Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: peace

  • Message to First Annual Student Movement for Nuclear Disarmament Conference

    This message was delivered to the First Annual Student Movement for Nuclear Disarmament Conference at Soka University of America on November 17, 2012.


    David KriegerI want to congratulate you for organizing this conference and for bringing together students to form a movement for nuclear disarmament.  It is a much needed effort.  As someone who has worked for nuclear weapons abolition for most of my adult life, I believe firmly that the involvement of students is necessary for achieving the goal of a nuclear weapons-free world. 


    You did not create nuclear weapons, but you have inherited them, and they will remain a threat to your future for so long as they exist.  Thus, your awareness, your engagement and your voices are critical to your own future as well as to the future of your children and grandchildren.


    Nuclear weapons are illegal, immoral and costly.  They do not make their possessors safer or more secure; they only assure that their possessors are targets of some other country’s nuclear weapons.


    If the most powerful counties in the world behave as though nuclear weapons are useful to them, as they do, they assure that other countries will seek nuclear weapons for themselves.  Thus, the possession of nuclear weapons encourages the proliferation of nuclear weapons to other countries.   


    The more nuclear weapons proliferate, the greater the chances are that they will end up in the hands of terrorist organizations.  In truth, though, any country that relies upon nuclear deterrence for its security is threatening the use of nuclear weapons against innocent people, and thus behaving as a terrorist nation itself.


    We must recognize nuclear weapons for what they are.  Some, like Archbishop Desmond Tutu, see them as an “obscenity.”  Others, like Josei Toda, view them as an “absolute evil.”  I see them as a human-designed threat to the future of civilization and perhaps to all complex life on earth.  By our technological cleverness, we humans have created the means of our own demise.  We cannot allow this to continue.


    Our great challenge is to abolish nuclear weapons before they abolish us.  It is not an easy goal to achieve, but it is not an impossible one.  It is a necessary goal, and it gives me hope that your conference is taking place and that each of you is involved and joining in the effort to create a world free of nuclear threat. 


    The only number of nuclear weapons that will assure a human future is zero.  No significant goal, such as the abolition of nuclear weapons, can be accomplished without awareness, boldness, creativity and hard work.  I hope that you will never lose sight of the need to achieve a world with zero nuclear weapons and that you will always choose hope as an impetus for building a better world.  Be persistent, persevere and never give up.

  • We All Have a Role to Play

    Vaya aquí para la versión española.


    David Krieger


    Nuclear weapons are game-changing devices.  They are more than weapons.  They are annihilators, capable of causing catastrophic damage to cities and countries.  They have the destructive power to bring civilization to its knees.  They could cause the extinction of most or all complex life on the planet. 


    One of the great moral leaders of our time, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, wrote: “Nuclear weapons are an obscenity.  They are the very antithesis of humanity, of goodness in this world.  What security do they help establish?  What kind of world community are we actually seeking to build when nations possess and threaten to use arms that can wipe all of humankind off the globe in an instant?”


    Nuclear weapons threaten the very future of humankind.  They are immoral and illegal.  They cause indiscriminate harm and unnecessary suffering.  Their damage cannot be contained in either time or space.  Their existence demands a response from us.  We must unite, as never before, to protect against this overriding technological threat of our own making or face the consequences. 


    But, you may ask, what can you do? 


    First, you can take the threat seriously and recognize that your own involvement can make a difference.  This is not an issue that can be left to political leaders alone.  They have dealt with it for over two-thirds of a century, and the danger persists.


    Second, join with others in working for a more peaceful and nuclear weapon-free world.  The voices of citizens can make a difference, and the aggregation of those voices an even greater difference.  Citizens must stand up and speak out as if the very future depends upon what they say and do, because it does.


    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation provides many ways to amplify the voices of citizens.  We believe that a path to a world free of nuclear weapons lies through US leadership, and the path to US leadership lies through an active and involved citizenry.  You can keep up to date with our monthly Sunflower e-newsletter and you can participate in pressing for change through our Action Alert Network. 


    Third, become a peace leader, one who holds hope and wages peace.  Never lose hope, and actively work to build a more peaceful world.  Live with compassion, commitment, courage and creativity.  Do your part to build a world you can be proud to pass on to your children and grandchildren and all children of the future, a beautiful planet free of the threat of nuclear annihilation. 


    If you are a painter, paint.  If you are a writer, write.  If you are a singer, sing.  If you are a citizen, participate.  Find a way to give your talents to building a better world in which the threat of war and nuclear devastation does not hang over our common future – a world in which poverty and hunger are alleviated, children are educated, human rights are upheld, and the environment is protected.  These are the great challenges of our time and each of us has an important role to play.

  • Standing Together for Our Common Future

    David Krieger delivered these remarks at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s 29th Annual Evening for Peace on October 21, 2012.


    David KriegerI want to begin with a poem.  I wrote this poem for the International Day of Peace, but I think it works well for our Evening for Peace.



    On this day, like any other,
    soldiers are killing and dying,
    arms merchants are selling their wares,
    missiles are aimed at your heart,
    and peace is a distant dream.


    Not just for today, but for each day,
    let’s sheathe our swords, save the sky
    for clouds, the oceans for mystery
    and the earth for joy. 


    Let’s stop honoring the war makers
    and start giving medals for peace.


    On this day, like any other,
    there are infinite possibilities to change
    our ways. 


    Peace is an apple tree heavy with fruit,
    a new way of loving the world.


    Our theme tonight is “Standing Together for Our Common Future.”  We all share in the responsibility for our common future.  Our challenge is to stand together to assure the best possible future for our children and grandchildren.  This is a global challenge; and it should be a universal desire.


    The Nuclear Age is just 67 years old.  During this short time, we humans have created, by our technological prowess, some serious obstacles to assuring our common future.  Climate change, pollution of the oceans and atmosphere, modern warfare and its preparations, and nuclear dangers are at the top of any list of critical global problems.  None of these dangers can be solved by any one country alone.  It no longer takes just a village.  It takes a world.  And within that world it takes, if not each of us, certainly far more of us.


    Let me share with you how Archbishop Tutu, a Foundation Advisor and one of the great moral leaders of our time, describes nuclear weapons.  He says, “Nuclear weapons are an obscenity.  They are the very antithesis of humanity, of goodness in this world.  What security do they help establish?  What kind of world community are we actually seeking to build when nations possess and threaten to use arms that can wipe all of humankind off the globe in an instant?”


    At the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, we work to abolish nuclear weapons –  insanely destructive weapons that cannot be used, or even possessed, without violating the most basic legal and moral precepts.  Nuclear weapons threaten civilization and our very survival as a species.  And yet, 50 years after the Cuban Missile Crisis, and more than 20 years after the end of the Cold War, the US and Russia still keep some 2,000 of these weapons on high-alert, ready to be fired in moments of an order to do so. 


    The weapons have not gone away, nor have the dangers they pose to humanity.  There are still 19,000 of them in the world.  Ninety-five percent of these weapons are in the arsenals of the US and Russia.  The remaining five percent are in the arsenals of seven more nuclear weapon states.


    Nuclear weapons do not protect us. Nuclear weapons are not a defense; they are only good for threatening retaliation or committing senseless acts of vengeance.


    The use of nuclear weapons is beyond the control of any country.  Let me illustrate this by telling you about Nuclear Famine.  Scientists modeled a relatively small nuclear war in which India and Pakistan were to use 50 nuclear weapons each on the other side’s cities.  The result of this war would be to put enough soot from burning cities into the upper stratosphere to reduce warming sunlight to the point that we would experience the lowest temperatures on Earth in 1,000 years. This would result in shortened growing seasons and crop failures, leading to starvation and Nuclear Famine killing hundreds of millions of people, perhaps a billion, throughout the world. 


    Let me emphasize that this would be the consequence of a small nuclear war using less than half of one percent of the world’s nuclear explosive power.  And, it would be a regional nuclear war, over which the US could not exert any control.  It would nonetheless be a war with global consequences for all of us.
     
    All of this is serious and sobering.  But, you may ask, what can we do about it?


    At the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, we are focusing on collective action and collective impact, in which the whole – each of us standing together – is greater than the sum of its parts. 


    We are also pursuing legal action related to breaches of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty by the US and other nuclear weapon states parties to the treaty. The treaty calls for the pursuit of negotiations in good faith for effective measures related to a cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date, to nuclear disarmament and for a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control. 


    Since the Treaty entered into force in 1970, it would be hard to argue 42 years later that there has been a cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date.  Nor has there been serious nuclear disarmament or a treaty on general and complete disarmament. 


    Our current education and advocacy work reaches and mobilizes our 57,000 members who join in taking action for our common future.  We plan to expand this number exponentially across the world.  We hope that you will all join us in this mission to assure the human future.


    Tonight we stand together with the people of the Marshall Islands, a country that was part of the Trust Territory of the United States after World War II.  The Marshall Islanders are easygoing and friendly people. They put their trust in the United States, but we abused that trust by testing nuclear weapons on their territory.  We began that atmospheric nuclear testing in 1946, when we were the only country in the world with nuclear weapons, and we continued testing there for 12 years until 1958. 


    We tested 67 times in the Marshall Islands, using powerful nuclear and thermonuclear weapons – the equivalent explosive power of having tested 1.7 Hiroshima bombs each day for 12 years.  On March 1, 1954, we tested our largest nuclear bomb ever, code-named Bravo, which had the power of 15 million tons of TNT. 


    We irradiated many of the people of the Marshall Islands, causing them death, injury and untold sorrow.  Many had to leave their home islands and live elsewhere.  Many have suffered cancers and leukemia, and the illness and death has carried over into the children of new generations of Marshall Islanders.


    These are the tragic effects of a world that maintains, tests and relies upon nuclear weapons.  In this world, our human rights are threatened and abused by nuclear weapons, as the Marshallese have experienced first-hand.


    As a traditional island nation, the Marshallese enjoyed a self-sufficient sustainable way of life before nuclear weapons testing.  Now, they struggle to uphold basic human rights:



    • to adequate health and life.
    • to adequate food and nutrition.
    • to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation.
    • to enjoyment of a safe, clean and healthy sustainable environment.

    In September of this year, the Foundation’s representative in Geneva spoke to the UN Human Rights Council on behalf of the Marshall Islanders.  He stated: “NAPF aligns itself with the UN Special Rapporteur’s suggestion that the international community, the United States, and the Government of the Marshall Islands must develop long-term strategic measures to address the effects of the nuclear testing program and specific challenges in each atoll.  As such, it is imperative that the U.S. government and the international community implement human rights measures to provide adequate redress to the citizens of the Marshall Islands.” 


    In other words, it is the responsibility of the United States and other nuclear weapon states to clean up the radioactive trail of dangerous debris and redress the suffering and human rights abuses they have left behind in their pursuit of ever more powerful and efficient nuclear arms.


    The man we honor tonight, Senator Tony de Brum, was a child when the US nuclear testing was taking place in his islands.  Born in 1945, he personally witnessed most of the detonations that took place, and was nine years old when the most powerful of those explosions, the Bravo test, took place. 


    He went on to become one of the first Marshall Islanders to graduate from college and focused on helping his people to extricate themselves from the legacy of US nuclear testing in his island country.  He has dedicated his life to helping his people and to working to assure they are fairly compensated for the wrongs done to them by nuclear testing.  He has served his people in many ways – as a parliamentarian and former Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister for Health and the Environment.  He currently represents Kwajalein in the Parliament and is the Minister in Assistance to the President.


    Like others who have suffered and witnessed the suffering caused by nuclear weapons, he has a larger vision: that what happened to his people should not happen again to any other people or country.  I’ve known Tony de Brum for many years.  He is an untiring leader of his people, deeply engaged in seeking justice.  He is a man with a vision of creating a more decent and peaceful future for all humanity. 


    Senator Tony de Brum is a dedicated Peace Leader, and tonight we are pleased to stand with him and the people of the Marshall Islands as we honor him with the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s 2012 Distinguished Peace Leadership Award.

  • Reflections on the Cuban Missile Crisis at Fifty

    David KriegerFifty years ago this month, the world teetered on the precipice of a nuclear war between the US and Soviet Union during the 13-day Cuban Missile Crisis.  We were fortunate to have survived that crisis, thanks largely to the restraint shown by President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev. 


    Now, fifty years later, there is no immediate crisis such as that in 1962 over Soviet nuclear-armed missiles being placed in Cuba. There are, however, still some 19,000 nuclear weapons in the arsenals of nine nuclear-armed nations: the US, Russia, UK, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea.  Approximately 95 percent of these weapons are in the arsenals of the US and Russia.  Some 2,000 of them are kept in a state of high alert, ready to be immediately launched upon an order to do so at any moment of any day or night. 


    Although the Cold War ended more than 20 years ago, the possibilities for crisis are still with us.  NATO has expanded to the Russian borders, despite US promises not to do so, and has begun placing missile defense installations near the Russian borders.  Despite US and NATO assurances to Russia that these installations are to protect against an Iranian missile launch, Russian leaders view these installations as undermining their strategic deterrent force by making them vulnerable to a first-strike attack.  They have said that they will target these US missile defense installations.


    In another US-Russian confrontation over Georgia, such as occurred in 2008, or some other regional dispute, it is possible that tensions could rise to the point of nuclear crisis between US and Russian military forces.  Of course, this would be crazy, but it is far from impossible.  What would make the world safer?  What might we expect from national leaders who should have learned from how close the world came to nuclear catastrophe during the Cuban Missile Crisis?


    First, for the US and NATO to make Russia a partner in any missile defense plans focused on Iranian missiles.  Second, for the US to remove its approximately 180 remaining tactical nuclear weapons located in five European countries (Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey).  Third, for the US and Russia to take seriously their legal obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to pursue negotiations in good faith for an end to the nuclear arms race at an early date, for nuclear disarmament in all its aspects and for a treaty on general and complete disarmament.


    We know now that a regional nuclear war would have global consequences.  Atmospheric scientists have modeled a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan in which each side used 50 Hiroshima-size nuclear weapons on the other side’s cities.  Such a war would put enough soot from burning cities into the upper stratosphere to reduce warming sunlight for a decade, lowering surface temperatures on earth to the lowest levels in 1,000 years.  This would result in shortened growing seasons, crop failures and famine that would kill hundreds of millions of people, perhaps a billion, throughout the world. 


    The scientific modeling showed that there would be a Nuclear Famine, and it would be triggered by using less than half of one percent of the world’s nuclear explosive power.  Such a famine could be initiated not only by India and Pakistan, two countries that have been to war over Kashmir on several occasions, but by any of the Nuclear Nine.  The US and Russia could each trigger a far more devastating Nuclear Famine by a nuclear attack on the other side’s cities, an attack which would be suicidal even if the other side did not respond in kind.


    When thinking about nuclear weapons and their dangers, we would do well to remember the words of General George Lee Butler, former commander-in-chief of the United States Strategic Command, responsible for all US strategic nuclear weapons: “Nuclear weapons give no quarter.  Their effects transcend time and space, poisoning the Earth and deforming its inhabitants for generation upon generation.  They leave us wholly without defense, expunge all hope for survival.  They hold in their sway not just the fate of nations but of civilization.”


    Nuclear weapons do not protect us.  Rather, they make us vulnerable to annihilation.  It is relatively easy to put them out of our minds, but to do so is to evade our responsibility as citizens of the world and of nuclear-armed countries.  Nuclear weapons imperil our common future – they imperil our children and their children and all children of the future. They imperil all we hold dear.   We must speak out for a world without nuclear weapons.  It is a moral and legal imperative and we would be well advised to act now before we are confronted with the equivalent of another Cuban Missile Crisis.

  • How Hawkish Are Americans?

    Lawrence Wittner


    This article was originally published by History News Network.


    In the midst of a nationwide election campaign in which many politicians trumpet their support for the buildup and employment of U.S. military power around the world, the American public’s disagreement with such measures is quite remarkable. Indeed, many signs point to the fact that most Americans want to avoid new wars, reduce military spending, and support international cooperation.


    The latest evidence along these lines is a nationwide opinion survey just released as a report (Foreign Policy in the New Millennium) by the highly-respected Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Conducted in late May and early June 2012, the survey resulted in some striking findings.


    One is that most Americans are quite disillusioned with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars of the past decade. Asked about these conflicts, 67 percent of respondents said they had not been worth fighting. Indeed, 69 percent said that, despite the war in Afghanistan, the United States was no safer from terrorism.


    Naturally, these attitudes about military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan fed into opinions about future military involvement. Eighty-two percent of those surveyed favored bringing U.S. troops home from Afghanistan by 2014 or by an earlier date. Majorities also opposed maintaining long-term military bases in either country. And 71 percent agreed that “the experience of the Iraq war should make nations more cautious about using military force to deal with rogue states.”


    Certainly Americans seem to believe that their own military footprint in the world should be reduced. In the Chicago Council survey, 78 percent of respondents said that the United States was playing the role of a world policeman more than it should. Presented with a variety of situations, respondents usually stated that they opposed the use of U.S. military force. For example, a majority opposed a U.S. military response to a North Korean invasion of South Korea. Or, to take an issue that is frequently discussed today – Iran’s possible development of nuclear weapons — 70 percent of respondents opposed a U.S. military strike against that nation with the objective of destroying its nuclear facilities.


    Yes, admittedly, a small majority (53 percent) thought that maintaining superior military power was a “very important goal.” But this response was down by 14 points from 2002. Furthermore, to accomplish deficit reduction, 68 percent of respondents favored cutting U.S. spending on the military — up 10 points from 2010. Nor are these opinions contradictory. After all, U.S. military spending is so vast – more than five times that of the number 2 military spender, China – that substantial cuts in the U.S. military budget can be made without challenging U.S. military superiority.


    It should be noted that American preferences are anti-military rather than “isolationist.” The report by the Chicago Council observes: “As they increasingly seek to cut back on foreign expenditures and avoid military entanglement whenever possible, Americans are broadly supportive of nonmilitary forms of international engagement and problem solving.” These range from “diplomacy, alliances, and international treaties to economic aid and decision making through the UN.”


    For example, the survey found that 84 percent of respondents favored the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty (still unratified by the U.S. Senate), 70 percent favored the International Criminal Court treaty (from which the United States was withdrawn by President George W. Bush), and 67 percent favored a treaty to cope with climate change by limiting greenhouse gas emissions. When asked about China, a nation frequently criticized by U.S. pundits and politicians alike, 69 percent of respondents believed that the United States should engage in friendly cooperation with that country.


    The “isolationist” claim falls particularly flat when one examines American attitudes toward the United Nations. The Chicago Council survey found that 56 percent of respondents agreed that, when dealing with international problems, the United States should be “more willing to make decisions within the United Nations,” even if that meant that the United States would not always get its way.


    Overall, then, Americans favor a less militarized U.S. government approach to world affairs than currently exists. Perhaps the time has come for politicians to catch up with them!

  • Review of Richard Falk’s and David Krieger’s The Path to Zero: Dialogues on Nuclear Dangers

    Lawrence WittnerAbout a third of the way through The Path to Zero, David Krieger, one of the authors, suggests a Zen koan — a mind-bending riddle designed to foster enlightenment — that runs as follows: “What casts a dark shadow when dormant and a fiery cloud of death when brought to life?” The answer is nuclear weapons, the subject of this book.

    It is certainly a crucial subject. The contradiction between the potential of nuclear weapons to destroy the world and the determination of nations to possess them is a central dilemma of modern times. More than sixty-seven years after U.S. atomic bombs killed much of the population of two Japanese cities, some 20,000 nuclear weapons — thousands of them on alert — remain housed in the arsenals of nine countries. The United States and Russia possess about 95 percent of them. Moreover, despite a rhetorical commitment to building a nuclear weapons-free world, some nations are undertaking multi-billion dollar programs to modernize their nuclear weapons production facilities, while others appear to be en route to becoming nuclear powers.

    Faced with this disastrous indifference by national governments to the fate of the earth, the people of the world would do well to study The Path to Zero, an extended conversation on the nuclear dilemma by two of its most brilliant, knowledgeable, and profound analysts. Richard Falk is Albert G. Milbank Professor of International Law and Practice Emeritus at Princeton University and currently a research professor at the University of California-Santa Barbara. Krieger is co-founder and president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation in Santa Barbara and a Councilor on the World Future Council.

    In this outstanding book, Falk and Krieger address with great eloquence a broad range of issues, including nuclear weapons dangers, nuclear power, international law, the strength of militarism, public apathy, nuclear proliferation, nuclear arms control, and nuclear disarmament.

    Falk rests his case against “nuclearism” on morality and law. He explains: “It is unacceptable to kill or threaten to kill innocent people on the basis of a weaponry and a strategic doctrine that is indiscriminate in targeting and would almost certainly result in inflicting mass destruction.” At a later point, he adds: “In a democracy, we should be able to insist that our elected government uphold the law and behave ethically in relation to an issue as important as the role of nuclear weaponry. And when that insistence is met with evasion and silence for decades, we are obliged to expose these deficiencies of national governance and, perhaps, extend the discussion to the deficiencies of a world order built on geopolitical premises of hard-power capabilities and the nonaccountability of nuclear weapon states to international law or the UN Charter.”

    Like Falk, Krieger makes a powerful case against nuclear weapons. It is not at all clear that nuclear deterrence is effective, he observes. Indeed, “missile defenses are, in effect, an admission that nuclear deterrence is insufficient to prevent a nuclear attack.” Furthermore, the deployment of such defenses by country A “is an incentive for country B to improve the quality and increase the quantity of its nuclear arsenal.” Opposition to preparations for nuclear war, Krieger argues, serves as “a voice of conscience … thereby awakening and engaging others in the struggle for a more decent world.”

    Falk and Krieger are not always in agreement. In general, Falk is more dismissive of past nuclear arms control and disarmament activities by governments and somewhat more pessimistic about progress in the future. Not surprisingly, then, while Krieger favors taking a more ameliorative path, Falk calls for a total break with past arms control and disarmament efforts. Indeed, he argues for what he calls “a politics of impossibility” — one focused on a “prudent and rationally desirable end” rather than its apparent political feasibility.

    Nonetheless, both individuals share the belief that a nuclear weapons-free world is essential for global survival and concur on specific steps that should be taken toward that goal. Krieger sums up their consensus nicely. “First, we agree that U.S. [government] leadership may be needed but … is unlikely to be forthcoming without considerable pressure from the people. Second, such pressure from below is not currently on the horizon, but we should not give up in our educational efforts to awaken the American people and engage them in a movement to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons.” Third and fourth, observes Krieger, given the absence of U.S. government pressure for disarmament, “we will have to look elsewhere for leadership.” This leadership “could come from the non-nuclear weapon states that are parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty.” In asserting such leadership, “they would have to band together and make strong demands on the nuclear weapon states” – demands that “might have to be in the form of … delivering an ultimatum to withdraw from the NPT” under the provisions of the treaty’s Article X — unless the nuclear weapon states finally agree to a concrete plan for full-scale nuclear disarmament. They recommend “an initial demand” on the nuclear nations of No First Use, but argue that “the strongest litmus test” of their sincerity would be convening negotiations on a treaty to abolish nuclear weapons.

    At the moment, as both men concede, this program does not seem likely to be implemented. Even so, Krieger notes, “the future is always undetermined and subject to change. The currents of history can be redirected by committed individuals and the formation of new institutions. … Creativity and persistence, rooted in hope, can change the world.”

    The Path to Zero — a work of great insight and wisdom — is an important part of that global transformation.

  • Nuclear Weapons and World Peace – Could Malta lead the way?

    This article was originally published by the Malta Independent.


    Martin HellmanHuman beings are so adaptable that we have often accomplished what we previously thought ourselves incapable of achieving. The idea that men could fly was seen as absurd until the Wright brothers, Santos Dumont and others defied conventional wisdom. Because they had the courage to consider what everyone around them “knew” was impossible, today we fly higher and faster than any bird, and have even walked on the moon. Human slavery and the subjugation of women, once seen as immutable aspects of human nature, are now banned in every civilized nation.


    But one dream has eluded us: beating our swords into ploughshares, and learning to make war no more. In this instalment of this series of articles, I argue that we may be close to realising that age-old dream of Isaiah, and that nuclear weapons can be the catalyst for doing so, if only we will view them from the proper perspective.


    The current environment might not seem conducive to that hope, with constant reports of wars, and threats of war. Yet a deeper look also shows signs of promise. Two books that appeared last year, Prof. Joshua Goldstein’s Winning the War on War, and Prof. Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature, both argued that the numbers paint a very different picture, with deaths due to war dropping from roughly 150,000 per year in the 1980s to 100,000 per year in the 1990s, and to 55,000 per year in the first decade of this century. While 55,000 deaths per year is a tragedy, that is far less than the number of deaths from road accidents!


    In earlier writings, Prof. John Mueller argued that war was going out of style, much as duelling did in the 19th century: compare the millions of civilian deaths that were planned and actually celebrated during World War II, with the revulsion that even a few accidental ones produce today. Think of London, Coventry, Hamburg, Dresden, Nanking, Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki – or the siege of Malta – and compare them with the understandable outcry today when an attack on al Qaeda inadvertently kills a few women and children. There are also signs of hope on the nuclear front: the world’s arsenals have fallen several-fold, from a peak of over 70,000 weapons to roughly 20,000 today.


    This data provides hope, but we should not become complacent about the threat posed by nuclear weapons – as Mueller, Goldstein, and to a lesser extent Pinker, tend to do. Part 3 in this series presented evidence that a child born today has at least a 10 per cent chance of being killed by nuclear weapons during his or her 80-year expected life – equivalent to playing Russian roulette with a 10-chambered revolver pointed at that child’s head. This level of risk may be lower than during the Cold War, but it is still unacceptably high. Now is not the time for complacency. Each generation is responsible for passing on a better world to their children. Now is the time to focus and help build the momentum towards eliminating this risk that could otherwise destroy the future.


    A race is on between “the better angels of our nature” and the risk that a mistake, an accident, or simply a miscalculation, will bring on a final, nuclear war. By properly integrating the nuclear threat into the quest for world peace, we can motivate our better angels to run a bit faster, thereby increasing their chance of winning the race. To do that, we need to recognise that every small war – and even the mere threat of war – has some chance of escalating out of control, much as a terrorist act in Sarajevo was the spark that set off the First World War. The only real difference is that World War III would not have a successor.


    The best-known example of a spark that nearly set off the nuclear powder keg is the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Both superpowers were taken by surprise when a minor conflict suddenly erupted into a crisis that had them teetering on the brink of the nuclear abyss. Afterwards, President Kennedy estimated the chance of war as having been “somewhere between one out of three and even.” In Kennedy’s estimation, that crisis was equivalent to playing nuclear roulette – a version of Russian roulette in which the whole world is at stake – with a 2- or 3-chambered revolver.


    Lesser crises have more chambers in the gun, but it doesn’t matter whether there are two chambers or two hundred. If we continually pull the trigger, it is only a matter of time before the gun goes off and civilization is destroyed. We have played this macabre game more often than is imagined. So long as we pretend that the potential gains from war outweigh the risks, each of our actions has some chance of triggering the final global war. Every “small” war – even those in Syria, or Libya, or Kashmir, or Georgia – pulls the trigger; each threat of the use of violence pulls the trigger; each day that goes by in which a missile or computer can fail pulls the trigger.


    The only way to survive Russian roulette is to put down the gun and stop playing that insane game. The only way to survive nuclear roulette is to move beyond war in the same sense that the civilized world has moved beyond human sacrifice and slavery.


    In the past, when it was merely moral and desirable, it might have been impossible to beat swords into ploughshares. Today, in our interdependent and interconnected global village, it is necessary for survival.


    Gen. Douglas MacArthur recognised that reality in his 1961 address to the Philippines Congress: “You will say at once that, although the abolition of war has been the dream of man for centuries, every proposition to that end has been promptly discarded as impossible and fantastic. But that was before the science of the past decade made mass destruction a reality. The argument then was along spiritual and moral lines, and lost. But now the tremendous evolution of nuclear and other potentials of destruction has suddenly taken the problem away from its primary consideration as a moral and spiritual question and brought it abreast of scientific realism.”


    There is potential for this to be the best of times, or the end of time, depending on which direction we take at this critical juncture. Technology has given a new, global meaning to the biblical injunction: “I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live.”


    Choosing life is not a passive decision, and requires an appropriate outward expression.


    To remove this risk of extinction, we must shift from an old mode of thinking, which justifies war as being necessary for survival, to a new mode of thinking, which recognises war as the ultimate threat to our survival. When it was merely moral and desirable, it might have been impossible to beat swords into ploughshares, but today the lives of our children and grandchildren – and quite possibly our own – depend on our once again doing what we previously thought ourselves incapable of achieving. And, as outlined in earlier essays in this series, Malta is an ideal candidate for leading the way in an outward expression of this changed thinking, by becoming the first nation to treat the nuclear threat with the respect and attention it deserves. That would be a game changer, which would give our better angels a second wind in the race against oblivion.


    Through supporting this series of articles, the ICT Gozo Malta project is seeking to create awareness that this is a global issue that can affect every one of us, including our children and their children. This is an issue that can be addressed in a meaningful way in a small country such as Malta. We in Malta have no desire to own or build weapons of mass destruction. We can leave a legacy for a safer world. Because of our small population and certain other advantages, it is easier for us to build a tipping point of public interest and for Malta to take a leadership stance, just as we already have in the area of nuclear power when Malta participated in the anti-nuclear Vienna Declaration, 25 May 2011. To begin this next process of change, and to ask our leaders to be more proactive in this cause, we require numbers! To make an outward expression, you can register your personal support on the online petition page, asking our government to make this issue a higher priority: www.change.org/petitions/global-nuclear-disarmament-malta.


    If you would like us to keep you posted on new developments and ways you might participate in this effort to make Malta a beacon unto the nations of the world, please contact David Pace of the ICT Gozo Malta Project (dave.pace@ictgozomalta.eu).

  • PSR Peacemaker Award to Bob Dodge

    David Krieger delivered this speech at an event sponsored by Physicians for Social Responsibility – Los Angeles on September 9, 2012.


    David KriegerIt’s great to be in a room filled with health care professionals who take seriously the challenge of healing their patients, their country and their planet. 


    Before I present the Peacemaker Award to Bob Dodge on behalf of Physicians for Social Responsibility, I’ve been asked to make a few remarks about the continuing dangers of nuclear weapons.


    The most important thing I can tell you is this: Nuclear weapons haven’t gone away.  They still threaten the very foundations of civilization.  There are still over 19,000 of them in the world.  The only acceptable number is zero.


    Even a small nuclear war between regional powers would have global consequences.  Scientists have modeled a nuclear war between India and Pakistan in which each country used 50 Hiroshima-size nuclear weapons on the other side’s cities.  Using less than half of one percent of the nuclear weapons on the planet would lead to putting enough soot into the stratosphere to reduce warming sunlight, lower the surface temperatures on the planet to the lowest in 1,000 years, shorten growing seasons, cause crop failures, and bring on a global famine that would kill hundreds of millions of people, perhaps a billion people, throughout the world.


    This would be a nuclear war totally beyond our control.


    It is only one of the risks we run every day that we rely upon nuclear weapons to protect us.  Incidentally, these weapons cannot and do not protect us.  Deterrence is not defense and it is not protection.  All that can be done with nuclear weapons is to threaten retaliation.  And if there were a nuclear war between the US and Russia, we’re talking about an extinction event for most or all complex life on the planet.


    Fifty years ago, we had the Cuban Missile Crisis and, in that crisis, we came far too close to nuclear war.


    Today, we are tempting fate by moving NATO membership to the Russian borders and placing US/NATO missile defenses near the Russian borders.  When Russia tells us this undermines their deterrent capability and worries them, we tell them, in essence, “Don’t worry, be happy.”  This is needless provocation. 


    What is needed is to work together with Russia as partners to help solve the world’s great problems: climate change, environmental degradation, poverty, terrorism, human rights abuses and, of course, the abolition of nuclear weapons and deep reductions in military budgets. 


    No matter how powerful a country is, no one country can solve these problems alone.  We need to come together as a world to solve these problems.


    I could go on talking about nuclear problems with Iran, North Korea and terrorist organizations.  But I won’t.  I just want to leave you with the thought that nuclear weapons still have the potential to do what Physicians for Social Responsibility recognized early on – to cause “The Last Epidemic.”



    Now, I want to talk about Bob Dodge.  What a fantastic human being you’ve chosen for your Peacemaker Award.  He is a Peacemaker with every fiber of his being.


    Growing up, his father helped him to recognize that war simply does not work.  The birth of his son, David, crystallized in him a passion to work for peace.  He considers this work both a responsibility and an opportunity.


    As far back as high school, he stood up against the Vietnam War and he has never stopped standing up and speaking out against war. 


    Many outstanding leaders in the anti-nuclear movement inspired him and instilled in him a sense of urgency to work for a world without nuclear weapons.


    He practices family medicine in Ventura.  The people of Ventura know him not only as a great family doctor.  They know him, as you do, as a Peacemaker.


    Every year, he informs his community how much taxpayers in Ventura are paying for nuclear weapons while basic needs for many go unmet. 


    Bob has been a leader in the Ventura chapter of PSR since 1985.  He is a leader in Beyond War.  He is a founder and leader of Citizens for Peaceful Resolutions.


    He is a man of firm character and boundless enthusiasm.  He is also tenacious.  He doesn’t give up.  He demonstrates in his life the values I most admire – compassion, commitment and courage. 


    I think Bob Dodge must be an amazing physician.  I know from my experiences working with him over many years for a world without nuclear weapons that he is an extraordinary Peacemaker.


    It’s a great pleasure to join you in honoring him tonight.

  • The World Is Over-Armed and Peace Is Under-Funded

    This article was originally published by Eurasia Review.


    Ban Ki-moonLast month, competing interests prevented agreement on a much-needed treaty that would have reduced the appalling human cost of the poorly regulated international arms trade. Meanwhile, nuclear disarmament efforts remain stalled, despite strong and growing global popular sentiment in support of this cause.


    The failure of these negotiations and this month’s anniversaries of the atomic bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki provide a good opportunity to explore what has gone wrong, why disarmament and arms control have proven so difficult to achieve, and how the world community can get back on track towards these vitally important goals.


    Many defence establishments now recognize that security means far more than protecting borders. Grave security concerns can arise as a result of demographic trends, chronic poverty, economic inequality, environmental degradation, pandemic diseases, organized crime, repressive governance and other developments no state can control alone. Arms can’t address such concerns.


    Yet there has been a troubling lag between recognizing these new security challenges, and launching new policies to address them. National budget priorities still tend to reflect the old paradigms. Massive military spending and new investments in modernizing nuclear weapons have left the world over-armed ― and peace under-funded.


    Last year, global military spending reportedly exceeded $1.7 trillion ― more than $4.6 billion a day, which alone is almost twice the U.N.’s budget for an entire year. This largesse includes billions more for modernizing nuclear arsenals decades into the future.


    This level of military spending is hard to explain in a post-Cold War world and amidst a global financial crisis. Economists would call this an “opportunity cost.” I call it human opportunities lost. Nuclear weapons budgets are especially ripe for deep cuts.


    Such weapons are useless against today’s threats to international peace and security. Their very existence is de-stabilizing: the more they are touted as indispensable, the greater is the incentive for their proliferation. Additional risks arise from accidents and the health and environmental effects of maintaining and developing such weapons.


    The time has come to re-affirm commitments to nuclear disarmament, and to ensure that this common end is reflected in national budgets, plans and institutions.


    Four years ago, I outlined a five-point disarmament proposal highlighting the need for a nuclear weapon convention or a framework of instruments to achieve this goal.


    Yet the disarmament stalemate continues. The solution clearly lies in greater efforts by States to harmonize their actions to achieve common ends. Here are some specific actions that all States and civil society should pursue to break this impasse.


    Support efforts by the Russian Federation and the United States to negotiate deep, verified cuts in their nuclear arsenals, both deployed and un-deployed.


    Obtain commitments by others possessing such weapons to join the disarmament process.


    Establish a moratorium on developing or producing nuclear weapons or new delivery systems.


    Negotiate a multilateral treaty outlawing fissile materials that can be used in nuclear weapons.


    End nuclear explosions and bring into force the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.


    Stop deploying nuclear weapons on foreign soil, and retire such weapons.


    Ensure that nuclear-weapon states report to a public U.N. repository on nuclear disarmament, including details on arsenal size, fissile material, delivery systems, and progress in achieving disarmament goals.
    Establish a Middle East zone free of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction.


    Secure universal membership in treaties outlawing chemical and biological weapons.


    Pursue parallel efforts on conventional arms control, including an arms trade treaty, strengthened controls over the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons, universal membership in the Mine Ban, Cluster Munitions, and Inhumane Weapons Conventions, and expanded participation in the U.N. Report on Military Expenditures and the U.N. Register of Conventional Arms.


    Undertake diplomatic and military initiatives to maintain international peace and security in a world without nuclear weapons, including new efforts to resolve regional disputes.


    And perhaps above all, we must address basic human needs and achieve the Millennium Development Goals. Chronic poverty erodes security. Let us dramatically cut spending on nuclear weapons, and invest instead in social and economic development, which serves the interests of all by expanding markets, reducing motivations for armed conflicts, and in giving citizens a stake in their common futures. Like nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation, such goals are essential for ensuring human security and a peaceful world for future generations.


    No development, no peace. No disarmament, no security. Yet when both advance, the world advances, with increased security and prosperity for all. These are common ends that deserve the support of all nations.

  • Nuclear Memories

    This article was originally published by the Federation of American Scientists.

    Dick DudaI was 9 years old in 1945 when the first atomic bomb was detonated above a city. I remember the radio news broadcasts about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and how my parents reacted with amazement. I didn’t know what to think.

    I was 11 years old in 1947 when I watched a double feature in a darkened movie theater— a Roy Rogers western with Andy Devine, followed by what I thought was another adventure film, a docudrama on the Manhattan Project called “The Beginning or the End.” The Saturday afternoon audience, filled mainly by school kids, was unusually subdued. This wasn’t fantasy, this was real. I didn’t say anything, but I was troubled.

    I was 26 years old in 1962 when the U.S. and the Soviet Union walked right to the brink of thermonuclear war. I remember when the Soviet ships turned around and everyone took a collective deep breath. I felt like we really dodged a bullet that time.

    I was 50 years old in 1986 when Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev met in Reykjavik, Iceland, and fumbled the greatest opportunity the world has ever had to rid nuclear weapons. Commentators assessed the summit as an ill-planned failure. I felt a deep sense of loss.

    I was 53 years old in 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell. I remember how people thought that the threat of nuclear war was over at last. No doubt about it – I felt euphoric!

    I was 65 years old in 2001 when terrorists flew two airplanes into the Twin Towers. Everyone said that the world had changed. I remember thinking, “What if it had been a nuclear bomb instead of just those planes?”

    I was 71 years old in 2007 when George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn published their celebrated Wall Street Journal Op-Ed, “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons.” I was surprised by how few people I knew were even aware of it. I thought that this could be a game changer, and I finally started to do something.

    During all those many years, I was well aware of all the effort to control the nuclear genie— the warnings by Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein, the spearheading of the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE) by Norman Cousins, the “Ban the Bomb” marches, the Nuclear Freeze movement.

    But I didn’t see how I could make a difference. And I was well aware of how quickly the progress toward nuclear disarmament faded with the end of the Cold War. The 1999 failure of the Senate to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty exemplified a decade of ever-worsening developments. Now North Korea has the bomb and the Middle East threatens to become awash with nuclear weapons.

    For the past five years, I have worked locally to promote nuclear disarmament. I know that I am only one person. At age 76, I am keenly aware that fewer and fewer people I meet have actual memories of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I don’t know how long it will be before the last nuclear bomb is dismantled. But I will always remember the people who encouraged me to do my part to make a difference – to work to reduce the threat that these weapons still pose to my children, my grandchildren, and future generations everywhere around the world.