Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: US

  • Bravo: 60 Years of Suffering, Cover-Ups, Injustice

    Sixty years ago on March 1 in the heart of the Pacific Ocean, the United States detonated the most powerful nuclear weapon in its history.

    Codenamed Bravo, the 15-megaton hydrogen bomb was 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb that devastated Hiroshima nine years earlier. The Bravo blast “represented as revolutionary an advance in explosive power over the atomic bomb as the atomic bomb had over the conventional weapons of World War II,” historian-lawyer Jonathan Weisgall notes.

    Castle Bravo Nuclear ExplosionAlso unlike Hiroshima’s A-bomb, Bravo was laced with plutonium, a most toxic element with a radioactive existence of half a million years that may be hazardous to humans for at least half that time.

    And, unlike the atomic airburst above Hiroshima, Bravo was a shallow-water ground burst.  It vaporized three of the 23 islands of tiny Bikini Atoll, 2,600 miles southwest of Hawaii, and created a crater that is visible from space.

    A fireball nearly as hot as the center of the sun sucked unto itself water, mud and millions of tons of coral that had been pulverized into ash by the incredible explosion; these clung to tons of radioactive uranium fragments.  The fireball swooshed heavenwards, forming a shimmering white mushroom cloud that hovered over the proving grounds of Bikini and Enewetak atolls, whose inhabitants had earlier been evacuated.

    Wafting eastward, the cloud powdered 236 islanders on Rongelap and Utrik atolls and 28 U.S. servicemen. The islanders played with, drank and ate the snowflake-like particles for days and began suffering nausea, hair loss, diarrhea and skin lesions when they were finally evacuated to a U.S. military clinic.

    These islanders had become a unique medical case. As scientist Neal Hines explains, “Never before in history had an isolated human population been subjected to high but sublethal amounts of radioactivity without the physical and psychological complexities associated with nuclear explosion.”

    Bravo bequeathed the world a new word: fallout.  Even before Bravo, experts—but not the public–knew that the radioactive dust of atmospheric nuclear weapons explosions was invisibly powdering the continental U.S. and touching others worldwide. But Bravo for the first time revealed to the world a new kind of invisible menace, a danger that could not be smelled, seen, felt or tasted.  Bravo exposed radioactive fallout as, what Weisgall calls, “a biological weapon of terror.” It visibly ushered in the globalization of radioactive pollution.

    For these islanders, Bravo also ushered in 60 years of sufferings and a chain reaction of U.S. cover-ups and injustices, as detailed below.  Over the decades, their pleas for just and adequate compensation and U.S. constitutional rights they had been promised were rejected by the U.S. courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, by Congress and by executive-branch administrations headed by presidents of either party.

    SNUBBED BY “AMERICA’S FIRST PACIFIC PRESIDENT”

    The silence by today’s administration of President Obama is acutely embarrassing, given that shortly after his election he described himself as “America’s first Pacific president,” and promised to “strengthen and sustain our leadership in this vitally important part of the world.”

    Since then, Obama has initiated a “pivot” to the Pacific by beefing up and re-positioning U.S.  military units in the region.  But he failed to acknowledge or recognize that these remote Pacific atolls had served after World War II as proving grounds vital for U.S. superpower status today.  They provided sites for nuclear-weapons tests too powerful and unpredictable to be detonated in the 48 contiguous states and for tests enabling the transition in nuclear delivery systems from conventional bombers to intercontinental missiles—Star-War-like tests that still continue.

    More recently, also ignoring the moral implications undergirding Marshallese pleas, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel called on U.S. military leaders to better instill ethics in their services so as to ensure “moral character and moral courage.”

    He issued his instructions for more accountability in the wake of investigations into cheating scandals on proficiency and training tests given to nuclear-related personnel in the Navy and Air Force. The Pentagon is also investigating possible illegal drug violations by 11 Air Force officers, including some responsible for launching America’s deadly nuclear missiles.

    U.N. CRITICIZES U.S. ON HUMAN RIGHTS

    If U.S. nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific is un-remembered by the American government, it has not been forgotten internationally.  While the U.S. regularly castigates the governments of China and Russia for human rights abuses or violations, a special United Nations report urges the U.S. government to remedy and compensate Marshall Islanders for its nuclear weapons testing that has caused “immediate and lasting effects” on their human rights.

    “Radiation from the testing resulted in fatalities and in acute and long-term health complications,” according to the report presented to the U.N. Human Rights Council in September 2012 by Special Rapporteur Calin Georgescu.  “The effects of radiation have been exacerbated by near-irreversible environmental contamination, leading to the loss of livelihoods and lands.  Moreover, many people continue to experience indefinite displacement.”

    The report also urged the U.S. to provide more compensation and to consider issuing a presidential acknowledgment and apology to victims adversely affected by its tests.

    The international community and the U.N. “has an ongoing obligation to encourage a final and just resolution for the Marshallese people,” the report reads, because they placed the Marshallese under the U.S.-administered strategic trusteeship for 40-plus years from 1947 until 1990. These international groups might consider a more comprehensive compilation of scientific findings “on this regrettable episode in human history.”

    As the sole administrator for the U.N.-sanctioned trust territory, the U.S. government pledged in 1947 “to protect the inhabitants against the loss of their lands and resources.”  Instead, the U.S. from 1946 to 1958 conducted 67 atomic and hydrogen tests in the Marshall Islands, with a total yield of 108 megatons, which is 98 times greater than the total yield of all the U.S. nuclear tests conducted in Nevada and is equivalent to 7,200 Hiroshima-size bombs.  That works out to an average of more than 1.6 Hiroshima-size bombs per day for the 12 years.

    In addition, the U.S. as the trust administrator was obliged “to protect the health of the inhabitants.” But the Bravo blast, more than any other single detonation, made visible to the world the adverse health and environmental effects these islanders suffered.  Bravo was the first  U.S. hydrogen device that could be delivered by airplane and was designed to catch up with the Soviets who had six months earlier exploded their aircraft-deliverable hydrogen bomb.

    A CHAIN REACTION OF COVER-UPS & “ASHES OF DEATH”

    A U.S. cover-up began just hours after the Bravo weapon was detonated.   Hardly a “routine atomic test” as it was officially described, Bravo initially created a radioactive, leaf-shaped plume that turned into a lethal zone covering 7,000 square miles—that is, the distance from Washington to New York. Then, radioactive snow-like particles began descending 100 to 280 miles away over lands, lagoons and inhabitants of Rongelap and Utrik atolls.  Within three days, 236 islanders were evacuated to a U.S. Navy clinic.

    The U.S. had hoped to keep the evacuation secret but a personal letter from Corporal Don Whitaker to his hometown newspaper in Cincinnati shared his observations of the distraught islanders arriving at the clinic.  The U.S. then issued a press release saying the islanders were “reported well.”  But gripping photographs taken at the time and later published in the Journal of the American Medical Association documented a 7-year-old girl whose hair had tufted out and a 13-year-old boy with a close-up of the back of the head showing a peeling off of the skin, a loss of hair and a persistent sore on his left ear. Others had lower blood counts that weaken resistance to infections.  Decades later, in 1982, a U.S. agency described Bravo as “the worst single incident of fallout exposures in all the U.S. atmospheric testing program.”Just days after the Cincinnati newspaper expose, another surprise stunned the U.S. government and the world. News accounts reported 23 crew members of a Japanese tuna trawler, the No. 5 Fukuryu Maru (the “Lucky Dragon”) had also been Bravo-dusted with what is known in Japan as shi no hai, or “ashes of death.”

    When the trawler reached home port near Tokyo two weeks after the Bravo explosion, the crews’ radiation sickness and the trawler’s radioactive haul of tuna shocked U.S. officials and created panic at fish markets in Japan and the West Coast. The Japanese government and public described the Lucky Dragon uproar as “a second Hiroshima” and it nearly led to severing diplomatic relations.

    A U.S. doctor dispatched by the government to Japan predicted the crew would recover within a month.  But, six months later, the Lucky Dragon’s 40-year-old radio operator, Aikichi Kuboyama, died.  The New York Times described him as “probably the world’s first hydrogen-bomb casualty.”

    The U.S. cover stories for Bravo’s disastrous results plus subsequent official cover-ups at the time—and continuing today–were that the might of the Bravo shot was greater than had been expected and that the winds shifted at the last minute unexpectedly to waft radioactivity over inhabited areas.  Both cover stories have since been rebutted by revelations in once-secret official documents and by testimonies of two U.S. servicemen who were also Bravo-dusted on Rongerik Atoll.

    A STRING OF UNENDING INJUSTICES

    Within days after the Bravo shot, the U.S. cover-up had secretly taken a more menacing turn.  In an injustice exposing disregard for human health, the Bravo-exposed islanders were swept into a top-secret project in which they were used as human subjects to research the effects of radioactive fallout.

    A week after Bravo, on March 8, at the Navy clinic on Kwajalein, E.P. Cronkite, one of the U.S. medical personnel dispatched there shortly after the islanders’ arrival, was handed a “letter of instruction” establishing “Project 4.1.” It was titled the “Study of Response of Human Beings Exposed to Significant Beta and Gamma Radiation Due to Fallout from High Yield Weapons.” To avoid negative publicity, the document had been classified as “Secret Restricted Data” until 1994, four years after the end of U.S. responsibilities for its trusteeship at the U.N. and when the Clinton Administration began an open-government initiative.
    It would be 40 years before islanders learned the true nature of Project 4.1.  Documents declassified since 1994 show that four months before the Bravo shot, on November 10, 1953, U.S. officials had listed Project 4.1 to research the effects of fallout radiation on human beings as among 48 experiments to be conducted during the test, thus seeming to indicate that using islanders as guinea pigs was premeditated. However, an advisory commission appointed by President Clinton in 1994 indicated “there was insufficient evidence to demonstrate intentional human testing on Marshallese.”

    For this human-subject research, the islanders had neither been asked nor gave their informed consent—which was established as an essential international standard when the Nuremberg code was written following the war crimes convictions of German medical officers.

    Under Project 4.1, the exposed Rongelapese were studied yearly and so were the Utrik Islanders after thyroid nodules began appearing on them in 1963. The islanders began complaining they were being treated like guinea pigs in a laboratory experiment rather than sick humans deserving treatment.  A doctor who evaluated them annually came close to agreeing when he wrote 38 years after Bravo, “In retrospect, it was unfortunate that the AEC [Atomic Energy Commission], because it was a research organization, did not include support of basic health care of populations under study.”

    During this time, Bravo-dusted islanders developed one of the world’s highest rates of thyroid abnormalities; one third of the Rongelapese developed abnormalities in the thyroid, which controls physical and mental growth, and thus resulted in some cases of mental retardation, lack of vigor and stunted development. Islanders complained of stillborn births, cancers and genetic damage.

    Seven weeks after Bravo, on April 21, Cronkite recommended to military officials that exposed Marshallese generally “should be exposed to no further radiation” for at least 12 years and probably for the rest of their natural lives.

    Yet, three years later, U.S. officials returned the Rongelapese to their radioactive homeland after they had spent three months at the Kwajalein military facility and at Ejit Island.  Besides being Bravo-dusted, their homeland by 1957 had accumulated radioactivity from some of the 34 prior nuclear explosions in the Marshall Islands.  Utrik Islanders were returned home by the U.S. shortly after their medical stay on Kwajalein.

    For 28 years the Rongelapese lived in their radioactive homeland until 1985.  Unable to get answers to their questions, they discounted U.S. assurances that their island was safe.  Failing to provide the Rongelapese “information on their total radiation condition, information that is available, amounts to a coverup,” according to a memo dated July 22, 1985 written by Tommy McCraw of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Safety.

    In mid-1985, when the U.S. refused to move them, 300 Rongelapese persuaded the environmental organization Greenpeace to transport them and 100 tons of their building materials 110 miles away to Majetto Island. Many of them have since stayed there because they fear their homeland is still too radioactive even though the U.S. has funded resettlement facilities.

    NEW AGREEMENTS BUILT ON U.S. SECRECY

    In 1986, President Reagan signed the Compact of Free Association with related agreements after its ratification by the central government of the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) and the U.S. Congress, thus ending bilaterally America’s trusteeship arrangement, which was continued by the U.N. Security Council until 1990.

    The Compact recognizes RMI as a sovereign, self-governing independent nation in terms of internal management and international relations but with significant U.S. economic aid and services and continues to reserve to the U.S. government sole military access to RMI’s 700,000 square miles used still for long-range missile tests.

    Yet, during the Compact negotiations, the U.S. government failed to disclose material information about its testing program to the Pacific Islanders.  Not until 1994 did the U.S. government respond favorably to RMI’s Freedom of Information Act request for details about the total number of nuclear tests conducted in its territories as well as the kind and yield of each test.  Newly declassified information then also revealed that more islanders were exposed to radiation than previously admitted by the U.S.  As late as June 2013 the U.S. gave RMI officials 650-plus pages detailing freshly declassified fallout results of 49 Pacific hydrogen-bomb blasts with an explosive force equal to 3,200 Hiroshima-size bombs conducted in only two years–1956 and 1958.

    While the Marshallese were kept in the dark during negotiations about material information, the U.S. crafted Compact agreements that included a provision prohibiting those inhabitants from seeking future legal redress in the U.S. courts and dismissing all current court cases in exchange for a $150 million compensation trust fund to be administered by a Nuclear Claims Tribunal.

    However, that trust fund is now depleted. That fund proved inadequate to pay $14 million in monies already awarded for personal health claims and 712 of those granted awards (42%) have died without receiving their full payments. The nuclear-weapons tests are presumed by the U.S. to have afflicted many Marshallese with various kinds of cancers and other diseases. A Congressional Research Service Report for Congress in March 2005 indicates that “as many as 4,000 claims may have yet to be filed among persons alive during testing.”

    A Marshallese petition sent to the House Speaker and President Bush on Sept. 11, 2000 states that circumstances have changed since the initial agreements and the Marshallese government demands far more in just and adequate compensation for health and property claims.  But those demands for justice have thus far gone unanswered.

    March 1 will be solemnly remembered in Asia and the Pacific.  In the Marshall Islands flags are flown at half-mast during the Nuclear Memorial and Survivors Remembrance Day. Last year on the anniversary of the Bravo shot, Marshallese President Christopher J. Loeak described March 1 as “a day that has and will continue to remain in infamy in the hearts and minds of every Marshallese.” He renewed his call for President Obama and the U.S. government for justice.

    This year President Loeak is scheduled in February for a state visit to Japan. He will meet with Emperor Akhito and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and journey to the Hiroshima Peace Park and Memorial Museum.

    With the approaching 60th anniversary of the Bravo blast, Loeak might also visit a pavilion exhibiting the hull of the ill-fated Lucky Dragon fishing trawler and a marker commemorating its 450 tons of radioactive tuna that touched off worldwide alarms.

    The Lucky Dragon and Hiroshima beseech “America’s first Pacific president” and the world to reflect on the catastrophic horror of nuclear weapons and to rectify their bitter legacy of lingering injustices.

    Beverly Deepe Keever is author of News Zero: The New York Times and the Bomb and of Death Zones and Darling Spies: Seven Years of Vietnam War Reporting.

  • Rejecting the Rule of Law

    The most important lesson one can acquire about US foreign policy is the understanding that our leaders do not mean well. They do not have any noble goals of democracy and freedom and all that jazz. They aim to dominate the world by any means necessary. And as long as an American believes that the intentions are noble and honorable, it’s very difficult to penetrate that wall. That wall surrounds the thinking and blocks any attempt to make them realize the harm being done by US foreign policy.
    — William Blum, former member of the US State Department, author of Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions since World War II

    alice_slaterMore than 5,000 satellites have been launched into orbit since the space age began. Today, eleven countries have space launch capability, with over sixty countries operating about 1,100 active satellites orbiting the earth providing a constant stream of data and information relied upon for critical civilian communications as well as for military operations by some. As we grow ever more dependent on the ability of these satellites to perform their essential functions without interruption, there are growing concerns that this useful technology is giving rise to a new battleground in space for the purpose of sabotaging or destroying the vital services our space-based communications now provide.

    The US and Russia have been testing anti-satellite technology (ASAT) since the space age began, and have even contemplated using  nuclear tipped ballistic missiles to destroy space assets. In 1967, the US and Russia  realized it would be in their interest to support the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which banned the placement of nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in space, although they failed to ban the use of conventional weapons in space. And in 1972 they agreed to sign the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) to slow down the space race and the ability to harm each other’s assets in space. Unfortunately, George Bush walked out of the ABM treaty in 2002, and the race to weaponize space was on once again in full force. China is getting into the act too, having launched, in 2007, a device which destroyed one of its aging weather satellites orbiting in space. The US followed suit in 2008, destroying a non-functioning satellite, while both nations denied any military mission for their acts, claiming they were merely trying to destroy outdated satellites that no longer functioned.

    With the proliferation of military spacecraft such as imaging and communications satellites and ballistic missile and anti-missile systems which often pass through outer space, there have been numerous efforts in the UN Committee on Disarmament (CD) to outlaw the weaponization of space through a legally binding treaty. But the United States is having none of it. In the CD, which requires consensus to take action, the US has been the only nation to block every vote to begin negotiations on such a treaty, with Israel generally abstaining in support. Russia and China actually prepared a draft treaty to ban weapons in space in 2008, but the US blocked the proposal, voting against it each year thereafter when it was reintroduced for consideration, saying the proposal was “a diplomatic ploy by the two nations to gain a military advantage”.

    While continuing to block a legally binding treaty to ban weapons in space, the US has recently begun to work with a group of nations in a new initiative that began in the European Union in 2008, proposing a “Code of Conduct  for Outer Space Activities“  which would lay out a non-binding set of rules of the road for a safer and more responsible environment in space. Some of its key objectives are to mitigate damage to satellites that could be caused by space debris orbiting the earth, to avoid the potential of destructive collisions, and to manage the crowding of satellites and the saturation of the radio-frequency spectrum, as well as to address direct threats of hostility to assets in space. At first, the US rejected any support for the Code, but has now agreed to participate in drafting a new version based on the third iteration from the European Union. Obama’s Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, Rose Gottemoeller, acknowledged in 2012 the necessity for a Code to deal with orbital debris and “other irresponsible actions in space”, while at the same time, noting that:

    It is important to clarify several points with respect to the code. It is still under development, we would not subscribe to any code unless it protects and enhances our national security, and the code would not be legally binding.

    In addition, the US is insisting on a provision in this third version of the Code of Conduct that, while making a voluntary promise to “refrain from any action which brings about, directly or indirectly, damage, or destruction, of space objects”, qualifies that directive with the language “unless such action is justified”. One justification given for destructive action is “the Charter of the United Nations including the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense”, thus lending legitimacy and codifying the possibility for warfare in space as part of the Code’s established norm. And while the Charter of the United Nations prohibits aggressive action by any nation without Security Council approval unless a nation acts in self-defense, we know there have been numerous occasions where nations have by-passed the Security Council to take aggressive action, often protesting they were acting in self-defense. Instead of banning ASAT development and warfare, this Code justifies such warfare as long as it’s done, individually and collectively, under the guise of “self-defense”. Thus despite lacking the force of law that would be established with a legally binding treaty, this new US version of the Code creates, as the norm it is proposing, a possibility for space warfare. Our world deserves better!

    Alice Slater is NAPF’s New York representative and serves on the Council of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space

  • When Will They Ever Learn? The American People and Support for War

    When it comes to war, the American public is remarkably fickle.

    Lawrence WittnerThe responses of Americans to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars provide telling examples.  In 2003, according to opinion polls, 72 percent of Americans thought going to war in Iraq was the right decision.  By early 2013, support for that decision had declined to 41 percent.  Similarly, in October 2001, when U.S. military action began in Afghanistan, it was backed by 90 percent of the American public.  By December 2013, public approval of the Afghanistan war had dropped to only 17 percent.

    In fact, this collapse of public support for once-popular wars is a long-term phenomenon.  Although World War I preceded public opinion polling, observers reported considerable enthusiasm for U.S. entry into that conflict in April 1917.  But, after the war, the enthusiasm melted away.  In 1937, when pollsters asked Americans whether the United States should participate in another war like the World War, 95 percent of the respondents said “No.”

    And so it went.  When President Truman dispatched U.S. troops to Korea in June 1950, 78 percent of Americans polled expressed their approval.  By February 1952, according to polls, 50 percent of Americans believed that U.S. entry into the Korean War had been a mistake.  The same phenomenon occurred in connection with the Vietnam War.  In August 1965, when Americans were asked if the U.S. government had made “a mistake in sending troops to fight in Vietnam,” 61 percent of them said “No.”  But by August 1968, support for the war had fallen to 35 percent, and by May 1971 it had dropped to 28 percent.

    Of all America’s wars over the past century, only World War II has retained mass public approval.  And this was a very unusual war – one involving a devastating military attack upon American soil, fiendish foes determined to conquer and enslave the world, and a clear-cut, total victory.

    In almost all cases, though, Americans turned against wars they once supported.  How should one explain this pattern of disillusionment?

    The major reason appears to be the immense cost of war — in lives and resources.  During the Korean and Vietnam wars, as the body bags and crippled veterans began coming back to the United States in large numbers, public support for the wars dwindled considerably.  Although the Afghanistan and Iraq wars produced fewer American casualties, the economic costs have been immense.  Two recent scholarly studies have estimated that these two wars will ultimately cost American taxpayers from $4 trillion to $6 trillion.  As a result, most of the U.S. government’s spending no longer goes for education, health care, parks, and infrastructure, but to cover the costs of war.  It is hardly surprising that many Americans have turned sour on these conflicts.

    But if the heavy burden of wars has disillusioned many Americans, why are they so easily suckered into supporting new ones?

    A key reason seems to be that that powerful, opinion-molding institutions – the mass communications media, government, political parties, and even education – are controlled, more or less, by what President Eisenhower called “the military-industrial complex.”  And, at the outset of a conflict, these institutions are usually capable of getting flags waving, bands playing, and crowds cheering for war.

    But it is also true that much of the American public is very gullible and, at least initially, quite ready to rally ‘round the flag.  Certainly, many Americans are very nationalistic and resonate to super-patriotic appeals.  A mainstay of U.S. political rhetoric is the sacrosanct claim that America is “the greatest nation in the world” – a very useful motivator of U.S. military action against other countries.  And this heady brew is topped off with considerable reverence for guns and U.S. soldiers.  (“Let’s hear the applause for Our Heroes!”)

    Of course, there is also an important American peace constituency, which has formed long-term peace organizations, including Peace Action, Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and other antiwar groups.  This peace constituency, often driven by moral and political ideals, provides the key force behind the opposition to U.S. wars in their early stages.  But it is counterbalanced by staunch military enthusiasts, ready to applaud wars to the last surviving American.  The shifting force in U.S. public opinion is the large number of people who rally ‘round the flag at the beginning of a war and, then, gradually, become fed up with the conflict.

    And so a cyclical process ensues.  Benjamin Franklin recognized it as early as the eighteenth century, when he penned a short poem for  A Pocket Almanack For the Year 1744:

    War begets Poverty,
    Poverty Peace;
    Peace makes Riches flow,
    (Fate ne’er doth cease.)
    Riches produce Pride,
    Pride is War’s Ground;
    War begets Poverty &c.
    The World goes round.

    There would certainly be less disillusionment, as well as a great savings in lives and resources, if more Americans recognized the terrible costs of war before they rushed to embrace it.  But a clearer understanding of war and its consequences will probably be necessary to convince Americans to break out of the cycle in which they seem trapped.

  • Defining Appropriate Action in Syria

    The horrific use of chemical weapons in Syria is a crime against humanity and demands an international response. President Obama states that the United States must take appropriate action vs. doing nothing. This is absolutely true. The problem comes in defining appropriate action. There are at least two options, military vs. non-military, the latter with a host of options.

    Framing that action in military terms guarantees the loss of additional innocent lives. Choosing a military option further fuels the sectarian strife spreading across the Middle East.  This will encourage the growth of anti-American sentiment rife in the region. Our trillion dollar war in Iraq has demonstrated that war is not the answer. Iraq is on the verge of falling into the worst chaos since the beginning of that conflict.

    This crisis does demand action ― non-military action.  Doing nothing is cowardly and not in keeping with the credibility or morals of the United States or any other country that professes to support the rule of international law and morality. This includes Russia, Iran and China.

    An international response is demanded. After 9/11 there was a brief period and opportunity when the world came together with a sentiment that the “whole world was American.” That feeling was quickly lost as the U.S. opted for bombing nation after nation, including a unilateral “pre-emptive” war against Iraq, a nation that had nothing to do with 9/11. We have paid and will pay the price of that war for generations.

    Today, in a similar vein, the entire world identifies with and is sickened and horrified by the images of children and innocent victims of these cowardly gas attacks. But the military intervention being debated is not intended to end the violent conflict that has killed more than 100,000 Syrians. It won’t help the nearly two million Syrian refugees return home or get the more than 6.8 million people in need access to humanitarian aid.

    Our leaders need to show courage against the tide of war. The perpetrators of these crimes must be brought to justice. There is an international arena for these crimes against humanity to be addressed. The International Criminal Court’s mission is to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and crimes of aggression. The International Court of Justice’s mission is to prosecute Nations that have committed crimes against humanity. These are just two methods by which perpetrators of these crimes can be held accountable. The United States has the opportunity to lead the way in empowering and supporting these international institutions in performing the role that they were established to do.

    This will take courage, strength, determination, vision and true international leadership―not bombs. This is the role that the United States can and must pursue if we hope to see an end to sectarian violence in this region and the world over.  We must call upon all nations and our own elected leaders complacent with arming the various sides in these conflicts to endorse and support this international peace keeping effort. This will demonstrate their true commitment to peace, international law and humanity.

    We must follow our moral compass. The United States and other world leaders should intensify their efforts to find a peaceful, political solution to end the bloodshed, not add more violence to a tragic civil war. The president needs to hear from us and be supported for his courage and willingness to pause and hear from the nation as we pursue the best hope for the ordinary men, women, and children of Syria.

    This article was originally published by HuntingtonNews.net.

  • Illegal. Immoral. Dangerous. Why Congress Needs to Say No!

    If I was really optimistic, I’d say that President Obama is hoping that Congress will follow the example of the British parliament – and vote against his proposed military strike on Syria. It would let him off the hook – he could avoid an illegal, dangerous, immoral military assault and say it’s Congress’ fault.

    But unfortunately I don’t think that much optimism is called for. Obama’s speech – not least his dismissal of any time pressure, announcing that his commanders have reassured him that their preparations to fire on command is not time-bound – gives opponents of greater U.S. intervention in Syria a week or more to mobilize, to build opposition in Congress and in the public, and to continue fighting against this new danger. As the President accurately described it, “some things are more important than partisan politics.”  For war opponents in Congress, especially President Obama’s progressive supporters, keeping that in mind is going to be difficult but crucial.

    Obama said he will “seek Congressional authorization” for a military strike on Syria.  He said he believes U.S. policy is “stronger” if the president and Congress are united, but he made clear his belief that he “has the authority to strike without” Congressional support. That’s the bottom line.  The first question shouted by the press as he left the White House Rose Garden was “will you still attack if Congress votes no?”  He didn’t answer.

    There is little question that the Obama administration was blindsided by the British parliament’s vote against the prime minister’s proposal to endorse war. They were prepared to go to war without United Nations authorization, but were counting on the UK as the core partner in a new iteration of a Bush-style “coalition of the willing.” Then NATO made clear it would not participate, and the Arab League refused to endorse a military strike. France may stay in Obama’s corner, but that won’t be enough.

    And Congress was getting restive, with more than 200 members signing one or another letter demanding that the White House consult with them.  Too many pesky journalists were reprinting Obama’s own words from 2007, when then-candidate Obama told the Boston Globe that “the President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.”

    All of that led to the drive towards war slowing a bit. But it didn’t stop. And that’s a problem. Because whatever Congress may decide, a U.S. military strike against Syria will still be illegal, immoral and dangerous, even reckless in the region and around the world. Congress needs to say NO.

    ILLEGAL

    However frustrated U.S. presidents may be with the UN Security Council’s occasional refusal to give in to their pressure, the law is clear. The United Nations Charter, the fundamental core of international law, may be vague about a lot of things.  But it is unequivocal about when military force is legal, and when it isn’t. Only two things make an act of war legal: immediate self-defense, which clearly is not the case for the U.S.  The horrific reality of chemical weapons devastated Syrian, not American lives. This is not self-defense. The other is if the Security Council, acting under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, authorizes the use of force in response to a threat to international peace and security. That’s the authorization President Obama knows he cannot get – certainly Russia and China would veto, but right now a British veto would certainly be a possibility if Cameron wanted to respond to his public. And it’s not at all clear a U.S. resolution to use force would even get the nine necessary votes of the 15 Council members. The U.S. is thoroughly isolated internationally.

    The problem for President Obama is he still is determined to use military force, despite the requirements of international law. He says he doesn’t need that authority – that maybe he’ll use the 1999 Kosovo precedent to “go around” the Security Council. The problem, of course, is that the 1999 U.S.-NATO assault on Serbia and Kosovo was illegal – faced with a sure Russian veto, Bill Clinton simply announced he would not ask for Council permission. Instead, he would get permission from the NATO high command.  But aside from the hammer-and-nail problem (if you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail; if you’re NATO military leaders looking for re-legitimation, everything looks like it needs a military solution), nothing in international law allows NATO to substitute for the Security Council.  The Charter was specifically designed to make it difficult to get authorization for military force – its whole raison d’etre is to stand against the scourge of war.  So any new decision to go to use military force without Council authority means that use of force is illegal.

    Right now, in Syria, that means that members of Congress have the chance to prevent another illegal U.S. war. If Congress should approve it, likely for political or partisan reasons that have nothing to do with Syria, their vote would mean direct complicity in an illegal and immoral war.

    IMMORAL

    Pentagon officials have confirmed what logic tells us all: every use of military force threatens civilian lives. More than 100,000 Syrians have been killed in this civil war so far, and hundreds more were killed in what appears to be (remember, we still don’t know for sure) a chemical strike last week – U.S. cruise missile strikes won’t bring any of them back, and more important, won’t protect any Syrian civilians from further threat. To the contrary, low-ranking conscript troops and civilians are almost certain to be injured or killed. Reports out of Syria indicate military offices and more being moved into populated areas – that shouldn’t come as a surprise given the nature of the Syrian regime. But the knowledge makes those contemplating military force even more culpable.

    DANGEROUS

    A U.S. military strike on Syria will increase levels of violence and instability inside the country, in the region, and around the world. Inside Syria, aside from immediate casualties and damage to the already shattered country, reports are already coming in (including from al Jazeera, known for its strong support of the Syrian opposition) of thousands of Syrian refugees returning from Lebanon to “stand with their government” when the country is under attack. It could lead to greater support to the brutal regime in Damascus. In Kosovo, more Kosovars were forcibly expelled from their homes by the Serbian regime after the NATO bombing began than had happened before it started; Syrian civilians could face similar retaliation from the government.

    A U.S. strike will do nothing to strengthen the secular armed opposition, still largely based in Turkey and Jordan, let alone the heroic but weakened original non-violent democratic opposition forces who have consistently opposed militarization of their struggle and outside military intervention. Those who gain will be the most extreme Islamist forces within the opposition, particularly those such as the Jubhat al-Nusra which are closest to al Qaeda. They have long seen the U.S. presence in the region as a key recruitment tool and a great local target.

    There is also the danger of escalation between the U.S. and Russia, already at odds in one of the five wars currently underway in Syria. So far that has been limited to a war of words between Washington and Moscow, but with the G-20 meeting scheduled for next week in St Petersburg, President Putin may feel compelled to push back more directly, perhaps with new economic or other measures.

    Crucially, a military strike without United Nations authorization undermines the urgent need for serious, tough diplomacy to end the Syrian war. The U.S. just cancelled a meeting with Russia to talk about negotiations; a couple of months ago, Russia cancelled one. They both must be pushed to meet urgently to arrange and implement an immediate ceasefire and an arms embargo on all sides in Syria.

    And finally, what happens the day after?   If Syria retaliates against a U.S. missile strike – with an attack on a U.S. warship, or a U.S. base in a neighboring country, or on U.S. troops in the region, or against Israel…. do we really think the U.S. will simply stand back and say “no, this was just a one-time surgical strike, we won’t respond”?  What happens when that inevitable response pushes the U.S. closer towards direct full-scale involvement in the Syrian civil war?

    The word to Congress now must be – you got the vote.  That’s important. Because now you can use that vote to say NO to military action.

    SO WHAT SHOULD THE U.S. DO?

    First thing, stop this false dichotomy of it’s either military force or nothing.  The use of chemical weapons is a war crime, it is indeed what Secretary Kerry called a “moral obscenity.”  Whoever used such a weapon should be held accountable. So what do we do about it?

    • First, do no harm.  Don’t kill more people in the name of enforcing an international norm.
    • Recognize that international law requires international enforcement; no one country, not even the most powerful, has the right to act as unilateral cop.  Move to support international jurisdiction and enforcement, including calling for a second UN investigation to follow-up the current weapons inspection team, this one to determine who was responsible for the attack.
    • Recommend that whoever is found responsible be brought to justice in The Hague at the International Criminal Court, understanding that timing of such indictments might require adjustment to take into account ceasefire negotiations in Syria.
    • President Obama can distinguish himself powerfully from his unilateralist predecessor by announcing an immediate campaign not only to get the Senate to ratify the International Criminal Court, but to strengthen the Court and provide it with serious global enforcement capacity.
    • Move urgently towards a ceasefire and arms embargo in Syria. Russia must stop, and must push Iran to stop arming and funding the Syrian regime. The U.S. must stop, and must push Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Jordan and others to stop arming and funding the opposition, including the extremist elements. That won’t be easy – for Washington it may require telling the Saudis and Qataris that if they don’t stop, we will cancel all existing weapons contracts with those countries.  (As my colleague David Wildman has said, why don’t we demand that the Pentagon deal with arms producers the way the Dept of Agriculture deals with farmers – pay them NOT to produce weapons. And then the money can be used to retool their factories to produce solar panels instead of Tomahawk missiles, and the workers stay on the job….)
    • Stand against further escalation of the Syrian civil war by voting NO on any authorization for U.S. military strikes.

    This article was originally published by Mondoweiss.

  • Contra Attack Syria (Excerpt)

    The rationale for an American-led attack on Syria is mostly expressed as follows:

    –America’s credibility is at stake after Obama ‘red line’ was crossed by launching a large-scale lethal chemical weapons attack; doing nothing in response would undermine U.S. global leadership;

    –America’s credibility makes indispensable and irreplaceable contributions to world order, and should not jeopardized by continued passivity in relation to the criminal conduct of the Assad regime; inaction has been tried for the past two years and failed miserably [not clearly tried—Hilary Clinton was avowed early supporter of rebel cause, including arms supplies; recent reports indicate American led ‘special forces operations’ being conducted to bolster anti-Assad struggle];

    –a punitive strike will deter future uses of chemical weapons by Syria and others, teaching Assad and other leaders that serious adverse consequences follow upon a failure to heed warnings posted by an American president in the form of ‘red lines;’

    –even if the attack will not shift the balance in Syria back to the insurgent forces it will restore their political will to persist in the struggle for an eventual political victory over Assad and operate to offset their recently weakened position;

    –it is possible that the attack will unexpectedly enhance prospects for a diplomatic compromise, allowing a reconvening of the U.S.-Russia chaired Geneva diplomatic conference, which is the preferred forum for promoting transition to a post-Assad Syria.

    Why is this rationale insufficient?

    –it does not take account of the fact that a punitive attack of the kind evidently being planned by Washington lacks any foundation in international law as it is neither undertaken in self-defense, nor after authorization by the UN Security Council, nor in a manner that can be justified as humanitarian intervention (in fact, innocent Syrian civilians are almost certain to loom large among the casualties);

    –it presupposes that the U.S. Government rightfully exercises police powers on the global stage, and by unilateral (or ‘coalition of the willing’) decision, can give legitimacy to an other unlawful undertaking; it may be that the United States remains the dominant hard power political actor in the region and world, but its war making since Vietnam is inconsistent with the global public good, causing massive suffering and widespread devastation; international law and the UNSC are preferable sources of global police power than is reliance on the discretion and leadership of the United States at this stage of world history even if this results in occasional paralysis as evidenced by the UN’s failure to produce a consensus on how to end the war in Syria;

    –U.S. foreign policy under President Barack Obama has similarities to that of George W. Bush in relation to international law, despite differences in rhetoric and style: Obama evades the constraints of international law by the practice of ‘reverential interpretations,’ while Bush defied as matter of national self-assertion and the meta-norms of grand strategy; as a result Obama comes off  as a hypocrite while Bush as an outlaw or cowboy; in an ideal form of global law both would be held accountable for their violations of international criminal law;

    –the impacts of a punitive strike could generate harmful results: weakening diplomatic prospects; increasing spillover effects on Lebanon, Turkey, elsewhere; complicating relations with Iran and Russia; producing retaliatory responses that widen the combat zone; causing a worldwide rise in anti-Americanism.

    There is one conceptual issue that deserves further attention. In the aftermath of the Kosovo NATO War of 1999 there was developed by the Independent International Commission the argument that the military attack was ‘illegal but legitimate.’[1] The argument made at the time was that the obstacles to a lawful use of force could not be overcome because the use of force was non-defensive and not authorized by the Security Council. The use of force was evaluated as legitimate because of compelling moral reasons (imminent threat of humanitarian catastrophe; regional European consensus; overwhelming Kosovar political consensus—except small Serbian minority) relating to self-determination; Serb record of criminality in Bosnia and Kosovo) coupled with considerations of political feasibility (NATO capabilities and political will; a clear and attainable objective—withdrawal of Serb administrative and political control—that was achieved). Such claims were also subject to harsh criticism as exhibiting double standards (why not Palestine?) and a display of what Noam Chomsky dubbed as ‘military humanism.’

    None of these Kosovo elements are present in relation to Syria: it is manifestly unlawful and also illegitimate (the attack will harm innocent Syrians without achieving proportionate political ends benefitting their wellbeing; the principal justifications for using force relate to geopolitical concerns such as ‘credibility,’ ‘deterrence,’ and ‘U.S. leadership.’ [For an intelligent counter-argument contending that an attack on Syria at this time would be ‘illegal but legitimate,’ see Ian Hurd, “Bomb Syria, Even if it is Illegal,” NY Times, August 27, 2013; also “Saving Syria, International Law is not the answer,” Aljazeera, August 27, 2013]

    This is an excerpt from a blog by Richard Falk

    Richard Falk is Professor Emeritus at Princeton University and Senior Vice President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • On Bradley Manning and America

    I am posting on this blog two important texts that deserve the widest public attention and deep reflection in the United States and elsewhere. I would stress the following:

    –the extraordinary disconnect between the impunity of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Yoo, and others who authorized and vindicated the practice of torture, were complicit in crimes against humanity, and supported aggressive wars against foreign countries and the vindictive rendering of ‘justice’ via criminal prosecutions, harsh treatment, and overseas hunts for Snowden and Assange, all individuals who acted selflessly out of concern for justice and the rights of citizens in democratic society to be informed about governmental behavior depicting incriminating information kept secret to hide responsibility for the commission of crimes of state and awkward diplomacy; a perverse justice dimension of the Manning case is well expressed in the statement below of the Center of Constitutional Rights “It is a travesty of justice that Manning who helped bring to light the criminality of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, is being punished while the alleged perpetrators are not even investigated.” And “We fear for the future of our country in the wake of this case.”

    –the vindictive punishment of Bradley Manning, a historically stiff imprisonment for the unlawful release of classified documents, a dishonorable discharge from military service that is a permanent stain, a demotion to the lowest rank, and imprisonment for 35 years;

    –the failure of the prosecution or the military judge or the national leadership to acknowledge the relevance of Manning’s obviously ethical and patriotic motivations and the extenuating circumstance of stress in a combat zone that was producing observable deteriorations in his mental health;

    –an increasingly evident pattern of constructing a national security state that disguises its character by lies, secrecy, and deception, thereby undermining trust between the government and the people, creating a crisis of legitimacy; it is part of the pattern of ‘dirty wars’ fought on a global battlefield comprehensively described in Jeremy Scahill’s book with that title;

    –the mounting challenge directed at President Obama to grant Manning’s request for a presidential pardon, and to reverse course with respect to the further authoritarian drift that has occurred during his time in the White House; ever since Obama’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech when he claimed American adherence to the rule of law, it has been evident that such a commitment does not extend to high level governmental violators at home (“too important to prosecute”) or to the sovereign rights of foreign countries within the gunsights of the Pentagon or the CIA or to the crimes of America’s closest allies; international law is reserved for the enemies of Washington, especially those who resist intervention and occupation, or those who dare to be whistle-blowers or truth-tellers in such a highly charged atmosphere that has prevailed since the 9/11 attacks; the opening of Manning’s statement below suggests the relevance of such a context to the evolution of his own moral and political consciousness;

    –read Bradley Manning’s statement and ask yourself whether this man belongs in prison for 35 years (even granting eligibility for parole in seven years), or even for a day; imagine the contrary signal sent to our citizenry and the world if Manning were to be awarded the Medal of Freedom! It is past time that we all heeded Thomas Jefferson’s urgent call for ‘the vigilance’ of the citizenry as indispensable to the maintenance of democracy.

    STATEMENT BY BRADLEY MANNING ON BEING SENTENCED

    The decisions that I made in 2010 were made out of a concern for my country and the world that we live in. Since the tragic events of 9/11, our country has been at war. We’ve been at war with an enemy that chooses not to meet us on any traditional battlefield, and due to this fact we’ve had to alter our methods of combating the risks posed to us and our way of life.

    I initially agreed with these methods and chose to volunteer to help defend my country. It was not until I was in Iraq and reading secret military reports on a daily basis that I started to question the morality of what we were doing. It was at this time I realized in our efforts to meet this risk posed to us by the enemy, we have forgotten our humanity. We consciously elected to devalue human life both in Iraq and Afghanistan. When we engaged those that we perceived were the enemy, we sometimes killed innocent civilians. Whenever we killed innocent civilians, instead of accepting responsibility for our conduct, we elected to hide behind the veil of national security and classified information in order to avoid any public accountability.

    In our zeal to kill the enemy, we internally debated the definition of torture. We held individuals at Guantanamo for years without due process. We inexplicably turned a blind eye to torture and executions by the Iraqi government. And we stomached countless other acts in the name of our war on terror.

    Patriotism is often the cry extolled when morally questionable acts are advocated by those in power. When these cries of patriotism drown our any logically based intentions [unclear], it is usually an American soldier that is ordered to carry out some ill-conceived mission.

    Our nation has had similar dark moments for the virtues of democracy—the Japanese-American internment camps to name a few. I am confident that many of our actions since 9/11 will one day be viewed in a similar light.

    As the late Howard Zinn once said, “There is not a flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.”

    I understand that my actions violated the law, and I regret if my actions hurt anyone or harmed the United States. It was never my intention to hurt anyone. I only wanted to help people. When I chose to disclose classified information, I did so out of a love for my country and a sense of duty to others.

    If you deny my request for a pardon, I will serve my time knowing that sometimes you have to pay a heavy price to live in a free society. I will gladly pay that price if it means we could have country that is truly conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all women and men are created equal.

    STATEMENT OF THE CENTER FOR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS

    August 21, 2013 – Today, in response to the sentencing of Pfc. Bradley Manning, the Center for Constitutional Rights issued the following statement.

    We are outraged that a whistleblower and a patriot has been sentenced on a conviction under the Espionage Act. The government has stretched this archaic and discredited law to send an unmistakable warning to potential whistleblowers and journalists willing to publish their information. We can only hope that Manning’s courage will continue to inspire others who witness state crimes to speak up.

    This show trial was a frontal assault on the First Amendment, from the way the prosecution twisted Manning’s actions to blur the distinction between whistleblowing and spying to the government’s tireless efforts to obstruct media coverage of the proceedings. It is a travesty of justice that Manning, who helped bring to light the criminality of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, is being punished while the alleged perpetrators of the crimes he exposed are not even investigated.  Every aspect of this case sets a dangerous precedent for future prosecutions of whistleblowers – who play an essential role in democratic government by telling us the truth about government wrongdoing – and we fear for the future of our country in the wake of this case.

    We must channel our outrage and continue building political pressure for Manning’s freedom. President Obama should pardon Bradley Manning, and if he refuses, a presidential pardon must be an election issue in 2016.

    This article was originally published on Richard Falk’s blog.

    Richard Falk is Professor Emeritus at Princeton University and NAPF Senior Vice President.

  • Fueling the Fire in North Korea

    Santa Barbara, CA – While tensions appear to have eased between North Korea and the U.S. in the past few weeks, the U.S.- North Korean nuclear crisis is not over. Any overt action by either country could easily reignite an already volatile and dangerous situation.

    It is in this context that later this month, on May 21, the U.S. plans to launch a Minuteman III Intercontinental Ballistic Missile from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California to the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, 4,200 miles away. The test was originally scheduled for early April, at the height of the current U.S.-North Korea nuclear crisis. At that time, U.S. officials postponed the test, stating they did not want to provoke a response from North Korea.

    So one must ask, has anything truly changed between North Korea and the U.S. since early April? Is a missile launch really any less provocative now than it was then? The answer is clearly that missile testing remains provocative. The posturing and exchanges that the world has been witnessing are capable of spiraling out of control and resulting in nuclear war today, just as they were a month ago.

    David Krieger, President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, said, “The testing of a Minuteman III nuclear missile at this time is a clear example of U.S. double standards. The government believes that it is fine for the U.S. to test-fire these missiles when we choose to do so, while expressing criticism when other countries conduct missile tests. Clearly U.S. leaders would be highly critical if North Korea were to conduct a long-range missile test, now or at any time. We seem to have a blind spot in our thinking about our own tests. Such double standards encourage nuclear proliferation and make the world a more dangerous place.”

    One must also consider that each missile test is a clear reminder of the United States’ continued reliance on nuclear weapons in spite of proclamations by the Obama administration of the goal of a nuclear weapons-free world. Nor should one overlook the tens of millions of dollars spent on each missile test at a time when the U.S. economic recovery is still weighing in the balance.

    Clearly this upcoming long-range missile test is more than just a test. It is a provocative move in a nuclear war game. A game where there is no winner.
    #  #  #

    For further comment, contact Rick Wayman, Director of Programs of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, at rwayman@napf.org or (805) 965-3443. Outside of regular office hours, please contact Rick Wayman at (805) 696-5159.

    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation — The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s mission is to educate and advocate for peace and a world free of nuclear weapons and to empower peace leaders.  Founded in 1982, the Foundation is comprised of individuals and organizations worldwide who realize the imperative for peace in the Nuclear Age. The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation is a non-partisan, non-profit organization with consultative status to the United Nations.  For more information, visitwww.wagingpeace.org. 

  • Lessons from the U.S.-Korea Nuclear Crisis

    David KriegerThe high-profile nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula, pitting the reigning heavyweight nuclear champion, the United States, against the bantamweight nuclear contender, North Korea, is not finished and is deadly serious.  The posturing and exchanges that the world has been witnessing are capable of spiraling out of control and resulting in nuclear war.  Like the Cuban Missile Crisis more than half a century ago, this crisis demonstrates that nuclear dangers continue to lurk in dark shadows across the globe.

    This crisis, for which the fault is shared by both sides, must be taken seriously and viewed as a warning that nuclear stability is an unrealistic goal.  The elimination of nuclear weapons, an obligation set forth in the Non-Proliferation Treaty and confirmed by the International Court of Justice, must be a more urgent goal of the international community.  The continued evasion of this obligation by the nuclear weapon states makes possible repeated nuclear crises, nuclear proliferation, nuclear terrorism and nuclear war.

    Lessons can be drawn from this most recent crisis about the dangerous reliance by nuclear-armed states on nuclear deterrence and the unrealistic quest for security through nuclear deterrence and nuclear crisis management.  Here are ten lessons:

    1. Nuclear deterrence encourages threatening words and actions that can escalate into a full-blown crisis.  For nuclear deterrence to be effective between nuclear-armed countries, each country must believe that the other is prepared to actually use nuclear weapons against it in retaliation for behavior considered prohibited (and this may not be clear).  Thus, the leader of each country must convince the other side that he is irrational enough to retaliate against it with nuclear weapons, knowing that the other will then retaliate in kind.  For each side to convince the other, threatening words and actions are employed.

    2. Nuclear deterrence requires leaders to act rationally, but also makes it rational to behave irrationally.  This is a conundrum inherent in nuclear deterrence.  A leader of a nuclear-armed country must be sufficiently rational to be deterred by a threat of nuclear retaliation; but he also must behave sufficiently irrationally to make the other side believe he is actually prepared to use nuclear weapons in retaliation against it.

    3. While deterrence theory requires that leaders be perceived as irrational enough to retaliate with nuclear weapons, they cannot be perceived as so irrational that they would mount a first-strike attack with nuclear weapons.  Should leaders of Country A be perceived by Country B as being ready to launch a preventive nuclear attack, it could lead to an earlier preventive attack by Country B.

    4. “War games” by Country B, held near Country A’s borders, are not-so-subtle threats, particularly when they involve nuclear capable delivery systems.  The US and South Korea conducted joint war games near the border of North Korea.  North Korean leaders became angry and threatening, escalating the crisis.  If a country conducted “war games” near the US border, one can only imagine the response.  To demonstrate how little countries appear to learn from such crises, the US cancelled a Minuteman III missile test in April at the height of the crisis, but has now rescheduled the provocative test for a date in May.

    5. When a nuclear crisis escalates, it can spin out of control.  In an environment of escalating threats, one side may believe its best option is to launch a preventive attack, thus setting in motion a nuclear war.

    6. Nuclear weapons are military equalizers; they provide greater benefit to the militarily weaker country.  A relatively small and weak country, such as North Korea, can hold a much more powerful country, such as the US, at bay with the threat to use nuclear weapons against it, its troops, and/or its allies.  On the other hand, when countries such as Iraq and Libya gave up their nuclear weapons programs, they were attacked by the US and its allies, their regimes were overthrown and their leaders killed.

    7. Nuclear power plants are attractive targets, since they can be turned into radiological weapons.  South Korea has 23 nuclear reactors within striking range of North Korea.  These plants could be intentionally or accidentally destroyed, leading to reactor and spent-fuel meltdowns, and the spread of radiation throughout the Korean Peninsula and beyond.

    8. The value of nuclear weapons, to the extent they have value, lies only in the bluff to use them.  If the nuclear bluff is called, it may lead to catastrophic results – “Game Over.”  That dangerous potential is always present in the bluff to use nuclear weapons.

    9. Cutting off communications increases the risks of misinterpreting an act or intention of the other side.  The two sides stopped speaking to each other except in the language of threat.  North Korea shut down the Crisis Hot Line, a communications device set up to prevent misunderstandings and misinterpretations of the acts of the two Koreas.

    10. Leaders in a nuclear crisis situation need to talk to each other and demonstrate rationality to reverse the escalation.  Leaders on both sides of the crisis should be making overtures to talk through their differences and resolve them rather than continuing to posture in threatening ways at a distance.

    One final lesson that applies to all nuclear crises is that the only way to assure that nuclear weapons are not used again is to abolish them.

    David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • Nuclear Roulette Has No Winners

    This article was originally published by Truthout.

    David KriegerThe United States and North Korea are playing a dangerous game of Nuclear Roulette.  The US is taking actions that threaten North Korea, such as conducting war games with US ally South Korea, including practice bombing runs that send nuclear-capable B-2 bombers from Missouri to the Korean Peninsula.  The North Koreans, in turn, are blustering, declaring they are in a state of war with South Korea, which technically is true since a truce and not a peace agreement ended the Korean War in 1953.  North Korean leaders have also cancelled the “hot line” with Seoul and are threatening nuclear attacks on the US, its troops and its allies.

    North Korea withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 2003 and has since tested nuclear devices on three occasions (2006, 2009 and earlier this year).  It has also tested medium- and long-range missiles and is developing capabilities to threaten the US and its allies with nuclear weapons.  The US has responded to the North Korean tests by holding talks with other countries in Northeast Asia and putting increasingly stringent sanctions on North Korea.  The US also continues to regularly test its long-range, nuclear-capable missiles from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.  Tensions in Northeast Asia continue to rise.

    Nuclear threats are an integral part of nuclear deterrence.  For nuclear deterrence to work effectively, it is necessary for an opponent to believe a nuclear threat is real.  When the US joins South Korea in playing war games with nuclear-capable aircraft on the Korean Peninsula, the message of threat is clear to the North Korean leaders.  Equally clear is the message from North Korea to the US with its nuclear tests and bluster: North Korea has a nuclear capability that could cause unacceptable harm to the US, its troops and its allies.

    From an objective perspective, each country has the capability to cause the other (or its troops or allies) horrific damage.  While they are pounding on their chests and demonstrating that they are in fact crazy enough to use nuclear weapons, they are engaged in a drama that hopes to dissuade the other side from actually doing so.  Both countries should take note of this.

    The dangerous game of Nuclear Roulette is built into the nuclear deterrence paradigm.  Each time the hammer of the gun is cocked and the gun is pointed at the other side’s head, the barrel of the opponent’s gun is also pointed at one’s own head.  An accident or miscalculation during a time of tension could trigger a nuclear holocaust.

    Yes, of course the United States is the stronger of the two countries and would fare better, perhaps far better, in a nuclear war, but that isn’t good enough.  Yes, North Korea could be destroyed as a functioning country, but at what cost?  In addition to the terrible cost in lives of North Koreans, the US and its allies would also pay a heavy price: first, in the deaths of US troops stationed in the Northeast Asian region; second, in the deaths and devastation of US allies, South Korea and Japan, and possibly of the US itself; and third, in the loss of stature and credibility of the US for having engaged in nuclear warfare that destroyed the lives of potentially millions of innocent North Koreans.

    Nuclear Roulette has no winners.  It is a game that no country should be playing.  But the leaders of countries with nuclear weapons tend to believe these weapons make their own country more secure.  They do not.  They risk everything we hold dear, all we love, and they undermine our collective sense of decency.  The only way out of the Nuclear Roulette dilemma is to unload the gun and assure that it cannot be used again by any side.

    We can do far better than we are doing.  For the short term, the US should stop conducting provocative war games in the region and instead offer some diplomatic carrots rather than sticks.  The US would go far to defuse a dangerous situation by again offering to support North Korea in providing food and energy for its people.  For the longer term, the US should lead the way forward by using its convening power to commence negotiations for a new treaty, a global Nuclear Weapons Convention, to achieve the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons.

    David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.