U.S. Senate Ratifies 'New Start' Nuclear Treaty With Russia
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Last updated (GMT/UTC): 21.12.2010 21:35
By Richard Solash
WASHINGTON -- World leaders have hailed the vote in the U.S. Senate ratifying a landmark nuclear arms-control treaty between the United States and Russia. After months of heated debate and closed-door negotiation, the Senate on December 22 ratified the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with Russia, giving President Barack Obama a major foreign-policy victory and U.S.-Russian relations a significant boost.
Senators voted 71 to 26 to approve the treaty, which commits the United States and Russia to reduce their stockpiles of deployed nuclear warheads to 1,550 -- a reduction of nearly one-third -- within seven years. The treaty also sets new limits on ballistic-missile delivery systems and is accompanied by a verification regime.
A spokeswoman for Russian President Dmitry Medvedev noted that the U.S. amendments will need to be considered by Russian lawmakers before they vote in both houses to ratify. In a sign that a first vote in Moscow could come soon, Boris Gryzlov, speaker of the Russian State Duma, said the lower chamber could vote to ratify as early as December 24.
NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen called the U.S. ratification a "significant contribution to Euro-Atlantic security," while United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said it sends a "clear message" in support of nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation.
Japan, site of the world's first and only atomic bombings at the end of World War II, said the move marked "important progress" in disarmament efforts by Washington and Moscow.
Speaking at a press conference after the vote, Obama said he was pleased that the Senate had passed what he called "my top national security priority for this session of Congress."
"This is the most significant arms control agreement in nearly two decades and it will make us safer and reduce our nuclear arsenals, along with Russia. With this treaty, our inspectors will also be back on the ground at Russian nuclear bases. So we will be able to trust but verify," Obama said.
John Kerry (Democrat-Massachusetts), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and one of the most vocal proponents of the treaty, told lawmakers in the moments before the vote that their decision would have global implications.
"Regardless of where we stand on the START treaty, this is one of those rare times in the United States Senate -- one of the only times in all of our service here -- when we have it in our power to safeguard or to endanger human life on this planet," he said.
Months Of Political Fighting
Obama and Medvedev signed the treaty, which replaces a 1991 agreement that expired in December 2009, on April 8 in Prague.
U.S. and Russian nuclear inspectors have not visited each other's facilities for more than a year -- a situation that officials in Washington say endangers national security.
Washington's deeply partisan political climate meant that challenges brought by opposition Republican lawmakers in the months since last spring's signing turned the ratification process into a bitter fight.
Republican senators, led by the party's second-most-senior member, Jon Kyl (Arizona), argued that because the treaty acknowledges an interrelationship between offensive and defensive systems, it constrains U.S. plans for a missile defense shield, which Russia views with skepticism.
Several Republicans also voiced concern that the treaty diverts attention away from what they said was a need to modernize the U.S. nuclear arsenal in the face of threats from Iran and North Korea.
The Obama administration spent months courting Kyl before today's vote and even sent a team across the country to his Arizona office in an effort to persuade him to drop his opposition. The White House also announced $85 billion in additional funding over the next 10 years to modernize the country's nuclear complex.
The push for ratification included multiple newspaper editorials, speeches, and letters of support from not only Obama, Vice President Joseph Biden, and Secretary of State Clinton, but also from military leaders and former presidents, secretaries of state, and defense secretaries from both the Democratic and Republican parties.
A December 17 "New York Times" editorial urging the Senate to ratify was even signed by the foreign ministers of 25 European countries.
It was not enough to erase Republican concerns, however.
On December 20, Democrats defeated three Republican amendments that they said would have killed the treaty by requiring additional negotiation with Moscow.
That led Kyl to say to lawmakers the following day: "Is the United States just to be a rubber stamp? We can't do anything to change the treaty or the protocol or just the resolution of ratification, which is what we're trying to do here, because the Russians would say no and therefore we can't do it? I thought we're the United States Senate."
In the end, Kyl voted against the treaty.
Capping 'Reset' With Russia
Before the vote, Democrats agreed to accept versions of two Republican amendments -- one recognizing the U.S. commitment to pursue a missile defense system and the other reiterating the U.S. commitment to weapons modernization. Neither one affects the language of the treaty itself.
All told, 13 Republican senators broke with the party leadership to give the treaty the two-thirds majority required for passage. Richard Lugar (Republican-Indiana), a longtime advocate of nuclear nonproliferation, led the Republicans who voted for the treaty.
Obama characterized the treaty as the lynchpin to Washington's reset of relations with Moscow, which he has pursued since taking office last year.
The White House has reaped rewards from the reset, including Russian flyover rights for military planes headed to Afghanistan and Moscow's agreement in June to support a strong set of UN sanctions against Iran for its nuclear ambitions, as Obama noted.
"We'll continue to advance our relationship with Russia, which is essential to making progress on a host of challenges, from enforcing strong sanctions on Iran to preventing nuclear weapons from falling into the hands of terrorists. And this treaty will enhance our leadership to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and seek the peace of a world without them," he said.
Matthew Rojansky, an expert on U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons policy at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, says ratifying New START had become a "litmus test" for the reset in both the United States and Russia.
"We're at a point where it has been made something of a litmus test for the success of the reset from both sides, and so I think, that being the case, perceptions create the reality. You would be very hard-pressed to continue the reset with the same momentum if ratification failed," he says.
The Senate vote was also welcomed in Moscow, where Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called it "a gold standard" for arms control pacts, according to Interfax.
U.S. and Russian officials had pledged at the treaty's signing to try to synchronize their respective ratification efforts.
Moscow had voiced impatience in recent months over the U.S. delay in ratification, and on November 3, the Duma's Foreign Affairs Committee withdrew its recommendation to ratify the treaty.
______________________________
Global Zero (campaign) to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Global Zero is an international initiative launched in December 2008 to promote the elimination of nuclear weapons. It proposes a phased withdrawal and verification for the destruction of all devices held by official and unofficial members of the nuclear club. The Global Zero campaign works toward building an international consensus and a sustained global movement of leaders and citizens for the elimination of nuclear weapons.
Goals include the initiation of United States-Russia bilateral negotiations for reductions to 1,000 total warheads each and commitments from the other key nuclear weapons countries to participate in multilateral negotiations for phased reductions of nuclear arsenals. Global Zero works to expand the diplomatic dialogue with key governments and continue to develop policy proposals on the critical issues related to the elimination of nuclear weapons.
Action plan
The Global Zero plan for the phased, verified elimination of all nuclear weapons is a four-phased strategy to reach a global zero accord over 14 years (2010–2023) and to complete the dismantlement of all remaining nuclear warheads over the following seven years (2024–2030).
Phase 1 (2010–2013) Following conclusion of a START replacement accord, negotiate a bilateral accord for the United States and Russia to reduce to 1,000 total warheads each.
Phase 2 (2014–2018) In a multilateral framework, the U.S. and Russia reach agreement to reduce to 500 total warheads each (to be implemented by 2021) as long as all other nuclear weapons countries agree to freeze their stockpiles until 2018, followed by proportional reductions until 2021. Establish a comprehensive verification and enforcement system, and strengthen safeguards on the civilian nuclear fuel cycle to prevent diversion of materials to build weapons.
Phase 3 (2019–2023) Negotiate a global zero accord, signed by all nuclear capable countries, for the phased, verified, proportional reduction of all nuclear arsenals to zero total warheads by 2030.
Phase 4 (2024–2030) Complete the phased, verified, proportional reduction of all nuclear arsenals to zero total warheads by 2030 and continue the verification and enforcement system.
In releasing the plan, the Commission noted that over the past twenty years (1989–2009), the United States and Russia retired and destroyed twice as many nuclear warheads (40,000+) as this action plan proposes (20,000+) over the next twenty years (2009–2030).
Showing posts with label Nuclear Disarmament. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nuclear Disarmament. Show all posts
Friday, December 24, 2010
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
It's Time to Rid the World of Nuclear Weapons
By Desmond Tutu
May 23, 2010 "The Guardian" -- This year the nuclear bomb turns 65 – an appropriate age, by international standards, for compulsory retirement. But do our leaders have the courage and wisdom to rid the planet of this ultimate menace? The five-yearly review of the ailing nuclear non-proliferation treaty, currently under way at the United Nations in New York, will test the strength of governments' commitment to a nuclear-weapon-free world.
If they are serious about realising this vision, they will work now to shift the focus from the failed policy of nuclear arms control, which assumes that a select few states can be trusted with these weapons, to nuclear abolition. Just as we have outlawed other categories of particularly inhuman and indiscriminate weapons – from biological and chemical agents to anti-personnel landmines and cluster munitions – we must now turn our attention to outlawing the most iniquitous weapons of all.
Gains in nuclear disarmament to date have come much too slowly. More than 23,000 nuclear arms remain in global stockpiles, breeding enmity and mistrust among nations, and casting a shadow over us all. None of the nuclear-armed countries appears to be preparing for a future without these terrifying devices. Their failure to disarm has spurred nuclear proliferation, and will continue to destabilise the planet unless we radically alter our trajectory now. Forty years after the NPT entered into force, we should seriously question whether we are on track to abolition.
Disarmament is not an option for governments to take up or ignore. It is a moral duty owed by them to their own citizens, and to humanity as a whole. We must not await another Hiroshima or Nagasaki before finally mustering the political will to banish these weapons from global arsenals. Governments should agree at this NPT review conference to toss their nuclear arms into the dustbin of history, along with those other monstrous evils of our time – slavery and apartheid.
Sceptics tell us, and have told us for many years, that we are wasting our time pursuing the dream of a world without nuclear weapons, as it can never be realised. But more than a few people said the same about ending entrenched racial segregation in South Africa and abolishing slavery in the United States. Often they had a perceived interest in maintaining the status quo. Systems and policies that devalue human life, and deprive us all of our right to live in peace with each other, are rarely able to withstand the pressure created by a highly organised public that is determined to see change.
The most obvious and realistic path to a nuclear-weapon-free world is for nations to negotiate a legally binding ban, which would include a timeline for elimination and establish an institutional framework to ensure compliance. Two-thirds of all governments have called for such a treaty, known as a nuclear weapons convention, and UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon has voiced his support for the idea. Only the nuclear weapon states and Nato members are holding us back.
Successful efforts to prohibit other classes of weapons provide evidence that, where there is political momentum and widespread popular support, obstacles which may at first appear insurmountable can very often be torn down. Nuclear abolition is the democratic wish of the world's people, and has been our goal almost since the dawn of the atomic age. Together, we have the power to decide whether the nuclear era ends in a bang or worldwide celebration.
Last April in the Czech capital, Prague, President Barack Obama announced that the United States would seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons, but he warned that nations probably would not eliminate their arsenals in his lifetime. I am three decades older than the US president, yet I am confident that both of us will live to see the day when the last nuclear weapon is dismantled. We just need to think outside the bomb.
May 23, 2010 "The Guardian" -- This year the nuclear bomb turns 65 – an appropriate age, by international standards, for compulsory retirement. But do our leaders have the courage and wisdom to rid the planet of this ultimate menace? The five-yearly review of the ailing nuclear non-proliferation treaty, currently under way at the United Nations in New York, will test the strength of governments' commitment to a nuclear-weapon-free world.
If they are serious about realising this vision, they will work now to shift the focus from the failed policy of nuclear arms control, which assumes that a select few states can be trusted with these weapons, to nuclear abolition. Just as we have outlawed other categories of particularly inhuman and indiscriminate weapons – from biological and chemical agents to anti-personnel landmines and cluster munitions – we must now turn our attention to outlawing the most iniquitous weapons of all.
Gains in nuclear disarmament to date have come much too slowly. More than 23,000 nuclear arms remain in global stockpiles, breeding enmity and mistrust among nations, and casting a shadow over us all. None of the nuclear-armed countries appears to be preparing for a future without these terrifying devices. Their failure to disarm has spurred nuclear proliferation, and will continue to destabilise the planet unless we radically alter our trajectory now. Forty years after the NPT entered into force, we should seriously question whether we are on track to abolition.
Disarmament is not an option for governments to take up or ignore. It is a moral duty owed by them to their own citizens, and to humanity as a whole. We must not await another Hiroshima or Nagasaki before finally mustering the political will to banish these weapons from global arsenals. Governments should agree at this NPT review conference to toss their nuclear arms into the dustbin of history, along with those other monstrous evils of our time – slavery and apartheid.
Sceptics tell us, and have told us for many years, that we are wasting our time pursuing the dream of a world without nuclear weapons, as it can never be realised. But more than a few people said the same about ending entrenched racial segregation in South Africa and abolishing slavery in the United States. Often they had a perceived interest in maintaining the status quo. Systems and policies that devalue human life, and deprive us all of our right to live in peace with each other, are rarely able to withstand the pressure created by a highly organised public that is determined to see change.
The most obvious and realistic path to a nuclear-weapon-free world is for nations to negotiate a legally binding ban, which would include a timeline for elimination and establish an institutional framework to ensure compliance. Two-thirds of all governments have called for such a treaty, known as a nuclear weapons convention, and UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon has voiced his support for the idea. Only the nuclear weapon states and Nato members are holding us back.
Successful efforts to prohibit other classes of weapons provide evidence that, where there is political momentum and widespread popular support, obstacles which may at first appear insurmountable can very often be torn down. Nuclear abolition is the democratic wish of the world's people, and has been our goal almost since the dawn of the atomic age. Together, we have the power to decide whether the nuclear era ends in a bang or worldwide celebration.
Last April in the Czech capital, Prague, President Barack Obama announced that the United States would seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons, but he warned that nations probably would not eliminate their arsenals in his lifetime. I am three decades older than the US president, yet I am confident that both of us will live to see the day when the last nuclear weapon is dismantled. We just need to think outside the bomb.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
President John F. Kennedy at United Nations: "Never Fear to Negotiate"
"We shall never negotiate out of fear but shall never fear to negotiate!"
President John F. Kennedy, September 25, 1961
NOTE:
President Kennedy in this speech at the United Nations early in the course of his administration spoke of the need to seek peace. He also specifically repudiated the concept of aggressive or preventive war (as did President Eisenhower before him) which later became known euphemistically as the so-called "Bush Doctrine." How we desperately need JFK today! It remains one of the great tragedies of the 20th century that he was murdered for daring to oppose the MIMIC and its demand for constant war.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
President John F. Kennedy, September 25, 1961
NOTE:
President Kennedy in this speech at the United Nations early in the course of his administration spoke of the need to seek peace. He also specifically repudiated the concept of aggressive or preventive war (as did President Eisenhower before him) which later became known euphemistically as the so-called "Bush Doctrine." How we desperately need JFK today! It remains one of the great tragedies of the 20th century that he was murdered for daring to oppose the MIMIC and its demand for constant war.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
President John F. Kennedy's "Peace" Speech: American University Commencement Address
In the words of author James W. Douglass, this was President Kennedy's greatest speech. His unprecedented turn toward peace in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis was seen by the National Security State as treasonous. Shortly thereafter his own NSS brutally murdered him.
I wholeheartedly recommend Douglass' book JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why it Matters, 2008, and the 5 volume tome by Douglas Horne, Inside the Assassination Records Review Board: The U.S. Government's Final Attempt to Reconcile the Conflicting Medical Evidence in the Assassination of JFK, 2009 available HERE... who in excruciating detail documents the medical cover-up.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
I wholeheartedly recommend Douglass' book JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why it Matters, 2008, and the 5 volume tome by Douglas Horne, Inside the Assassination Records Review Board: The U.S. Government's Final Attempt to Reconcile the Conflicting Medical Evidence in the Assassination of JFK, 2009 available HERE... who in excruciating detail documents the medical cover-up.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
Sunday, April 11, 2010
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty: Can We Achieve a World Without Wars
Mayors for Peace
Global Research,
April 6, 2010
May 2010 sees once again the 5-yearly review conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty taking place in New York. It is now 40 years ago since this treaty came into force and although currently there are 189 party states to the treaty, India, Pakistan and Israel are non-signatories and North Korea, first ratified, later violated and finally withdrew from the treaty in 2003.
The treaty is frequently talked of in terms of its 3 pillars of: disarmament, non-proliferation and peaceful uses of nuclear technology as if all had equal importance whereas the treaty was designed for non-proliferation. The treaty also gives special recognition to the 5 nuclear weapon states somehow giving them the right to have these weapons.
In 1996, the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion ruling that the use or the threat of use of nuclear weapons would violate various articles of international law, including the Geneva Conventions, the Hague Conventions, the UN Charter, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
In the light of the above, World without Wars and without Violence:
1. Denounces the hypocrisy of the 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council who believe they have some kind of inalienable right to possess nuclear weapons and who since the end of the Cold War have made little or no attempts to fulfill their obligations to disarm under article 6 of the treaty.
2. In particular denounces the USA and her allies who threaten countries they declare as “rogue states” with war and the use of nuclear weapons.
3. Denounces Pakistan, India and North Korea for spending billions of dollars of their countries meager income on developing nuclear technology at the expense of the suffering of their peoples.
4. Denounces Israel for destabilizing the whole of the Middle East region by possessing nuclear weapons, and denounces the US for having supplied them the knowledge to develop them in violation of article 1 of the treaty.
5. Denounces NATO countries for deploying US nuclear weapons on foreign soil in violation of articles 1 and 2 of the treaty.
In addition, World without Wars and without Violence:
1. Declares the NPT to be a failed treaty, having failed to produce the nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation required by the planet’s population.
2. Calls on all States to start immediate negotiations for a Nuclear Weapons Convention, making the failed NPT redundant.
3. Calls on those NATO countries that host US nuclear weapons to have them returned.
4. Pledges to work side by side with all other organizations working towards the elimination of nuclear weapons who share the methodology of nonviolence and non-discrimination.
5. Calls on the people of the planet to join in massive mobilizations between the 1st of May and the 9th of May 2010 to raise awareness of the NPT conference in the world’s media and to pressure their national politicians and diplomats to work in the conference in New York with a real willingness to negotiate in good faith to finally do what public opinion demands and that is: to disarm now. This message was vividly manifested during October 2nd 2009 and January 2nd 2010 when in 100 countries the World March for Peace and Nonviolence took the message of disarmament around the world.
NOTE:
While admittedly imperfect, the agreement signed this past week by the United States and Russia is at least a step in the right direction in that it focuses the two major nuclear states attention on the importance of making significant reductions in their nuclear arsenals. It is hypocritical in the extreme for those NPT signatories who possess nuclear weapons to object to the nuclear weapons development programs of alleged proliferator's when they have not complied with their own disarmament responsibilities under the treaty.
It may be premature to totally abandon the NPT just when the two nation states with the largest nuclear arsenals have indicated a willingness to make significant reductions.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
Global Research,
April 6, 2010
May 2010 sees once again the 5-yearly review conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty taking place in New York. It is now 40 years ago since this treaty came into force and although currently there are 189 party states to the treaty, India, Pakistan and Israel are non-signatories and North Korea, first ratified, later violated and finally withdrew from the treaty in 2003.
The treaty is frequently talked of in terms of its 3 pillars of: disarmament, non-proliferation and peaceful uses of nuclear technology as if all had equal importance whereas the treaty was designed for non-proliferation. The treaty also gives special recognition to the 5 nuclear weapon states somehow giving them the right to have these weapons.
In 1996, the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion ruling that the use or the threat of use of nuclear weapons would violate various articles of international law, including the Geneva Conventions, the Hague Conventions, the UN Charter, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
In the light of the above, World without Wars and without Violence:
1. Denounces the hypocrisy of the 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council who believe they have some kind of inalienable right to possess nuclear weapons and who since the end of the Cold War have made little or no attempts to fulfill their obligations to disarm under article 6 of the treaty.
2. In particular denounces the USA and her allies who threaten countries they declare as “rogue states” with war and the use of nuclear weapons.
3. Denounces Pakistan, India and North Korea for spending billions of dollars of their countries meager income on developing nuclear technology at the expense of the suffering of their peoples.
4. Denounces Israel for destabilizing the whole of the Middle East region by possessing nuclear weapons, and denounces the US for having supplied them the knowledge to develop them in violation of article 1 of the treaty.
5. Denounces NATO countries for deploying US nuclear weapons on foreign soil in violation of articles 1 and 2 of the treaty.
In addition, World without Wars and without Violence:
1. Declares the NPT to be a failed treaty, having failed to produce the nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation required by the planet’s population.
2. Calls on all States to start immediate negotiations for a Nuclear Weapons Convention, making the failed NPT redundant.
3. Calls on those NATO countries that host US nuclear weapons to have them returned.
4. Pledges to work side by side with all other organizations working towards the elimination of nuclear weapons who share the methodology of nonviolence and non-discrimination.
5. Calls on the people of the planet to join in massive mobilizations between the 1st of May and the 9th of May 2010 to raise awareness of the NPT conference in the world’s media and to pressure their national politicians and diplomats to work in the conference in New York with a real willingness to negotiate in good faith to finally do what public opinion demands and that is: to disarm now. This message was vividly manifested during October 2nd 2009 and January 2nd 2010 when in 100 countries the World March for Peace and Nonviolence took the message of disarmament around the world.
NOTE:
While admittedly imperfect, the agreement signed this past week by the United States and Russia is at least a step in the right direction in that it focuses the two major nuclear states attention on the importance of making significant reductions in their nuclear arsenals. It is hypocritical in the extreme for those NPT signatories who possess nuclear weapons to object to the nuclear weapons development programs of alleged proliferator's when they have not complied with their own disarmament responsibilities under the treaty.
It may be premature to totally abandon the NPT just when the two nation states with the largest nuclear arsenals have indicated a willingness to make significant reductions.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
Saturday, May 24, 2008
The Intrinsic Evil of Nuclear Weapons
By: Stephen Hand, original HERE...
I am often shocked at how many will defend the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan on the grounds that it saved the lives of so many American soldiers towards the end of the Second World War. The argument, which I heard again not long ago, is as neat and simple as it is horrific.
But surely using the same logic we could prevent all of our losses in every war by simply preemptively nuking any nation that is deemed an enemy presenting a clear and immanent danger.
The elderly, the sick, women, children...kill them all...to win and cut losses.
But does human life mean so little that the end here justifies the means? What then becomes of Just War teaching? It is replaced by the easy logic of nihilism. Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen wrote,
"When, I wonder, did we in America ever get into this idea that freedom means having no boundaries and no limits? I think it began on the 6th of August 1945 at 8:15 am when we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. Somehow or other, from that day on in our American life, we say we want no limits and no boundaries."
Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, the late head of the Holy Office(1) under Pius XII and John XXIII, likewise in 1947:
"The extent of the damage done to national assets by aerial warfare, and the dreadful weapons that have been introduced of late, is so great that it leaves both vanquished and victor the poorer for years after. Innocent people, too, are liable to great injury from the weapons in current use: hatred is on that account excited above measure; extremely harsh reprisals are provoked; wars result which flaunt every provision of the jus gentium, and are marked by a savagery greater than ever. And what of the period immediately after a war? Does not it also provide an obvious pointer to the enormous and irreparable damage which war, the breeding place of hate and hurt, must do to the morals and manners of nations? These considerations, and many others which might be adduced besides, show that modern wars can never fulfil those conditions which (as we stated earlier on in this essay) govern - theoretically - a just and lawful war. Moreover, no conceivable cause could ever be sufficient justification for the evils, the slaughter, the destruction, the moral and religious upheavals which war today entails".
God is love. Creation belongs to Him, not us. There are always too many "reasons" and pretexts to think the unthinkable, commit genocide, kill the innocent... Evidently there is a something of a Stalin and Hitler in all of us that must be exorcised.
If we have any humanity left inside of us, we must work now with all of our hearts and wills to eliminate nuclear weapons from the earth, just as we want an end to all death camps and other genocidal ends--- otherwise those nations which refuse become as evil as the weapons themselves.
The world is not safer since 1945 but immeasurably more dangerous.
___
(1) Today called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
I am often shocked at how many will defend the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan on the grounds that it saved the lives of so many American soldiers towards the end of the Second World War. The argument, which I heard again not long ago, is as neat and simple as it is horrific.
But surely using the same logic we could prevent all of our losses in every war by simply preemptively nuking any nation that is deemed an enemy presenting a clear and immanent danger.
The elderly, the sick, women, children...kill them all...to win and cut losses.
But does human life mean so little that the end here justifies the means? What then becomes of Just War teaching? It is replaced by the easy logic of nihilism. Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen wrote,
"When, I wonder, did we in America ever get into this idea that freedom means having no boundaries and no limits? I think it began on the 6th of August 1945 at 8:15 am when we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. Somehow or other, from that day on in our American life, we say we want no limits and no boundaries."
Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, the late head of the Holy Office(1) under Pius XII and John XXIII, likewise in 1947:
"The extent of the damage done to national assets by aerial warfare, and the dreadful weapons that have been introduced of late, is so great that it leaves both vanquished and victor the poorer for years after. Innocent people, too, are liable to great injury from the weapons in current use: hatred is on that account excited above measure; extremely harsh reprisals are provoked; wars result which flaunt every provision of the jus gentium, and are marked by a savagery greater than ever. And what of the period immediately after a war? Does not it also provide an obvious pointer to the enormous and irreparable damage which war, the breeding place of hate and hurt, must do to the morals and manners of nations? These considerations, and many others which might be adduced besides, show that modern wars can never fulfil those conditions which (as we stated earlier on in this essay) govern - theoretically - a just and lawful war. Moreover, no conceivable cause could ever be sufficient justification for the evils, the slaughter, the destruction, the moral and religious upheavals which war today entails".
God is love. Creation belongs to Him, not us. There are always too many "reasons" and pretexts to think the unthinkable, commit genocide, kill the innocent... Evidently there is a something of a Stalin and Hitler in all of us that must be exorcised.
If we have any humanity left inside of us, we must work now with all of our hearts and wills to eliminate nuclear weapons from the earth, just as we want an end to all death camps and other genocidal ends--- otherwise those nations which refuse become as evil as the weapons themselves.
The world is not safer since 1945 but immeasurably more dangerous.
___
(1) Today called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
FOCUS: A world free of nuclear weapons -- a dream?
Kyodo World Service
STAFF
Feb 18, 2008
Can we make a world free of nuclear weapons?
If you are involved in shaping security policy, you would say, ''Unfortunately no. The world is not such an easy place.''
And you can explain why the United States and other powers need nuclear weapons to deter rogue nations, such as Iran and North Korea, and hostile nations like China and Russia, and to attack al-Qaida's underground headquarters.
''They are all wrong,'' 87-year-old George Shultz, architect of the Ronald Reagan administration's foreign policy, said in a recent interview. ''These weapons come to be unusable by civilized people and with the spread of nuclear weapons and the threat of them falling into the hands of terrorists, I think the concept of deterrence deteriorates.''
One year ago, Shultz, along with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of Defense William Perry, and former Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee Sum Nunn, wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal titled, ''A World Free of Nuclear Weapons,'' and proposed to the U.S. president and leaders of other nuclear weapon countries ''setting the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons and working energetically on the actions required to achieve that goal.''
What made Shultz, Reagan's secretary of state and the mastermind of the U.S. Cold War policies, and other Cold War warriors advocate a nuclear free world? Have they become peaceniks in their older years?
''It's something that I have felt was desirable for a long time,'' Shultz said at his home in the penthouse of a San Francisco high-rise apartment building. When Ronald Reagan met with Mikhail Gorbachev, then general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, in Reykjavik, Iceland, in 1987, making a world free of nuclear weapons was put on the table and ''those two leaders fundamentally agreed that was a good idea.''
But of course at that time there was a very negative reaction from militaries in both countries. They argued that nuclear weapons were the key to mutual deterrence. ''The subject has kind of languished. It's fallen off the table,'' Shultz said.
Shultz said he thinks nuclear weapons are ''immoral.'' Even in the Cold War when mutual deterrence was believed to have prevented the United States and the Soviet Union from going to war, Shultz said nuclear weapons made him feel uneasy.
He posed the question, ''What would I say to the president if I were in his office and he asked me my advice in using a nuclear weapon, knowing that hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people are killed and who thinks they are in position to make that kind of decision?''
Shultz and his friends revitalized the idea of abolishing nuclear weapons and proposed concrete steps on the 20th anniversary of the Reykjavik summit. The spread of nuclear weapon technology to Iran and North Korea forced them to recognize the urgency of the proposal.
With increasing worries about global warming, the idea of expanding nuclear power has been embraced by many countries, but ''if you can enrich the uranium for a power plant, you can enrich it for a weapon. When you get through with the spent fuel, it's reprocessed and becomes plutonium and that's a basis of a bomb,'' Shultz said.
Some U.S. security experts argued that the proposal risks compromising the value that nuclear weapons continue to contribute to U.S. security and international stability. Shultz simply said, ''There is plenty of power,'' meaning nonnuclear weapons, and if you wanted to use it, you could do severe deterrent-type damage. He asked people believing in nuclear weapons, ''Would you really lay a nuclear weapon into North Korea and wipe out Pyongyang?''
So what can we do to deter North Korea and Iran, which are said to aspire to having nuclear weapons? Shultz said that the best option is to ''change the scene so that having a nuclear weapon is a problem for countries, not a boon to them...the nuclear club should be abolished and anybody who has a nuclear weapon is the enemy of mankind, so let's get rid of them.''
He said if the international community starts moving toward abolishing nuclear weapons, then it can strongly tell countries to give them up.
President George W. Bush's administration seems to have a different idea. In 2002 it released ''Nuclear Posture Review,'' which reiterated the nuclear deterrence and called for new types of small and penetrating nuclear weapons.
''That's the way you get proliferation. I disagree,'' Shultz said.
Another disagreement concerns the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The Bush administration and the Republican Party oppose ratification of the treaty on the grounds that it cannot verify other countries' secret nuclear testing. But Shultz said, ''The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty is a good treaty. We should ratify it.''
After one year of discussion, Shultz and his group contributed another article on the same subject to the Wall Street Journal last month and disclosed that Madeline Albright, James Baker, Zbigniew Brzezinski, William Christopher, Robert McNamara and Collin Powell indicated general support.
Gorbachev wrote his own essay in the Journal and said, ''It is becoming clearer that nuclear weapons are no longer a means of achieving security; in fact, with every passing year they make our security more precarious.''
Joseph Cirincione, director of nuclear policy of the Center for American Progress, said, ''People with such a long history of support for nuclear weapons are now declaring not only that we should reduce nuclear stockpiles but actually eliminate them. This is stunning, a dramatic change of the elite's opinion in the U.S.''
But we cannot know when ''a world free of nuclear weapons'' might become a reality. Shultz likened the question to his experience in the construction industry. Overlooking San Francisco Bay, Shultz said, when somebody tells you to build a bridge across the bay here, that's a hard problem. But ''if you work at it continuously, it turns out you can produce (the bridge),'' he said. ''It's attitude.''
Shultz also had thoughts about recent discussions in Japan that the country should possibly possess nuclear weapons.
A world free of nuclear weapons ''would mean a world with less military force. So that would be an environment in which the Japanese would feel very comfortable,'' he said, adding, ''Japan has to think about its demography. Japan's labor force is shrinking, so the more you spend on the military, the less you can spend on your standard of living.''
NOTE:
There is no question from a moral perspective (i.e traditional morality per the Aristotelian/Thomistic synthesis) that nuclear weapons are inherently evil. They are incapable of differentiating between innocent non-combatants and armed enemy forces. This of course assumes that it is still possible in light of the incredibly indiscriminate and destructive nature of modern conventional warfare to participate in a "just war" in which a nation (as a last resort) is forced to defend itself against unjust offensive aggression. Clearly some high-tech conventional weaponry is also immoral for similar reasons. I reserve that discusion for another day.
Given that it is always and everywhere wrong to intentionally kill innocent human beings, nuclear weapons by their very nature (both strategic and tactical) must be ruled out on categorical grounds; i.e. they are morally illicit even as part of a just war in which the innocent party has only mounted a defense against aggression. That being the case, all the original nuclear weapons states (NWS's) should proceed with their NPT promised agreement to progressively disarm (which of course includes the United States). This undoubtedly would require great courage and political leadership but the moral case is not at all difficult to make.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
STAFF
Feb 18, 2008
Can we make a world free of nuclear weapons?
If you are involved in shaping security policy, you would say, ''Unfortunately no. The world is not such an easy place.''
And you can explain why the United States and other powers need nuclear weapons to deter rogue nations, such as Iran and North Korea, and hostile nations like China and Russia, and to attack al-Qaida's underground headquarters.
''They are all wrong,'' 87-year-old George Shultz, architect of the Ronald Reagan administration's foreign policy, said in a recent interview. ''These weapons come to be unusable by civilized people and with the spread of nuclear weapons and the threat of them falling into the hands of terrorists, I think the concept of deterrence deteriorates.''
One year ago, Shultz, along with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of Defense William Perry, and former Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee Sum Nunn, wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal titled, ''A World Free of Nuclear Weapons,'' and proposed to the U.S. president and leaders of other nuclear weapon countries ''setting the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons and working energetically on the actions required to achieve that goal.''
What made Shultz, Reagan's secretary of state and the mastermind of the U.S. Cold War policies, and other Cold War warriors advocate a nuclear free world? Have they become peaceniks in their older years?
''It's something that I have felt was desirable for a long time,'' Shultz said at his home in the penthouse of a San Francisco high-rise apartment building. When Ronald Reagan met with Mikhail Gorbachev, then general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, in Reykjavik, Iceland, in 1987, making a world free of nuclear weapons was put on the table and ''those two leaders fundamentally agreed that was a good idea.''
But of course at that time there was a very negative reaction from militaries in both countries. They argued that nuclear weapons were the key to mutual deterrence. ''The subject has kind of languished. It's fallen off the table,'' Shultz said.
Shultz said he thinks nuclear weapons are ''immoral.'' Even in the Cold War when mutual deterrence was believed to have prevented the United States and the Soviet Union from going to war, Shultz said nuclear weapons made him feel uneasy.
He posed the question, ''What would I say to the president if I were in his office and he asked me my advice in using a nuclear weapon, knowing that hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people are killed and who thinks they are in position to make that kind of decision?''
Shultz and his friends revitalized the idea of abolishing nuclear weapons and proposed concrete steps on the 20th anniversary of the Reykjavik summit. The spread of nuclear weapon technology to Iran and North Korea forced them to recognize the urgency of the proposal.
With increasing worries about global warming, the idea of expanding nuclear power has been embraced by many countries, but ''if you can enrich the uranium for a power plant, you can enrich it for a weapon. When you get through with the spent fuel, it's reprocessed and becomes plutonium and that's a basis of a bomb,'' Shultz said.
Some U.S. security experts argued that the proposal risks compromising the value that nuclear weapons continue to contribute to U.S. security and international stability. Shultz simply said, ''There is plenty of power,'' meaning nonnuclear weapons, and if you wanted to use it, you could do severe deterrent-type damage. He asked people believing in nuclear weapons, ''Would you really lay a nuclear weapon into North Korea and wipe out Pyongyang?''
So what can we do to deter North Korea and Iran, which are said to aspire to having nuclear weapons? Shultz said that the best option is to ''change the scene so that having a nuclear weapon is a problem for countries, not a boon to them...the nuclear club should be abolished and anybody who has a nuclear weapon is the enemy of mankind, so let's get rid of them.''
He said if the international community starts moving toward abolishing nuclear weapons, then it can strongly tell countries to give them up.
President George W. Bush's administration seems to have a different idea. In 2002 it released ''Nuclear Posture Review,'' which reiterated the nuclear deterrence and called for new types of small and penetrating nuclear weapons.
''That's the way you get proliferation. I disagree,'' Shultz said.
Another disagreement concerns the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The Bush administration and the Republican Party oppose ratification of the treaty on the grounds that it cannot verify other countries' secret nuclear testing. But Shultz said, ''The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty is a good treaty. We should ratify it.''
After one year of discussion, Shultz and his group contributed another article on the same subject to the Wall Street Journal last month and disclosed that Madeline Albright, James Baker, Zbigniew Brzezinski, William Christopher, Robert McNamara and Collin Powell indicated general support.
Gorbachev wrote his own essay in the Journal and said, ''It is becoming clearer that nuclear weapons are no longer a means of achieving security; in fact, with every passing year they make our security more precarious.''
Joseph Cirincione, director of nuclear policy of the Center for American Progress, said, ''People with such a long history of support for nuclear weapons are now declaring not only that we should reduce nuclear stockpiles but actually eliminate them. This is stunning, a dramatic change of the elite's opinion in the U.S.''
But we cannot know when ''a world free of nuclear weapons'' might become a reality. Shultz likened the question to his experience in the construction industry. Overlooking San Francisco Bay, Shultz said, when somebody tells you to build a bridge across the bay here, that's a hard problem. But ''if you work at it continuously, it turns out you can produce (the bridge),'' he said. ''It's attitude.''
Shultz also had thoughts about recent discussions in Japan that the country should possibly possess nuclear weapons.
A world free of nuclear weapons ''would mean a world with less military force. So that would be an environment in which the Japanese would feel very comfortable,'' he said, adding, ''Japan has to think about its demography. Japan's labor force is shrinking, so the more you spend on the military, the less you can spend on your standard of living.''
NOTE:
There is no question from a moral perspective (i.e traditional morality per the Aristotelian/Thomistic synthesis) that nuclear weapons are inherently evil. They are incapable of differentiating between innocent non-combatants and armed enemy forces. This of course assumes that it is still possible in light of the incredibly indiscriminate and destructive nature of modern conventional warfare to participate in a "just war" in which a nation (as a last resort) is forced to defend itself against unjust offensive aggression. Clearly some high-tech conventional weaponry is also immoral for similar reasons. I reserve that discusion for another day.
Given that it is always and everywhere wrong to intentionally kill innocent human beings, nuclear weapons by their very nature (both strategic and tactical) must be ruled out on categorical grounds; i.e. they are morally illicit even as part of a just war in which the innocent party has only mounted a defense against aggression. That being the case, all the original nuclear weapons states (NWS's) should proceed with their NPT promised agreement to progressively disarm (which of course includes the United States). This undoubtedly would require great courage and political leadership but the moral case is not at all difficult to make.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)