Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: Russia

  • The Crawford Summit

    Presidents Bush and Putin will be meeting at the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas from November 13-15 at what has been billed as the Crawford Summit. One major purpose of this summit is to discuss reductions in nuclear arsenals. For a few years the Russians have been calling for reducing US and Russian nuclear arsenals to 1,500 or less strategic nuclear weapons. The US has said that it needs to evaluate its nuclear posture, and is now in the process of doing so.

    President Bush has said that he wants to move forward with reductions in nuclear arsenals, but he has tried to tie these reductions to Russian agreement on amending the Anti Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty to allow the US to conduct missile defense tests that are currently banned by the ABM Treaty. In other words, President Bush has been using reductions in nuclear arsenals as a bargaining chip to gain Russian assent to amending the ABM Treaty.

    Perhaps it is not yet clear to President Bush that significant reductions in the Russian nuclear arsenal will make the US safer. In fact, leadership by the US and Russia to eliminate all nuclear weapons, as they are obligated to do in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, would be strongly in the interests of both countries as well as the world at large.

    Why is the US so eager to amend the ABM Treaty? I would suggest that there are three major reasons. First, the US wants to use theater missile defenses to protect its forward based forces throughout the world. This will give the United States greater degrees of freedom to use its military troops anywhere in the world without concern that US bases and troops will be vulnerable to missile attacks in response.

    Second, the US wants to weaponize outer space and wants to be rid of Article V, Section 1 of the ABM Treaty in which each party to the treaty “undertakes not to develop, test, or deploy ABM systems or components which are sea-based, air-based, space-based or mobile land-based.” The US views missile defenses as a way to develop and test space based weaponry.

    Third, amending the ABM Treaty will allow the US to transfer billions of taxpayer dollars to defense industries to develop, test and deploy missile defenses — defenses that have little potential for actually protecting Americans from either major threats such as terrorism or virtually non-existent threats such as missile attacks from so-called rogue states.

    If the Russians do not go along with an amendment to the ABM Treaty, the Bush administration has already announced that it plans to withdraw from the treaty a treaty that Vladimir Putin as well as most of our allies throughout the world consider the cornerstone of strategic stability.

    US withdrawal from the ABM Treaty would be viewed throughout the world as a symbol of US arrogance and unilateralism. It would certainly have negative effects on our ability to hold together a coalition against terrorism, on future cooperative efforts with Russia and China, and on the prospects for nuclear disarmament.

    *David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • Letter to President Vladimir Putin

    Letter to President Vladimir Putin

    Dear President Putin,

    Please stand firm on your position on upholding the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. You are correct in stating that it remains the cornerstone of global stability, and many knowledgeable Americans understand this.

    The Bush administration wants to eliminate Article V, Section 1 of the Treaty in order to develop a comprehensive ABM system, but with particular emphasis on space-based weaponry that will lead to a new arms race in space. This would be yet another disaster for the prospects of life on our fragile planet.

    If September 11th has taught us anything, it is that even the most powerful nations are vulnerable to those who hate and are wedded to violence. September 11th provides yet another warning that human beings and nuclear weapons cannot co exist.

    Please use the occasion of the Crawford Summit with President Bush to call for implementation of a plan to eliminate all nuclear weapons from Earth in accord with existing obligations of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, beginning with immediate major reductions of nuclear weapons into the hundreds rather than thousands. I also urge you to propose that all nuclear weapons be removed from hair-trigger alert. Finally, I urge you to put forward immediately a World Treaty Banning Space-Based Weapons.

    This is a time that calls for bold proposals. Never has global leadership been more important. History has presented you with an opportunity to speak for humanity. Please speak to the world’s people in a clear and unambiguous voice for ending the nuclear weapons threat to humanity and for preserving outer space as a zone free of all weaponization.

    I am certain that you have the courage and commitment to succeed in accomplishing these goals.

    David Krieger, President Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

  • U.S. and Russian Nuclear Defense Strategies are Fatally Flawed – They Can’t be Used Without Self-Destruction

    Nuclear Defense Strategies – The nuclear arsenals of the United States and Russia, left-over from the Cold War, present the world with its greatest danger. These two arsenals have 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons. The nuclear defense strategies for Russia and the U.S. are similar. Within minutes upon receiving instruction to fire, either one or both countries can launch thousands of missiles. These strategies are fatally flawed because launching thousands of nuclear weapons could destroy all countries including themselves.

     

    Global Danger – In a study made by the World Health Organization, they found that a nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia could kill one billion people outright. In addition, it could produce a Nuclear Winter that would probably kill an additional one billion people. It is possible that more than two billion people, one-third of all the humans on Earth, would be destroyed almost immediately in the aftermath of a global thermonuclear war. The rest of humanity would be reduced to prolonged agony and barbarism. These findings are from a study chaired by Sune K. Bergstrom (the 1982 Nobel laureate in Physiology and Medicine) nearly 20 years ago. (1)

     

    Subsequent studies have had similar findings. Professor Alan Robock says, “Everything from purely mathematical models to forest fire studies shows that even a small nuclear war would devastate the earth. (2)

     

    Rich Small’s work, financed by the Defense Nuclear Agency, suggests that burning cities would produce a particularly troublesome variety of smoke. The smoke of forest fires is bad enough. But the industrial targets of cities are likely to produce a rolling, black smoke, a denser shield against incoming sunlight.(3)

     

    The late Dr. Carl Sagan and his associates in their studies found that a nuclear explosive force equal to 100 million tons of dynamite could create a global nuclear winter. (4) The U.S. and Russia each have on alert a nuclear explosive power more than 10 times greater than that needed to create a nuclear winter.

     

    Nuclear explosions with temperatures of 3,000 to 4,000 degrees centigrade at ground zero could start giant flash fires leaving large cities and forests burning with no one to fight them. Nuclear explosions can also lift an enormous quantity of fine soil particles into the atmosphere, creating more than l00,000 tons of fine, dense, dust for every megaton exploded on a surface. (5) This dust would add to the darkness and cold.

     

    Explosive Power Compared – Nuclear weapons are far more powerful than is generally realized.

     

    *The terrorist bomb that was detonated outside an office building in Oklahoma City in 1995 killed 168 people. This fertilizer and fuel bomb weighted 3 and 1/2 tons. (6)

     

    * A small nuclear warhead, that one person can lift can have an explosive power equal to 40,000 tons of dynamite, or 8,000 trucks each carrying 5 tons of dynamite, or 3 Hiroshima size bombs

     

    *One average size U.S. strategic nuclear warhead has an explosive force equal to 50,000 trucks each carrying 5 tons of dynamite.

     

    *If 1,000 of the average size 0U.S. warheads were used they could produce an explosive force equal to 50 million trucks each carrying 5 tons of dynamite.

     

    *One average size Russian strategic nuclear warhead has an explosive power equal to 40,000 trucks each carrying 5 tons of dynamite. (7)

     

    Leader’s Concern – General Lee Butler (USAF), former head of the US Strategic Command, said, “… twenty nuclear weapons would suffice to destroy the twelve largest Russian cities with a total population of twenty-five million people and therefore that arsenals in the hundreds, much less in the thousands, can serve no meaningful strategic objective.” (8) Twenty nuclear warheads is less than one percent of the nuclear weapons that the U.S. has set for hair-trigger release.

     

    Robert McNamara, former Secretary of Defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, says there was no long-range war plan. Neither Russia nor the U.S. wanted to get behind. Each side strove to build the greatest number of nuclear weapons. More importantly, he said, the totals far exceeded the requirements of any conceivable war plan. (9)

     

    Accidental Nuclear War – There have been at least three times in the past that the U.S. and Russia almost launched to false warnings. Each time they came within less than 10 minutes of launching before learning the warnings were false.

     

    * In l979, a U.S. training tape showing a massive attack was accidentally played.

     

    * In l983, a Soviet satellite mistakenly signaled the launch of a U.S. missile.

     

    * In 1995, Russia almost launched its missiles because a Norwegian rocket studying the northern lights was mistakenly taken as the start of a nuclear attack. (10)

     

    False warnings are a fact of life. For example, during an 18-month period in 1979-80 the U.S. had 147 false alarms in its strategic warning system. (11)

     

    Casper Weinberger, when he was President Reagan’s Defense Secretary, said that since an anti-ballistic missile defense could require decisions within seconds there would be no time for White House approval. Hitting a missile having a head start and going thousands of miles per hour does not allow much time to assess whether a warning is false or not. (12) Do we want computers determining our fate?

     

    Action – All countries with nuclear weapons need to assess what would be the consequences of their use, including possibility of self-destruction. Reporting these findings to the public could help build a better understanding of the need to rid the world of nuclear weapons.

     

    General Butler has said the world can immediately and inexpensively improve security by taking nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert. (13)

     

    Reference and Notes

     

    1. Sagan, Carl. The Nuclear Winter, Council for a Livable World Education, Boston, MA, 1983.

     

    2. Robock, Alan. “New models confirm nuclear winter,’ Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist, September 1989, pp.32-35.. .

     

    3. Blum, Deborah, Scientists try to predict nuclear future from forest fires, The Sacramento Bee. Nov. 28, 1987.

     

    4. Sagan, Op. Cit.

     

    5. Ibid.

     

    6. Hamilton, Arnold. “McVeigh forgoes 2 final appeals,“ Contra Coast Times, June 8, 2001.

     

    7. Norris, Robert S. and Arkin, William. “U.S. Nuclear Weapons Stockpile,”’ Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, July/Aug. 96.

     

    8. Butler, Lee. Talk at the University of Pittsburgh , May13, 1999.

     

    9. McNamara, Robert. Blundering Into Disaster, Pantheon Books, New, York, 1986.

     

    10. Babst, Dean. “Preventing An Accidental Armageddon,” Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Feb., 2000.

     

    11. Hart, Senator Gary and Goldwater, Senator Barry, Recent False Alerts from the Nation’s Missile Attack Warning System, a report to the Senate Armed Forces, 9 October, 1980, pp. 4 & 5.

     

    12. Strategic Defense and Anti-Satellite Weapons, hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, April 25, 1984, pp. 69-74.

     

    13. Schell, Jonathan, “The Gift Of Time,” The Nation, Feb. 8, 1998, p. 58.

  • How Countries Can Work Together to Rid the World of Its Greatest Danger

    The US and Russia each have about 2,000 powerful nuclear weapons set for hair-trigger release. The enormous nuclear overkills of these weapons present the greatest danger to all countries.1 While groups working to rid the world of nuclear weapons such as Abolition 2000 are growing in size and number of supporters, still, much more remains to be done to achieve a nuclear free world. Hopefully, as more nations whose leaders become aware of what is the greatest danger to all countries, then the more they will work toward eliminating nuclear weapons. Their leadership could be invaluable.

    Nuclear Weapons Overkills

    The US and Russia each maintain enormous nuclear weapons overkills. A massive nuclear attack, whether intentional or accidental, by Russia or the US or both, could destroy all countries by turning the world into a dark, cold, silent, radioactive planet. Russia and the U.S. have more than 90 percent of the world’s strategic nuclear weapons.2

    Explosive Power – A nuclear warhead can be far more destructive than is generally realized. One average size U.S. strategic nuclear warhead on an Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles is:

    • Equal to 250,000 tons of dynamite (250 kilotons).3
    • Or 50,000 World War II type bombers each carrying 5 tons of bombs.
    • Or 20 Hiroshima size nuclear warheads.
    • One average size Russian strategic nuclear warhead has an explosive power equal to 400,000 tons of dynamite or 80,000 bombers each carrying 5 tons of bombs. The terrorists’ truck bombs that exploded at the NY World Trade Center and in Oklahoma City each had an explosive force equal to about 5 to 10 tons of dynamite.4

    Out Of Touch With Reality – When General Lee Butler (USAF Ret.1994) first became head of the US Strategic Air Command, he went to the Omaha headquarters to inspect the list of targets in the former Soviet Union. Butler was shocked to find dozens of warheads aimed at Moscow (as the Soviets once targeted Washington). At the time that the target list was contrived, US planners had no grasp of the explosions, firestorms and radiation effects from such an overkill. We were totally out of touch with reality. Butler said, “The war plan, its calculations, and consequences never took into account anything but cost and damage. Radiation was never considered.” 5

    If one average sized strategic nuclear bomb hit Washington DC today, in a flash it could vaporize Congress, the White House, the Supreme Court, the Pentagon, and destroy many federal programs like Social Security. If another nuclear bomb hit New York City, it could vaporize the United Nations headquarters, international communication and transportation centers, the New York Stock Exchange, etc. And that would only take two of the more than 2,000 warheads that Russia has ready for hair-trigger release.

    One Percent Is Too Much – General Butler said, “..it is imperative to recognize that all numbers of nuclear weapons above zero are completely arbitrary; that against an urban target one weapon represents an unacceptable horror; that twenty weapons would suffice to destroy the twelve largest Russian cities with a total population of twenty-five million people — one-sixth of the entire Russian population; and therefore that arsenals in the hundreds, much less in the thousands, can serve no meaningful strategic objective.” 6

    Twenty nuclear warheads is less than one percent of the nuclear weapons that the US has set for hair-trigger release.

    Nuclear Winter – A nuclear exchange between Russia and the U.S. could destroy all 192 nations in the world by filling the sky with very dense smoke and fine dust thereby creating a dark, cold, hungry, radioactive planet. The late Dr. Carl Sagan and his associates estimated that a nuclear winter could be created with a nuclear explosive force equal to 100 million tons of dynamite. Such a force could ignite thousands of fires.7

    The US and Russia each have a nuclear explosive force many times more powerful than that needed to create a very dark, global nuclear winter. Nuclear explosions can produce heat intensities of 3,000 to 4,000 degrees Centigrade at ground zero. Nuclear explosions over cities could start giant flash fires leaving large cities and forests burning with no one to stop them. Nuclear explosions can lift an enormous quantity of fine soil particles into the atmosphere, more than 100,000 tons of fine, dense, dust for every megaton exploded on a surface.8

    Why Nuclear Overkill

    It is hard to believe that nations would build a defense on something as crazy as the huge nuclear overkills that exist. One factor that allows the creation of suicidal overkills is that most people do not like to think about the possibility of mass destruction. While this reluctance is readily understandable, it allows the following factors to dictate humanity’s drift toward extinction: building and maintaining nuclear weapons provides profits and wages; nuclear weaponry is a complex technical subject; much of the nuclear weapons work is done in secrecy; and the end of the Cold War has given some the idea that the danger is past.

    Hopefully, if the leaders of governments and their staff start widely discussing the danger, and progress is made in getting rid of nuclear weapons, the world will be glad to join in supporting further agreements to rid the world entirely of nuclear weapons.

    Accidental Nuclear War

    The danger of launching based on a false warning could be growing. During a major part of each day Russia’s early warning system is no longer able to receive warnings. It has so decayed that Moscow is unable to detect US intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launches for at least seven hours a day, US officials and experts say. Russia also is no longer able to spot missiles fired from US submarines. At most, only four of Russia’s 21 early-warning satellites were still working.

    This means Russian commanders have no more than 17 hours — and perhaps as little as 12 hours — of daily coverage of nuclear-tipped ICBMs in silos in Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota and Wyoming. Against Trident submarines, the Russians basically have no warning at all.9

    What makes the current situation so dangerous is that in the heat of a serious crisis Russian military and civilian leaders could misread a non-threatening rocket launch or ambiguous data as a nuclear first strike and launch a salvo.

    There have been at least three times in the past that the US and Russia almost launched to false warnings. Each time they came within less than 10 minutes of launching before learning the warnings were false. In 1979, a US training tape showing a massive attack was accidentally played.10 In 1983, a Soviet satellite mistakenly signaled the launch of a US missile.11 In 1995, Russia almost launched its nuclear missiles because a Norwegian rocket studying the northern lights was mistakenly interpreted as the start of a nuclear attack.12

    False warnings are a fact of life. During an 18-month period in 1979-80, the US had 147 false alarms in its strategic warning system. Two of those warnings lasted three minutes and one lasted six minutes before found to be false.13 How is Russia handling false alarms today? There is no certain nor reassuring answer.

    Low Awareness of the Danger

    There is a great need to increase public awareness of the danger in order to provide broad, long-term understanding and support for arms agreements that would rid the world of nuclear weapons. The following actions by the US and Russia show low awareness of the current danger. Only 71 out of 435 US Congressional representatives signed a motion calling for nuclear weapons to be taken off of hair-trigger alert.14 Former President Boris Yeltsin said on Dec. 10, 1999 when pressured about the Chechnya conflict, “It seems Mr. Clinton has forgotten that Russia is a great power that possesses a nuclear arsenal.”15 The US Senate rejected ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in October 1999.16 Moscow leaders say that the US arguments for changing the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty will provoke an arms race.17

    Despite US and Russian nuclear weapons presenting the greatest danger to all nations, reference to them in the mass media is not commensurate with the magnitude of the danger. Acting Russian President Putin signed into law a new national security strategy in January that lowers the threshold on first-use of nuclear weapons.18 And at arms control talks in Geneva this January, the US opposed a Russian suggestion that each country cut the size of its nuclear arsenal to 1,500 warheads. James Runis, a US State Department spokesman, said a lower warhead figure would meet opposition from US generals, who would have to adjust their nuclear doctrine.19

    How confident should we be with defense planners who have not taken into consideration the self-destructive consequences of their current strategies?

    Drawing Attention To The Danger

    One way to draw the world’s attention to overkill danger is for the leaders of nations to ask the following questions of the US and Russia:

    “Why does Russia and the U.S. each maintain far more nuclear weapons than either can use without destroying all countries including their own?”

    “Can they refute any of the consequences of nuclear weapons use described above?”

    “If not, what are they doing to reduce the possibility of the accidental destruction of all?”

    The more that countries ask the US and Russia these questions, the more difficult it will be for the US and Russia to ignore them. This could be especially so if each nation’s leaders share copies of their questions and the answers they receive with the news media.

    General George Lee Butler has said that the world can immediately and inexpensively improve security by taking nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert.20This action could also stop sending the message that we do not trust each other and could provide a better atmosphere for reaching an agreement in all nuclear arms reduction talks.
    ——————————————————————————–

    Reference and Notes

    1.Blair, Bruce C., Feiveson, Harold A. and Huppe, Frank.. “Taking Nuclear Weapons off Hair-Trigger Alert,” Scientific American, Nov 97, p.78.

    2. Norris, Robert S. and Arkin, William, “U.S. Nuclear Weapons Stockpile,” Bulletin Of The Atomic Scientists, July/Aug 96. (The percent of all nuclear weapons that belong to the U.S. and Russian was calculated from this source.)

    3. Ibid.

    4. Babst, Dean. “Preventing An Accidental Armageddon,” Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Santa Barbara, California, Sep 99.

    5. Grady, Sandy. “Can Nuclear Genie Be Stuffed Back In The Bottle,” San Jose Mercury News, Dec.8, 1996.

    6. Butler, Lee. Talk at the University of Pittsburgh, May 13, 1999, p. 12.

    7. Sagan, Carl. The Nuclear Winter, Council for a Livable World Education Fund, Boston, MA, 1983. 8. Ibid

    9. Russia Update, The Sunflower No. 32 Feb 00, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Santa Barbara, Calif..

    10. Phillips, Alan E. “Matter of Preventive Medicine,” Peace Research, August 1998, p 204.

    11. “Twenty Minutes From Nuclear War,” The Sunflower, No. 17 Oct 98, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Santa Barbara, Calif.

    12. Blair, Op. Cit.

    13. Hart, Senator Gary and Goldwater, Senator Barry; Recent False Warning Alerts from the Nation’s Missile Attack Warning System, a report to the Senate Armed Forces Committee, 9 October 1980, pp. 4&5.

    14. The Sunflower, No. 31 Jan 00, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Santa Barbara, Calif.

    15. Burns, Robert. “U.S., Russian relations get chillier,” Contra Costa Times, Dec. 10, 1999.

    16. The Sunflower, No. 31 Jan 00, Op. Cit.

    17. Gordon, Michael R. “Russia rejects call to amend ABM treaty,” Contra Costa Times, Oct. 21, 1999.

    18. “New Russian Defense Plan Lowers Threshold for First Use,” The Sunflower No. 32 Feb 00, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. Santa Barbara, Calif.

    19. “U.S. Opposes Extra Russian Arms Cut, ” Reuters News Service, Jan. 28, 2000.

    20. Schell, Jonathan, “The Gift Of Time,” The Nation, Feb. 9, 1998, p. 56.

     

  • Our Own Worst Enemy

    The U.S and Russia have so many nuclear weapons that if used, either alone could destroy humanity. The Center for Defense Information said, “It is folly, verging on madness, to perpetuate the Cold War nuclear confrontation at levels that threaten the survival of human kind.” (1)

    How do we explain such a crazy situation? Consider the following. When thinking about nuclear weapons matters, it is much easier and less hideous to think about them in terms of numbers rather than the consequences of their use. As a result, consequence of use is generally ignored. In the arms reduction talks, the talks are in term of having equal numbers even if we can’t use them all.

    One way around the stalled nuclear arms reduction talks is to think about the relationship between the number of nuclear weapons and consequences of use. The following provides a guide for such thinking. The more nuclear weapons the greater the self-destruction.

    One Nuclear Bomb – One average size U.S. strategic nuclear warhead has an explosive power equal to 25,000 trucks each carrying 10 tons of dynamite. One average size Russian strategic nuclear warhead has an explosive power equal to 40,000 trucks each carrying 10 tons of dynamite. In order to give an idea of how destructive these warheads can be, compare them with the destruction created by the truck bombs that were exploded by terrorists in the NY World Trade Center and in Oklahoma City. Each terrorists truck bomb had about 10 tons of dynamite.(2)

    Twenty Nuclear Bombs – If 20 nuclear bombs, less than one percent of the nuclear weapons that the US and Russia each have set for hair trigger release, were used it would be enough to destroy each other. If one nuclear bomb hit Washington, D.C. it could vaporize Congress, the White House, the Supreme Court and the Pentagon. If another nuclear bomb hit New York City it could vaporize the United Nations headquarters, communication centers for NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox and the New York Stock Exchange. And that is only two of the twenty. Nuclear explosions would also leave the areas highly radioactive and unusable for years. Where the radioactive fallout from the mushroom clouds would land in the world would depend upon the direction of the wind and rain conditions at the time of the explosion.

    General Lee Butler USAF commanded the US Strategic Air Command until it was folded into the U.S. Strategic Command, which he then commanded until he retired. General Butler said, “That twenty nuclear weapons would suffice to destroy the twelve largest Russian cities with a total population of twenty-five million people – one-sixth of the entire Russian population and therefore that arsenals in the hundreds, much less in the thousands, can serve no meaningful strategic objective. From this prospective the START process is completely bankrupt. The START II ceiling of 3000 to 3500 operational warheads to be achieved by the year 2007 is wholly out of touch with reality.” (3)

    General Butler said,”It is imperative to recognize that all numbers of nuclear weapons above zero are completely arbitrary; that against an urban target one weapon represents an unacceptable horror.” (4)

    Four Hundred Nuclear Bombs – If 400 nuclear bombs, less than ten percent of the nuclear weapons the U.S. and Russia have set for hair trigger release, were used they could destroy everyone on earth. The late Dr. Carl Sagan and his associates, in their extensive studies of nuclear weapons use, found that a nuclear explosive force equal to 100 million tons of dynamite (100 megatons) could produce enough smoke and fine dust to create a Nuclear Winter over the world leaving few survivors. (5)

    A nuclear bomb blast can produce heat intensities of 3,000 to 4,000 degrees Centigrade at ground zero. This could start giant flash fires leaving large cities and surrounding area burning with no one to fight them. The firing of 400 nuclear explosions can lift an enormous quantity of fine soil particles into the atmosphere – more than 100,000 tons of fine dust for every megaton exploded in a surface burst. If there were any survivors they would have to contend with radioactive fallout carbon monoxide, cyanides, dioxins, furans, and increased ozone burnout. (6)

    Actions That Can Be Taken

    General Butler USAF (Ret. 1994) said the world can immediately and inexpensively improve security by taking nuclear weapons off of hair-trigger alert. (7) This action should also provide a better atmosphere for reaching agreements in the arms reduction talks.

    There are very important positive forces at work for peace. Vice President Al Gore and Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin for the past five years has been chairing the Joint Commission on Economic and Technological Cooperation. The Commission has grown into a bilateral government conglomerate, with officials at many levels working on problems of energy, health, agriculture, investment, space and the environment. (8)

    The way the U.S. and Russia are planning on working together during the transition to the year 2000 to guard against any false alerts that might be triggered by Y2K in the warning system, is also very encouraging. (9) Let us hope they can continue to work together after the first of the year until there are no more nuclear weapons.

    “There is no doubt that, if the people of the world were more fully aware of the inherent danger of nuclear weapons and the consequences of their use, they would reject them.” This conclusion appeared in the 1996 report of the Canberra Commisson on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, a group of the world’s nuclear weapon experts. (10)

    The creation of a Consequence Study Center within the U.N., in which many countries share in the studies, could help everybody become more fully aware of the consequences of nuclear weapon use and better understand the need to rid the world of them.

    Notes and References

    1. Smith, Daniel; Stobhl, Rachel; and Carroll, Eugene E, “Jump-START: A way Ahead in Nuclear Arms Reduction,” The Defense Monitor, Vol. XXVIII, No. 5, 1999. Washiington, D.C.

    2. Babst, Dean V. “Preventing An Accidental Armagedon,” Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Sept. 1999.

    3. Butler, Lee. Talk at the University of Pittsburgh, May 13, 1999, p.12.

    4. Ibid.

    5. Sagan, Carl. The Nuclear Winter, Council for a Livable World Education Fund, Boston, MA, 1983.

    6. Ibid.

    7. Schell, Jonathan, “The Gift Of Time,” The Nation, 2/9, 1998, p.56.

    8. Lippman, Thomas W. “Gore Carves Unique Post With U.S.-Russia Collaboration,” Washington Post, Washington, D.C., March 14, 1998.

    9. Burns, Robert. “Russia, U.S. set Y2K missile vigil,” The Contra Costa Times, Sept. 11, 1999.

    10. Green, Robert D. “Zero Nuclear Weapons,” Middle Power Initiative, Cambridge. Mass., 1998, p. 8.

    *Dean Babst is a retired government research scientist and Coordinator of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Accidental Nuclear War Studies Program. In the development of this article, appreciation is extended for the helpful suggestions of David Krieger, President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Bob Aldridge who heads the Pacific Life Research Center, and Andy Baltzo, the Founder of the Mt. Diablo (California) Peace Center.

  • The US-Russian Relationship: Shooting Ourselves in the Foot

    Russia proposed, in August meetings with US arms control negotiators, that each country agree to cut its supply of missile-ready nuclear bombs from 5,000 down to 1,500 strategic nuclear weapons. The Russian offer would allow for a full accounting of all warheads and provide for early de-alerting of bombs poised at hair-trigger readiness, which would considerably ratchet down the nuclear danger to our planet.

    Were the US to follow through on this generous Russian proposal, we would have an extraordinary opportunity to bring all the nuclear weapons states to the negotiating table for a treaty to ban the bomb, just as the world has banned biological and chemical weapons. France, UK, China, Israel, India and Pakistan all have less than 500 warheads in their respective arsenals and are not prepared to come to the table so long as the US and Russia have stockpiles of bombs which number in the tens of thousands.

    The US response has been appalling. Seeking to squeeze the final bitter cup of humiliation from Russia, which is still smarting from the expansion of NATO up to the Russian border, the continued unilateral bombing of Iraq without UN approval, and the unauthorized NATO bombing of Yugoslavia without Security Council sanction, the Clinton administration persists in demanding that Russia yield to our scheme to abrogate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and move full speed ahead with “Son of Star Wars”.

    It is little reported that the Bush administration promised Gorbachev that if Russia did not oppose the admission of a reunified Germany into NATO when the Berlin wall crumbled ten years ago, we would not expand NATO. Nor is it widely known that the US Committee to Expand NATO, which lobbied furiously on the Hill to disregard our pledge to Russia, was chaired by the Vice-President of Lockheed-Martin, working demonically to expand its lethal market to Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. NATO’s 50th Anniversary Summit last April was hosted by corporate sponsors, including Boeing, Raytheon, and the like, who paid up to $250,000 to mingle and peddle their deadly wares to the 19 Foreign Ministers in attendance.

    These merchants of death are driving the Star Wars revival as well. In an illustration of a laser beam from space zapping a target, the US Space Command’s report, Vision for 2020, unashamedly trumpets, “US Space Command dominating the space dimensions of military operations to protect US interests and investment. Integrating Space Forces into warfighting capabilities across the full spectrum of conflict”. There is no way that Russia will cooperate with us to eliminate nuclear weapons while it is unable to match the billions of US dollars being poured into the militarization of space. Ironically, the greatest threat to our national security today is the Russian nuclear arsenal. How long will Americans continue to allow the ignorant boys with the dangerous toys to play Russian roulette with the fate of the earth? Who’s minding the store?

    Write to President Clinton, your Senators, your Member of Congress, the new Presidential candidates. Urge them to take up, in good faith, the Russian offer to go to 1500 warheads and to give up the warped and imperial dream of dominating space with a new arms race to the heavens. This may be our last chance to reap the benefits of the peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union.

    * Alice Slater is President of the Global Resource Action Center for the Environment (GRACE) and a founder of Abolition 2000, a global network working for a treaty to ban the bomb.

  • NATO’s Expansion: Provocation, Not Leadership

    NATO claims that by bringing Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic into the 16-member Organization, the new NATO will “meet the challenges of the 21st century.” But 50 American former Senators, diplomats and officials maintain that NATO expansion would be “a policy error of historic proportions.” George Kennan, the father of the U.S. containment policy on the Soviet Union, says: “Expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era.”

    Why is NATO so determined to enlarge? Why is the opposition so strong? Why is the U.S. Senate rushing to judgment on such a controversial step?

    I am an opponent of NATO expansion. I see the expansion of a nuclear-armed Alliance up to Russia’s borders as provocative, not an act of leadership for peace. In fact, NATO’s expansion undermines the struggle for peace.

    I want to set out my reasons in three main categories: instilling fear in Russia; setting back nuclear disarmament; and undermining the United Nations.

    Instilling Fear In Russia

    It is claimed that the idea of NATO expansion started with the leaders of Central and Eastern Europe who wanted to look West in confidence rather than East in fear. President Clinton was impressed with this stance and U.S. policy set out reasons for widening the scope of the American-European security connection.

    NATO expansion would respond to three strategic challenges: to enhance the relationship between the U.S. and the enlarging democratic Europe; to engage a still evolving Russia in a cooperative relationship with Europe; and to reinforce the habits of democracy and the practice of peace in Central Europe.

    Secretary of State Madeleine Albright set out the case cogently: “Now the new NATO can do for Europe’s east what the old NATO did for Europe’s west: vanquish old hatreds, promote integration, create a secure environment for prosperity, and deter violence in the regions where two world wars and the Cold War began.”

    Russia’s early objections to NATO expansion were met by NATO’s assurances that it wanted a strong, stable and enduring partnership with Russia based on the Founding Act on Mutual Relations. Russia would be consulted; a Russian military representative arrived in Brussels; the NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council began meeting at the ministerial level. NATO insisted it was moving away from forward defense planning and reducing its military capability.

    But that is not what Russian leaders see. They maintain that, despite Moscow’s disbanding of the Warsaw Pact, deeper reductions in nuclear and conventional forces than in the West, the hasty withdrawal of half a million troops from comfortable barracks in Central Europe to tent camps in Russian fields, the most powerful military Alliance in the world started moving toward Russian borders.

    Offered only membership in a limited “Partnership for Peace” rather than full membership in the new NATO, Russia is now having a much harder time achieving the goals of Russian democrats.

    Russians are little impressed with Western benign assurances. And their apprehension increases at the prospect of more East and Central European countries joining NATO in the next expansion wave. Worst of all, they fear the entry of the three Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania—Russia’s intimate neighbors—into NATO. A Charter of Partnership has already been signed between the U.S. and the three Baltic nations in which Washington has promised to do everything possible to get them ready to join NATO.

    How can the West expect the Russians, a proud people who have suffered the ravages of war throughout the 20th century, to calmly accept such isolation? They see a ganging-up of nations against Russia as a travesty on the end of the Cold War.

    Why, Russians ask, cannot the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) be the guarantor of security for the whole of Europe? The OSCE was started a quarter of a century ago to serve as a multilateral forum for dialogue and negotiation between East and West. As a regional arrangement under Chapter VIII of the UN Charter, the OSCE was established as a primary instrument for early warning, conflict prevention and crisis management in Europe. In the Charter of Paris for a New Europe, the OSCE was called upon to contribute to managing the historic change in Europe and respond to the new challenges of the post-Cold War period. It was believed that the OSCE would replace NATO as the principal security watchdog in Europe. Russia would like to have NATO subservient to the OSCE. But in NATO’s resurgence, the OSCE is fading.

    Why? One reason is because all states in the OSCE have equal status and decisions are made on the basis of consensus. This does not sit well with the lone superpower in the world whose military might exceeds the combined power of most of Europe.

    Why should the U.S.— exercising its military might through dominance of an expanding NATO — create such a permanent source of friction with Russia? NATO expansion is a backward step in drawing Russia into the community of nations.

    The expansion process should be stopped and alternative actions taken:

    • Open the European Union to all the countries of Europe
    • Develop a cooperative NATO-Russian relationship that implements arms reductions and builds trading relationships
    • Setting Back Nuclear Disarmament
    • The setting back of nuclear disarmament is the most serious consequence of NATO expansion. Global security will suffer. In fact, it is NATO’s insistence that “nuclear forces continue to play an essential role in NATO strategy” that poses such a threat to peace in the 21st century

    The nuclear weapons situation in the world is at a critical stage. Nearly a decade after the end of the Cold War, more than 35,000 nuclear weapons remain in the world. No new nuclear negotiations are taking place; the Conference on Disarmament is paralyzed. The Russian Duma, fearing NATO’s expansion, has not ratified START II; START III is immobilized. Some Russian politicians and militarists, concerned about Russia’s crumbling conventional force structure, are once again talking of nuclear weapons as a vital line of defense for Russia. Even if START II were ratified, there would still be at least 17,000 nuclear weapons of all kinds remaining in 2007. More than 8,500 will be in Russia.

    Under Gorbachev, Russia started to move down the road to nuclear disarmament, starting with a no-first-use pledge and other unilateral moves. When he came to power, Boris Yeltsin projected a sweeping foreign policy on democracy, a market economy, the slashing of weapons, a pan-European collective defense system and even “a global system for protection of the world community.” “A new world order based on the primacy of international law is coming,” Yeltsin said.

    Such talk has ceased as Russia, ever more desperate for hesitant Western financial assistance, became mired in constant economic and political crises. Instead of offering a 1990s Marshall Plan-scale of help to Russia (which would be in the economic and political interests of the West, not least in cleaning up the “loose nukes” peril), the West offers an expanded NATO. Since Russia so desperately needs the new eighth seat at the G7 Economic Summit, its protests, though not its resentments, are weakened.

    Despite the indefinite extension of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the signing of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), a new technology race in the quest for more innovative nuclear weapons, led by the U.S., has broken out. Since the U.S. so clearly intends to keep producing better designed nuclear weapons, there is virtually no hope that other nations will forego seeking the technology to allow them to keep up with this race. The world is poised to enter the 21st century in a “cold peace” atmosphere in which the CTBT will go unratified by some of the required states and the NPT may begin to unravel.

    The continued retention of nuclear weapons by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council who insist that they are essential to their security and that of their allies, while denying the same right to others, is inherently unstable. This is an essential point made by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) whose unanimous call for the conclusion of nuclear weapons negotiations continues to be rejected by the Western NWS and the bulk of NATO.

    NATO’s continued deployment of nuclear weapons in Europe, even at reduced levels, along with a refusal to respect the ICJ and enter into comprehensive negotiations, is in direct violation of the pledge made by the Nuclear Weapons States at the time of the indefinite extension of the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1995: to pursue with determination “systematic and progressive efforts to reduce nuclear weapons globally, with the ultimate goal of eliminating those weapons.”

    To lessen fears of the growth of a nuclear-armed Alliance, NATO insists that it has “no plan, no need and no intention” to station nuclear weapons on the territory of new members. That is not the point. Not stationing nuclear weapons in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic does nothing to get them out of Western European countries. Nothing less than the removal of all of NATO’s nuclear weapons from all of Europe will suffice to demonstrate NATO’s sincerity.

    Though NATO operates in great secrecy, it is clear that the Alliance has no intention of renouncing nuclear weapons, is determined to maintain a nuclear war-fighting capability, and is prepared to use low-yield nuclear warheads first. It is unacceptable that NATO even refuses to release the Terms of Reference used for its current review of the Strategic Concept.

    The expansion of such a nuclear-armed Alliance is not an aid but a challenge to the development of peaceful relations with Russia. A nuclear NATO sets back peace.

    Undermining the United Nations

    The evolution of a world system is imperative if civilized life is to continue in the coming millennium. The United Nations is the essential centre-piece of that system. Its over-arching purpose is to maintain international peace and security. For this reason, the Security Council is given strong powers to enforce its decisions.

    But the UN is undermined by military alliances that threaten force as a standing policy. The long years of East-West animosity during the Cold War virtually immobilized the UN’s efforts to maintain peace. In despair during one of the worst moments of the Cold War, former UN Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar castigated the nuclear superpowers for their militarism, contrasting it to world poverty of vast proportions—”a deprivation inexplicable in terms either of available resources or the money and ingenuity spent on armaments and war.” He criticized governments for ignoring their own signatures on the UN Charter: “We are perilously near to a new international anarchy.”

    Despite the end of the Cold War, the world still spends $800 billion a year on the military, most of this amount is spent by the U.S. and its NATO allies. NATO expansion will send arms expenditures even higher. NATO has already said that new members will have to make a “military contribution.”

    Estimates of the cost of NATO expansion vary from $27 billion to several hundred billion dollars over the next decade, though the U.S. Administration, fearful of a taxpayers’ backlash, has been playing down the U.S. share of the bill. Whatever the final cost, the many billions of dollars to be devoted to new military hardware, thus enriching the leading arms merchants of the world, is a direct theft from the fifth of humanity that is poor and marginalized and that needs but modest investment in their economic and social development to stabilize regional conditions. This is the old anarchy writ new.

    The UN has shown time and again that promoting disarmament and development at the same time enhances security. In the post-Cold War era, human security does not come from the barrel of a gun but from the quality of life that economic and social development underpins.

    Sustainable development needs huge amounts of investment in scientific research, technological development, education and training, infrastructure development and the transfer of technology. Investment in these structural advances is urgently needed to stop carbon dioxide poisoning of the atmosphere and the depletion of the earth’s biological resources such as the forest, wetlands and animal species now under attack. But the goals for sustainable development set out in the 1992 Earth Summit’s major document, Agenda 21, are blocked by political inertia, which countenances continued high military spending.

    It is clear, as the Director-General of UNESCO put it, that “we cannot simultaneously pay the price of war and the price of peace.” Budgetary priorities need to be realigned in order to direct financial resources of enhancing life, not producing death. A transformation of political attitudes is needed to build a “culture of peace.” A new political attitude would say No to investment in arms and destruction and Yes to investment in the construction of peace.

    A nuclear-armed NATO stronger than the United Nations is an intolerable prospect. Yet the residual militarist mentality in the world continues to sideline the UN and even force it into penury. The lavishness of NATO contrasted to the poverty of the UN mocks the most ardent aspirations of the peoples of the world.

    The Role of Civil Society

    Put in strategic terms, the risks of NATO expansion far outweigh any possible contribution to security. The issues are complex and need careful examination and extended public debate. A headlong rush into this abyss could indeed be a “fateful error.” The U.S. Senate needs to hear from informed citizens before giving its advice and consent to such an ill-considered policy.

    Is it too late to stop NATO expansion? Has the U.S. Administration gone too far to pull back? Could a five-year waiting period be invoked for time for sober reflection? What is so sacred about getting expansion done in time for NATO’s 50th anniversary in 1999?

    If NATO expansion is to be stopped by the U.S. Senate, civil society will have to mobilize as never before. The enlightened elements of the public will have to lead the way. Much of government seems mesmerized by the superficial appeal of the politics of an enlarged NATO.

    It was once said of King Philip of Spain: “No experience of the failure of his policy could shake his belief in its essential excellence.” The stakes are too high today for trial-and-error. We must shake the Government and Congress of the United States of the belief that NATO expansion serves the people’s interest. It does not. It serves only the interests of the producers of arms. NATO expansion is folly. We must proclaim this from the roof-tops and help both government and public recover the vision of a de-militarized world.

  • Needed: An Updated Strategy for Nuclear Security During the Disarmament Process

    The continuing success of the global efforts to achieve nuclear disarmament is impressive. Awareness of the true dimensions of the continuing nuclear threat has been raised, yet success in these efforts has revealed an inherent danger in the disarmament process. Security programs developed for the armament process are not, in many cases, adequate for the disarmament process.

    Nuclear weapons security is designed to provide a continuity of protection from manufacture to installation in a potential delivery system or in a ready-for-use storage site. Security comprises a series of special function jurisdictions, each with a unique set of handling or processing requirements.

    It is a compartmentalized security system, meaning that each facility maintains its own security. The least dangerous element (in terms of loss to an adversary or accidental detonation) is the initial step of mining, refining, and converting raw materials for use in the weapons making efforts. Security in this activity is routine industrial plant security as these facilities are not likely to be targets. The most danger begins when the materials are combined to become the components for nuclear weapons. Security requirements at these manufacturing facilities increases and is adjusted to meet the specific needs of the facility depending on its function within the system.

    Therefore, as each function is accomplished and material is passed to the next facility, security responsibilities change commensurately. The ultimate recipients, the military, in turn, provide their own security.

    Superimposed on this system of security arrangements is a number of specialized support groups which provide unique functions that supplement facility security. They provide unique functions not provided by facility security. The most utilized of these services is provided by the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Transportation Safeguards Division (TSD). TSD trains, equips, and controls a group of security specialists known as “Couriers” who provide safe, secure transport of fabricated nuclear materials. Other security support services are provided by Explosive Ordinance Disposal teams (EOD), the Nuclear Emergency Search Teams (NEST) and a multiplicity of local, state and federal law enforcement agencies. These groups work together through a series of interagency agreements and protocols that establish lines of authority and jurisdictional responsibilities. The security system now in place has evolved as the nuclear industry grew to meet the demands of the military for weapons. The system was designed and implemented for serialized, unidirectional (manufacture to use) purposes. Whether or not the same system will be adequate for the disarmament process is an open question. The mounting body of evidence suggests it will not.

    The bureaucracy that created the nuclear security system is multifaceted, and, in some cases, duplicative and unnecessary. Responsibility for its programmatic development is vested in many bureaus within DOE and DOD. These bureaus and subordinated groups are now competing for dominance and the limited funds that are available to maintain their status quo as they struggle to realign their missions to counter the known and perceived terrorist threats. New divisions and ad hoc specialized groups are being created within the existing agencies and, consequently, more competition is engendered for the limited human and monetary resources. The net effect of these developments is that nuclear security, already questionable in many areas , will continue to deteriorate due to the perception that the need for this specific security system diminishes as disarmament efforts become more successful. Already, under the guise of Civil Defense, the Pentagon is flexing its muscle in the competition as it assumes a role in the training of civilian agencies for chemical, biological, and nuclear emergencies. Fifty-two million dollars have been authorized by Congress for this program, yet the diffuse nature of the efforts across so many agencies offers little promise for improving protection against threats of misappropriation where the residual materials of nuclear disarmament are concerned. The focus on specific security regimens is being lost in favor of more generic types of security presumably more capable of countering a broader range of threats to our national safety.

    This type of political and bureaucratic reaction is not responsive to the operational requirements for well-founded security and is not conducive to developing means that will neutralize the dangers from the growing terrorist threat.

    For the conditions existing in the political environment today, there is a primary and essential need to increase awareness of the operational realities related to security in the nuclear disarmament effort so that deficiencies can be identified and corrected. This has to be done as a prerequisite to the dismantling process. The vital issues must be raised in ways that will motivate the government and people throughout our society to take appropriate and effective action.

    More concerted efforts must be made to identify and isolate each perceived or real threat in context with the unique security problems it creates. This level of attention will, in turn, assure that effective deterrents for specific threats can be developed and put into place.

    A prerequisite for the disarmament process to achieve its purpose with minimum risk is an understanding of the complexities arising from the shift in attitudes that avoids considering the significance of independently treating, in depth, the threats specific to nuclear security . The security of nuclear materials cannot be relegated to a dependency upon the generalizations of a generic security program.

    Everyone Gets into the Terrorist Game, – David E. Kaplan, U.S. News and World Report – Nov. 17, 1997, Based on DOE’s Nuclear Emergency Search Team (NEST), begun in the 1970’s, copy-cat units are being established by the FBI (DEST -Domestic Emergency Support Teams), The State Department (FEST – Foreign Emergency Support Team), Public Health (MMST – Metropolitan Medical Support Teams), DOE (two spin-offs to NEST (Best – Biological Emergency Search Team and CEST – Chemical Emergency Search Team) and also the Marines with CBIRF -Chemical Biological Incident Response Force.

    Eye on America, CBS Evening News, Nov.25, 1997, Report by Rita Braver on security problems at Rocky Flats Nuclear Facility

    Taking Civil Liberties – Washington Whispers, U.S. News and World Report – Jan. 12., 1998 pg 15

  • 68 Leaders Call for the De-Alerting of Nuclear Weapons

    The Honorable William Jefferson Clinton
    The White House
    Washington, DC 20500

    The Honorable Boris Yeltsin
    The Kremlin
    Moscow, Russia

    Dear President Clinton and President Yeltsin:

    When you come together in your forthcoming meeting, we urge you to set a course so that Earth may enter the new millennium with all nuclear weapons taken off high alert status. One straightforward method to accomplish this would be to separate warheads from their delivery vehicles and place them in secure storage.

    We ask that the United States and Russia mutually commence the de-alerting process no later than January 1999 and complete the task no later than December 31, 1999. We ask you to work with the United Kingdom, France, and China so that they will likewise take their nuclear arsenals off alert within that time frame.

    With the Cold War over for nearly ten years, the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, and China maintain peaceful relations and carefully avoid military confrontation. Yet all five nations live in a condition of nuclear insecurity because of the danger of accidental or unauthorized launch of missiles kept on hair-trigger alert. They face the risk of attack by missiles launched on warning due to miscommunication or misinterpretation of data. By removing these dangers, mutual de-alerting will substantially enhance the national security of all the nuclear weapon states.

    Mutual de-alerting is an action which the two of you can carry out through executive action. This is what your predecessors, President George Bush and President Mikhail Gorbachev, did in the fall of 1991 when they reduced the alert status of strategic bombers and a sizable number of intercontinental ballistic missiles. In 1994 you two took a positive step when you agreed to stop aiming strategic missiles at each other’s country. It is well within the purview of executive authority to move now to de-alerting your respective nuclear arsenals.

    De-alerting carries the endorsement of a variety of groups, including the Canberra Commission (1996), a statement of 60 generals and admirals leaders from around the globe (1996), the National Academy of Sciences in the United States (1997), a statement of 117 civilian leaders, including 47 past and present heads of states and prime ministers (1998), and the recent New Agenda Declaration by the foreign ministers of Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, Slovenia, South Africa, and Sweden (1998). This approach also has the support of a variety of religious bodies and numerous non-governmental organizations.

    De-alerting would be very welcome by all the people of Earth who would like to enter the new millennium free from the fear of nuclear destruction. We hope that you will take advantage of the opportunity to lead the world in this direction.

    Sincerely yours,

    Organizations from the United States
    Howard W. Hallman, Chair
    Methodists United for Peace with Justice

    Robert W. Tiller, Director of Security Programs
    Physicians for Social Responsibility

    Joe Volk, Executive Secretary
    Friends Committee on National Legislation (Quakers)

    Donnan Runkel, Executive Director
    Peace Links

    Christopher Ney, Disarmament Coordinator
    War Resisters League

    Anne Anderson, National Coordinator
    Psychologists for Social Responsibility

    Ellen Thomas
    Proposition One Committee

    Paul F. Walker, Ph.D., President
    Veterans for Peace

    Robin Caiola, Executive Director
    20/20 Vision

    Michael Mariotte, Executive Director
    Nuclear Information and Resource Service

    Gordon S. Clark, Executive Director
    Peace Action

    Susan Shaer, Executive Director
    Women’s Action for New Directions

    Daniel Plesch, Director
    British-American Security Information Council

    John Isaacs
    Council for a Livable World

    Tim Barner
    World Federalist Association

    David Krieger, President
    Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

    Clayton Ramey
    Fellowship of Reconciliation

    Mary H. Miller, Executive Secretary, and Rev. David Selzer, Chair
    Episcopal Peace Fellowship

    Marie Dennis, Director
    Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns

    Jay Lintner, Director, Washington Office
    United Church of Christ, Office for Church in Society

    Curtis Ramsey-Lucas, Director of Legislative Advocacy
    National Ministries, American Baptist Churches

    Bishop Walter F. Sullivan, President
    Pax Christi USA

    Margaret N. Spallone, Recording Secretary
    Abolition 2000 Working Group of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the
    Religious Society of Friends

    L.William Yolton, Executive Secretary
    Presbyterian Peace Fellowship

    Kathy Thornton, RSM, National Coordinator
    NETWORK: A National Catholic Social Justice Lobby

    Rev. Robert Moore, Executive Director
    Coalition for Peace Action (New Jersey)

    Ralph Hutchison, Coordinator
    Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance (Tennessee)

    Marylia Kelley, Executive Director
    Tri-Valley CAREs (California)

    Byron Plumley, Disarmament Program Director
    American Friends Service Committee (Colorado Office)

    Greg Mello
    Los Alamos Study Group (New Mexico)

    David Buer, Interim Director
    The Nevada Desert Experience (Nevada)

    Jonathan Parfrey, Executive Director
    Physicians for Social Responsibility/Los Angeles

    Wayne Shandera, MD
    Physicians for Social Responsibility/Houston

    Peter Wilk, MD, Co-President
    Physicians for Social Responsibility/Maine

    Ed Arnold, Executive Director
    Physicians for Social Responsibility/Atlanta

    Robert M. Gould, MD, President
    Physicians for Social Responsibility/Greater San Francisco Bay Area

    Herbert M. Perr, MD
    Physicians for Social Responsibility/Nassau County

    Jennifer Aldrich, Executive Director
    Physicians for Social Responsibility/Oregon

    Wendy Perron, Executive Director
    Physicians for Social Responsibility/New York City

    Josiah Hill III, PA, President
    Physicians for Social Responsibility/Oregon

    Daniel Kerlinsky, MD
    Physicians for Social Responsibility/New Mexico

    Martin Fleck, Executive Director
    Physicians for Social Responsibility/Washington

    Wells R. Staley-Mays, Director
    Peace Action/ Maine and Physicians for Social Responsibility/Maine

    Jonathan M. Haber
    Action Site to Stop Cassini Earth Flyby (Massachusetts)

    Harry Rogers, Nuclear Issues Coordinator
    Carolina Peace Resource Center (South Carolina)

    Organizations from other nations
    John Hallam
    Friends of the Earth
    Australia

    Zohl de Ishtar
    Women for a Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific
    International Peace Bureau
    Australia

    Graham Daniell
    People for Nuclear Disarmament
    Western Australia

    Babs Fuller-Quinn, Coordinator
    Australian Peace Committee (National Office)
    Australia

    Irene Gale, Secretary
    Australian Peace Committee (South Australian Branch)
    Australia

    Pauline Mitchell, Secretary
    Campaign for International Cooperation and Disarmament
    Australia

    Debbie Grisdale, Executive Director
    Physicians for Global Survival
    Canada

    Norman Abbey, Director
    Nanoose Conversion Campaign
    Canada

    Joanna Miller
    Project Ploughshares
    Canada

    Peter Coombes, President
    End the Arms Race
    Canada

    Caterina Lindman, Chair
    St. Jerome’s University Social Justice Committee,
    Canada

    Peter G. Rasmussen, Co-chairperson
    Pax Christi
    Denmark

    Laura Lodenius, Press Secretary
    Peace Union of Finland
    Finland

    Malla Kantola, Secretary General
    Committee of 100
    Finland

    Regina Hagen
    Darmstaedter Friedensforum
    Germany

    David Wakim, Chairperson
    Pax Christi Trust
    Aotearoa-New Zealand

    Kate Dewes, Vice President
    International Peace Bureau
    Aotearoa-New Zealand

    Professor Bent Natvig
    Science and Responsibility in the Nuclear Age
    Norway

    Bengt Lindell, Secretary
    Swedish Physicians Against Nuclear Weapons (SLMK)
    Sweden

    Commander Robert Green RN (Ret’d), Chair
    World Court Project
    United Kingdom

    Anni Rainbow and Lindis Percy
    Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases
    United Kingdom

    George Farebrother, Secretary
    World Court Project UK
    United Kingdom

    Dave Knight, Chair
    Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
    United Kingdom

  • A Plea Not to Revive Nuclear Arms Race

    AS EARLY AS 1985, President Reagan and I, at our first summit, said that nuclear war can never be won, and must never be fought. Even then we knew something very important about the inadmissibility of nuclear war.

    Today, it is just as true that if nuclear war, on any scale, were ever to be unleashed, or were ever to become a reality, it would threaten the very existence of life on earth.

    It is particularly important to keep this in mind, in the wake of the nuclear tests by India and Pakistan. All must condemn those tests and the dangerous era which they rekindle.

    What is not being discussed by the established nuclear powers today is that the process of nuclear disarmament has been stalled for several years now; it is just marking time. I believe we have not been properly using the opportunities that were open since the end of the Cold War, the possibility to move toward a really new world order based on stability, democratic cooperation and equality, rather than on the hegemony of one country.

    Instead, the geopolitical games are continuing; we are seeing those old geopolitical games in places such as Bosnia, and we know the dangerous potential of such conflicts.

    During the Cold War, many of those wars in small places festered for decades and became worse because the two superpowers and the two military alliances were self-interestedly fueling the hostilities.

    During the years of the arms race, the United States and the Soviet Union spent $10 trillion each on weapons production. It is true that the danger of nuclear war has significantly diminished, but it has not disappeared for good. The so-called conventional wars and regional wars are still claiming thousands of lives and tremendous resources, as well as ravaging nature, the unique source of life on our planet.

    After the Cold War, instead of defense conversion, we are still seeing the continuation of defense production, of the arms trade and weapons-export policies.

    After the breakup of the Soviet Union, while Russia was immersed in its domestic problems, the United States captured 70 percent of the world weapons-trade market, while not doing much for defense conversion.

    The result is that Russia, too, has decided to step up the production and transfer of the most sophisticated weapons, and is pushing in the same direction and trying to capture that market.

    Behind this is the underlying assumption of defense and security planning in most countries: that all the time we should consider the possibility of war.

    Thus we see the arms race, weapons production and also the increasing sophistication of arms, including very exotic weapons.

    And at the same time we see poverty, backwardness and disease in territories that account for almost two-thirds of the population of the world. So, as we face the 21st century, let us think about what is happening.

    It is a trap to perpetuate those systems that existed during the Cold War — relaunching the arms race and planning on the supposition of a resumption of war.

    We must say very firmly to the United States and Russia that in dragging their feet on further nuclear disarmament, they are setting a bad example for others.

    We should also once again raise the issue of missiles, intermediate- and shorter-range missiles, because those are weapons of a particularly regional nature. We should do more not just to limit the nuclear-arms race, but to move even further, toward the elimination and abolition of nuclear arms.

    Certainly we should bear in mind, in cooperating with less-developed countries in the area of commercial nuclear power, that we should always be vigilant that this is not taken further, and does not stimulate the production of nuclear weapons.

    Finally, we should put an end to the myth that nuclear weapons guarantee peace. Everyone, for example, should understand that security on the Indian subcontinent has not improved because of recent developments; it has deteriorated sharply.

    We should do all we can to help Pakistan and India understand that they’re not gaining anything. They’re actually losing a lot by embarking on the nuclear path. In the context of the conflict that has been festering in that region, this is an ominous development. We should work hard to ensure that India and Pakistan sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty without delay. The 20th century has seen more bloodshed and cruelty than the whole rest of human history, and has left us a complex and challenging heritage. The tradition of resolving national and international problems by force, violence and arms is a political disease of our epoch.

    We must do away with it — which is the great and noble imperative of our time.