


    6. It does not work against an accidental use.  Nuclear deterrence is useful, if at all, only against the possibility of an intentional, premeditated nuclear attack.  Its purpose is to make the leader who contemplates the intentional use of a nuclear weapon decide against doing so.  But nuclear deterrence cannot prevent an accidental use of a nuclear weapon, such as an accidental launch.  This point was made in the movie Dr. Strangelove, in which a US nuclear attack was accidentally set in motion against the Soviet Union.  In the movie, bomber crews passed their “failsafe” point in a training exercise and couldn’t be recalled.  The president of the United States had to get on the phone with his Soviet counterpart and try to explain that the attack on Moscow that had been set in motion was just an accident.  The Americans were helpless to stop the accident from occurring, and so were the Soviets.  Accidents happen!  There is no such thing as a “foolproof” system, and when nuclear weapons are involved it is extremely dangerous to think there is.


    7. It doesn’t work against terrorist organizations.  Nuclear deterrence is based upon the threat of retaliation.  Since it is not possible to retaliate against a foe that you cannot locate, the threat of retaliation is not credible under these circumstances.  Further, terrorists are often suicidal (e.g., “suicide bombers”), and are willing to die to inflict death and suffering on an adversary.  For these reasons, nuclear deterrence will be ineffective in preventing nuclear terrorism.  The only way to prevent nuclear terrorism is to prevent the weapons themselves from falling into the hands of terrorist organizations.  This will become increasingly difficult if nuclear weapons and the nuclear materials to build them proliferate to more and more countries.


    8. It encourages nuclear proliferation.  To the extent that the theory of nuclear deterrence is accepted as valid and its flaws overlooked or ignored, it will make nuclear weapons seem to be valuable instruments for the protection of a country.  Thus, the uncritical acceptance of nuclear deterrence theory provides an incentive for nuclear proliferation.  If it is believed that nuclear weapons can keep a country safe, there will be commensurate pressure to develop such weapons. 


    9. It is not believable.  In the final analysis, it is likely that even the policy makers who promote nuclear deterrence do not truly believe in it.  If policy makers did truly believe that nuclear deterrence works as they claim, they would not need to develop missile defenses.  The United States alone has spent over $100 billion on developing missile defenses over the past three decades, and is continuing to spend some $10 billion annually on missile defense systems.  Such attempts at physical protection against nuclear attacks are unlikely to ever be fully successful, but they demonstrate the underlying understanding of policy makers that nuclear deterrence alone is insufficient to provide protection to a country.  If policy makers understand that nuclear deterrence is far from foolproof, then who is being fooled by nuclear deterrence theory?  In all likelihood, the only people being fooled by the promised effectiveness of nuclear deterrence theory are the ordinary people who place their faith in their leaders, the same people who are the targets of nuclear weapons and will suffer the consequences should nuclear deterrence fail.  Their political and military leaders have made them the “fools” in what is far from a “foolproof” system.


    10. Its failure would be catastrophic.  Nuclear deterrence theory requires the development and deployment of nuclear weapons for the threat of retaliation.  These weapons can, of course, be used for initiating attacks as well as for seeking to prevent attacks by means of threatened retaliation.  Should deterrence theory fail, such failure could result in consequences beyond our greatest fears.  For example, scientists have found in simulations of the use of 100 Hiroshima-size nuclear weapons in an exchange between India and Pakistan, the deaths could reach one billion individuals due to blast, fire, radiation, climate change, crop failures and resulting starvation.  A larger nuclear war between the US and Russia could destroy civilization as we know it. 


    The flaws in nuclear deterrence theory that I have discussed cannot be waved aside.  They show that the theory has inherent weaknesses that cannot be overcome.  Over time, the theory will suffer more and more stress fractures and, like a poorly constructed bridge, it will fail.  Rather than staying docilely on the sidelines, citizens of the nuclear weapon states must enter the arena of debate.  In fact, they must create the debate by challenging the efficacy and validity of nuclear deterrence theory. 


    After these many years of accepting nuclear deterrence theory as valid and unimpeachable, it is time to awaken to the reality that it could fail and fail catastrophically.  The answer to the risks posed by nuclear deterrence theory is not to shore up an inherently flawed theory, but to take a new path, a path leading to the elimination of all nuclear weapons from the planet.  This is not an impossible dream and, in fact, the risks of taking this path are far less than maintaining nuclear arsenals justified by an unstable and unproven theory.  But for this dream to be realized, citizens will have to raise their voices, challenge their leaders, and refuse to be docile in the face of the overwhelming threat that nuclear weapons pose to humanity.

  • The Moral Revolution

    The people in the streets of Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere have achieved more in a few weeks than twenty years of mass murder, torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, white phosphorous, drones and night raids as delivered by our warfare state. Exactly what have we accomplished in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan other than blotting out millions of innocent lives, including the lives and families of our troops and creating endless enemies as we recklessly endanger the lives of our own citizens? The wasted lives and trillions spent in bankrupting the United States stand as a witness to international criminality.


    At the same time we have people of peace in the Arab world who are giving us an example of how to change the world without the mass murder of illegal and immoral wars.


    Here at home we also have a host of peace makers who have been jailed for their nonviolent and spirited opposition to the merchants of death.


    Those responsible for unnecessary, illegal and immoral wars should rightfully be detained together with the war profiteers, not those who work for peace and justice.


    IRAQ


    I was in Baghdad in January of 1991, just before a holocaust of 88 thousand tons of bombs reigned on that sacred land.  That massacre was only the beginning, and the killing has not stopped for twenty years.  Yes, it continued throughout eight years of the Clinton Administration. After I returned from Baghdad we had major demonstrations and civil disobedience in opposition to the upcoming war with Iraq.  Theresa and I and our son together with scores of non-violent protesters were handcuffed and prostrate on the marble floor of the Los Angeles Federal Building and later detained in large holding cells in the basement of the Los Angeles Federal Building.  While incarcerated we heard that the bombing of Iraq had begun. Yes, January of 1991. We reflected on how meaningful it was to be to be locked up in protest  when this holocaust began. We have now witnessed a score of years of utter devastation.


    DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING


    This leads us to reflect on Dr. Martin Luther King’s words at Riverside Church on April 4, 1967. After he became conscious of the massive daily violence of the Vietnam War he said: “I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in ghettos without having spoken first to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government.”
    (Beyond Vietnam Speech at Riverside Church in New York City, April 4, 1967.


    Our nation has not changed since Dr. King’s death, we are still the greatest purveyor of violence in the world. Dr. King called for a moral  revolution and we echo that call today. What is holding us back?  What is hindering the spirit of international peace making? Every time we reflect on our policy of endless war we can say correctly, ”Our people are better than that. Our family, friends and associates would not support that kind of behavior.”


    OUR SOCIALIZATION


    To understand this problem we must examine how we have been socialized as citizens. In the 19th  century it was called “manifest destiny.”  It is basically the religiosity of patriotism. Clear heads have referred to militaristic patriotism as, “The last refuge of scoundrels,” And closely related to this scam is the trap of American exceptionalism.


    Because of a “might makes right” position we can brandish thousands of nuclear weapons and  threaten  other nations like Iran because they might possibly be doing research on such weapons. We can practice preventative and aggressive war but other nations cannot.


    We can intervene militarily anywhere on earth on behalf of our “national interests”, which have nothing to do with the common good of our citizens and at root are simply the interests of corporate capital.


    It takes that new consciousness as mentioned by Einstein if we are going to change our way of thinking.  We have been socialized into cult-like, irrational approach to 96% of the world’s people who do not live within our boundaries.


    FEAR


    And why does the vast majority of our population enter into the silence of complicity during a policy of perpetual war which is recklessly endangering our people?


    First there is the manipulation of fear which is the daily work of corrupt politics. Fear is the glue that keeps us silent and fear flows from the threat of punishment. Actually much of our lives have been ruled by such fear. Unfortunately manipulative fear is the byproduct of a great fallacy. In the field of Logic it is known as the fallacy “ad baculum.”  This classic fallacy is identified as the implication that authority implies truth. However, philosophers have demonstrated for centuries that the argument from authority has absolutely no bearing on the truth of a statement. Certainly authority may speak what is true, but the possession of authority gives no logical force to what is said. Why then does the argument from authority rule our lives? Because authority can instill fear. Authority can flunk you, can fire you, can jail you or can kill you. If we do not change our way of thinking the manipulation of fear proceeding from authority will dominate our lives.


    And this is why when we look at the Scriptures we see, “Don’t be afraid,” as a constant motif.


    “There is no fear in love, for perfect love casts out fear,” says St. John.


    In Liberation Square in Cairo we hear, “Fear has been defeated, there is no turning back.” When Dr. King was questioned about how it was possible for him to accept his role of the leadership of a vast movement, he responded, “When I put aside my fear of death.”


    FOLLOWING ORDERS


    Our operatives control our drones from Arizona and Nevada and indiscriminately kill non-combatants  every day. They are allegedly killing suspects. There is no national or international law that gives us a right to kill suspects. The people we are killing have no less a right to live than our citizens do. And what aberration of morality ever told us that they were of lesser value?
    The moral revolution is based on truth telling which is a revolutionary act in a time of rampant militarism.  We simply have to give up the idol worship of militaristic patriotism which is also known as jingoism. We shall not have strange gods before us.


    HOLY WARS


    One of the last great lectures of Howard Zinn who I always called the Dean of American historians was titled:  “Three Holy Wars; The Revolution, The Civil War and World War II.”  Zinn demonstrated clearly that these wars were neither holy nor necessary. And we find that this is true of all wars. The objective of the moral revolution is to abolish war. If we were here 200 years ago and brought up the idea of abolishing slavery, I think we would have had mild approval with so-called realists sadly responding, “Yes, slavery is just terrible, but that is our economic system you know and we simply cannot exist without it. We must be realistic.”


    And today we join the thinking of 200 chapters of Veterans for Peace who clearly state their objective of ending war. We will hear the same refrain from the so-called realists saying, “Oh, yes, war is just terrible but it is human nature you know and there is nothing we can do about it.” It is time to stop the charade, this planet is not sustainable with the continuation of the war system. It is not simply nuclear weapons, it is war itself. And here is the rub, the environmental movement correctly proceeds with the denunciation of global warming, and that is the correct thing to do. But environmentalists are prone to ignore the catastrophe of militarism in their agenda. Why? Because in the playbook of our militaristic socialization it is unpatriotic to oppose our holy wars.


    The moral revolution requires a marriage, a marriage of the environmental movement and the peace movement. The military of the world at peace is the biggest polluter on earth. The military of the world at war means that life on this tiny grain of sand in the universe called planet Earth will no longer have a human population.


    REASON


    When  we enter into rational thought processes rather than the ad baculum logic of power which has marked much of our lives, we will recognize the realists as those who know that war is no longer acceptable,  that there is but one race on the planet and it is the human race and that the archaic thuggery of militarism which simplistically declares others to be “bad guys cannot stand.


    Dr. Martin Luther King spoke of a moral revolution as he created a moral revolution. The most morally desired events in history have been made by such actions of audacity.


    ORGANIZATION


    “Don’t mourn, organize,” said Joe Hill, the labor leader who was executed on a trumped up murder charge in Utah in 1910. And that is our task as we face so much bad news. The response must not be, “Isn’t it awful?” but rather, “How can we turn it around?” The Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) insisted on facing reality and rejecting any form of denial. As we look at the world honestly we are correct to have a pessimism of the intellect. And at the same time we must have an optimism of the will. This is where the moral revolution begins. We observe and acknowledge the negative elements in the world and at the same time we believe that change is possible and we dedicate ourselves to be part of that moral revolution. “Thy will be done on earth…”


    As we look at scriptural literature we see that faith is what we are willing to do, and not a formulation of dogmas. Yes, the moral revolution requires faith. And how is it organized? It is organized from the base.  Take the Office of the Americas for example. We started with a few people sitting around our dining room table and discussing how we could move our activities from our home to an office. We had all experienced the profound negativity of US foreign policy throughout the world. The warfare state had taken millions of innocent lives. We had all seen the power of base communities in Latin America and how the formation of tens of thousands of such groups had transformed Brazil, Central and South America, and ultimately created a moral revolution in the Americas.


    METHODOLOGY


    How is policy made in base communities?  First the group intensely observes the reality in which they are living as they identify areas that require change.


    Next a judgment is made on how that change can be effected. After reflection including prayer by those who pray, a praxis is selected. Praxis is reflective action.


    Everyone in the base community participates in this base community determination. Then what happens? Once the general policy has been agreed upon qualified individuals form a like-minded team to take the responsibility for specific actions.


    This does not include promoting a static political ideology. Personally I cannot distinguish between religious and political ideologies. In both cases the ideologues presume that they will work to fit the world into their mind set. This is futile and divisive position.


    We determined that our objective is to change the foreign policy of the United States which has become an international empire of military bases.


    Some people are comfortable working in electoral politics and we respect them. Personally I consider lobbying for change to be the most painful kind of work. Each visit to Washington, D.C. is a visit to, “Talk to the wall.” We get the message that our tripartite system now primarily represents  the banks, the insurance companies and the military industrial, congressional, prison and gun complex.


    MASS MOBILIZATION


    The matter of mass mobilization requires a coming together of hundreds of base communities and that is what occurred after 9/11. It was the largest mass mobilization in the history of the world. Tens of millions of people came out internationally to oppose a war that had not yet begun.


    The message of government was clear, “We don’t care what you want, we are going to have an unnecessary, illegal and immoral massacre.” Yes, pessimism of the intellect but optimism of the will. Since that time, those who get their information solely from corporate sources are saying, “There is no peace movement.” The fact is that the peace movement is in every city town and rural area of this country and represents the hopes of the rest of the world as well.


    Ethics and Logic are an important part of the base community. In ethics we see war as a clear and present danger fostered by lies, ignorance and malice. It must be abolished if the planet is to have a future.


    And what is the logic of government?  Most government and all military continues to be governed by the fallacy of the baculum, that is the club, the stick, the threat. The beginning of critical thought is the understanding that the Official Story of both Church and State is based on this ancient fallacy. 


    “I’m in charge here,” does not mean I am correct about anything. Throughout history many generals have clearly been out of their minds and that holds true for the present as well.  The cult of militaristic patriotism is the delight of war profiteers. Actually most of us have been governed by the fallacy of the baculum at school, in the workplace and most of all in the military.


    HAZARDS


    There are some occupational hazards in forming base communities. For example what can be called “super democracy.” On this matter let me offer a parable: 300 people are flying on a large jet aircraft and one of the passengers says, “I have just as much a right to fly this plane as the pilot does, I demand my democratic rights.”  OK so far? And here is where authentic authority comes in. This is not the fallacy of authority this is the fact of having a specific competence. This is the respect required for actual expertise.  No, you are not going to fly the plane without certification of competence. No, you are  not going to keep the books of this organization if you have no background in bookkeeping. No, you are not going to plan an action in a war zone if you are not thoroughly informed about the situation.


    Risk. yes, there are risks. Nothing can be accomplished without courage. All of the “experts” told us we could not have a march from Panama to Mexico in the midst the Central American Wars. They were wrong. And there is also financial risk. We were constantly told that we should not deal with anything negative about Israel or we would lose support. We refused to comply with these “experts” as well. “Cancel my membership,” was a frequent message. There are no moral restrictions on denouncing brutality by any government including our own.


    The moral revolution requires an unwillingness to accept the “official story.” The more powerful the polity, the more ridiculous is the official story. No, there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. No, Iraq did not attack the Twin Towers. No, Afghanistan did not attack the United States. No, the Mavi  Marmara did not attack Israel. Lies are the essence of official stories.


    NATION STATE AS IDOL


    The moral revolution requires an understanding that the nation state as the terminus of sovereignty is as outdated as the city states of old. U.S. laws cannot stop global warming. U.S. laws cannot stop war. International law must be respected by the singular great power. We have trashed the entire international legal system by our “might makes right” policies.


    The moral revolution requires a denunciation of conventional wisdom. The ways of the rich and famous do not represent a model for us. On the contrary, we accept a preferential option for the poor of the earth. The current economic system is a failure for the majority of the people on the globe.


    War making is a great business opportunity and at the same time a morally bankrupt choice.


    Mohandas Karamchand  (Mahatma) Gandhi gave the model for contemporary moral revolution by wayof satyagraha, mass civil disobedience; ahimsa, nonviolence. He insisted on truth force in contrast to the imperial lies of the British. His weapons included non-cooperation,  general strike and  boycott.


    I am proud to say that Gandhian methods are the contemporary tools of the peace movement internationally. The British Empire responded to Gandhi with ongoing bloodshed. We must demand that the Egyptian government not respond in a similar manner. 


    The commercial press frequently compares the reactionary governmental, armed and dangerous  messengers of hate, racism and war to the peace movement as if they were two similar aberrations. They are not. They have nothing in common. This is true in Egypt and in the United States. One side represents oppression and the other side represents the oppressed. They are not the same. The moral revolution can easily make this distinction.


    And the prophecy of the Messianic Era states: 


                You have shown might with your arm;
                 you have scattered the proud in their conceit;
                 you have deposed the mighty from their thrones
                 and raised the lowly to high places.
                 You have filled the hungry with good things,
                 while you have sent the rich away empty.           
                 — Luke, 1


    Our technology is centuries ahead of our humanity. If this were not true, there would be no nuclear weapons.  The president calls for more education in technology and that is good but over half of the federal research funds in the United States today are for the military.


    The focus on technology, however, is at the expense of the humanities. We desperately need the art of being human. Training has replaced education.  Training is not education. Training is how to drive an automobile or how to operate a machine gun.


    Education is the beauty that can come out of a humanized soul.  Michelangelo would look at a piece of marble and say, “There is an angel in that marble and I think I can get it out.  I can educe it, I can educate it.


    Yes, we need training to fly the aircraft, but we also need education so the well trained pilot would never accept an order to eliminate fellow human beings.