A nuclear-weapons-free world: Champions, detractors, and the urgency of getting to zero (Part 2)
Some heavy hands are definitely on the brakes
Most of the world is already finished with the idea of nuclear weapons (See Part 1: The abolition express is rolling). Public opinion polls in country after country—even in the nuclear-weapon states—reflect broad and growing support for a nuclear-weapons-free world. Serious mainstream politicians and diplomats, including US President Barack Obama, have embraced the goal of zero nuclear weapons, though they mostly advocate near-term— though important — incremental steps such as dealerting and making deeper cuts in the US and Russian arsenals, and stop short of calling for negotiations on a comprehensive, universal agreement—a nuclear weapons convention similar to the treaties that already ban chemical and biological weapons.
Rightly or wrongly (and good arguments can be made either way), the international community—by which I primarily mean the diplomats who participate in the Conference on Disarmament, the UN First Committee, and Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Reviews—expects leadership on disarmament to come from the US and Russia, which possess 95% of the world’s nuclear weapons between them. Without such leadership, arguably, not much will happen. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, for example, has told IPPNW leaders and other NGOs that India will fully participate in a global nuclear disarmament agreement, but that negotiations will have to be initiated by the US and Russia. Many make the further argument that the primary moral responsibility for leadership on disarmament lies with the only country that has ever used nuclear weapons against defenseless populations. Again, rightly or wrongly, all eyes are on the US.
For those who have been championing nuclear abolition for decades, the inauguration of President Obama at a time when the international community is expressing a strong desire to eliminate nuclear weapons represents the best—and perhaps the last—chance the world has to rid itself once and for all the only instruments of mass destruction capable of taking the future away from all humanity. What stands in the way of decisive US action is a lingering, false, but seemingly intractable belief that nuclear weapons, in some hands, provide an irreplaceable safety net in a dangerous world. The convoluted argument based on this faulty premise is that the world must be made safe for zero nuclear weapons before we can actually achieve a world without nuclear weapons; that such a precondition is unlikely if not impossible; and that, therefore, some number of nuclear weapons in some places will always be necessary.
Who’s making that argument? Chris Ford, for one. Christopher Ford was the US Special Representative for Nuclear Nonproliferation in the Bush administration, and complained repeatedly at the 2007 and 2008 NPT PrepComs that the US wasn’t being given enough credit for its nuclear weapons reductions. He simultaneously—and with a straight face—suggested that modernization of the US nuclear arsenal was actually a disarmament initiative.
Ford is now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a right-wing Washington think tank, where he has spun out the notion that disarmament proponents should abandon “unrealistic” proposals and embrace “unconventional thinking.”
Here’s an example of Ford’s “unconventional thinking,” from a speech he gave to the Nonproliferation Forum in November 2008 [1]:
In my view, disarmament’s advocates still need to show that no world with nuclear weapons would be preferable – in terms of global stability and international peace and security – to any world without them. My own suspicion is that this cannot be demonstrated, and therefore that while some hypothetical future worlds without nuclear weapons would be greatly preferable to our own, some would not be (italics in the original).”
Ford did not describe any particular world with the capacity to exterminate all of humanity that he would prefer to a world that had renounced omnicide and had done everything possible to remove that capacity, but that’s not his real purpose. He concedes that “a world free of nuclear weapons would indeed be in the United States’ interest” and declares that nuclear disarmament is “a genuine US policy goal.” What he doesn’t support are any of the actual steps toward a nuclear-weapons-free world that were endorsed by the NPT member states in 2000 in the form of a practical action plan to fulfill the treaty’s Article VI disarmament obligations.
If all of this hadn’t been settled in 2000, only to be repudiated by Ford’s employers in the Bush administration for the next eight years, one could almost see the point of arguing the whole thing out again. But it was settled (italics mine), and it’s time to move on.
Ford sniped that he had “recently scolded the disarmament community for not caring enough about such practical details,” in particular the difficulties that will be encountered along the path to zero nuclear weapons—difficulties that, to be fair, are real enough. Nonetheless, some truly unconventional thinking about paths to the elimination of nuclear weapons, along with careful consideration of the obstacles, is on offer from disarmament NGOs to anyone with a serious interest in getting there. (They can be found in the Model Nuclear Weapons Convention, the text of which is part of Securing Our Survival, downloadable from the ICAN website.)
That makes Ford’s adulatory quote of Hudson Institute founder Herman Kahn all the harder to take. Kahn, Ford reminds us, wrote nearly 50 years ago that it was “the hallmark of the amateur and the dilettante that he has almost no interest in how to get to his particular utopia.” (Kahn, for those unfamiliar with the author of the 1962 classic, On Thermonuclear War, tops most lists of certifiably insane nuclear strategists. His book, which was required reading for my high school debate team, gave me nightmares for an entire school year.) One might counter that it’s the hallmark of the obstructionist and the troublemaker that he characterizes as a “utopia” any goal that he doesn’t really want to reach in the first place.
Because he starts with the false premise that nuclear weapons are necessary and, in some worlds (i.e., the one in which we live) worth keeping (at least in small numbers, in some hands), Ford comes down on the side of the Reliable Replacement Warhead, missile defenses, and something he calls “countervailing reconstitution.” The latter is a proposal that the US, in particular, should retain a capacity to quickly rebuild a nuclear force in the face of an emerging threat, regardless of how far it goes with the “disarmament project.” Perhaps that’s a confidence-building measure.
Heritage Foundation fellow Baker Spring has made a career out of trashing arms control treaties both as a congressional staffer and as a freelancer. He recently posted a web article called “Toward an Alternative Strategic Security Posture” on the Heritage website.
Under the guise of commenting on an interim report from the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, Spring produces what could be a two-page primer on logical fallacies. He starts with the obvious, that “there is no consensus in Congress on an appropriate strategic posture”; acknowledges that “individuals both within the commission and outside it fervently desire to rid the world of nuclear weapons”; and accurately quotes from the interim report that the goal is “extremely difficult to attain and would require a fundamental transformation of the world political order.”
Those are the last things he says that aren’t completely made up. From a predictable lack of consensus on nuclear policy among the members of a bipartisan commission comprising both nuclear weapons advocates and skeptics, Spring crafts a brazen non-sequitur. “This means,” he says, “those favoring nuclear disarmament have recognized that their preferred outcome is not appropriate under present circumstances and that there is no direct path to nuclear disarmament.” Nothing could be more absurd.
Well, except the things he writes next. Since abolitionists have now been forced to concede the error of their ways, he continues, they [we] will now “abandon unilateral steps aimed at atrophying the US nuclear weapons infrastructure. They [we] will, for example, have to abandon immediate steps to de-alert US nuclear forces, cease efforts to curtail all programs for modernizing the nuclear force, put off ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and cease efforts to impose changes on the declared policy governing the use of US nuclear weapons.” What a relief! I’d been hoping for some extra time to go skiing this winter.
Spring has more recommendations for an intellectually defeated movement (isn’t sarcasm wonderful?): “…those who strongly favor nuclear disarmament should recognize that robust strategic defensive measures—including ballistic missile defenses— and conventional superiority can create a circumstance where nuclear disarmament is appropriate.” Like Ford, Spring does not seem to find an “appropriate” reason for the global elimination of nuclear weapons in the undisputed fact that they stand ready to exterminate everyone on Earth (see Part 3, coming soon).
The views of a couple of Reagan and Bush-era policy wonks in exile would matter less if they were not the basis of the case being made by US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates for rebuilding the US nuclear weapons infrastructure and cranking out thousands of “reliable replacement warheads” for the rest of this century. Gates may well be out of synch on this issue with President Obama, who has said he opposes production of new nuclear weapons. Nevertheless, Obama’s decision to keep Gates on for other reasons can only complicate what was already going to be a struggle to reverse 60 years of entrenched nuclear madness in Congress, the Pentagon, and the weapons labs.
When it comes to deterrence, Gates is a true believer. (Deterrence of what is a little harder to say, but that’s been a problem ever since the end of the Cold War.) Last October, in what appeared to some of us to be a shot across Obama’s bow (by then the signals had been sent that the new president would ask Gates to stay on, at least temporarily), the former CIA director told an audience at the Carnegie Endowment that “our [nuclear] arsenal plays an irreplaceable role in reducing proliferation….While we have a long-term goal of abolishing nuclear weapons once and for all, given the world in which we live, we have to be realistic about that proposition.” [2] (There’s that “real world” again, the one in which the ability to blow the whole place up ensures one’s security — or was that supremacy?)
Unfortunately—and not surprisingly, since they share some core assumptions—being “realistic” about nuclear policy means the same thing to Gates that it means to Ford and Spring. “To be blunt,” he said during his Carnegie speech, “there is absolutely no way we can maintain a credible deterrent and reduce the number of weapons in our stockpile without either resorting to testing our stockpile or pursuing a modernization program….We must take steps to transform from an aging Cold War nuclear weapons complex that is too large and too expensive to a smaller, less costly, but modern enterprise that can meet our nation’s nuclear security needs for the future.”
Last year, Gates and former Energy Secretary Samuel Bodmann laid out a detailed plan for how to revitalize the US nuclear infrastructure and ensure a steady flow of new nuclear warheads between now and 2114. Chris Ford’s proposal for “countervailing reconstitution” is a comfortable fit with Gates’s “realistic” approach to nuclear policy. How President Obama frames his quest for a nuclear-weapons-free world in relation to this contrary set of recommendations from his own Defense Secretary will speak volumes about how much progress we can expect during the next four-to-eight years.
Next: How and why the medical message still decides the issue
1) Christopher A. Ford. Deterrence to – and through – “zero”: challenges of disarmament and proliferation. Nonproliferation Forum, Woodrow Wilson Center and the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Washington, DC, November 14, 2008.
2) Robert Gates. Nuclear weapons and deterrence in the 21st century. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Washington, DC. October 28, 2008.
IPPNW Speaks Out Against Use of White Phosphorus by Israeli Forces
Download statement here.
IPPNW notes with grave concern the use of white phosphorus by Israeli forces in the recent war against Gaza. As physicians committed to reducing the suffering brought by warfare, we recognize the inhumane and indiscriminate effects of white phosphorus, and strongly condemn its use in armed conflict under any circumstances.
White Phosphorus (WP) ignites spontaneously in air, the resultant oxide combining rapidly with moisture to form droplets which produce a very effective smoke screen. On contact with skin, WP causes painful and deep chemical burns, often extending to bone that are very slow to heal. Such burns, or the inhalation of WP droplets that can cause severe damage to the airways, are often fatal.
WP’s military utility stems from both its smoke-screening and its incendiary properties. It has been used for both purposes many times since 1916, including against Dresden, Hamburg and Cherbourg in the Second World War; by Iraqi forces, principally as ground-bursts, in the 1980s war against Iran, by US forces against Fallujah in Iraq in 2004; and now by Israeli forces in Gaza, often as air-bursts.
IPPNW calls for a ban on the use of white phosphorus in armed conflict. Its use against positions holding many civilians (including children), must be particularly condemned, its inhumane medical effects are such that its use in weaponry can never be justified.
IPPNW notes that the use of WP is not regarded as illegal under the Chemical Weapons Convention as it is deemed to be a conventional weapon for creating smoke screens. However weapons which “may be deemed to be excessively injurious or to have indiscriminate effects” are also banned by Protocol III of the “Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons”. Noting that WP causes injuries that are both excessively injurious and indiscriminate, and that these effects are entirely predictable when the weapon is used, IPPNW calls for the explicit and complete banning of WP from armed conflict, and for its use to be prohibited by the Chemical Weapons Convention and recognized as a criminal offence under international law
International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985, is a non-partisan, global federation of national affiliates in more than 60 countries, including Israel and Palestine, dedicated to research, education and advocacy, relevant to the prevention of all wars. To this end, IPPNW seeks to promote non-violent conflict resolution and to minimize the effects of war. IPPNW has long advocated a peaceful and just resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and has developed a Medical Roadmap for peace in the Middle East.
Helsinki, Moscow, and Stockholm on February 6, 2009
Vappu Taipale, Sergey Kolesnikov, and Ime John
Co-presidents of IPPNW
A nuclear-weapons-free world: Champions, detractors, and the urgency of getting to zero (Part 1)
The abolition express is rolling
What a difference a year or two can make. These days nearly everyone to the left of John Bolton prefaces discussions of nuclear policy with at least a nod toward the goal of a nuclear-weapons-free world. Even those who don’t especially want to eliminate nuclear weapons in this century (more about them in part 2) make a show of endorsing the general idea before systematically attacking the specific proposals that would actually move us in the right direction.
Through most of the years of the Bush administration, the international community was desperately trying to salvage what it could of hard-won arms control and disarmament agreements, and dismissed all talk of abolition as wishful thinking. Merely saving the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) from total collapse seemed like a Promethean task. NGOs who reminded diplomats that the nuclear-weapon states had committed themselves to an “unequivocal undertaking” to nuclear disarmament at the 2000 NPT Review, or tried to engage them in a serious conversation about the 13 “practical” steps that went along with that pledge, would get the kind of uncomfortable stare usually reserved for those afflicted with Tourette syndrome.
Now it seems like a week doesn’t go by without a declaration by someone with serious political or diplomatic credentials that the need for global nuclear disarmament is self evident and urgent. (See Michael Christ’s blog entry, “Look Who’s Talking.”)
First and foremost has to be the new US President, Barack Obama, whose campaign platform contained a pledge to work for a world without nuclear weapons, and who has carried that goal over into the administration’s foreign policy agenda, published on the White House website days after his inauguration.
Some credit for this new abolitionist spirit among mainstream politicians and diplomats has to go to George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn, and William Perry who, on January 4, 2007, penned the first of two Wall Street Journal articles that shook up the mainstream arms control community and made abolition a legitimate agenda item at international conferences and in the pages of respectable foreign policy journals. NGOs that had been carrying the abolition torch for decades grumbled at the irony (Kissinger was an architect of Cold War deterrence strategy, after all), but no one could deny that a sea change had occurred.
Here’s what the Gang of Four said two years ago:
Reassertion of the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons and practical measures toward achieving that goal would be… a bold initiative consistent with America’s moral heritage. The effort could have a profoundly positive impact on the security of future generations.…We endorse setting the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons and working energetically on the actions required to achieve that goal…” (1)
Their call has been endorsed by a majority of former US secretaries of state and defense and national security advisers.
Ronald Reagan’s original partner in seeking a nuclear-weapons-free world, Mikhail Gorbachev, wrote in response to the first Journal article: “It is becoming clearer that nuclear weapons are no longer a means of achieving security; in fact, with every passing year they make our security more precarious.”
Not to be outdone, some British decision makers promptly came out as abolitionists themselves. In June 2007, Margaret Beckett, the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs in the UK, told the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace “What we need is both vision—a scenario for a world free of nuclear weapons—and action—progressive steps to reduce warhead numbers and to limit the role of nuclear weapons in security policy. These two strands are separate but they are mutually reinforcing. Both are necessary, both at the moment too weak.”
Prime Minister Gordon Brown took this a step further in January 2008, stating that Britain “will be at the forefront of the international campaign to accelerate disarmament amongst possessor states, to prevent proliferation to new states, and to ultimately achieve a world that is free from nuclear weapons.”
The UK, of course, is moving full steam ahead to replace its Trident program but, that inconvenient fact aside, a group of former foreign secretaries and a former NATO secretary-general echoed the views of their US counterparts in a London Times article published on June 30, 2008.
“Substantial progress towards a dramatic reduction in the world’s nuclear weapons is possible,” wrote Sir Malcolm Rifkind, Lord David Owen, Lord Douglas Hurd, and Lord George Robertson. “The ultimate aspiration should be to have a world free of nuclear weapons. It will take time, but with political will and improvements in monitoring, the goal is achievable. We must act before it is too late, and we can begin by supporting the campaign in America for a non-nuclear weapons world.”
That “campaign in America” got a big boost when presidential candidate Barack Obama stated his own position during a now-famous speech in Berlin in July 2008:
This is the moment when we must renew the goal of a world without nuclear weapons.… It is time to secure all loose nuclear materials; to stop the spread of nuclear weapons; and to reduce the arsenals from another era. This is the moment to begin the work of seeking the peace of a world without nuclear weapons.”
Even Obama’s Republican opponent, John McCain, said he shared Ronald Reagan’s “dream” of a nuclear-weapons-free world, though he sounded less convinced it was possible. Still, he said it.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said it, too, and in the process he endorsed the important missing piece. The Nuclear Weapons Convention, he told the UN First Committee in October, is “a good point of departure” to “revitalize the international disarmament agenda.”
And there’s the rub. These new abolitionists, for the most part, are more comfortable talking about incremental first steps than comprehensive frameworks. Ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, taking nuclear weapons off alert, banning production of fissile materials, and further reducing the size of existing arsenals, are all familiar ideas with broad support outside the neo-con community. When the US President says he is opposed to the production of new nuclear weapons, something new is clearly on the table, although the language of deterrence still seems to have a hold on Obama, who talks of the need to have lots of “reliable” nuclear weapons as long as others do. That’s the kind of circular reasoning abolition’s detractors make hay (i.e., reliable replacement warheads) with.
“In some respects,” Shultz and company wrote in the second of their two Journal articles in January 2008, “the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons is like the top of a very tall mountain. From the vantage point of our troubled world today, we can’t even see the top of the mountain…We must chart a course to higher ground where the mountaintop becomes more visible.”
The roadmap to the top of that mountain already exists, at least in draft form. It’s the Model Nuclear Weapons Convention produced by the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (IALANA), the International Network of Engineers and Scientists Against Proliferation (INESAP), and IPPNW. The NWC – the focal point of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) — is the “good point of departure” to which Secretary-General Ban referred, and it has been a working document of the United Nations for more than 10 years. Commencing negotiations on an NWC – something the US and Russia could start to organize and promote early in the Obama presidency – should be the goal of everyone who takes the idea of a nuclear-weapons-free world seriously.
The number of self-proclaimed abolitionists has swelled even further with the launch in December of Global Zero, a public outreach campaign the goal of which is “to achieve a comprehensive agreement to eliminate all nuclear weapons worldwide through phased and verified reductions.” More than 100 political, military, business, and celebrity heavyweights have already endorsed Global Zero, including Richard Branson, Gro Harlem Brundtland, Zbigniew Brzezinkski, Jimmy Carter, Michael Douglas, Mikhail Gorbachev, Robert McNamara, Queen Noor, Jonathan Schell, and Desmond Tutu.
US Senator Dianne Feinstein of California may have given the clearest, most straightforward advice of all to the incoming leader of the world’s largest nuclear superpower:
The bottom line: We must recognize nuclear weapons for what they are—not a deterrent, but a grave and gathering threat to humanity. As president, Barack Obama should dedicate himself to their world-wide elimination.”
With this kind of momentum, you’d think we should have no trouble achieving a nuclear-weapons-free world, if not overnight, certainly by 2020, which is the target date set by Mayors for Peace. Well, not if Chris Ford, Baker Spring, and, sad to say, Robert Gates have anything to say about it.
Next: Some heavy hands are definitely on the brakes
1) George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger, Sam Nunn. A world free of nuclear weapons. Wall Street Journal. January 4, 2007:A15.
2) Mikhail Gorbachev. The nuclear threat. Wall Street Journal. January 31, 2007:13.
3) Margaret Beckett. Speech to the Carnegie Endowment Non-Proliferation Conference. Washington, DC. June 25, 2007.
4) Gordon Brown. Speech at Chamber of Commerce in Delhi. January 21, 2008.
5) Douglas Hurd, Malcolm Rifkind, David Owen, George Robertson. Start worrying and learn to ditch the bomb: It won’t be easy, but a world free of nuclear weapons is possible. The Times of London.
June 30, 2008.
6) Barack Obama. A world that stands as one. Berlin. July 24, 2008.
7) Ban Ki-Moon. The United Nations and security in a nuclear-weapon-free world. Address to East-West Institute. New York. October 24, 2008.
8) George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger, Sam Nunn. Toward a nuclear-free world. Wall Street Journal. January 15, 2008:A13.
9) Dianne Feinstein. Let’s commit to a nuclear-free world. Wall Street Journal. January 3, 2009:A13.
Nigerian Students and Doctors Get “Peace Through Health” Training
From November 20th-22nd a very successful workshop was conducted in Kano, Nigeria. The workshop was initiated by Dr. Bene Benard from Nigeria and Dr. Caecilie Buhmann from Denmark with the purpose of training 20 new trainers in topics of violent conflict and health.
The training was to be conducted in such a way that the participants would be able to conduct trainings themselves after the 3-day workshop. The workshop was sponsored by Danish Physicans Against Nuclear Weapons, Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital, Dr. Aminu Mohammed, Dr. Daniel Bassey, the IPPNW International Student Fund, and The Society of Nigerian Doctors for the Welfare of Mankind (SNDWM).
A group of Nigerian students and doctors in training had made all practical arrangements for the workshop. International Student representative Agyeno Ehase not only made a great effort in the preparations, but will also with regional representatives and Dr. Caecilie Buhmann bring the initiative international in the student movement. The students were supported by IPPNW Co-president Dr. Ime John and SNDWM Dr. Aminu Mohammed, who both attended parts of the workshop and without whom the workshop would not have become a reality.
During the three day programme Dr. Ime John Presented on small arms and nuclear weapons and Dr. Chris Kwaja presented on humanitarian assistance, refugees and protection of human rights in complex emergencies. Dr. Caecilie Buhmann conducted 4 2-hour modules on “Globalization & Health”, “Peace through Health”, “Health & Human Rights” and “Advocacy and Dialogue”. Each of the modules was manualized during the training and the last day the participants conducted test trainings of all 4 manuals under the supervision of Dr. Buhmann.
The outcomes of the workshop thereby include the training of 30 medical students and doctors in training from all over Nigeria, the piloting of 4 “training of trainers” modules on topics relevant for peace through health and written manuals on each of the topics. The workshop participants left inspired and full of ideas of how they could pass their knowledge and training skills on to others. At a future session in the end of the training suggestions were made for training medical students, communities prone to conflict, school teachers, secondary school students and professionals. Plans were made for forming new IPPNW groups in various parts of the country and to use the training modules at local, national, regional and international meetings of medical students and IPPNW. Participants were asked to grade the training on a scale from 0 to 10 and it received an average score of 8.7. Quotes from the evaluation forms include:
Quotes
In a world increasingly plagued by conflict, which undermine health and health service delivery, it only makes sense for doctors to take active part in brokering peace. The Peace through Health initiative shows them how.
—Agyeno Ehase Sunday
There’s no epithet in any human language that can describe or truly capture the exhilaration and fulfillment that I currently bask in following the enrichment I got from the intellectual discourse that this training offered me.
—Abdullateef Nafiu
This training not only trained me, but inspired me to do the same. I have never felt more confident about myself. I started with very little and got a lot back. I hope and pray to spread the message.
—Hafsatu Garba Bawa
It was very nice, interactive, knowledgeable, interesting, fabulous. The nice words are endless… The days went very fast as if it should never have ended, but like every good thing that happens in life, time consumes it so fast. I have learned a lot, the methods of teaching were the best I have heard in years. Keep it up I must say. I think with this I will be a better advocate, a better teacher and a human rights activist. No improvements needed. All I would say is a big thank you.
—Zaynbmed
We came with little knowledge, we’ve gained a lot. With knowledge comes power. We shall conquer!
—Sani Abdulmumin Saaif
Human rights, peace advocacy and their related issues are noble causes and even more noble is the teacher that ensures that the world properly understands and apply their knowledge.
—John Ikwuobe
The world has suffered many things because of the explosion of untrained people in relevant circles of life. Training is essential for our quest for world peace in IPPNW.
—Ogebe Onazi
Some workshops are for attending, some workshops are to get a certificate, while some are to be lived with. This workshop is to be lived with because it is part of us.
—Francis Sunday
The training is exceptional, generally informative and sensational.
—A. Adamu
I love the interaction classes and the use of communication between one another instead of power point. The tutor was patient and was not quick to judge or condemn our views, but accepted all views with a smile. I learned most importantly that there is more to being a doctor than carrying a stethoscope.
—Anonymous
The snowball effect is the best way of telling humanity that change can be made.
-Ban
Before I thought the issue of nuclear weapons is only an issue of the West, but now I understand it affects the whole common humanity.
—Shamsuddean Abdulrahman
The training brings youth together with the trainer, which taught us about how important this issue of disarmament is for humanity. We will be the decision-makers and leaders of tomorrow, so the concept is “catch them young” and we were moved.
—Anonymous
IPPNW Zambian Leader co-hosts a workshop in Lusaka, Zambia
Dr. Robert Mtonga, a leader of IPPNW-affiliate Zambian Healthworkers for Social Responsibility (ZHSR), has been active in his country and worldwide on Aiming for Prevention issues including educating that “guns are bad for health,” advocating for policy changes to prevent armed violence, and conducting violent injury research.
Here’s a link to a very recent article in Medicine, Conflict and Survival featuring Dr. Mtonga’s work.
He recently co-hosted a workshop in Lusaka, Zambia, “Towards a Common Understanding of the Arms Trade Treaty in Zambia” with Joseph Dube, African representative of the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA). Dr. Mtonga is also the medical field director of the IANSA Public Health Network, which is coordinated by IPPNW.
Speakers included the Deputy British High Commissioner, Paula Walsh, and the Director of the Zambia Anti-Personnel Mine Action Centre, Sheila Mweemba. The Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Fashion Phiri, was in attendance. The Arms Trade Treaty that is advocated will establish common standards and institutions to control small arms, making sure that they are produced, bought, sold and used legally.
Ms. Mweeba spoke specifically about lessons learned from the cluster bomb campaign, which recently resulted in a landmark Convention on Cluster Munitions (IPPNW Zambia and IPPNW Russia both serve on the steering committee of the coalition that helped enact this historic treaty. Other IPPNW affiliates have also participated in this campaign.
Obama Reasserts Pledge for a Nuclear Weapons Free World During First Week in Office
During its first week in office, the new US administration of President Barack Obama published its foreign policy agenda on the revamped White House website. A summary of steps that Obama took as a US Senator to address the nuclear threat is followed by a series of explicit pledges to stop the development of new nuclear weapons, to take existing weapons off hair trigger alert, and to strengthen the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
IPPNW welcomes these clear breaks with the failed and counterproductive policies of the Bush administration, and will continue to press for a comprehensive solution: commencement of negotiations on a Nuclear Weapons Convention.
If you haven’t visited the new White House website, Start here.
Nuclear Weapons
- A Record of Results: The gravest danger to the American people is the threat of a terrorist attack with a nuclear weapon and the spread of nuclear weapons to dangerous regimes. Obama has taken bipartisan action to secure nuclear weapons and materials:
- He joined Senator Dick Lugar (R-In) in passing a law to help the United States and our allies detect and stop the smuggling of weapons of mass destruction throughout the world.
- He joined Senator Chuck Hagel (R-Ne) to introduce a bill that seeks to prevent nuclear terrorism, reduce global nuclear arsenals, and stop the spread of nuclear weapons.
- Secure Loose Nuclear Materials from Terrorists: Obama and Biden will secure all loose nuclear materials in the world within four years. While working to secure existing stockpiles of nuclear material, Obama and Biden will negotiate a verifiable global ban on the production of new nuclear weapons material. This will deny terrorists the ability to steal or buy loose nuclear materials.
- Strengthen the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty: Obama and Biden will crack down on nuclear proliferation by strengthening the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty so that countries like North Korea and Iran that break the rules will automatically face strong international sanctions.
- Move Toward a Nuclear Free World: Obama and Biden will set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons, and pursue it. Obama and Biden will always maintain a strong deterrent as long as nuclear weapons exist. But they will take several steps down the long road toward eliminating nuclear weapons. They will stop the development of new nuclear weapons; work with Russia to take U.S. and Russian ballistic missiles off hair trigger alert; seek dramatic reductions in U.S. and Russian stockpiles of nuclear weapons and material; and set a goal to expand the U.S.-Russian ban on intermediate-range missiles so that the agreement is global.
What do you think about these bold commitments? Consider this an open thread. We’ll respond to your comments below.
Look Who’s Talking
For years, IPPNW was one of a few lone voices in the wilderness calling for the complete abolition of nuclear weapons to ensure humanity’s future – a position once derided as naïve and even dangerous by many “pragmatists.” Now, a sea change is taking place with a growing list of political and defense experts in the US and around the world proclaiming that a nuclear weapon free world is desirable, urgent and achievable.
From where you sit, do you see nuclear weapons abolition entering mainstream thinking? Is a nuclear weapon free world an idea whose time has come? Let us know what you think by posting a comment below!
A world without nuclear weapons is profoundly in America’s interest and the world’s interest. It is our responsibility to make the commitment, and to do the hard work to make this a reality.”
– Campaign statement of then-Senator Barack Obama, Jan 17, 2008. http://tinyurl.com/USPresident-says-ICAN
Without the vision of moving toward zero [nuclear weapons], we will not find the essential cooperation required to stop our downward spiral.”
– George Shultz, former US Secretary of State; William Perry, former Secretary of Defense; Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State; Sam Nunn, former Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Wall Street Journal, Jan 15, 2008.
http://tinyurl.com/ColdWarriors-say-ICAN
I urge all NPT parties, in particular the nuclear-weapon-states, to fulfill their obligation under the treaty to undertake negotiations on effective measures leading to nuclear disarmament. They could pursue this goal by agreement on a framework of separate, mutually reinforcing instruments. Or they could consider negotiating a nuclear-weapons convention, backed by a strong system of verification, as has long been proposed at the United Nations.”
– UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in a speech entitled “The United Nations and Security in a Nuclear Weapons-Free World”, Oct 24, 2008. http://tinyurl.com/UNChief-says-ICAN
We must recognize nuclear weapons for what they are – not a deterrent, but a grave and gathering threat to humanity. As president, Barack Obama should dedicate himself to their world-wide elimination.”
– US Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The Wall Street Journal, Jan 3, 2009.
http://tinyurl.com/Senator-says-ICAN
What we need is both vision – a scenario for a world free of nuclear weapons. And action – progressive steps to reduce warhead numbers and to limit the role of nuclear weapons in security policy”
– Margaret Beckett, then Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, United Kingdom. Carnegie International Nonproliferation Conference June 25, 2007.
http://tinyurl.com/BritishMinister-Says-ICAN
The vision of a world free of the nuclear threat, as developed by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik, must be rekindled.”
– Helmut Schmidt, former German Chancellor; Richard von Weizsäcker, former German President; Egon Bahr, a minister in Social Democratic governments; and Hans-Dietrich Genscher, former German Foreign Minister. International Herald Tribune, Jan 9, 2009.
http://tinyurl.com/German-Statesmen-say-ICAN
Nuclear weapons have shown themselves to be completely useless as a deterrent to the threats and scale of violence we currently face or are likely to face, particularly international terrorism.”
– Field Marshal Lord Bramall, a former head of the UK armed forces, and retired generals Lord David Ramsbotham and Sir Hugh Beach. Times of London, Jan 16, 2009.
http://tinyurl.com/military-says-ICAN
From December 11-13, 2008, IPPNW Co-Presidents Ime John and Vappu Taipale participated in the 9th Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates in Paris, France. The theme of the summit was “human rights and a world without violence,” and it coincided with the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Drs. John and Taipale gave the speeches that follow, and were instrumental in drafting the Summit press statement, which stated: “There is no greater threat to human rights than nuclear weapons. We call for the global legally verifiable elimination of all nuclear weapons through the prompt adoption of a nuclear weapons convention.’’
__________
Nuclear weapons abolition – a fundamental human right in a democratic world
Dr. Ime A. John
Co-President, IPPNW
Mr Chairman,
Fellow Nobel Laureates and Nobel Laureates Organisations
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen
It gives me great pleasure to address this distinguished assembly of Leaders and Statesmen who have excelled in so many important endeavours to achieve a more peaceful world in which human dignity and security have the highest priority. I also wish to thank the Gorbachev Foundation for its unwavering commitment to engage and nurture a community of Nobel Laureates during the nine years in which it has sponsored these annual summits.
This year’s theme, “Human rights and a world without violence,” is not only timely, but urgent in our present world, where the Universal Declaration adopted 60 years ago must not only be preserved and respected in its original intent, but must be adapted to encompass and guarantee human rights in social, political, and cultural contexts that have changed and evolved — sometimes dramatically — since 1948.
We are used to thinking about the right to health, the right to a secure environment, and the right to live free of fear and oppression as fundamental human rights. In a world awash in nuclear weapons, a commitment to human rights must also be a commitment to a world in which the threat of nuclear annihilation is eliminated. A world in which each generation, in pursuit of its own human rights, makes a promise to protect the right to existence of the next generation, and the ones after that. Therefore, I have decided to address the topic of nuclear weapons abolition as a fundamental human right in a democratic world.
Colleagues,
Human societies have long searched for more peaceful ways to resolve conflicts and to settle disputes on the basis of equity and fair play. Yet nations continue to seek domination over each other through war and the exercise of raw power. It was no coincidence that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was conceived and adopted in the years just after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while the world was still recoiling in horror from the introduction of weapons of mass destruction into a world that had already exhausted itself in two world wars and the deaths of tens of millions — combatants and non-combatants alike. We still see the consequences of that egregious affront to human rights and human dignity in the faces of the Hibakusha and their families.
The international community has made more than one attempt to abolish these instruments of mass extermination and to ensure that they will never be used again. Those attempts have been only partially successful, but persisted throughout the decades of the nuclear age, most recently in the form of resolutions on nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation passed by the First Committee of the UN in October and adopted by the General Assembly in December. Within the past year, a chorus of prominent voices has begun to call seriously for a nuclear-weapons-free world. In a now-famous pair of editorials in the Wall Street Journal, George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn, and William Perry broke ranks with the nuclear cold warriors and echoed what IPPNW and other Nobel Laureates had been saying for decades — that we would either abolish nuclear weapons or they would abolish us. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon told the East-West Institute on 24 October that “a world free of nuclear weapons would be a global public good of the highest order,” and said that the Model Nuclear Weapons Convention drafted by NGOs and championed by Costa Rica and Malaysia would be a good starting point. During his successful election campaign, President-Elect Barack Obama said that he wanted to provide leadership toward a nuclear-weapons-free world. India has resurrected the Rajiv Gandhi nuclear disarmament plan, and even President Sarkozy of France has now endorsed the goal of abolition.
Nevertheless, the good-faith commitment to nuclear disarmament enshrined in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) remains unfulfilled, and the nuclear weapon states, without exception, are modernizing their nuclear arsenals and the infrastructures that will produce new weapons well into this century. Some nuclear weapon states are not party to the NPT, and many non-nuclear-weapon states that are NPT members are losing patience with a double standard that has dragged on for almost 40 years. The failure to complete this long overdue task is not only a threat to global security, but poses a serious danger to the human rights of people in all countries of the world. These dangers are too often imposed on citizens who do not have a meaningful say on matters of global life and death. What is this, if not a human rights violation of the highest order?
Role of democracy
In the 1980s, millions of people around the world demonstrated in the streets for nuclear disarmament, while decision makers said the idea of a nuclear-weapons-free world was naïve and impractical. Today, the situation is strangely reversed, with serious statesmen and diplomats asserting that a world without nuclear weapons is a necessity, while the public is largely silent, preoccupied with other critical issues such as global warming and the economic crisis. Yet when asked, citizens of countries throughout the world express opinions in support of a Nuclear Weapons Convention. We find ourselves in a historical moment when the voices of the civil society and the voices of the powerful can make common cause in promoting a nuclear free world.
Will the Obama administration fulfill the President-Elect’s pledge to rid the world of these weapons? What of Russia, the UK, France and China? Can the democratic institutions in these Countries be placed in the service of this ultimate human rights project? How do we respond to countries such as Iran, which claim a human right to develop nuclear facilities for energy, but which leave the world anxious about their intentions? South Africa, which once had a nuclear weapons capability, renounced it, but now nuclear energy is making resurgence. Even my own country, Nigeria, is working seriously to acquire nuclear energy technologies that are only a few steps removed from a bomb-making capability.
Many non-nuclear-weapon states have already come together in exercises of democracy resulting in the creation of nuclear free zones in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. They are contributing to the momentum building up within civil society for nuclear abolition.
The call itself is not new. The World Health Assembly adopted a resolution in 1983 asserting that “nuclear weapons constitute the greatest immediate threat to the health and survival of mankind.” The World Medical Association condemned nuclear weapons in 1998, and just renewed its call for their elimination at this year’s WMA annual meeting in Seoul, in October.
IPPNW, which has mobilized physicians and medical students in 62 countries to educate the public and decision makers about the irremediable medical consequences of nuclear war, launched the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) in 2007. The goal of ICAN is to reawaken public concern about the growing threat posed by nuclear weapons, and to mobilize civil society to demand a nuclear-weapon-free world through the negotiation and adoption of a Nuclear Weapons Convention. The international community reached such agreements on chemical and biological weapons, on landmines, and, most recently, on cluster munitions. There is no reason, other than political resistance, why we cannot come to agreement around the prohibition of nuclear weapons as well.
Nuclear abolition and a healthy world
The WHO has made it clear that the definition of health encompasses far more than freedom from diseases and their symptoms, but that health is “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being.” Nuclear war — and security policies based on the capability to threaten the use of nuclear weapons — is the antithesis of health as defined by the WHO. Our fundamental message — that doctors can offer NO meaningful medical response to a nuclear war, and that prevention is the only responsible option — has not changed from the earliest days of our movement.
Chairman and Colleagues,
With tensions in the Caucasus, the Middle East, Africa, South Asia and elsewhere, the world must take a decision about security and freedom from the devastation of armed conflict as a human right. As Nobel Peace Laureates, we have an opportunity and a responsibility to engage with political decision makers in promoting a concrete agenda for health, security, human dignity, and human rights. A convention that abolishes nuclear weapons is an important advancement of fundamental human rights that can no longer be postponed.
Thank you for attention.
__________
Women and mothers promoters of change –
a total global freeze of military expenditure is needed now to face the global economical situation
Vappu Taipale
Co-President, IPPNW
IPPNW is a physician’s movement and therefore we look at the world through our profession. When IPPNW was set up in the early 1980s, the fear of a nuclear war was very real and palpable. Prevention of nuclear war was our urgent priority in health.
Today the environment of world politics is different. Still, the nuclear weapons have not disappeared; the stores are there and even refilled with increasingly modern technology. The imagined threat has become weaker, if not forgotten. But a disease will not disappear just by rejecting information about it and a cancer will not heal just by making it disappear from our consciousness.
There have been dramatic reductions in mortality in all industrialised countries, particularly for infants and children. However, this overall improvement masks less favourable trends: there are systematic differences in health across the population within all countries. Especially the situation as regards mental health and mental sickness has steadily deteriorated in the developing countries and particularly among poor people. Even the rich countries face a steady increase in depression, suicide and anxiety disorders but do not show much ambition and progress in the mental health field.
There is an uneven distribution of health and disease, favouring those in socially advantaged position, whether measured by income, education, occupation or other measures of socio-economic status. In fact, the world has grown more unequal. The WHO rapport on Social Determinants of Health (2008) has pointed out the crucial importance of social justice in health. Today, the problem still exists: human rights are violated and there is structural violence as to people´s rights to health.
Poverty and poverty-bound ill-health means that opportunities and choices most basic to human development are denied. Health is one of the most prominent choice people everywhere in the world appreciate. The world has today the material and natural resources, the know-how and the people to make a poverty-free world a reality in less than a generation. This requires conscious policies and a strong civil society everywhere.
When investing in child human rights and child health, some of the measures are taken on a macro scale, on the level of the society in general. These measures include the provision of education and training, safeguarding the economic circumstances of families with children, and a long-term family policy. Some of the measures are environmental, because it has become more and more difficult to guarantee the basic qualities of environment to the children: healthy food, fresh air and pure water — just the challenges from the beginning of the hygienic movement in the 19th century.
I am mother of four children and grandmother of six. As a child psychiatrist I was one of the first in IPPNW to raise the issue of children and war on our agenda. Militarism means subordinating of the values of the society to the needs of the war and to the preparation of war. Militarism can be structural; it can be targeted to the minds of people or reach the behaviour of people. Children have always been, as a part of any human society, influenced by famines, illnesses, conflicts and occupations, eye witnessing human violence and participating in many ways in crises and warfare. Methods and means of warfare have become increasingly sophisticated. Conflicts opposing regular armed forces and irregular combatants are more frequent. In modern warfare, losses are much more severe among civilians, and they even are consequently growing in severity all the time. Military expenditure in the world is high, consuming resources needed to alleviate poverty and to reach Millennium Development Goals.
Therefore,
we mothers and women are here to protect our children.
The major economic recession which affects all the countries will hit children worst and have several consequences during next decades. All the nations should freeze immediately their military expenditure in order to protect their children. This will serve as the first step to total nuclear disarmament, to protect human rights and to build up a world without violence.
There are positive signs to be found in the world during last months. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has uttered his strong will to nuclear disarmament as well as President –elect Barack Obama. President Nicholas Sarkozy, France holding the presidency of European Union has come out with strong support to nuclear abolition. Global Zero group has prominent members and supporters.
Future innovations are neither merely macroeconomic nor technical but social. They involve increased social understanding, deeper cultural interpretations, better co-operation between different scientific fields, and enhanced dialogue between science, civil society and politics.
A nuclear-weapons-free world? Not if those building a 100-year production line can help it
John Loretz
Program Director, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War
If a change is coming in US nuclear policy after the 2008 elections, there is no hint of it in a policy paper released quietly by the outgoing Bush administration in September. “National Security and Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century,” a followup to a report issued by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman last year, provides a rationale and a timetable (actually, a choice among timetables) for rebuilding the US nuclear weapons infrastructure, with the goal of ensuring a steady flow of new nuclear warheads for the next 50 to 100 years.
Gates and Bodman conclude that the number of operational nuclear warheads required for the security of the US and its allies for the remainder of this century is 1,700 to 2,200. Reserve warheads would, perhaps, double the size of the stockpile to about 4,500, although 3,500 is another ceiling they consider. Depending on the projected size of the stockpile and the rate at which new plutonium triggers (pits) and replacement warheads are produced, reconstruction of the US arsenal would be completed between 2039 and 2114. Once the infrastructure is rebuilt and running up to speed, it can always be expanded if the Pentagon wants more warheads.
If you are having a hard time connecting the dots between this vision of the future and a world without nuclear weapons, welcome to the club. Gates and Bodman don’t make a single reference to US disarmament commitments under the NPT. They note that the US is meeting its goals under SORT (the 2002 Moscow Treaty), but describe the nuclear force levels established by that treaty as a carefully determined operational threshold, not as a stopover on any path to zero. (It’s no stretch to read this report as confirmation of a long-held suspicion that SORT was not a disarmament treaty at all, rather a “gentlemen’s agreement” to stabilize the US and Russian arsenals at a predetermined, long term threshold.)
The cabinet secretaries, who share responsibility for the size and structure of the US arsenal, chafe under the moratorium on nuclear testing, but believe they have solved the problem of how to keep new warhead designs coming without necessarily having to explode them to make sure they work. And they fret that aging warheads are not the only worrisome part of the system:
Critical personnel, with experience in the design and testing of nuclear weapons, are also aging and retiring, and in the absence of a viable nuclear infrastructure, their expertise cannot be replaced. Moreover, as new design efforts are further delayed, the ability and availability of experienced designers and engineers to mentor the next generation will decrease over time.
The rationale offered by Gates and Bodman for a large, permanent nuclear warmaking capability (which, by the way, is incompatible with Article VI of the NPT despite often repeated US claims to the contrary) is just the latest iteration of the false and unexamined assumptions laid out in the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review. The Cold War is over, but “the international security environment remains dangerous and unpredictable.” Nuclear weapons “play unique roles in supporting US national security” and “remain an essential element in modern strategy.” US nuclear weapons defend not only the US but also its allies. They do this by providing assurances to friends, by dissuading adversaries (and also friends) from acquiring nuclear weapons of their own, and by deterring nuclear-armed adversaries. Gates and Bodman assert that nuclear weapons will be used to defeat our adversaries if deterrence fails, but sidestep the question of how the US expects to avoid mutually assured destruction, even in a post-Cold-War world. The fact that nuclear weapons are meant to enforce US political will globally is openly acknowledged.
What we have here is a faith-based initiative, with the object of faith being a guaranteed capability to destroy humanity. According to Gates and Bodman — and a succession of US administrations from both political parties — “The United States will need to maintain a nuclear force, though smaller and less prominent than in the past, for the foreseeable future.” Contrast this with statements made by both presidential candidates. Earlier this year, Sen. Barack Obama said “A world without nuclear weapons is profoundly in America’s interest and the world’s interest. It is our responsibility to make the commitment, and to do the hard work to make this vision a reality.” Sen. John McCain agreed a short while later, though he expressed himself in the language of wishful thinking: “A quarter of a century ago, President Ronald Reagan declared, ‘our dream is to see the day when nuclear weapons will be banished from the face of the Earth.’ That is my dream, too.”
Despite their encouraging rhetoric, both candidates, to varying degrees and with varying levels of enthusiasm, are committed to maintaining what they call a “strong nuclear deterrent” as long as nuclear weapons exist. Whether either of them has a serious, practical plan to achieve a nuclear-weapons-free world remains to be seen. What seems certain is that, in the absence of a clear and unambiguous presidential directive to start pursuing and planning for a nuclear-weapons-free world, what we will get is the 21st century nuclear force envisioned by Gates and Bodman. A global pandemic of nuclear weapons will then be a foregone conclusion.
Read “National Security and Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century” here
Should anything trigger the use of nuclear weapons?
John Loretz
Program Director, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War
The next President of the United States has an awesome responsibility for the security of the entire world. He (or potentially she) can either lead us toward the global elimination of nuclear weapons, or he can continue to claim that they are essential for US security and ensure their almost inevitable use—whether deliberately or through tragic error.
During the US vice presidential debate on Thursday, October 2, moderator Gwen Ifill asked Senator Joe Biden and Governor Sarah Palin “What should be the trigger, or should there be a trigger, when nuclear weapons use is ever put into play?”
Neither candidate answered the question. Gov. Palin spoke vaguely about the lethality of nuclear weapons and made an inaccurate statement about US nuclear policy. “Nuclear weaponry,” she said:
“of course, would be the be all, end all of just too many people in too many parts of our planet, so those dangerous regimes, again, cannot be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons, period. Our nuclear weaponry here in the US is used as a deterrent. And that’s a safe, stable way to use nuclear weaponry.”
Not only is there is no “safe, stable way” to use nuclear weapons, given their intolerably destructive nature, but US nuclear policy defines a number of situations in which national leaders might use or threaten to use nuclear weapons preemptively or in response to a non-nuclear attack. Such policies are extremely dangerous; they violate the norms of international law; and they provoke other countries into considering the acquisition of their own nuclear arsenals.
Sen. Biden also sidestepped the question about the use of nuclear weapons and gave an incomplete answer about the importance of arms control. “Barack Obama” he said “…reached across the aisle to my colleague, Dick Lugar, a Republican, and said, ‘We’ve got to do something about keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists.’ They put together a piece of legislation that, in fact, was serious and real.” He also spoke about the importance of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
His answer, while it demonstrated his expertise in nuclear policy, stopped short of expressing what both Sen. Obama and Sen. McCain have said during the campaign: that the world will be safer without nuclear weapons. As a number of senior American statesmen have argued over the past year, any individual arms control measures need to be seen as steps toward the global elimination of nuclear weapons.
The answer to Ms. Ifill’s question is simple and irrefutable. We must never allow anything to trigger the use of nuclear weapons, because if we use them they will destroy all of us — our adversaries, our allies, and ourselves. There can be no responsible owners of nuclear weapons. Because of their inherent destructiveness, the mere existence of nuclear weapons threatens the future of all humanity.
Increasing knowledge of how to construct nuclear weapons, increasing availability of the materials with which to make a bomb, increasing numbers of people desperate enough to use the bomb, and, most important, a lack of international resolve to banish the bomb from the arsenals of the world, make the use of nuclear weapons inevitable if the next US President and the international community do not act decisively. IPPNW, through the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) has called for negotiaton and adoption of a Nuclear Weapons Convention that would eliminate all the world’s nuclear weapons.
You can learn more about nuclear weapons and what would happen if they are ever used again here [nwarmedicalcons.pdf]. You can learn how to become part of the solution and become an ICAN supporter here [www.ippnw.org/Program/ICAN].
Most important, please tell both Sen. Obama and Sen. McCain that there are no responsible owners of nuclear weapons, only responsible leaders who will take the necessary steps to abolish these weapons of mass extermination from the world.
Please let us know how you feel about the remarks of the Vice Presidential Candidates and our opinion of their responses by commenting on this post.
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