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.

Nuclear Terrorism is in the Eye of the Beholder

This guest blog comes from NAPF Board member Robert Laney.

The “Seoul Communiqué,” issued by the United States and other governments attending the 2012 Seoul Nuclear Security Summit this week, begins with the following preamble:

We, the leaders, gathered in Seoul on March 26-27, 2012, renew the political commitments generated from the 2010 Washington Nuclear Security Summit to work toward strengthening nuclear security, reducing the threat of nuclear terrorism, and preventing terrorists, criminals, or other unauthorized actors from acquiring nuclear materials.  Nuclear terrorism continues to be one of the most challenging threats to international security.  Defeating this threat requires strong national measures and international cooperation given its potential global political, economic, social, and psychological consequences.

The purpose of this communiqué is to summarize and reaffirm these various  governments’ common understanding of the components of “nuclear security” and their commitment to make progress toward achieving them.  Key to their notion of “nuclear security” are the words, “preventing terrorists, criminals, or other unauthorized actors from acquiring nuclear materials.”   In other words, “nuclear security” means ensuring that non-state actors do not acquire nuclear weapons or the means to develop them.  What nation-states may do or not do with nuclear weapons is beside the point of this communiqué.

I am all for keeping nuclear weapons and the means to develop them out of the hands of non-state actors.  Indeed I believe that a robust international effort to secure weapons-grade materials from the hands of non-state actors is long overdue after years of relative inaction by the previous U. S. administration.  In any case, who can be against “preventing terrorists, criminals, or other unauthorized actors from acquiring nuclear materials?” 

But I find a peculiar irony in defining “nuclear security” in terms of non-state actors only, without regard for those nation-states which for decades, by maintaining vast nuclear arsenals on hair-trigger alert with a “first strike” option, have implicitly threatened millions upon millions of ordinary men, women, and children with indiscriminate annihilation.  Viewed objectively and from a disinterested standpoint, do not those nation-states which in the 21st Century continue to threaten mass, “omnicidal” annihilation also qualify as “terrorists,” “criminals,” and “unauthorized actors,” only more so than do non-state actors because of their potential to put an end to civilization?  And if that is so, does not one’s concept of “nuclear security” derive from his particular place, situation, and perspective on the world?

Sense of Urgency Leads to Civil Disobedience at Vandenberg

David Krieger, Fr. Louis Vitale and
Daniel Ellsberg. Photo by Jim Haber.

In the early hours of Saturday, February 25, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation President David Krieger was arrested with 14 others protesting the test launch of a Minuteman III Intercontinental Ballistic Missile. The Minuteman is the United States' land-based missile, 450 of which sit in silos around the Midwest on hair-trigger alert, ready to be fired at a moment's notice. Saturday's launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base targeted the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.

I had the chance to ask David a few questions about his arrest now that he has had a couple of days to reflect on it.

RW: What made you decide after 30 years of working as President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation to get arrested protesting this missile launch?

President's Message

Today is an important day in history. It was 90 years ago on this day that Babe Ruth became baseball's all-time home run leader. It was 68 years ago today that the ballpoint pen was patented in the United States. And on this day just 48 years ago during the height of the Cold War, President Kennedy gave the Commencement Address at American University where he discussed the importance of peace and how nuclear weapons would destroy that peace by creating, “a new face of war.” While we have come a long way on the road to peace and nuclear abolition, this “new face of war” still remains.

In light of the recently released Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) report, NAPF President David Krieger released a message titled, "How Many Nuclear Weapons Still Threaten Humanity?" On this significant day in history we must be proud of how far humanity has come, but we must also realize that the path to nuclear abolition is one we must continue to walk if we ever want to experience the kind of genuine peace that President Kennedy referred to almost 50 years ago: the kind of peace that we all deserve.

Testing 1,2,3 (4,5...)

What's up with all the nuclear missile testing lately by the US military? It's nothing new: they have been doing it for decades. But five tests in eight days? Twenty years after the end of the Cold War, and with a president who claims to (eventually) want a world free of nuclear weapons, this really is not what the world needs.

On Tuesday and Wednesday of last week, the US Navy fired four Trident 2 D-5 nuclear-capable missiles from the USS Maryland. Then, early this morning, the US Air Force fired a Minuteman III Intercontinental Ballistic Missile from Vandenberg - just up the road from me in California - to Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.

The Navy really patted itself on the back about the "success" of the tests and the capabilities of their missiles that carry nuclear warheads around the world's oceans. In their press release, they lauded the Trident 2 D-5 missile for its "increased firepower [and] flexibility."

Today's Headlines: A Nuclear Aftermath?

All over the newspapers, internet and TV today we are seeing the unbelievable devastation caused by the earthquake near Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Thousands of collapsed buildings, infrastructure destroyed, an unknown (but very high) number of people dead or missing. My heart aches at the suffering this natural disaster has caused.

When I came in to work this morning, my thoughts turned to images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Just as in Haiti today, buildings collapsed and a city was destroyed. In Japan, hundreds of thousands of innocent people were killed in a very short period of time, not by a natural disaster but a man-made one. The US atomic bombs, nicknamed "Little Boy" and "Fat Man," brought unforgettable destruction and anguish to those two Japanese cities.