- "The world has entered a new nuclear age, a second
nuclear age. The danger is rising that nuclear weapons will be used against
the United States. Just as bad, the danger is rising that the United States
will use nuclear weapons against others·."
- -- Jonathan Schell
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- With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the breakup of
the Soviet Union, many Americans gave a deep sigh of relief and pronounced
the nuclear threat at an end. It was a heady time. I can remember being
asked, ãWhat will the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation do now that the
nuclear threat is gone?ä My response was that the nuclear threat
was still with us despite these momentous changes in the geopolitical landscape.
It was far too soon to pronounce the Nuclear Age dead.
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- In retrospect, from a vantage point of more than 12
years after these tectonic shifts in geopolitics, we can see that the Nuclear
Age, with new and growing dangers, is still with us. The first half-century
of the Nuclear Age was marked by a mad arms race between the United States
and the former Soviet Union that resulted in the development and deployment
of tens of thousands of nuclear weapons capable of destroying civilization
and most life on Earth.
- While the nuclear standoff between the US and former
USSR is no longer the extraordinary danger it was, new nuclear dangers
have arisen that have led many astute observers to the conclusion that
we have entered a second Nuclear Age. Among these new dangers are:
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- * the nuclear standoff between nuclear-armed rivals India
and Pakistan, two countries that have more than a fifty-year history of
warfare and serious tensions;
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- * the partial breakdown of command and control systems
that protect nuclear weapons and weapons-grade nuclear materials in the
former Soviet countries, giving rise to the increased possibility that
these weapons and materials could fall into the hands of other countries
and terrorist organizations;
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- * the pursuit of nuclear weapons programs and the development
of nuclear arsenals by countries, such as North Korea and Iran, that feel
threatened by the Bush administrationâs policy of preemptive war;
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- * the impetus that Israelâs nuclear arsenal gives
to other countries in the Middle East to develop their own nuclear arsenals;
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- * the provocative policies of the Bush administration
to pursue smaller, more usable nuclear weapons and those with a specific
use in warfare such as the so-called ãbunker busters,ä blurring
the distinction between conventional and nuclear arms; and
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- * the possibility that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty, which has already lost its first member, North Korea, could fall
apart due to the failure of the nuclear weapons states to fulfill their
obligations under Article VI of the Treaty to engage in good faith efforts
to achieve nuclear disarmament.
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- The United States, as the world's sole surviving superpower,
has had the opportunity to lead the world toward a nuclear weapons free
future. It is an opportunity that our country has largely rejected, and
has done so at its own peril. Political leaders in the United States have
yet to grasp that nuclear weapons make us less secure rather than more
so, and their policies have reflected this failure to comprehend the dangers
of the second Nuclear Age.
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- In the year 2000, the parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty, including the United States, agreed to 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear
Disarmament. These included ã[a]n unequivocal undertaking by the
nuclear-weapon states to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear
arsenals,ä along with specific steps such as ratification and entry
into force of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), preserving and
strengthening the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, and applying the
principle of irreversibility to nuclear disarmament.
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- In each of these areas the United States, under the Bush
administration, has led in the opposite direction. The administrationâs
policies have sent a message to the world that the worldâs strongest
military power finds nuclear weapons useful for its national security and
plans to maintain its nuclear arsenal for the indefinite future. The Bush
administration has opposed ratification of the CTBT and has withdrawn from
the ABM Treaty. Its approach to nuclear disarmament has been to employ
maximum flexibility and make reductions fully reversible.
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- The US pact with Russia, the Strategic Offensive Reductions
Treaty (SORT), signed by Presidents Bush and Putin in May 2002, calls for
reductions in deployed strategic nuclear weapons to between 1,700 and 2,200
weapons on each side by the year 2012. The treaty has no timetable other
than the final date to achieve these reductions, and there is no requirement
to make these reductions irreversible. The Bush administration has already
announced that it plans to put the weapons it takes off active deployment
status into storage ready for redeployment on short notice. The Russians
are likely to follow suit, creating more opportunity for the stored nuclear
weapons in both countries to fall into the hands of terrorists. In the
meantime, the US and Russia are each maintaining over 2,000 nuclear weapons
on hair-trigger alert, subject to being launched accidentally.
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- In addition, the Bush administration pursued an illegal
preventive war against Iraq because of its purported, but never found,
weapons of mass destruction. This action sent a message to North Korea,
Iran and other states that if they want to be more secure from US attack,
they had better develop nuclear forces to deter the US.
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- North Korea has repeatedly made a simple request of the
US. They have asked for security assurances from the US that they will
not be attacked. This is not unreasonable considering that the Korean
War has never officially ended, that the US maintains some 40,000 troops
near the Demilitarized Zone that separates the two Koreas, that the US
keeps nuclear-armed submarines in the waters off the Korean Peninsula,
and that the Bush administration has pursued a doctrine of preemption.
In return for a Non-Aggression Pact from the US, the North Koreans have
indicated that they would give up their nuclear weapons program and rejoin
the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
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- It would be a great shame if Americans only awakened
to the dangers of the second Nuclear Age with the detonation of one or
more nuclear weapons somewhere in the world. Given the increased threats
associated with terrorism and the dangers that nuclear weapons or bomb-grade
nuclear materials could fall into the hands of terrorists, it is not beyond
the realm of possibility that the next detonation of a nuclear weapon or
other weapon of mass destruction could take place in a city in the United
States.
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- It is of critical importance that Americans be made aware
of these dangers and reverse our policies before we are confronted by such
tragedy. The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation has set forth a series of needed
steps that have been widely endorsed by prominent leaders, including 38
Nobel Laureates, in its Appeal to End the Nuclear Weapons Threat to Humanity
and All Life. These steps are de-alerting all nuclear weapons, reaffirming
commitments to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the Anti-Ballistic
Missile Treaty, commencing good faith negotiations on a treaty to eliminate
all nuclear weapons, declaring a policy of No First Use of nuclear weapons
and reallocating resources from nuclear arsenals to improving human health,
education and welfare throughout the world.
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- Our challenge is to translate this program into action.
It will require a sea change in the thinking of US political leaders.
This cannot happen without a grassroots movement from below, that is,
from ordinary citizens, who hold the highest office in the land. The starting
point is the recognition that the Nuclear Age did not end with the fall
of the Berlin Wall, and that we are now living in the second Nuclear Age.
We ask for your support in this fight for the future of humanity and all
life on our planet.
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- David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace
Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is the co-author of Choose Hope,
Your Role in Waging Peace in the Nuclear Age.
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- "Peace is the only battle worth waging."
- --- Albert Camus
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- To become a free on-line participating member of the
Nuclear Age Peace Foundation,
- click here: https://www.ndic.com/wagingpeace/supportus.htm
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- David Krieger, President
- Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
- PMB 121, 1187 Coast Village Road, Suite 1
- Santa Barbara, CA 93108-2794
- dkrieger@napf.org Web site: http://www.wagingpeace.org
- http://www.nuclearfiles.org
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