Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: Soka Gakkai

  • A Time for Boldness

    This is the transcript of a talk given at a side event hosted on April 26, 2013, by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and Soka Gakkai International entitled “Nuclear Abolition: A Time for Boldness and Hope” at the 2013 Non-Proliferation Treaty PrepCom in Geneva, Switzerland.

    First, I thank you for being here today, in this 27th anniversary of the beginning of the Chernobyl catastrophe. Together we honour the memory of its victims, as well as of the victims of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Fukushima.

    I thank David Krieger and Rick Wayman for inviting me to this panel and for prompting us to think about an unusual and stimulating subject. The subject of boldness is a surprising subject to choose.

    When David offered me the chance to address you on it, I thought he was alluding to the words of Kissinger, Nunn, Shultz and Perry in the “Wall Street Journal” of January 2007. They requested (quote) “a bold initiative consistent with America’s moral heritage”, that is an initiative to go by practical measures to a world free of nuclear weapons. However, I was very surprised. I asked him: “Really? Why me?” He replied: “Because your hunger-strike was a bold action”. That answer only increased my perplexity.

    So now, let me put to you the thoughts that resulted from that surprise, and, as David requested, let me use my hunger-strike as a way of raising one or two questions that I’ll try to answer without claiming to solve them. I’ll refer to my own experience in an attempt to draw conclusions that others can use – because, as Hannah Arendt said, it is in specific things that universal things can be readable.

    First question: was my hunger-strike really a bold act? What defines the boldness of an action or a person?

    Note first that the word “bold” is often used in the military, in games like chess, and generally in context of competition, for example when a yacht in a sailing race chooses a surprising course to sail.

    Boldness is often a synonym of courage. But it’s a particular form of courage. It consists, certainly, of confronting a situation that is difficult, painful, scary, even desperate, but not simply by doing one’s duty. Boldness consists in taking the initiative of doing something unusual, unpredictable or unforeseen. Bold people are not content like “ordinary” brave people to resist the course of history, they try to reverse it. They take risks, they strive to overcome adversity by surprising the adversary. And often they win, although success is never guaranteed (otherwise there would be no risk). However, although the risks that the bold take can be considerable, they are still reasoned, calculated risks. Boldness is never madness or foolhardiness. Sometimes bold people make very quick decisions, but they remain nevertheless cool-headed. Their actions are in proportion with their objectives, and that is what gives them a serious chance of success.

    Now, if we apply these criteria to my hunger-strike, was it, as David thinks, a bold action? Upon reflection I think it could be.

    I needed, in truth, a certain courage: enough to “take the plunge” into unknown waters, for I had never fasted before. I didn’t know I would even get beyond day three, which some fasters had told me is a frightening one. And I still remember the precise minute when I took the plunge by sending off a media release.

    It was also an action I took out of desperation. ACDN since it was founded in 1996, and I myself since 1986, had done all we could to involve France in the abolition of nuclear weapons. I shan’t give the details of our activism, just a few “bold” actions: like my candidacy for the Presidential Elections in 2002 or my applications to the Constitutional Council in 2002 and 2012 asking for the main candidates (Chirac and Jospin, then Sarkozy and Hollande) to be excluded because they were preparing crimes against humanity, violating Article VI of the NPT, and not honouring the French Constitution. Moreover, during the 2012 campaign, we wrote to François Hollande seven or eight times without ever getting a reply. Actually, he replied indirectly, in December 2011: he said in an article in the “Nouvel Observateur” that he would continue the nuclear deterrence policy, a presidential prerogative that he intended to assume. In other words this humanist, this socialist declared himself capable of pressing the nuclear button. That was unacceptable. On 15 May, the day he became President, I began my hunger-strike.

    Let me add that my objective was reasonable and accessible: I did not fast to demand the abolition of all nuclear weapons, or for France to renounce her own weapons, but only to obtain an audience with the new president to expound our arguments and to ask him to organize – for democratic reasons – the referendum that would at last enable the French people to express their opinion … and would enable him to change policy without losing face or breaking his commitments.

    On 25 June, day 42 of my hunger-strike, I was in Paris with Luc Dazy – a friend who had joined me in fasting since 1 June – and we were barred by the police from entering the Elysee Palace where we were to have had an audience. We never could find out why. Even the socialist MP of my city – who had herself handed candidate Hollande a letter from me, and who has later signed the Open Letter to the President, even she was not able to find out why.

    Must we conclude that this “bold” action was doomed to failure? Frankly I don’t think so. Our hunger-strike was not useless.

    On 24 June, the Federal Council of the EELV Party (Europe Ecologie- Les Verts), of which I was a former Councillor, gave me an enthusiastic and impressive welcome (including a standing ovation of one hundred fifty or more people, a minute of applause). On a motion of its president and committee, the Federal Council paid tribute to our action, said they endorsed our struggle, and committed to support it. They wished Luc Dazy and me to stop our hunger-strike, they expressed solidarity with us, and they wished that President Hollande would listen to our requests.

    After a solemn debate, the Federal Council decided unanimously with one abstention (quote) “to ask all its representatives in parliament and in government to do all they can to ensure that a bill or a governmental proposal is drawn up without delay with a view to establishing a wide debate and a referendum on the following question:

    Do you agree that France should participate with the other states concerned in the complete elimination of nuclear weapons, under mutual and international control that is strict and effective?”

    Previously, in October 2011, ACDN and 6 other national organisations working in other fields from ours, such as ATTAC, the Confédération Paysanne or Human Rights League, had organised a big gathering in Saintes. Three hundred people did attend this event and about 150 wrote and discussed a “Charter for a Livable World” which they definitely adopted by consensus. A few later, during the presidential campaign, we proposed this charter to every candidate. François Hollande never answered, but six other candidates answered and three of them explicitly approved, amongst 103 articles, the article 1.2.F. By this approval, Eva Joly (EELV), Philippe Poutou (New Anticapitalist Party) and Jean-Luc Mélenchon (Parti de Gauche, Left Party) – had undertaken to consult the French people by referendum on the aforesaid question. Together these candidates won around 15% of the votes.

    Currently, the Greens have around 45 MPs, Senators and MEPs, they have 2 ministers in the French government. If each of them follows up the aforesaid commitment of their own party, it seems that the French people should not be far from deciding by themselves whether they must stop or pursue the archaic and criminal nuclear policies decided in their name by a handful of schizophrenic deciders. According to two polls, one ordered in 2008 by Global Zero, the second ordered in 2012 by the Mouvement de la Paix, more than 80 % of French wish for a world without any nuclear weapons, not even French ones.

    So, even if a referendum is never won before being voted, even if our opponents are very strong in the art of manipulating opinion and the media, I think we have to go to a referendum on such an important, decisive and vital issue. If we lose the referendum, we will lose nothing, since for more than 60 years the French nuclear policy has been conducted without any democratic debate and without voting. A defeat of the abolitionist camp would result simply in the continuation of a policy which is already planned. On the other hand, a success would be the beginning of a complete change, a reversal of situation. Let us remember the sentence of Lenin: “When an idea takes over masses, it becomes a historic force”. We have to attempt it, or else admit that we are mere sheep destined to become mutton.

    Personally, I’m convinced that the French people are not more intelligent than any other people, but very likely have more good sense than their political leaders, and are perfectly able to decide by themselves on the most important issues. Is that democratic idea a too bold idea? In that case, I accept being called a bold guy.

    Friends from abroad, I thank you for supporting in great numbers the Open Letter to the French President. If you have not done it already, please support and sign it now.

    Before concluding, I would like to ask and quickly answer a second question: If that hunger-strike was truly “bold”, how did it happen that an eminent figure in the international abolitionist movement, a US citizen, considered it important, whereas in France the national media, with very few exceptions, didn’t even mention it? That paradox deserves explanation.

    When an event escapes the attention of most people, including professional observers like journalists who ought to notice, those who do notice need to have been on the lookout for a subject they are already sensitive to. Thus, David has struggled for ages for the abolition of nuclear weapons and like us keeps meeting a sort of wall. He is therefore on the lookout for anything that could open a breach in it. Similarly, it’s because I was interested in international relations and Russian history that I heard, at the very moment in January 1986, Mikhail Gorbachev’s call for “No nuclear weapons by 2000!”. That call, certainly unexpected and bold, was to overturn my life.

    Prior sensitization creates a vicious circle for whistle-blowers and activists for causes like ours: by what we say and write and do, we wish to draw public attention to a problem that we deem particularly serious, but the public cannot pay serious attention unless they are already sensitized… In our media-dominated world, journalists play an essential role in informing and sensitizing the public. So we first need to gain their attention, and since the media love anything sensational, that’s where boldness can play a role.

    But that’s not enough. For instance, our hunger-strike was well covered by the press, radio and TV in our region, where ACDN and I are already known. That didn’t happen elsewhere, and when TV France 3 of our region asked the national France 3 to film us outside the Elysee Palace, the footage was broadcast in our region but not nationally. Why so? It would be too long to explain, but it could be also an interesting topic by comparing the various situations we are faced with in our different countries.

    In conclusion, permit me to ask you two questions without answering them:

    First: What enables us now to say that “The Time for Boldness has come”?

    And, last question: What kinds of boldness must we manifest in order to respond to the challenges of the present time?

    I would have several suggestions to make on that last item; some of them could perhaps interest you. But my time of speaking is over. Generally, I would say: we need to demand with determination our right to have truth, freedom and life.

    I heartily thank David and Rick who have permitted me to speak for the first and perhaps for the last time at a side event in this arena. Thank you for your attention.

    Jean-Marie Matagne is President of l’Action des Citoyens pour le Désarmement Nucléaire (ACDN) in France.

  • Hiroshima and Nagasaki Day Memorial

    Today, on August 6, we remember the tragic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki against the background of another catastrophe, the earthquake and tsunami that destroyed the nuclear power plant at Fukushima, spreading dangerous and long-lasting radioactive contamination throughout a large region in Northern Japan. Our thoughts go to the brave people of Japan who have suffered this terrible recent disaster.


    As a result of the Fukushima catastrophe, world public opinion now increasingly rejects nuclear power generation. We can hope that the disaster will also contribute to a rejection of nuclear weapons.


    We value and love our natural environment for its beauty, but we are also starting to realize how closely our lives are linked to nature. We are becoming more conscious of how human activities may damage the natural systems on which we depend for our existence. There is much worry today about climate change, but an ecological catastrophe of equal or greater magnitude could be produced by a nuclear war. One can gain a small idea of what this would be like by thinking of the radioactive contamination that has made large areas near to Chernobyl and Fukushima uninhabitable, or the testing of hydrogen bombs in the Pacific, which continues to cause leukemia and birth defects in the Marshall Islands more than half a century later.


    In 1954, the United States tested a hydrogen bomb at Bikini. The bomb was 1,300 times more powerful than the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Fallout from the bomb contaminated the island of Rongelap, one of the Marshall Islands 120 kilometers from Bikini. The islanders experienced radiation illness, and many died from cancer. Even today, half a century later, both people and animals on Rongelap and other nearby islands suffer from birth defects. The most common defects have been “jellyfish babies,” born with no bones and with transparent skin. Their brains and beating hearts can be seen. The babies usually live a day or two before they stop breathing. A girl from Rongelap describes the situation in the following words:


    “I cannot have children. I have had miscarriages on seven occasions… Our culture and religion teach us that reproductive abnormalities are a sign that women have been unfaithful. For this reason, many of my friends keep quiet about the strange births that they have had. In privacy they give birth, not to children as we like to think of them, but to things we could only describe as `octopuses’, `apples’, `turtles’, and other things in our experience. We do not have Marshallese words for these kinds of babies, because they were never born before the radiation came.”
    The environmental effects of a nuclear war would be catastrophic. It would produce radioactive contamination of the kind that we have already experienced in the areas around Chernobyl and Fukushima and in the Marshall Islands, but on anenormously increased scale. We have to remember that the total explosive power of the nuclear weapons in the world today is 500,000 times as great as the power of the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. What is threatened by a nuclear war today is the complete breakdown of human civilization.


    Besides spreading deadly radioactivity throughout the world,
    a nuclear war would incite catastrophic damage on global agriculture. Firestorms in burning cities would produce millions of tons of black, thick, radioactive smoke. The smoke would rise to the stratosphere where it would spread around the earth and remain for a decade. Prolonged cold, decreased sunlight and rainfall, and massive increases in harmful ultraviolet light would shorten or eliminate growing seasons, producing a nuclear famine. Even a small nuclear war could endanger the lives of the billion people who today are chronically undernourished. A full-scale nuclear war would mean that most humans would die from hunger. Many animal and plant species would also be threatened with extinction.


    Today, the system that is supposed to give us security is called Mutually Assured Destruction, appropriately abbreviated as MAD. It is based on the idea of deterrence, which maintains that because of the threat of massive retaliation, no sane leader would start a nuclear war.


    Before discussing other defects in the concept of deterrence, it must be said very clearly that the idea of “massive nuclear retaliation” is a form of genocide and is completely unacceptable from an ethical point of view. It violates not only the principles of common human decency and common sense, but also the ethical principles of every major religion.


    Having said this, we can now turn to some of the other faults in the concept of nuclear deterrence. One important defect is that nuclear war may occur through accident or miscalculation – through technical defects or human failings, or by terrorism.


    This possibility is made greater by the fact that despite the end of the Cold War, thousands of missiles carrying nuclear warheads are still kept on hair-trigger alert” with a quasi-automatic reaction time measured in minutes. There is a constant danger that a nuclear war will be triggered by error in evaluating the signal on a radar screen.


    Incidents in which global disaster is avoided by a hair’s breadth are constantly occurring. For example, on the night of 26 September, 1983, Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov, a young software engineer, was on duty at a surveillance center near Moscow. Suddenly the screen in front of him turned bright red. An alarm went off. Its enormous piercing sound filled the room. A second alarm followed, and then a third, fourth and fifth. “The computer showed that the Americans had launched a strike against us,” Petrov remembered later. His orders were to pass the information up the chain of command to Secretary General Yuri Andropov. Within minutes, a nuclear counterattack would be launched. However, because of certain inconsistent features of the alarm, Petrov disobeyed orders and reported it as a computer error, which indeed it was. Most of us probably owe our lives to his coolheaded decision and knowledge of software systems. The narrowness of this escape is compounded by the fact that Petrov was on duty only because of the illness of another officer with less knowledge of software, who would have accepted the alarm as real.


    Narrow escapes such as this show us clearly that in the long run, the combination of space-age science and stone-age politics will destroy us. We urgently need new political structures and new ethics to match our advanced technology. Modern science has, for the first time in history, offered humankind the possibility of a life of comfort, free from hunger and cold, and free from the constant threat of death through infectious disease. At the same time, science has given humans the power to obliterate their civilization with nuclear weapons, or to make the earth uninhabitable through overpopulation and pollution. The question of which of these paths we choose is literally a matter of life or death for ourselves and our children.


    Will we use the discoveries of modern science constructively, and thus choose the path leading towards life? Or will we use science to produce more and more lethal weapons, which sooner or later, through a technical or human failure, will result in a catastrophic nuclear war? Will we thoughtlessly destroy our beautiful planet through unlimited growth of population and industry? The choice among these alternatives is ours to make.


    We live at a critical moment of history – a moment of crisis for civilization.


    No one alive today asked to be born at a time of crisis, but history has given each of us an enormous responsibility. Of course we have our ordinary jobs, which we need to do in order to stay alive; but besides that, each of us has a second job, the duty to devote both time and effort to solving the serious problems that face civilization during the 21st century. We cannot rely on our politicians to do this for us. Many politicians are under the influence of powerful lobbies. Others are waiting for a clear expression of popular will. It is the people of the world themselves who must choose their own future and work hard to build it. No single person can achieve the changes that we need, but together we can do it.


    The problem of building a stable, just, and war-free world is difficult, but it is not impossible. The large regions of our present-day world within which war has been eliminated can serve as models. There are a number of large countries with heterogeneous populations within which it has been possible to achieve internal peace and social cohesion, and if this is possible within such extremely large regions, it must also be possible globally.


    We must replace the old world of international anarchy, chronic war, and institutionalized injustice by a new world of law. The United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Criminal Court are steps in the right direction. These institutions need to be greatly strengthened and reformed.
    We also need a new global ethic, where loyalty to one’s family and nation will be supplemented by a higher loyalty to humanity as a whole.


    Tipping points in public opinion can occur suddenly. We can think, for example, of the Civil Rights Movement, or the rapid fall of the Berlin Wall, or the sudden change that turned public opinion against smoking, or the sudden movement for freedom and democracy in the Arab world. A similar sudden change can occur soon regarding war and nuclear weapons.


    We know that war is madness. We know that it is responsible for much of the suffering that humans experience. We know that war pollutes our planet and that the almost unimaginable sums wasted on war prevent the happiness and prosperity of mankind. We know that nuclear weapons are insane, and that the precariously balanced deterrence system can break down at any time through human error or computer errors or through terrorist actions, and that it definitely will break down within our lifetimes unless we abolish it. We know that nuclear war threatens to destroy civilization and much of the biosphere.


    The logic is there. We must translate into popular action which will put an end to the undemocratic, money-driven, power-lust-driven war machine. The peoples of the world must say very clearly that nuclear weapons are an absolute evil; that their possession does not increase anyone’s security; that their continued existence is a threat to the life of every person on the planet; and that these genocidal and potentially omnicidal weapons have no place in a civilized society.


    Modern science has abolished time and distance as factors separating nations. On our shrunken globe today, there is room for one group only – the family of humankind. We must embrace all other humans as our brothers and sisters. More than that, we must feel that all of nature is part of the same sacred family – meadow flowers, blowing winds, rocks, trees, birds, animals, and other humans – all these are our brothers and sisters, deserving our care and protection. Only in this way can we survive together. Only in this way can we build a happy future.

  • Daisaku Ikeda’s Perseverance and Passion for Peace

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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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