Leave Him Alone?

Yesterday, I sent out an action alert asking our members to write to President Obama and ask him to cancel next week’s test of a Minuteman III Intercontinental Ballistic Missile. Thousands of people immediately took action, asking him not only to cancel next week’s test, but also to work quickly in his second term to decommission land-based ICBMs.

As always, I am deeply grateful to our thousands of dedicated members who take action to support the elimination of nuclear weapons. This wide support from around the United States gives us the public voice we need to be able to get our foot in the door in Washington, DC.

I got a couple of replies from people to the effect of, “Come on, give the guy [Obama] a break. He just won re-election. Let’s savor this victory for a while.”

Here’s why I disagree with that assessment:

• The Air Force isn’t planning to give us, or the Marshall Islanders (the target of the November 14 test), a break by postponing the test. 
• Conducting this test would be a terrible message to send to the world immediately after the President’s re-election. We’re talking about a missile that carries thermonuclear warheads at least eight times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.
• We are trying to hold President Obama to his 2008 campaign promise to “renew the goal of a world without nuclear weapons.”

To read more about why the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation believes that the United States should decommission its land-based Minuteman III missiles, see this article in the Christian Science Monitor by NAPF President David Krieger and Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg.

What Does Your Political Party Say About Nuclear Weapons?

The 2012 U.S. Presidential election season is well underway, and among the most important political issues that America faces is determining a policy on nuclear weapons. The following passages are the official stances on nuclear weapons from the Democratic, Republican, and Green Party platform. Each party platform addresses the issue of nuclear weapons proliferation and disarmament, in regards to both the U.S.'s nuclear program and nuclear programs abroad.

My Letter in the Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal published a letter to the editor from me on Sunday, September 2. It appears as if the Journal is no longer archiving letters to the editor online, so the full text of the letter appears below.

The letters to the editor page is the second-most widely read page of a newspaper after the front page. It is a great way to get your message across to readers, especially in a publication known for coming down on the other side of your issue of interest.

I encourage everyone to write letters to the editor on issues they care about - both local papers and national ones. You can read my suggested guidelines for writing a letter to the editor here.

Here's the text of my letter, which refers to an op-ed that had been published by the Wall Street Journal earlier that week:

Mr. Kozak certainly places a lot of faith in the idea that "rational actors" with their finger on the nuclear trigger will act rationally at all times, even under extreme stress during times of war. This dangerous assumption overlooks the fact that one irrational decision with nuclear weapons could set off a chain of events that could kill hundreds of millions of people around the world through nuclear famine.

Furthering the gap between nuclear "haves" and "have-nots" through military action, as Mr. Kozak not so subtly infers, will only increase the incentive for other countries to develop nuclear weapons quickly. Negotiations for a Middle East Weapons of Mass Destruction-Free Zone, which would include both Iran and Israel, are supposed to take place in the coming months. This is a sensible way to halt real and possible nuclear proliferation in this volatile region of the world.

Rick Wayman

Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Santa Barbara, Calif.

Iran Call for Nuclear Abolition by 2025 is Unreported by New York Times

Logo of the Non-Aligned Movement
(photo: Wikipedia)

This guest blog was written by Alice Slater.

The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), formed in 1961 during the Cold War, is a group of 120 states and 17 observer states not formally aligned with or against any major power bloc.  The NAM held its opening 2012 session yesterday under the new chairmanship of Iran, which succeeded Egypt as the Chair.

Significantly, an Associated Press story in the Washington Post headlined, “Iran opens nonaligned summit with calls for nuclear arms ban”, reported that “Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi opened the gathering by noting commitment to a previous goal from the nonaligned group, known as NAM, to remove the world’s nuclear arsenals within 13 years. ‘We believe that the timetable for ultimate removal of nuclear weapons by 2025, which was proposed by NAM, will only be realized if we follow it up decisively,’ he told delegates.”