The Climate Change Peril and the Nuclear Peril: Different in both Magnitude and Immediacy
by Tad Daley
It is difficult to dispute that global climate change poses the single greatest long-term peril to human civilization, at least as such things can be perceived from our present vantage point. However, it is equally difficult to dispute that the nuclear peril — in its many incarnations — poses the single greatest immediate such peril. Although climate change is undoubtedly already having profound effects in certain areas, its most worrisome impacts probably still lay some two or three or five decades down the road. But a major world city, without any warning, could suddenly disappear into a vaporized radioactive cloud tomorrow morning. All in the blink of an eye, the snap of a finger, the single beat of a human heart.
It could be a successful attack by nuclear terrorists. (It is well documented that both Al Qaeda and other militant groups have aspired to carry out such an attack, and explored the routes by which they might do so.) It could be an accidental nuclear launch, of one or 101 nuclear warheads. (Hardly any Americans know that thousands of nuclear weapons, in American and Russian and other arsenals, remain poised on hair-trigger alert, and that dozens of near accidental nuclear launches have taken place in the history of the nuclear age – some with only minutes to spare.) It could be a hot political crisis between one or more nuclear-armed countries, with some leader under intense pressure, sweating, getting advice from five sides, hasn’t slept in three days, getting harassed about something or other by his wife or his kids or his mistress … and he decides to push the button. (The world came close to such an eventuality during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, the Able Archer episode in 1983, and possibly on several other occasions as well.) Alternatively, it could be not political calculations turning into nuclear miscalculations in a moment of fear and uncertainty and panic, but instead a sober, considered, rational calculation by the leadership of some state that for some international political tangle, the benefits of a nuclear first strike exceed the costs. (If that sounds fantastic, consider that the Administration of George W. Bush proffered just such a possibility in its December 2001 Nuclear Posture Review, named seven states as the possible targets of an American nuclear first strike, and – according to investigative journalist Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker magazine – seriously considered actually carrying one out against the nation of Iran.) Read more…
Another Nobel Controversy
This was originally posted on the History News Network.
Link to Original: http://www.hnn.us/articles/118314.html
Another Nobel Controversy
By Lawrence S. Wittner
Dr. Wittner is Professor of History at the State University of New York/Albany. His latest book is Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement (Stanford University Press).
The swirling controversy over President Barack Obama’s receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize brings to mind another controversy that began in October 1985, when the Norwegian committee announced that that year’s prize would go to International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW).
This global physicians’ movement was initiated in 1979 by Dr. Bernard Lown, a prominent American cardiologist deeply concerned about the spiraling nuclear confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union and what it portended for the future. Approaching the distinguished Soviet cardiologist, Dr. Evgenii Chazov, with whom he had had previous professional contacts, Lown sought to convince Chazov that they should build an international physicians’ movement that would alert the world to the nuclear peril. Chazov was initially reluctant to involve himself in this venture, for it seemed likely to lead to the sacrifice of the modern hospital he was building and, worst of all, engage him in political difficulties with the Soviet authorities. Even so, he succumbed to Lown’s pleas and, in late 1980, a small group of U.S. and Soviet physicians laid the groundwork for IPPNW, with Lown and Chazov and co-chairs. Read more…
Postcard from London: A call to action from Oslo
I’ve traveled a lot as an IPPNW staff member, and I’ve never missed being home as much as I do now. I saw the headline announcing that Barack Obama had received the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize while walking toward Victoria Station in London, and headed right for the Underground and the nearest internet connection to get some questions answered. Did they give it to him in recognition of what he’s done or because of the hope he’s inspired for change? Did they mention ridding the world of nuclear weapons? How did he respond? How was everyone else responding? How late would I have to stay up rewriting my speech for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament conference tomorrow?
I watched Obama’s press conference first. The man has class. I learned that whatever the Nobel Committee had said, he was taking it not as praise but as “a call to action.” I got the other answers from the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s website: “The Committee has attached special importance to Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.” And Nobel Committee chair Thorbjorn Jagland made it clear that this award was intended as much to recognize aspiration, shared purpose, and expectations of leadership as it was to reward accomplishment.
Here’s some of what I plan to say at CND tomorrow that I had not thought of saying earlier today:
“We now have not only a sitting US President who has committed himself to working for ‘the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons,’ but also a Nobel Peace Laureate who suddenly has greater authority, greater incentive, and – I hope – an even greater sense of responsibility to prove that abolition can be accomplished in his lifetime.”
I hope that everyone back home is conspiring to arrange the first meeting among Nobel Peace laureates – old and new.
The Truth about Qom
It was revealed to the press by Presidents Obama and Sarkozy and Prime Minister Brown on Friday, September 25th – incidentally the day after the US resolution on non-proliferation was unanimously passed in the Security Council – that Iran had a second uranium enrichment facility near Qom, a Shi’ite holy city in Central Iran. Actually it was revealed four days earlier by Iran itself, who had written a letter to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to say they had constructed a pilot-scale plant designed to produce up to 5% enriched uranium. However, this is less interesting to the media than the response that this declaration received from the powers-that-be. Sarkozy looked like he would have gladly used the “Force de Frappe”, rather than more sanctions. You would be hard pressed to find any reports on this issue in the days before that press conference.
The media turned out in force and reported the findings of the US intelligence services as reported by ‘senior administration officials’. No names were given and a lot of information was withheld. You can read those findings here (http://tiny.cc/72QVG), but it won’t really help you find out the truth about Qom. It will only tell you what US senior administration officials want you to know (or to think) about Qom. Read more…
Extended deterrence: Outdated, dangerous, wrong for Australia
Barack Obama has issued a massive challenge to the world.
It is a challenge to rid the world of its worst weapons of terror.. It is a challenge to banish one of humanity’s greatest fears– the threat posed by nuclear weapons.
President Obama’s chairing of the UN Security Council on nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation on September 24 served to focus the nuclear spotlight where it is most needed, on the Council’s five permanent members.
Between them – Russia, USA, France, China and the UK are responsible for all but a fraction of the world’s 26,000 nuclear weapons. The President spoke of the need for “new strategies and new approaches” to reach the goal of a world without nuclear weapons, with every nation playing a part.
Notwithstanding the enormous responsibility of the nuclear weapon states to get rid of their own weapons, the barriers to disarmament go further than just these nations, and far beyond the usual suspects such as Iran and North Korea.
That challenge includes Australia, and our subservience to an out-dated and dangerous Cold War policy that lives on. The policy is “extended deterrence”. Read more…
Note to Security Council: The conditions for a nuclear-weapons free world already exist
How do we “create the conditions” for a world without nuclear weapons?
The UN Security Council has resolved to do just that, at the urging of a nuclear superpower no less. SC1887, which lists a few concrete early steps toward the total elimination of nuclear weapons along with a lot of proposals related to proliferation, nuclear terrorism, and nuclear energy development, was adopted unanimously in the opening minutes of the special summit on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament chaired by President Obama, who brought the US-drafted resolution to New York with him and deftly shepherded it through the process like the community organizer he remains at heart.
UN Security Council summit on nuclear disarmament. UN Photo/Mark Garten
While underscoring the difficulty of the task as he has whenever he has broached the subject, Obama said plainly that ridding the Earth of nuclear weapons is the responsibility of “a world that understands that no difference or division is worth destroying all that we have built and all that we love.” And he dug up yet another quote from that iconic abolitionist Ronald Reagan (because the post-Reykjavik Reagan is so quotable): “We must never stop at all until we see the day when nuclear arms have been banished from the face of the Earth.”
“That,” Obama said, “is our task.”
So as much as I want to believe we’re finally moving in the right direction, I’m still left wondering what conditions have to be created for the elimination of nuclear weapons that don’t already exist. Is it not enough, as President Obama himself said this morning, that a single nuclear weapon exploded in a major city would kill hundreds of thousands of people and “badly destabilize our security, our economies, and our very way of life?” Or that 100 bombs could kill tens of millions outright and damage the global climate so severely that a billion more would die from a nuclear famine? Or that 1,000 or more nuclear weapons —less than 5% of the world stockpile — could render the Earth itself unfit for life? Read more…
The Right Decision on Missile Defenses
The Obama administration’s decision to scrap plans for missile defense deployments in the Czech Republic and Poland is the first really substantial indication that changes in US nuclear policy are more than just rhetoric.
Abolitionists have been holding their breaths ever since January, wondering whether Obama would renounce a Bush administration priority that had been forced upon US allies, had met with significant domestic opposition, and had angered Russia to the point of threatening to hold further disarmament negotiations hostage.
Today’s answer comes as a relief, even though it was couched in somewhat ambiguous language about the possible development of a different kind of defensive system sometime in the future. I certainly would have been happier with an unequivocal repudiation of a scheme that traces its lineage back to the Star Wars fantasies of the Reagan years and has already wasted billions of dollars that could have been spent on more effective ways to prevent nuclear war. But I’ll gladly count this as one for our side (if all of humanity is a “side”). Read more…
Africa moves to halt the evolution of the Shaka spear into a nuclear warhead
By Dr. Walter Odhiambo – IPPNW Regional Vice President, Africa
Thirteen years after it officially opened for signature, the African Nuclear-Weapon-Free-Zone Treaty (Treaty of Pelindaba) finally came into force with the twenty-eighth deposit of its ratification instrument by Burundi on 15 July 2009. This is a major historical development applauded by the entire IPPNW fraternity and Africa region in particular. We congratulate the leaders of African States for this noble vision that sets the continent ahead in the right trajectory. A brief review of the history of conflicts in Africa will illustrate why this development is worthy of some jubilation.
“With passage of time and advancement in technology, weapons of war and violence have undergone unmatched metamorphosis. The discovery of the gunpowder marked a major but sad revolution, catapulting humanity to the age of firepower and replacing the traditional tools of war like swords, machetes and Shaka Zulu spears. These crude historical weapons had a limited range and were not as lethal as the gun.”
The above statement is an excerpt from an editorial I wrote in the December 2008 issue of The Annals of African Surgery entitled “The Burden of Firearm Injuries.” Shaka is the name of a fearless and ruthless Zulu warrior whose reign of terror in the Southern region of Africa is legendary. He lived at a time when man considered war the most popular, respectable and effective mode of settling disputes. Kings and Emperors attacked their neighbours simply for the purposes of expanding their Kingdoms or empires and to acquire the neighbour’s wealth and property. It was an era when, according to Chinua Achebe in “Things Fall Apart,” a man’s greatness was judged by “how many human heads he brought home from the battle field.” Read more…
IPPNW Interview: Homsuk Swomen and Ogebe Onazi
Medical students active with IPPNW’s Nigerian affiliate Society of Nigerian Doctors for the Welfare of Mankind (SNDWM) were inspired to create a radio show to promote peace. The program has been airing on Silverbird Rhythm FM broadcast from Jos, Nigeria. This interview is with Nigerian medical student leaders who helped develop and implement the program – Homsuk Swomen, national student representative of IPPNW Nigeria, and Ogebe Onazi, African co-regional student representative.
Homsuk Swomen, national student representative of IPPNW Nigeria with co-presenters
IPPNW: Why did you develop this radio program?
HS and OO: We were motivated to develop this program because of the recurrent violence that ravages Jos, a calm and peaceful city of middle belt Nigeria; sensitize the public on the health effect of guns and light weapons; and to advocate the need for tougher legislation on acquisition of small arms.
It was designed to influence the minds of our listening audience and the wider public on the need to practice peace. The media (that is, newspapers, radio and television) has had an incredible influence on the minds of people and the quality of livelihood across the entire world over many decades. This informed our decision to go upstream and use the radio as a means to disseminate relevant and worthwhile research-based health information that may help check the spread of violence and small arms in Nigerian society, particularly with Jos as the reference point.
IPPNW: Have you experienced any types of violence in your personal lives or in your communities?
International medical student representative, Agyeno Ehase on left with radio show co-organizer, Onazi Ogebe.
OO: I have experienced violence personally and in my community. I remember an experience I had in my pre-clinical period when I was attacked at gun point on my way to my off-campus house and was subsequently robbed. And also, in the Jos community of Nigeria, we witnessed an ethno-politically engineered violence that left many injured, homeless and dead in recent times (28th November, 2008).
HS; yes! In my hometown Yelwa-Shendam, there was massive destruction of lives and property in 2004 which caused violence in neighbouring Kano state. I was living in fear during the last violence in November 2008 because my neighbourhood in Jos had a 50/50 religious population waiting to fight at the slightest provocation. It affected my state of mind. I witnessed the violence in September 2001 also as human beings were roasted and axed before my eyes.
IPPNW: What expertise as medical students do you bring to this issue? Read more…
A Giant Passes: Senator Edward M. Kennedy – 1932-2009
As the eulogies for United States Senator Ted Kennedy start to pour in following his death last night, we will be reminded what a tireless and effective champion he was for people’s health, for education, for the rights of working people, for immigrants’ rights, and for peace and social justice across the board, not only in the US but around the world.
He was all those things and more. In particular, he was an ardent and unwavering supporter of nuclear disarmament. In 1982, when the fear of a nuclear war between the US and the Soviet Union was the world’s nightmare, Kennedy and Senator Mark Hatfield sponsored the Nuclear Freeze amendment. The goal of the Freeze was to get the two nuclear superpowers to stop the relentless, massive buildup of their arsenals and to start disarmament negotiations. The legislation itself did not make it through the Senate (the US House passed its own version of the Freeze that year), but the Freeze concept galvanized a public movement to renounce nuclear weapons that claimed Ted Kennedy as a political leader.
Although he devoted himself primarily to other vital issues later in his Senate career, Kennedy’s voice and his vote on nuclear disarmament were always there when it counted. He led the fight for ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1998, and when the Senate rejected the CTBT he worked just as hard to support a moratorium on nuclear testing not only in the US but also worldwide. In 2002, he rejected the Bush administration’s false claims that Saddam Hussein was building nuclear weapons and stockpiling other weapons of mass destruction, and was one of 23 Senators who had the courage to vote against the Senate resolution authorizing the war against Iraq.
When the Bush/Cheney administration pulled out all the stops to get Congressional funding for low-yield nuclear weapons, Kennedy didn’t mince any words. Here’s what he said in May 2003, at a decisive moment in the debate about so-called mini-nukes:
This issue is as clear as any issue ever gets. You’re either for nuclear war, or you’re not. Either you want to make it easier to start using nuclear weapons, or you don’t.
“Our conventional weapons already have vast power and accuracy, and we can make them even more powerful. No one at the Pentagon and no one in the Administration has given us any example — none at all — of a case where a smaller nuclear weapon is needed to do what a conventional weapon can’t do.
“For half a century, our policy has been to do everything we possibly can to prevent nuclear war. And so far, we’ve succeeded.
“The hard-liners say things are different today. A nuclear war won’t be so bad if we just make the nukes a little smaller. We’ll call them mini-nukes. They’re not real nukes. A little nuclear war’s O.K.
“That’s nonsense. Nuclear war is nuclear war is nuclear war. We don’t want it anywhere, anytime, anyplace.
“Make no mistake. A mini-nuke is still a nuke.
“Is half a Hiroshima O.K.? Is a quarter of a Hiroshima O.K.? It’s a little mushroom cloud O.K.? That’s absurd.
“This issue is too important. If we build it, we’ll use it. No Congress should be the Congress that says, ‘Let’s start down this street,’ when it’s a one-way street that can lead only to nuclear war.”
Kennedy was on the winning side of that vote, and the world is better for it.
The best way to honor the memory of a person who brought this much passion and commitment to improving the quality of our lives – in the case of nuclear disarmament, to ensuring our very survival – is to complete the task he stayed with for some 30 years. If we could not abolish nuclear weapons in Ted Kennedy’s lifetime, let’s make sure we do it before another generation passes.
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