Today, I will have the honor of receiving from United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon the UN Correspondents Association Advocacy of the Year Award for my work in the Global Zero movement to eliminate all nuclear weapons. Since I and one hundred international leaders from around the world launched the movement three years ago this month, we have made tremendous progress, but if we are to avert nuclear catastrophe, our leaders must act with much greater urgency to set our course to the elimination of all nuclear weapons.
When the lights went out on the Soviet Union on Mikhail Gorbachev's watch twenty years ago this month, the fate of its thirty-five thousand nuclear weapons became a source of deep concern to the world. Russia had to round up its nuclear inheritance from most of the fourteen other republics that emerged from the Soviet break-up, in many cases prying them loose from countries like Ukraine that claimed ownership. Miraculously, Russia retrieved them without losing its grip on a single weapon, thanks in large part to the herculean effort of the Russian general in charge, Evgeny Maslin.
But the list of nuclear dangers has only expanded over the past two decades, and frankly there is little relief in sight. The world is beset with problems and preoccupied with economic challenges that have distracted attention from the even greater danger of nuclear catastrophe. We are pretending as though this peril will go away if we ignore it.
New threats are knocking on the door - the spreading of the bomb to additional countries, and potentially to terrorists. Since Gorbachev stepped down, Pakistan, India, and North Korea have acquired and tested the bomb. Iran is moving ever closer to that day. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey and others are waiting in the wings. As Iran goes, so go them. The world faces the specter of cascading proliferation that may not be stoppable if it gains further momentum. Terrorists will stand a better chance of getting their hands on them. The use of nuclear weapons would become inevitable.
And there remain serious risks stemming from the continuing Cold War habits of the United States and Russia to keep many hundreds of their nuclear-armed intercontinental rockets poised for launch within a few minutes. In the documentary film Countdown to Zero, which I produced, Gorbachev recalls how hair-trigger nuclear missiles allowed him only minutes to decide whether to unleash Soviet nuclear forces on apparent warning of an incoming strike. His counterpart in nuclear negotiations, former President Ronald Reagan, also was astonished at how little time for reflection was allowed by the standing nuclear war plans: In his memoirs, Reagan wrote: [pp. 36-7] "Russian submarines off our East Coast with nuclear missiles could turn the White House into a pile of radioactive rubble within six or eight minutes. Six minutes to decide how to respond to a blip on radar scope and decide whether to release Armageddon! How could anyone apply reason at a time like that?"
What is more astonishing is that virtually nothing has changed. Both Russia and the United States continue to prepare to fight a large-scale nuclear war with each other on a moment's notice. If their launch-ready stances are adopted by the world's other nuclear weapons countries, then the risks of the accidental or unauthorized use of nuclear weapons would grow exponentially. As Enrico Fermi said about the laws of physics, if an event is not prohibited absolutely, then it will happen eventually. If nuclear weapons are not stood down and eliminated, one day they will be used.
Rather than retreating from the precipice of an avoidable disaster, almost all of the nine nuclear weapons countries are upgrading their nuclear arms, at an estimated total cost of one trillion dollars over the next decade. The United States is constructing new uranium and plutonium factories to build bombs, and planning to build new nuclear-armed submarines and bombers. Russia is embarked on a 70-billion dollar binge to replace its aging nuclear forces. China is building its first fleet of nuclear missile submarines and truck-based nuclear forces. Great Britain is preparing to build four new Trident-class submarines. France just christened a new nuclear missile submarine. Pakistan is surging its production of nuclear materials and may take third place in nuclear-arsenal size within a few years, ahead of everyone but Russia and the U.S. India is playing catch-up deploying new land-based missiles and submarines. Even Israel is buying submarines (from Germany), equipping them with nuclear cruise missiles and deploying them in the Persian Gulf to pose a nuclear threat to Iran. The bête noire of nuclear countries, North Korea, is spending extravagantly on its nuclear factories and missiles while its people starve.
Hundreds of international figures in the Global Zero movement, like Gorbachev and Maslin, have joined forces in a last-ditch effort to pull the world back from the brink. It may not be too late if we can convince world leaders and the public of the urgent need to take immediate steps to reduce the nuclear threat - like taking all nuclear weapons off of hair-trigger alert -- and to begin multilateral negotiations to eliminate all nuclear arms in verifiable stages over a period of years. The Global Zero movement includes leaders who have served as national security advisors and in other positions with high-level responsibility for foreign policy, defense, and counter-terrorism that allows them to testify credibly about the growing dangers of nuclear war by intention or accident, by states or terrorists. Our agenda is to bring all the nuclear weapons countries into dialogue and negotiation to ensure that the use of nuclear weapons does not become inevitable. This is a catastrophe can be prevented.
However, Iran is a different issue all together. They have shown time and time again that they will consistently be a menace to the rest of the world. It is the one nation where isolation might be the right answer. But sanctions, as I have previously stated, are highly ineffective, as nations such as China and Syria continue to evade UN demands of boycotting Iranian goods. China in particular gets much of its oil from Iran. But the Barack Obama administration does have the ability to reduce the possibilities of an Iran armed with nuclear weapons. He must continue to support the Arab Spring. For too long, we have supported brutal dictators in the area such as Qaddafi and the al-Khalifa family of Bahrain. If we finally give a helping hand to the Middle Eastern people, they will have a more positive view of the West, and will not listen to the constant anti-Western rhetoric of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Thus, there will be less trading partners for Iran and less money in its coffers. Although it is an indirect means of halting the Iranian nuclear program, it seems to be the best way of moving forward.
That is why the true way to solving this is adopting the neoliberalist principle of bringing rogue nations into the global system and integrating them into the globalized economy. If we rein in the "outlaws" and make it so that they are dependent in the rest of the world for economic stability, then international bodies will have a new sense of control over them and will finally be able to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. Although it might sound corny, cooperation and dialogue truly is the prescription for this problem.
Link: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2011-10-25/nuke-bomb-disassembly/50901152/1
Bigger IS Better.
R/ PRONESE
1. Proliferation is impossible to prevent. - Eventually it will be too easy to create these or more powerful weapons
2. No matter what you do, technology will eventually progress to the point where a teenager in his backyard can make a nuclear weapon - its inevitable. Don't think so? 30 years ago no one thought a 14 year old would ever succeed in making a nuclear reactor..Now, the distinction is shared by
multiple teenagers.
3. Nuclear War is catastrophic but its not the end of the world - We have all grown up watching various film, scifi, book depictions of Nuclear Armageddon. Its important to realize that these are mostly fiction. Sure a nuclear war would be an unprecedented catastrophe, it will not however be the end of the world, several non hysteria minded scientists have published significant papers to this fact.
Spouting nonsense about total destruction, the end of all life etc. is not only ignorance, but cowardice.
If I were still monotheist, my bishop-or-equivalent would (probably) feel ‘duty-bound’ to excommunicate: I’m pro-choice, support marriage-&-clerical-vocational-equality, and numerous-other-issues my former Belief seems 'all-a-tremble-over'…
If I'm sitting in a B-1b/B-52d cockpit, revving engines, waitin'-to-taxi or below-the-waves / in-a-silo, crewing a nuclear-powered-mass-abortificient, (a contemporary example: 'Trident', SS-20/Miniteman-3), I can ‘cannibalize-the-Deity’, any-old-time the ‘sparsely-attended’ sacristy is open-for-traffic…
Obviously, I consider ‘prolife’ protests, whether 'violent' or ‘sidewalk-counseling’ by (uncertified)counselors), when directed at ‘non-believers’ to be profoundly-unethical…
How can I go-to-war, allegedly confiscating Condi-S-leeza Rice’s (imaginary) W.M.D.’s or practice/prepare to reduce ‘humanity-to-ashes’, (reel-life: ‘Terminator-2’; REAL-life: Dr. R.J. Lipton’s post-Hiroshima-study)...w/o similar ecclesiastic_sanction?
By what power-fantasy do others feel a moral-prerogative to decide, (either N-War-or-reproductive-issues), for others? ...Is there as-yet-unpublished-science demonstrating ‘Human_Womb, M-1919-a1’, sufficiently protective of foetels, (wanted & unwanted)?
As a retired urban ‘Blood-N-Guts’ manager, I feel comfortable noting there’s ‘NO-Survival’, (in practical-terms), of nuclear-war… There may be some-few-decades-o'-agony for 'pitiful-human-leftovers'.
‘Life’ may continue; 'Human_Civilization’, (as this phrase is currently understood), is UNLIKLY to recover in less than a ‘quasi-geologic’ timeframe, if ever.
The late Carl Sagan did post-nuclear-conflict-modeling.
The latest-revision suggests 'limited-war', (limited by E.M.P.-related-electronic-launch-failure?), like Israel-Vs.-Pakistan' or India-Vs-Pakistan, (50 Megatons, each combatant), projects an almost-indistinguishable ‘nuclear-winter’, when compared to 'U.S.-Vs.-Russia-&/or-China', (150+ Megatons used).
(...continued due to space-issues).
It may sound a little glib, but I'm afraid that if we outlaw nukes only the outlaws will have nukes.
Wouldn't it be nice if there were no threats in this world? But, alas, there are. And we need to defend ourselves against them.
Civilian reactors will probably kill us first. They already got a good start on both sides. Just another whoops away.