Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: terrorism

  • Paris: War Is Not the Answer

    The attacks on innocents in Paris on November 13, 2015 were horrifying crimes, filling the city with grief and uniting people throughout the world in solidarity with the victims and with France.  These attacks were cold-blooded murders of innocent people, clearly crimes deserving punishment.  But when crimes are used as the impetus for war, the crimes and grief are multiplied and the toll of innocents increases to become the norm.  Surely, we must cry havoc, but we must also be wary of letting loose the dogs of war.

    The attacks in New York on September 11, 2001 were also unspeakable crimes.  These attacks also stirred the sympathy and solidarity of the world, in this case for the United States, until the U.S. answered the attacks by letting loose the snarling dogs of war, first against Afghanistan and then against Iraq, a country having nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.  The leaders who perpetrated these wars also caused untold sorrow and death of innocents.  While perpetrators of the attacks in New York, including Osama bin Laden, have been tracked down and captured or killed, those U.S. leaders who committed the worst of the Nuremberg crimes, crimes against peace, particularly in Iraq, have never been brought to justice.

    It was the illegal U.S. war against Iraq, at least in part, that gave birth to ISIS and stoked its smoldering resentment and aggression against the West, and yet those who perpetrated this war still walk free.  And crimes within these wars, such as the bombing of the Doctors without Borders hospital in Kunduz (Afghanistan), still continue.  Unfortunately, we cannot roll back time or erase bad decisions by U.S. leaders, but we can learn from those bad decisions.  The West, particularly France, can seek out the perpetrators of the Paris crimes and bring them to justice.  Crimes demand justice for the victims, not warfare that will only create more victims in an ongoing loop of vengeance and retaliation.

    The challenge today is to find a means of ending this loop of vengeance and retaliation.  This will require acting morally, legally (under international law), and pragmatically (by not inflaming more deaths of innocents and more violence).  This is a great challenge, which will require a new way of thinking, based on avoiding wars rather than perpetuating them.  It will require righting many of the wrongs that the West has inflicted on the Middle East, including ending the long-standing injustices that have been brought to bear on the Palestinians.  It will require the West curbing its hunger for cheap oil from the Middle East.  It will require finding a means of cutting off sources of funding for ISIS, which allow it to pursue war and support terrorism.

    It is also clear that the West cannot fight terrorism with nuclear weapons.  These devices of mass annihilation are not suitable for stopping crimes associated with terrorism.  On the other hand, if the number of nuclear weapons in the world is not dramatically reduced (on the way to zero) and bomb-grade fissionable materials not brought under secure safeguards, terrorists will end up with nuclear or radiological weapons.  This could lead to disasters almost beyond comprehension.  Terrorists in possession of nuclear weapons will not be subject to nuclear deterrence.  They are suicidal, and they do not have territory to retaliate against.  Thus, nuclear deterrence won’t work against them.  If we don’t want to witness or be victims of nuclear terrorism, it is now past time to begin negotiating seriously to create a Nuclear Zero world, as we are required to do under international law.

    The terrorist acts in Paris were a terrible tragedy, but war is not the answer.  In solidarity with the people of France, we must seek justice, not war, if we are to end the cycle of violence that threatens us all and undermines our common humanity.

  • The Ultimate Weapon of Terrorism

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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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



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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Ten Serious Flaws in Nuclear Deterrence Theory

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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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

  • The World’s Worst Terrorist Act

    As the clock struck 8:15 a.m. in Japan this very day exactly 60 years ago, the world witnessed a wholly new kind and scale of brutality, leading to mass death. The entire city of Hiroshima was flattened by a single bomb, made with just 60 kg of uranium, and dropped from a B-29 United States Air Force warplane.

    Within seconds, temperatures in the city centre soared to 4,000 C, more than 2,500 higher than the melting point of iron. Savage firestorms raged through Hiroshima as buildings were reduced to rubble. Giant shock-waves releasing blast energy ripped through the city, wreaking more destruction.

    Within seconds, 80,000 people were killed. Within hours, over 100,000 died, most of them crushed under the impact of blast-waves and falling buildings, or severely burnt by firestorms. Not just people, the body and soul of Hiroshima had died.

    Then came waves of radiation, invisible and intangible, but nevertheless lethal. These took their toll slowly, painfully and cruelly. Those who didn’t die within days from radiation sickness produced by exposure to high doses of gamma-rays or poisonous radio-nuclides, perished over years from cancers and leukaemias. The suffering was excruciating and prolonged. Often, the living envied the dead. Hiroshima’s death toll climbed to 140,000.

    This was a new kind of weapon, besides which even deadly chemical armaments like mustard gas pale into insignificance. You could defend yourself against conventional-explosive bombs by hiding in an air-raid shelter or sandbagging your home. To protect yourself from a chemical attack, you could wear a gas mask and a special plastic suit. But against the nuclear bombs, there could be no defence –military, civil or medical.

    Nuclear weapons are unique for yet another reason. They are, typically, not meant to be used against soldiers, but are earmarked for use against unarmed non-combatant civilians. But it is illegitimate and illegal to attack non-combatant civilians. Attacking them is commonly called terrorism. Hence, Hiroshima remains the world’s worst terrorist act.

    Hiroshima’s bombing was followed three days later by an atomic attack on Nagasaki, this time with a bomb using a different material, plutonium. The effects were equally devastating. More than 70,000 people perished in agonising ways.

    US President Harry S. Truman was jubilant. Six days later, Japan surrendered. The US cynically exploited this coincidence. It claimed that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had saved thousands of lives by bringing the war to an early end. This was a lie. Japan was preparing to surrender anyway and was only waiting to negotiate the details of the terms. That entire country has been reduced to a wasteland. Most of its soldiers had stopped fighting. Schoolgirls were being drafted to perform emergency services in Japanese cities.

    American leaders knew this. Historians Peter Kuznick and Mark Selden have just disclosed in the British New Scientist magazine that three days before Hiroshima, Truman agreed Japan was “looking for peace”.

    General Dwight Eisenhower said in a 1963 Newsweek interview that “the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing”. Truman’s chief of staff, Admiral William Leahy, also said that “the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan.

    The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender”.

    The real function of the two bombs was not military, but political.

    It was to establish the US’s superiority and pre-eminence within the Alliance that defeated the Axis powers, and thus to shift the terms of the ensuing new power struggle in Washington’s favour.

    The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings inaugurated another rivalry: the Cold War, which was to last for four decades. They also triggered fierce competition among the other victors of the World War to acquire nuclear weapons. The insane arms race this launched but hasn’t ended yet.

    From a few dozen bombs in the early 1950s, the world’s nuclear arsenals swelled to several hundred warheads in a decade, and then several thousand by the 1970s. At the Cold War’s peak, the world had amassed 70,000 nukes, with explosive power equivalent to one million Hiroshimas, enough to destroy Planet Earth 50 times over.

    One-and-a-half decades after the Cold War ended, the world still has 36,000 nuclear weapons. Nothing could be a greater disgrace!

    Nuclear weapons are uniquely destructive and have never ceased to horrify people and hurt the public conscience. The damage they cause is hard to limit in space –thanks to the wind-transporting radioactivity over thousands of miles –or in time. Radioactive poisons persist and remain dangerous for years, some for tens of thousands of years. For instance, the half-life of plutonium-239, which India uses in its bombs, is 24,400 years. And the half-life of uranium-235, which Pakistan uses in its bombs, is 710 million years!

    Nuclear weapons violate every rule of warfare and every convention governing the conduct of armed conflict, they target non-combatant civilians. They kill indiscriminately and massively. They cause death in cruel, inhumane and degrading ways. And the destruction gets transmitted to future generations through genetic defects. That’s why nuclear weapons have been held to be incompatible with international law by the International Court of Justice.

    The world public overwhelmingly wants nuclear weapons to be abolished. The pro-abolition sentiment is strong and endorsed by 70 to 90 percent of the population even in the nuclear weapons-states (NWSs), according to opinion polls. More than 180 nations have forsworn nuclear weapons by signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). But a handful of states remain addicted to their “nuclear fix”. Led by the US, five NWSs refuse to honour their obligation under the NPT to disarm their nuclear weapons. And three of them, India, Pakistan and Israel, haven’t even signed the treaty.

    India and Pakistan occupy a special position within the group of NWSs. They are its most recent members. They are regional rivals too, with a half-century-long hot-cold war, which has made South Asia the world’s “most dangerous place”. There is an imperative need for India and Pakistan, rooted in self-preservation, to negotiate nuclear restraint and abolition of nuclear weapons. But the chances of this seem rather dim.

    Even dimmer is the possibility of the five major NWSs embracing nuclear disarmament. Their reluctance to do so largely springs from their faith in nuclear deterrence. This is a dangerously flawed doctrine. It makes hopelessly unrealistic assumptions about unfailingly rational and perfect behaviour on the part of governments and military leaders and rules out strategic miscalculation as well as accidents. The real world is far messier, and full of follies, misperceptions and mishaps. Yet, the deterrence juggernaut rolls on.

    Today, the system of restraint in the global nuclear order is on the verge of being weakened. The US-India nuclear deal (discussed here last week) is a bad precedent. But even worse are US plans to develop nukes both downwards (deep-earth penetrators or bunker-busters) and upwards (“Star Wars”-style space-based Ballistic Missile Defence). If the US conducts nuclear tests in pursuit of this, that will impel others to follow suit, and encourage some non-nuclear states to go overtly nuclear, raising the spectre of another Hiroshima.

    Sixty years on, that would be a disgrace without parallel. Humankind surely deserves better.

    The writer is a Delhi-based researcher, peace and human rights activist, and former newspaper editor.

    Originally published by The News International.

  • What’s Wrong With Cutting and Running?

    If I were a journalist, I would list all the arguments that you hear against pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq, the horrible things that people say would happen, and then ask: Aren’t they happening already? Would a pullout really make things worse? Maybe it would make things better.

    Here are some of the arguments against pulling out:

    1. We would leave behind a civil war.
    2. We would lose credibility on the world stage.
    3. It would embolden the insurgency and cripple the move toward democracy.
    4. Iraq would become a haven for terrorists.
    5. Iranian influence in Iraq would increase.
    6. Unrest might spread in the region and/or draw in Iraq’s neighbors.
    7. Shi’ite-Sunni clashes would worsen.
    8. We haven’t fully trained the Iraqi military and police forces yet.
    9. Talk of deadlines would undercut the morale of our troops.

    But consider this:

    1. On civil war. Iraqis are already fighting Iraqis. Insurgents have killed far more Iraqis than Americans. That’s civil war. We created the civil war when we invaded; we can’t prevent a civil war by staying.

    For those who really worry about destabilizing the region, the sensible policy is not to stay the course in Iraq. It is rapid withdrawal, reestablishing strong relations with our allies in Europe, showing confidence in the UN Security Council, and trying to knit together a large coalition including the major states of Europe, Japan, South Korea, China, and India to back a strategy for stabilizing the area from the eastern Mediterranean to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Until the United States withdraws from Iraq and admits its strategic error, no such coalition can be formed.

    Thus, those who fear leaving a mess are actually helping make things worse while preventing a new strategic approach with some promise of success.

    2. On credibility. If we were Russia or some other insecure nation, we might have to worry about credibility. A hyperpower need not worry about credibility. That’s one of the great advantages of being a hyperpower: When we have made a big strategic mistake, we can reverse it. And it may even enhance our credibility. Staying there damages our credibility more than leaving.

    Ask the president if he really worries about U.S. credibility. Or, what will happen to our credibility if the course he is pursuing proves to be a major strategic disaster? Would it not be better for our long-term credibility to withdraw earlier than later in this event?

    3. On the insurgency and democracy. There is no question the insurgents and other anti-American parties will take over the government once we leave. But that will happen no matter how long we stay. Any government capable of holding power in Iraq will be anti-American because the Iraqi people are increasingly becoming anti-American.

    Also, the U.S. will not leave behind a liberal, constitutional democracy in Iraq no matter how long it stays. Holding elections is easy. It is impossible to make it a constitutional democracy in a hurry.

    President Bush’s statements about progress in Iraq are increasingly resembling LBJ’s statements during the Vietnam War. For instance, Johnson’s comments about the 1968 election are very similar to what Bush said in February 2005 after the election of a provisional parliament.

    Ask the president: Why should we expect a different outcome in Iraq than in Vietnam?

    Ask the president if he intends to leave a pro-American liberal regime in place. Because that’s just impossible. Postwar Germany and Japan are not models for Iraq. Each had mature (at least a full generation old) constitutional orders by the end of the 19th century. They both endured as constitutional orders until the 1930s. Thus, General Clay and General MacArthur were merely reversing a decade and a half of totalitarianism – returning to nearly a century of liberal political change in Japan and a much longer period in Germany.

    Imposing a liberal constitutional order in Iraq would be to accomplish something that has never been done before. Of all the world’s political cultures, an Arab-Muslim one may be the most resistant to such a change of any in the world. Even the Muslim society in Turkey (an anti-Arab society) stands out for being the only example of a constitutional order in an Islamic society, and even it backslides occasionally.

    4. On terrorists. Iraq is already a training ground for terrorists. In fact, the CIA has pointed out to the administration and Congress that Iraq is spawning so many terrorists that they are returning home to many other countries to further practice their skills there. The quicker a new dictator wins political power in Iraq and imposes order, the sooner the country will stop producing experienced terrorists.

    Why not ask: “Mr. President, since you and the vice president insisted that Saddam’s Iraq supported al-Qaeda – which we now know it did not – isn’t your policy in Iraq today strengthening al-Qaeda’s position in that country?”

    5. On Iranian influence. Iranian leaders see U.S. policy in Iraq as being so much in Tehran’s interests that they have been advising Iraqi Shi’ite leaders to do exactly what the Americans ask them to do. Elections will allow the Shi’ites to take power legally. Once in charge, they can settle scores with the Ba’athists and Sunnis. If U.S. policy in Iraq begins to undercut Iran’s interests, then Tehran can use its growing influence among Iraqi Shi’ites to stir up trouble, possibly committing Shi’ite militias to an insurgency against U.S. forces there. The U.S. invasion has vastly increased Iran’s influence in Iraq, not sealed it out.

    Questions for the administration: “Why do the Iranians support our presence in Iraq today? Why do they tell the Shi’ite leaders to avoid a sectarian clash between Sunnis and Shi’ites? Given all the money and weapons they provide Shi’ite groups, why are they not stirring up more trouble for the U.S.? Will Iranian policy change once a Shi’ite majority has the reins of government? Would it not be better to pull out now rather than to continue our present course of weakening the Sunnis and Ba’athists, opening the way for a Shi’ite dictatorship?”

    6. On Iraq’s neighbors. The civil war we leave behind may well draw in Syria, Turkey, and Iran. But already today each of those states is deeply involved in support for or opposition to factions in the ongoing Iraqi civil war. The very act of invading Iraq almost ensured that violence would involve the larger region. And so it has and will continue, with or without U.S. forces in Iraq.

    7. On Shi’ite-Sunni conflict. The U.S. presence is not preventing Shi’ite-Sunni conflict; it merely delays it. Iran is preventing it today, and it will probably encourage it once the Shi’ites dominate the new government, an outcome U.S. policy virtually ensures.

    8. On training the Iraq military and police. The insurgents are fighting very effectively without U.S. or European military advisers to train them. Why don’t the soldiers and police in the present Iraqi regime’s service do their duty as well? Because they are uncertain about committing their lives to this regime. They are being asked to take a political stand, just as the insurgents are. Political consolidation, not military-technical consolidation, is the issue.

    The issue is not military training; it is institutional loyalty. We trained the Vietnamese military effectively. Its generals took power and proved to be lousy politicians and poor fighters in the final showdown. In many battles over a decade or more, South Vietnamese military units fought very well, defeating VC and NVA units. But South Vietnam’s political leaders lost the war.

    Even if we were able to successfully train an Iraqi military and police force, the likely result, after all that, would be another military dictatorship. Experience around the world teaches us that military dictatorships arise when the military’s institutional modernization gets ahead of political consolidation.

    9. On not supporting our troops by debating an early pullout. Many U.S. officers in Iraq, especially at company and field grade levels, know that while they are winning every tactical battle, they are losing strategically. And according to the New York Times, they are beginning to voice complaints about Americans at home bearing none of the pains of the war. One can only guess about the enlisted ranks, but those on a second tour – probably the majority today – are probably anxious for an early pullout. It is also noteworthy that U.S. generals in Iraq are not bubbling over with optimistic reports the way they were during the first few years of the war in Vietnam. Their careful statements and caution probably reflect serious doubts that they do not, and should not, express publicly. The more important question is whether or not the repressive and vindictive behavior by the secretary of defense and his deputy against the senior military – especially the Army leadership, which is the critical component in the war – has made it impossible for field commanders to make the political leaders see the facts.

    Most surprising to me is that no American political leader today has tried to unmask the absurdity of the administration’s case that to question the strategic wisdom of the war is unpatriotic and a failure to support our troops. Most officers and probably most troops don’t see it that way. They are angry at the deficiencies in materiel support they get from the Department of Defense, and especially about the irresponsibly long deployments they must now endure because Mr. Rumsfeld and his staff have refused to enlarge the ground forces to provide shorter tours. In the meantime, they know that the defense budget shovels money out the door to maritime forces, SDI, etc., while refusing to increase dramatically the size of the Army.

    As I wrote several years ago, “the Pentagon’s post-Cold War force structure is so maritime heavy and land force weak that it is firmly in charge of the porpoises and whales while leaving the land to tyrants.” The Army, some of the Air Force, the National Guard, and the reserves are now the victims of this gross mismatch between military missions and force structure. Neither the Bush nor the Clinton administration has properly “supported the troops.” The media could ask the president why he fails to support our troops by not firing his secretary of defense.

    —

    So why is almost nobody advocating a pullout? I can only speculate. We face a strange situation today where few if any voices among Democrats in Congress will mention early withdrawal from Iraq, and even the one or two who do will not make a comprehensive case for withdrawal now. Why are the Democrats failing the public on this issue today? The biggest reason is because they weren’t willing to raise that issue during the campaign. Howard Dean alone took a clear and consistent stand on Iraq, and the rest of the Democratic Party trashed him for it. Most of those in Congress voted for the war and let that vote shackle them later on. Now they are scared to death that the White House will smear them with lack of patriotism if they suggest pulling out.

    Journalists can ask all the questions they like, but none will prompt a more serious debate as long as no political leaders create the context and force the issues into the open.

    I don’t believe anyone will be able to sustain a strong case in the short run without going back to the fundamental misjudgment of invading Iraq in the first place. Once the enormity of that error is grasped, the case for pulling out becomes easy to see.

    Look at John Kerry’s utterly absurd position during the presidential campaign. He said, “It’s the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time,” but then went on to explain how he expected to win it anyway. Even the voter with no interest in foreign affairs was able to recognize it as an absurdity. If it was the wrong war at the wrong place and time, then it was never in our interests to fight. If that is true, what has changed to make it in our interests? Nothing, absolutely nothing.

    The U.S. invasion of Iraq only serves the interests of:

    1. Osama bin Laden (it made Iraq safe for al-Qaeda, positioned U.S. military personnel in places where al-Qaeda operatives can kill them occasionally, helps radicalize youth throughout the Arab and Muslim world, alienates America’s most important and strongest allies – the Europeans – and squanders U.S. military resources that otherwise might be finishing off al-Qaeda in Pakistan.);

    2. The Iranians (who were invaded by Saddam and who suffered massive casualties in an eight-year war with Iraq.);

    3. And the extremists in both Palestinian and Israeli political circles (who don’t really want a peace settlement without the utter destruction of the other side, and probably believe that bogging the United States down in a war in Iraq that will surely become a war with the rest of Arab world gives them the time and cover to wipe out the other side.)

    The wisest course for journalists might be to begin sustained investigations of why leading Democrats have failed so miserably to challenge the U.S. occupation of Iraq. The first step, of course, is to establish as conventional wisdom the fact that the war was never in the U.S.’ interests and has not become so. It is such an obvious case to make that I find it difficult to believe many pundits and political leaders have not already made it repeatedly.

    Lieutenant General William E. Odom, U.S. Army (Ret.), is a Senior Fellow with Hudson Institute and a professor at Yale University. He was Director of the National Security Agency from 1985 to 1988. From 1981 to 1985, he served as Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, the Army’s senior intelligence officer. From 1977 to 1981, he was Military Assistant to the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs, Zbigniew Brzezinski.

    Originally published by Nieman Watchdog

  • I Wrote Bush’s War Words- In 1965

    President Bush’s explanation Tuesday night for staying the course in Iraq evoked in me a sense of familiarity, but not nostalgia. I had heard virtually all of his themes before, almost word for word, in speeches delivered by three presidents I worked for: John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon. Not with pride, I recognized that I had proposed some of those very words myself.

    Drafting a speech on the Vietnam War for Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara in July 1965, I had the same task as Bush’s speechwriters in June 2005: how to rationalize and motivate continued public support for a hopelessly stalemated, unnecessary war our president had lied us into.

    Looking back on my draft, I find I used the word “terrorist” about our adversaries to the same effect Bush did.

    Like Bush’s advisors, I felt the need for a global threat to explain the scale of effort we faced. For that role, I felt China was better suited as our “real” adversary than North Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh, just as Bush prefers to focus on Al Qaeda rather than Iraqi nationalists. “They are trying to shake our will in Iraq — just as they [sic] tried to shake our will on Sept. 11, 2001,” he said.

    My draft was approved by McNamara, national security advisor McGeorge Bundy and Secretary of State Dean Rusk, but it was not delivered because it was a clarion call for mobilizing the Reserves to support an open-ended escalation of troops, as Johnson’s military commanders had urged.

    LBJ preferred instead to lie at a news conference about the number of troops they had requested for immediate deployment (twice the level he announced), and to conceal the total number they believed necessary for success, which was at least 500,000. (I take with a grain of salt Bush’s claim that “our commanders tell me they have the number of troops they need to do their job.”)

    A note particularly reminiscent in Bush’s speech was his reference to “a time of testing.” “We have more work to do, and there will be tough moments that test America’s resolve,” he said.

    This theme recalled a passage in my 1965 draft that, for reasons that will be evident, I have never chosen to reproduce before. I ended by painting a picture of communist China as “an opponent that views international politics as a whole as a vast guerrilla struggle … intimidating, ambushing, demoralizing and weakening those who would uphold an alternative world order.”

    “We are being tested,” I wrote. “Have we the guts, the grit, the determination to stick with a frustrating, bloody, difficult course as long as it takes to see it through….? The Asian communists are sure that we have not.” Tuesday, Bush said: Our adversaries “believe that free societies are essentially corrupt and decadent, and with a few hard blows they can force us to retreat.”

    His speechwriters, like me, then faced this question from the other side. To meet the enemy’s test of resolve, how long must the American public support troops as they kill and die in a foreign land? Their answer came in the same workmanlike evasions that served Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon: “as long as we are needed (and not a day longer) … until the fight is won.”

    I can scarcely bear to reread my own proposed response in 1965 to that question, which drew on a famous riposte by the late U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson during the Cuban missile crisis: “There is only one answer for us to give. It was made … by an American statesman … in the midst of another crisis that tested our resolution. Till hell freezes over.”

    It doesn’t feel any better to hear similar words from another president 40 years on, nor will they read any better to his speechwriters years from now. But the human pain they foretell will not be mainly theirs.

    Daniel Ellsberg is a member of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Advisory Council and is currently a Foundation Fellow. He worked in the State and Defense departments under Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. He released the Pentagon Papers to the press in 1971. Daniel Ellsberg is the recipient of the Foundation’s 2005 Distinguished Peace Leadership Award.

  • Bush Administration Eliminating 19-year-old International Terrorism Report

    WASHINGTON – The State Department decided to stop publishing an annual report on international terrorism after the government’s top terrorism center concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985, the first year the publication covered.

    Several U.S. officials defended the abrupt decision, saying the methodology the National Counterterrorism Center used to generate statistics for the report may have been faulty, such as the inclusion of incidents that may not have been terrorism.

    Last year, the number of incidents in 2003 was undercounted, forcing a revision of the report, “Patterns of Global Terrorism.”

    But other current and former officials charged that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s office ordered “Patterns of Global Terrorism” eliminated several weeks ago because the 2004 statistics raised disturbing questions about the Bush’s administration’s frequent claims of progress in the war against terrorism.

    “Instead of dealing with the facts and dealing with them in an intelligent fashion, they try to hide their facts from the American public,” charged Larry C. Johnson, a former CIA analyst and State Department terrorism expert who first disclosed the decision to eliminate the report in The Counterterrorism Blog, an online journal.

    Rep. Henry Waxman (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif., who was among the leading critics of last year’s mix-up, reacted angrily to the decision.

    “This is the definitive report on the incidence of terrorism around the world. It should be unthinkable that there would be an effort to withhold it – or any of the key data – from the public. The Bush administration should stop playing politics with this critical report.”

    A senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, confirmed that the publication was being eliminated, but said the allegation that it was being done for political reasons was “categorically untrue.”

    According to Johnson and U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the issue, statistics that the National Counterterrorism Center provided to the State Department reported 625 “significant” terrorist attacks in 2004.

    That compared with 175 such incidents in 2003, the highest number in two decades.

    The statistics didn’t include attacks on American troops in Iraq, which President Bush as recently as Tuesday called “a central front in the war on terror.”

    The intelligence officials requested anonymity because the information is classified and because, they said, they feared White House retribution. Johnson declined to say how he obtained the figures.

    Another U.S. official, who also requested anonymity, said analysts from the counterterrorism center were especially careful in amassing and reviewing the data because of the political turmoil created by last year’s errors.

    Last June, the administration was forced to issue a revised version of the report for 2003 that showed a higher number of significant terrorist attacks and more than twice the number of fatalities than had been presented in the original report two months earlier.

    The snafu was embarrassing for the White House, which had used the original version to bolster President Bush’s election-campaign claim that the war in Iraq had advanced the fight against terrorism.

    U.S. officials blamed last year’s mix-up on bureaucratic mistakes involving the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, the forerunner of the National Counterterrorism Center.

    Created last year on the recommendation of the independent commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the center is the government’s primary organization for analyzing and integrating all U.S. government intelligence on terrorism.

    The State Department published “Patterns of Global Terrorism” under a law that requires it to submit to the House of Representatives and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee a country-by-country terrorism assessment by April 30 each year.

    A declassified version of the report has been made public since 1986 in the form of a glossy booklet, even though there was no legal requirement to produce one.

    The senior State Department official said a report on global terrorism would be sent this year to lawmakers and made available to the public in place of “Patterns of Global Terrorism,” but that it wouldn’t contain statistical data.

    He said that decision was taken because the State Department believed that the National Counterterrorism Center “is now the authoritative government agency for the analysis of global terrorism. We believe that the NCTC should compile and publish the relevant data on that subject.”

    He didn’t answer questions about whether the data would be made available to the public, saying, “We will be consulting (with Congress) … on who should publish and in what form.”

    Another U.S. official said Rice’s office was leery of the methodology the National Counterterrorism Center used to generate the data for 2004, believing that analysts anxious to avoid a repetition of last year’s undercount included incidents that may not have been terrorist attacks.

    But the U.S. intelligence officials said Rice’s office decided to eliminate “Patterns of Global Terrorism” when the counterterrorism center declined to use alternative methodology that would have reported fewer significant attacks.

    The officials said they interpreted Rice’s action as an attempt to avoid releasing statistics that would contradict the administration’s claims that it’s winning the war against terrorism.

    To read past “Patterns of Global Terrorism” reports online, go to www.mipt.org/Patterns-of-Global-Terrorism.asp

  • Nuclear Plants are Still Vulnerable, Panel Says

    Three and a half years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the government has failed to address the risk that a passenger plane flying at high speed could be deliberately crashed into a commercial nuclear plant, setting off fires and dispersing large amounts of radiation, a long-awaited report by the National Academy of Sciences has concluded.

    Officials at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission have maintained that such an attack is improbable and that detailed analyses of the consequences of such attacks are unnecessary. Experts at the nation’s premier scientific body said those judgments are flawed.

    “There are currently no requirements in place to defend against the kinds of larger-scale, pre-meditated, skillful attacks that were carried out on September 11, 2001,” a panel of scientists said, even as it agreed such an attack would be difficult to pull off.

    Academy officials battled the government for months to make their declassified conclusions public — and the version released yesterday charged that federal secrecy edicts designed to keep information from terrorists were paradoxically hurting efforts to defend against such attacks.

    Restrictions on sharing information imposed by the NRC had kept the industry from addressing vulnerabilities, the report said.

    As a result, government labs and independent researchers have sometimes worked at cross-purposes, searched for solutions that others had already found and duplicated complex analyses.

    NRC spokesman Scott Burnell said the agency “respectfully disagrees” that there are no provisions to deal with major attacks.

    Security measures have been upgraded since 2001, and the agency continues to analyze risks, he said. But he emphasized that such attacks are improbable and that other agencies are guarding against them.

    “We do believe that the possibility of a successful attack using commercial aircraft is very small,” he said. It is impractical to ask commercial plants to defend against such attacks, Burnell concluded. But he said plants are aware of the risk and are implementing measures to deal with worst-case scenarios.

    As to the complaint of excessive secrecy, Burnell said the commission has to implement the law, which requires controls on information that could be misused. The debate is not over classified information but rather over sensitive data that ought not to be publicized.

    In an earlier interview, E. William Colglazier, executive officer of the academy, said the nuclear agency’s guidelines for this classification are vague. Even when officials agreed that certain details in the report are not secret, he said, they had argued that chunks of non-secret information, when presented together, constituted “Safeguards Information.”

    The report said government scientists and independent researchers had conducted analyses of threats without knowing that others were doing the same.

    Burnell acknowledged that “the system was not perfect” but said that as more people receive security clearances such bottlenecks could be reduced. The commission has indicated it is seeking to increase access to information.

    To the relief of the industry, the academy report disputed a characterization that the commission used in a letter to Congress on March 14. The letter implied that the academy was recommending moving spent nuclear fuel from large pools to dry storage casks. Industry believes that the pools are as safe as the casks and that moving the fuel is not worth the expense.

    Louis J. Lanzerotti, chairman of the academy’s report, said that his panel had called for analyses of large attacks and that those results might prompt the commission to move fuel to dry storage at some plants.

    Although dry storage has advantages, the risk of major attacks could be sufficiently addressed by changing how spent fuel is stored in pools and by installing water sprays to control fires, said the academy’s Kevin Crowley, the study coordinator.

    Originally published by The Washington Post

  • World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates

    A United World or a Divided World? Multiethnicity, Human Rights, Terrorism

    Statement of the 5th Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates

    Two decades ago, the world was swept with a wave of hope. Inspired by the popular movements for peace, freedom, democracy and solidarity, the nations of the world worked together to end the cold war. Yet the opportunities opened up by that historic change are slipping away. We are gravely concerned with the resurgent nuclear and conventional arms race, disrespect for international law and the failure of the world’s governments to address adequately the challenges of poverty and environmental degradation. A cult of violence is spreading globally; the opportunity to build a culture of peace, advocated by the United Nations, Pope John Paul II, the Dalai Lama and other spiritual leaders, is receding.

    Alongside the challenges inherited from the past there are new ones, which, if not properly addressed, could cause a clash of civilizations, religions and cultures. We reject the idea of the inevitability of such a conflict. We are convinced that combating terrorism in all its forms is a task that should be pursued with determination. Only by reaffirming our shared ethical values — respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms — and by observing democratic principles, within and amongst countries, can terrorism be defeated. We must address the root causes of terrorism — poverty, ignorance and injustice — rather than responding to violence with violence.

    Unacceptable violence is occurring daily against women and children. Children remain our most important neglected treasure. Their protection, security and health should be the highest priority. Children everywhere deserve to be educated in and for peace. There is no excuse for neglecting their safety and welfare and, particularly, for their suffering in war.

    The war in Iraq has created a hotbed of dangerous instability and a breeding ground for terrorism. Credible reports of the disappearance of nuclear materials cannot be ignored. While we mourn the deaths of tens of thousands of people, none of the goals proclaimed by the coalition have been achieved.

    The challenges of security, poverty and environmental crisis can only be met successfully through multilateral efforts based on the rule of law. All nations must strictly fulfil their treaty obligations and reaffirm the indispensable role of the United Nations and the primary responsibility of the UN Security Council for maintaining peace.

    We support a speedy, peaceful resolution of the North Korean nuclear issue, including a verifiable end to North Korea ‘s nuclear weapons program, security guarantees and lifting of sanctions on North Korea . Both the six-party talks and bilateral efforts by the United States and North Korea should contribute to such an outcome.

    We welcome recent progress in the talks between Iran and Great Britain , France and Germany on the Iranian nuclear program issue and hope that the United States will join in the process to find a solution within the framework of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

    We call for the reduction of military expenditures and for conclusion of a treaty that would control arms trade and prohibit sales of arms where they could be used to violate international human rights standards and humanitarian law.

    As Nobel Laureates, we believe that the world community needs urgently to address the challenges of poverty and sustainable development. Responding to these challenges requires the political will that has been so sadly lacking.

    The undertakings pledged by states at the UN Millennium Summit, the promises of increased development assistance, fair trade, market access and debt relief for developing countries, have not been implemented. Poverty continues to be the world’s most widespread and dangerous scourge. Millions of people become victims of hunger and disease, and entire nations suffer from feelings of frustration

    and despair. This creates fertile ground for extremism and terrorism. The stability and future of the entire human community are thus jeopardized.

    Scientists are warning us that failure to solve the problems of water, energy and climate change will lead to a breakdown of order, more military conflicts and ultimately the destruction of the living systems upon which civilization depends. Therefore, we reaffirm our support for the Kyoto Protocol and the Earth Charter and endorse the rights-based approach to water, as reflected in the initiative of Green Cross International calling upon governments to negotiate a framework treaty on water.

    As Nobel Peace Prize Laureates we believe that to benefit from humankind’s new, unprecedented opportunities and to counter the dangers confronting us there is a need for better global governance. Therefore, we support strengthening and reforming the United Nations and its institutions.

    As immediate specific tasks, we commit to work for:

    – Genuine efforts to resolve the Middle East crisis. This is both a key to the problem of terrorism and a chance to avoid a dangerous clash of civilizations. A solution is possible if the right of all nations in the region to secure, viable statehood is respected and if the Middle East is integrated in all global processes while respecting the unique culture of the peoples of that region.

    – Preserving and strengthening the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. We reject double standards and emphasize the legal responsibility of nuclear weapons states to work to eliminate nuclear weapons. We call for continuation of the moratorium on nuclear testing pending entry into force of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and for accelerating the process of verifiable and irreversible nuclear arms reduction. We are gravely alarmed by the creation of new, usable nuclear weapons and call for rejection of doctrines that view nuclear weapons as legitimate means of war-fighting and threat pre-emption.

    – Effectively realizing the initiative of the UN Secretary General to convene a high-level conference in 2005 to give an impetus to the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals. We pledge to work to create an atmosphere of public accountability to help accomplish these vitally important tasks.

    We believe that to solve the problems that challenge the world today politicians need to interact with an empowered civil society and strong mass movements. This is the way toward a globalization with a human face and a new international order that rejects brute force, respects ethnic, cultural and political diversity and affirms justice, compassion and human solidarity.

    We, the Nobel Peace Laureates and Laureate organizations, pledge to work for the realization of these goals and are calling on governments and people everywhere to join us.

    Mikhail Gorbachev, Kim Dae-Jung, Lech Walesa, Joseph Rotblat, Jose Ramos-Horta, Betty Williams, Mairead Corrigan Maguire, Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo, Adolfo Perez Esquivel, and Rigoaberta Menchu Tum; and, United Nations Children’s Fund, Pugwash Conferences, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, International Peace Bureau, Institut de Droit International, American Friends Service Committee, Médicins sans Frontières, Amnesty International, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, International Labour Organization, International Campaign to Ban Land Mines, United Nations.

  • Cronkite: US ‘Excited the Arab World’ by Waging War on Iraq

    Veteran TV network newsman Walter Cronkite told a Santa Barbara audience Saturday that he sees the nation as less safe for having waged war on Iraq .

    “The problem, quite clearly, is we have excited the Arab world, the Muslim world, to take up arms against us,” he said, adding that this excitement far exceeds the anger that existed among terrorist groups prior to the war.

    The comments came moments after Mr. Cronkite received an annual award from the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation at a gala event focused on his longtime and storied journalism career and his views on current U.S. foreign policy. They came in response to questions posed by veteran ABC News correspondent Sam Donaldson in front of an audience of more than 400 people in a ballroom at Fess Parker’s Doubletree Resort.

    At age 87, Mr. Cronkite is far more outspoken with regard to his personal opinions than he ever was or arguably could be during his career as a reporter and news anchor.

    Dubbed “the most trusted man in America ,” even after his 1981 retirement, Mr. Cronkite is increasingly regarded as an advocate for world peace. In its 21st year, the Distinguished Peace Leadership Award goes to individuals who have demonstrated “courageous leadership in the cause of peace,” according to the nonprofit Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, which works to eliminate nuclear weapons and inspire antiwar activism.

    Past recipients include the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Jacques Cousteau and King Hussein of Jordan .

    David Krieger, foundation president, said Mr. Cronkite was chosen this year because he represents integrity in the media and spoke the truth to the American public. “We believe that is essential for Democracy to function and for peace to have a chance in any society.”

    Speaking with Santa Barbara news media before the ceremony, Mr. Cronkite said he thinks the Nov. 2 presidential election will be one of the most important since perhaps the Civil War because it comes on the heels of a drastic change in U.S. foreign policy and a ballooning national debt.

    The war on Iraq marked the first time the United States has conducted a pre-emptive invasion and occupation of another country. The debt, now at $7.43 trillion, has grown by almost a third since President Bush took office.

    So what will it take to achieve peace in this world?

    “It certainly has to include, as a major factor, diplomacy,” Mr. Cronkite said, adding that an increased understanding between nations and cultures is critical, coupled with the involvement of an international organization such as the United Nations.

    He said TV news could do more to serve the public. In particular, he said networks should expand their nightly news offerings to one hour from a half hour, and should use news magazine shows more wisely.

    “The material that flows over the newsroom desks each day cannot be handled in the proper detail,” Mr. Cronkite said, adding that magazine shows focus too much on sex, crime and scandal. “Why don’t they take those hours and do instant documentaries, which they are certainly capable of doing?”

    He said these could focus on the major stories of the day. “This great informative medium we’ve got of television is really not fulfilling its obligation to the public.”

    Slightly stooped and gray, Mr. Cronkite walks in measured steps. He appeared in a dark suit and yellow tie and, at times Saturday, relied on his chief of staff to repeat questions.

    “I am a little bit hard of hearing,” he said. Then he added: “That’s a darn lie. I’m as deaf as a post.”

    The Missouri-born journalist began his career writing for public relations, small newspapers and at radio stations before joining United Press International to cover World War II.

    Five years after the war, he joined CBS, hosting warmly remembered shows such as “You Are There” and “Twentieth Century” before taking the anchor slot on the “CBS Evening News” in 1962. His broadcasts after the Tet offensive and afterwards, in which he suggested the war was in stalemate, have been credited by some with helping turn public sentiment against the war.

    On foreign shores, his on-the-air question to Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, asking if he would go to Jerusalem if invited, ended with such an invitation and eventually to a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt .

    Mr. Cronkite is perhaps remembered best by some viewers for his famous sign off: “And that’s the way it is.”