Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: public opinion

  • Public Mobilization for a Nuclear-Free World

    This article was originally published by Foreign Policy in Focus.

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

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

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

    Supporting the Bomb

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

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

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

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

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

    Lack of Information

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

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

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

    Lessons for Peace and Disarmament Groups

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • What Has Prevented Nuclear War

    This article was originally published on the History News Network

    One of the great questions of the modern world is: Why has nuclear war not occurred since 1945?

    The conventional answer is that, thanks to fear of mutual destruction, nuclear weapons have “deterred” nuclear war. And yet, this answer fails to account for some important developments. Since 1945, nuclear powers have not waged nuclear war against non-nuclear powers. Furthermore, if nuclear weapons prevent nuclear war, it is hard to understand why nuclear powers have signed disarmament agreements or have worried (and still worry) about nuclear proliferation.

    An alternative explanation for nuclear restraint is that public opposition to nuclear war has caused government officials to step back from the brink. After all, peace groups have agitated vigorously against nuclear war and opinion polls over the years have shown that the public has viewed nuclear war with revulsion—two factors that government leaders have viewed with alarm. In addition, there is substantial evidence that underscores the decisive role of public pressure.

    In 1945, U.S. President Harry Truman had launched the atomic bombing of Japan without apparent moral qualms or influence by the public (which knew nothing of the government’s atomic bomb program). This use of nuclear weapons, Truman declared jubilantly, was “the greatest thing in history.” Consequently, five years later, when the Korean War erupted, there could well have been a repeat performance in that bloody conflict. Certainly, there seemed good military reasons for the use of nuclear weapons. On two occasions, U.S. troops were close to military defeat at the hands of non-nuclear powers. Also, there was no prospect of a nuclear counterattack by the Soviet Union, which was not participating directly in the war, had only recently developed an atomic bomb, and lacked an effective delivery system for it.

    But, thanks to burgeoning antinuclear sentiment, employing the atomic bomb in the war had become politically difficult. U.S. intelligence reported that, in Britain, there existed “widespread popular alarm concerning the possible use of the A-bomb.” From the State Department’s specialist on the Far East came a warning that use of the Bomb would cause a “revulsion of feeling” to “spread throughout Asia. . . . Our efforts to win the Asiatics to our side would be cancelled and our influence in non-Communist nations of Asia would deteriorate to an almost non-existent quantity.” Paul Nitze, the chair of the State Department’s policy planning staff, argued that, in military terms, the Bomb probably would be effective. But using it would “arouse the peoples of Asia against us.” Ultimately, then, political considerations overwhelmed military considerations, and Truman chose to reject calls by U.S. military commanders, such as General Douglas MacArthur, to win the war with nuclear weapons.

    The Eisenhower administration, too, began with a breezy sense of the opportunities afforded by U.S. nuclear weapons, promising “massive retaliation” against any outbreak of Communist aggression. But it soon came up against the limits set by popular loathing for nuclear war. According to the record of a 1956 National Security Council (NSC) meeting, when the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other administration officials called for greater flexibility in the employment of nuclear weapons, the President responded: “The use of nuclear weapons would raise serious political problems in view of the current state of world opinion.” The following May, countering ambitious proposals by Lewis Strauss (chair of the Atomic Energy Commission) and the Defense Department for nuclear war-fighting, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles told another NSC meeting, according to the minutes, that “world opinion was not yet ready to accept the general use of nuclear weapons. . . . If we resort to such a use of nuclear weapons we will, in the eyes of the world, be cast as a ruthless military power.” Dulles predicted, hopefully, “that all this would change at some point in the future, but the time had not yet come.” Although the Secretary of Defense renewed his pleas for use of nuclear weapons, Dulles remained adamant that the United States must not “get out of step with world opinion.”

    The Kennedy administration also found its options limited by the public’s distaste for nuclear war. A late 1960 Defense Department report to the President-elect, recalled one of its drafters, argued that “the political mood of the country” weighed heavily against developing a U.S. “`win’ capability” for a future nuclear war. This fear of the public response also tempered administration policy during the Cuban missile crisis, when Kennedy—as Secretary of State Dean Rusk recalled—worried about “an adverse public reaction,” including “demonstrations, peace groups marching in the streets, perhaps a divisive public debate.” In addition, even in conflicts with non-nuclear powers, U.S. policymakers felt it necessary to rule out nuclear war thanks to the stigma attached to it by the public. A nuclear power, Rusk explained years later, “would wear the mark of Cain for generations to come if it ever attacked a non-nuclear country with nuclear weapons.”

    The Vietnam War provided a particularly attractive opportunity for the U.S. government’s use of its nuclear might. Here, once more, U.S. military forces were engaged in a war with a non-nuclear nation—and, furthermore, were losing that war. And yet, as Rusk recalled, the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations deliberately “lost the war rather than ‘win’ it with nuclear weapons.” McGeorge Bundy, who served as the national security advisor to Kennedy and Johnson, maintained that the U.S. government’s decision to avoid using nuclear weapons in the Vietnam conflict did not result from fear of nuclear retaliation by the Soviet and Chinese governments, but from the terrible public reaction that a U.S. nuclear attack would provoke in other nations. Even more significant, Bundy maintained, was the prospect of public upheaval in the United States, for “no President could hope for understanding and support from his own countrymen if he used the bomb.” Looking back on the war, Richard Nixon complained bitterly that, had he used nuclear weapons in Vietnam, “the resulting domestic and international uproar would have damaged our foreign policy on all fronts.”

    And so it went in the following decades. Even the remarkably hawkish officials of the Reagan administration came up sharply against political realities. Entering office talking glibly of fighting and winning nuclear wars, they soon confronted a worldwide antinuclear uprising, undergirded by public opinion. In April 1982, shortly after a Nuclear Freeze resolution began wending its way through Congress, the President began declaring publicly: “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” He added, on that first occasion: “To those who protest against nuclear war, I’m with you.” Cynics might argue that Reagan’s rejection of nuclear war was no more than rhetoric. Nevertheless, rhetoric repeated often enough inhibits a policy reversal. And, in fact, although the Reagan administration sponsored wars in numerous places, it does not appear to have factored nuclear weapons into its battle plans. Kenneth Adelman, who directed the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency for most of the Reagan years, claimed that he “never heard anyone broach the topic of using nuclear weapons. Ever. In any setting, in any way.”

    Thus, evidence certainly exists that public pressure has prevented nuclear war. Where is the evidence that nuclear weapons have done so?

    Dr. Lawrence S. Wittner is Professor of History at the State University of New York/Albany. His latest book is Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement (Stanford University Press).

  • Risk and Nuclear Weapons

    Those of us working to eliminate the threat that nuclear weapons pose to human survival face three major barriers that a new approach attempts to overcome:

    • The public is more worried about the risk of modifying our nuclear posture than maintaining it. Even a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty is criticized as too risky by guardians of the nuclear status quo. Larger steps such as the recent efforts by Shultz, Perry, Kissinger and Nunn to pose even the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons are derided as fantasy.
    • Public interest only approaches an appropriate level when the world is on the brink of a nuclear catastrophe and fades at the first partial success. When the Cold War ended, I was horrified that public concern evaporated in the mistaken belief that the nuclear threat had been extinguished. Without an ongoing effort, it was only a matter of time before the pendulum swung back, as it is now doing, and the threat of nuclear war reared its ugly head once more.
    • A true solution to the nuclear threat involves such far-reaching changes in human thought and behavior that most people discount their ever occuring. “You can’t change human nature,” is a phrase we all have heard far too often. What naysayers miss is that these changes do not occur in one fell swoop, but rather as a process. What is impossible early on becomes feasible in the new environment produced by the first steps. Abolishing slavery and women’s suffrage, both initially derided as fools’ errands, came to be in just this fashion.

    Defusing the Nuclear Threat, as the new approach is called, is based on a simple, but surprising observation: People have a right to know the risk associated with locating a nuclear power plant near their homes and to object if they feel that risk is too high. Similarly, they should have a right to know the risk associated with nuclear deterrence and to object if they feel that risk is too high. But they cannot because that latter risk is largely unknown. The initial goal of the project is summarized in a statement endorsed by seven eminent individuals including two Nobel Laureates, a former president of Stanford University, a former Director of NSA and Deputy Director of the CIA, and which concludes:
    “We, the undersigned, therefore urgently petition the international scientific community to undertake in-depth risk analyses of nuclear deterrence and, if the results so indicate, to raise an alarm alerting society to the unacceptable risk it faces as well as initiating a second phase effort to identify potential solutions.” How do these proposed studies overcome the three barriers we face?

    • They do not change our military posture one iota and therefore cannot be criticized as “too dangerous.”
    • My preliminary analysis indicates that the current risk is literally thousands of times greater than acceptable. If the proposed in-depth studies agree even approximately, it says that society cannot go back to sleep at the first partial success.
    • Reducing risk a thousand-fold clearly cannot be done in one instantaneous act. The long-term nature of the solution as a process is almost self-evident: First find ways to halve the threat. Then halve it again, and again, and again. Thus, without ever explicitly calling for the ultimate goal of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, the world can discover if that end state is required as it journeys through ever safer levels.

    My paper “Risk Analysis of Nuclear Deterrence” has just appeared in the magazine of the national engineering honor society and provides more details. While it includes some higher mathematics, those sections can be skipped without losing the paper’s main thrust.

    Martin Hellman is Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering at Stanford and previously taught at MIT. His invention of public key cryptography is the basis of secure financial transactions on the Internet and has been honored with numerous awards, most notably election to the National Academy of Engineering, election as a Fellow of the IEEE, and being named a Marconi International Fellow.