President Obama in Berlin: "So long as nuclear weapons exist, we are not truly safe.”

President Barack Obama at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate

Today, in front of the historic Brandenburg Gate, US President Barack Obama stood where Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy before him also stood.  He uttered the words now made famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” to a cheering crowd waving German and American flags together.  President Obama addressed the issue of nuclear weapons and proliferation in his speech.  Perhaps more importantly, Obama said, “We may no longer live in fear of global annihilation, but so long as nuclear weapons exist, we are not truly safe.”  While most likely rhetoric, Mr. Obama was correct when he said this; for as long as weapons exist that can take out entire cities and regions, no country or people are safe if war breaks out. 

President Obama championed the New START Treaty in his speech saying, “I intend to seek negotiated cuts with Russia to move beyond Cold War nuclear postures.”  However, unless Mr. Obama has had some great change of heart, his actions during his Presidency regarding nuclear weapons have yet to meet the expectations laid out in his grandiose speeches.  The New START Treaty is made to sound ambitious and groundbreaking, it is however very conservative in its changes and unimaginative.  The new treaty sets the deployed weapon limit at 1550 warheads for each country.  The estimate of the US stockpile is estimated at 4,650 warheads, of which around 2,150 are deployed.  Russian nuclear stockpile is estimated at 4,500 weapons.  Only 1,800 of those warheads are deployed.  So the limit of 1550 really isn’t that drastic of a change.

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.