BALTIMORE
HOLDS 34th ANNUAL HIROSHIMA & NAGASAKI COMMEMORATIONS.
IT IS
THE 73rd ANNIVERSARY OF THE ATOMIC BOMBINGS OF JAPAN.
For the 34th year, the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Commemoration Committee
will remember the atomic bombings of Japan on August 6 & 9, 1945, which
killed some 220,000 people. Other organizations involved in the
commemorations are the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, Chesapeake Physicians for
Social Responsibility, Prevent Nuclear War Maryland and the Working Group for
the Arts of Homewood Friends Meeting.
On August 6, the Baltimore City Council pass unanimously a
resolution endorsing the Back From the Brink Campaign. This is
a national grassroots campaign seeking to fundamentally change U.S. nuclear
weapons policy by laying out five common-sense steps that the United States
should take to reform its current policy. The City Council endorsed nuclear disarmament.
On Thursday, August 9 at 6 PM, the bombing
of Nagasaki will be commemorated outside Homewood Friends Meetinghouse, 3107 N.
Charles Street. Participants will demonstrate in favor of the Treaty on the
Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) which was adopted by 122 countries at the
United Nations in 2017. This Treaty makes it illegal under international law to
develop, test, produce, manufacture, otherwise acquire, possess or stockpile
nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.
At 7:15 PM,
Paul Magno, a long-time activist who now lives at Baltimore’s Jonah House will
provide insight into the legal situation facing the Kings Bay Plowshares, seven
Catholic activists, including Elizabeth McAlister, who were arrested at the
Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base in St. Mary’s, Georgia on April 4, 2018.
They enacted Isaiah’s command to “beat swords into plowshares.” In
1984, Paul was a member of the Pershing Plowshares which did a disarmament
action at a Martin Marietta plant in Orlando, Florida. Also to be discussed
will be the Back From the Brink Campaign. Finally, Dr. Dick Humphrey will be
remembered. RSVP to Max at 410-323-1607 or mobuszewski2001 at Comcast dot net.
Remembering the Atomic
Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Perilous Times
Japanese school children visit the Atomic
Bomb Dome in Hiroshima, Japan, on May 8, 2017.MARKA / UIG VIA GETTY IMAGES
August
6, 2018
The consensus among US
historians is that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — in addition
to being moral abominations against civilians — were also opposed by senior
military leaders, including General (later President) Eisenhower, who
did not see them as politically necessary.
While making no excuses for
Japanese militarism and imperial aggressions, we should remember that in the
months prior to the US’s atomic bombings, the Japanese government attempted to
surrender on terms the US ultimately accepted after the atomic
bombings: unconditional surrender with the exception of the emperor remaining
on his throne. According to my own research for my book, most senior US
military leaders thought that the bombings were unnecessary and wrong.
Craven domestic political
calculations, racism and bureaucratic momentum contributed to former President
Harry Truman’s decision to usher in the nuclear age with the annihilation of
the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but as General Leslie Groves, who led the
Manhattan Project, remarked in 1943, the atomic bomb project was no longer
about Germany or Japan. It was about Russia. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were
vaporized, incinerated, poisoned and traumatized to ensure that the US would
not have to share influence with the Soviet Union in Northern China, Manchuria
and Korea. Further, Truman thought that the atomic bomb gave him “a hammer” with
which he could dominate the Kremlin with the threat of nuclear annihilation.
Despite the Hibakusha‘s
fundamental truth that human beings and nuclear weapons cannot coexist, the
illusion that nuclear weapons have worked and can serve as the ultimate
enforcer of empire, compounded by lies and mistaken beliefs about nuclear
deterrence, have repeatedly brought us to the brink of nuclear omnicide and
have driven nuclear weapons proliferation. In Helsinki, Finland, Russian
President Vladimir Putin again illuminated the madness and injustice of nuclear
apartheid. “As major nuclear powers,” he said, “we bear special responsibility for
maintaining international security.” He and Trump believe that their nuclear
arsenals give them the right to intimidate and dictate how the world’s nations
and peoples live and possibly die.
A Perilous Time
We live in a perilous time of
rising great power tensions, the ascendency of right-wing autocracies, uncertainties,
and renewed nuclear and high-tech arms races. This is compounded by the reality
that there are no longer any givens in US foreign and military policies or
to the future of liberal democracy in the US.
Following Trump’s secretive summit
with Putin and the political and media circus that followed, Trump was
confronted by his most senior staff who insisted that he deny or reverse a
number of statements and commitments he had made in Helsinki — from possible
Russian interrogation of the former US ambassador to Moscow to his support for
a referendum in Eastern Ukraine. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National
Security Adviser John Bolton are at odds on the Korea negotiations. Moreover,
the Pentagon is reeling from Trump’s unexpected and whimsical orders, musings
about reductions of troops in Germany, his order to organize a costly
Kremlin-like military parade on Armistice Day and his announcement of the
creation of a new space command.
Independent of Trump, though, the
gears of empire grind on. The Pentagon budget has been increased by an amount
equal to Russia’s total military budget. Despite Trump’s embrace of Putin, the
Pentagon’s new National Strategy prioritizes preparations for great power war
against China or Russia — the two countries military leaders believe threaten“American power, influence and interests.”
This explains the $1.2 trillion
spending plan for the new generation of US offensive nuclear weapons and their
delivery systems and Trump’s new “Space Command” to dominate Earth from space.
As we saw in Trump’s theatrical summitry with Kim Jong Un and with his trade
war tariffs and denunciation of the European Union, in Trump’s “America First” empire,
the only good allies are those who know their proper place as vassals.
More than his predecessors, Trump
embraces dictators and authoritarian rulers from Putin and the Saudi Kingdom,
to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in Hungary and President Rodrigo Duterte in the
Philippines. While he describes his 391-word vague agreement with Kim Jong Un
as a “good deal,” he calls the fully implemented P5+1 deal with Iran a “bad
deal” and has violated it.
We’re now told that there is no
reason to rush to complete North Korean denuclearization, while the unspoken
commitment to regime change in Iran to restore US regional and global US
hegemony is an urgent priority.
Two Minutes to Midnight
All of this is deeply related to
continuing US preparations for omnicidal nuclear war. This past winter, the
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists sent the world a warning by moving the hands
of their Doomsday Clock to two minutes to midnight. This is the closest to
apocalyptic nuclear war since 1953 and worse than during the 1962 Cuban Missile
Crisis.
Why the warning? They cited the
Trump administration’s Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), decrying increased US
reliance on nuclear weapons; its staggering investments in new nuclear weapons
that are driving “modernization” of the world’s other nuclear arsenals; the
return to Cold War rhetoric; and the total absence of US-Russian arms control
negotiations. They warned about the dangerous lack of
coherent US foreign and military policies that undermine global security, North
Korea’s nuclear weapons program, South Asian rivalries, Trump’s threat to the
nuclear deal with Iran, and climate change.
The NPR follows on the Pentagon’s
new National Strategy that prioritizes preparations for a great power war and
includes a more aggressive US first-strike nuclear war-fighting doctrine. It
builds on former President Obama’s commitments to deploy new and more usable
B-61 nuclear weapons to Europe. The Navy’s sea-launched ballistic missiles will
be armed with still more devastating first-strike W-76-1 warheads. Further, the
mandate to replace the entire nuclear triad remains in place, including
replacing older missiles with new sea-launched cruise missiles and Trident
submarine-launched ballistic missiles armed with Hiroshima-like atomic bombs.
To compensate for China’s increasing area denial capabilities in the western Pacific,
there is to be standoff, air-launched, nuclear-armed cruise missiles that can
be fired against the Chinese military and civilians from thousands of miles
away.
Perhaps the most dangerous element
of Trump’s $1.2 trillion NPR is its blurring of the distinction between
conventional and nuclear war and the increased role for nuclear weapons in US
war-fighting strategies. The initial leaked version of the NPR mandated
first-strike attacks in response to devastating cyberattacks, as well as to
chemical or biological weapons attacks.
Even before Trump’s NPR, renowned
whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg pointed to continuities in US nuclear doctrine:
Thousands of nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert. The US retains its
first-strike policy. So-called “extended deterrence” in Europe and East Asia
relies on first use. US doctrine calls for “launch on warning.” US policies
have “always precluded an effective nonproliferation campaign,” according to
Ellsberg’s The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear
War Planner. Further still, the president is
not the only person who can launch the country’s nuclear
weapons.
The US is not the only culprit.
All of the other nuclear-armed states are upgrading their arsenals. There is
increasing debate in right-wing German circles about the creation of a German
or European bomb. Iran will unleash its cyclotrons if the P5+1 deal collapses.
Saudi Arabia is putting its nuclear infrastructure in place. Lastly, the
Turkish Labor Party reports that President Erdoğan wants a nuclear weapon.
Singapore: After Fire and Fury
We should appreciate South Korean
President Moon Jae-in’s inspired Olympic diplomacy and that the Singapore
summit prevented – at least for the time being – a catastrophic war by walking
Trump back from his incendiary fire and fury nuclear threats. The summit also
made it possible for Seoul and Pyongyang to proceed in “determining the destiny
of the Korean nation on their own accord.”
As we think about North Korea’s
nuclear arsenal and the threat it poses to Japan, South Korea and other
countries, we need to recognize that it reflects fear. Even as we criticize
Pyongyang’s hideous human rights record, we need to acknowledge that
Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons grew from the trauma of Japanese conquest and
colonialism, the devastating Korean War, US and South Korean regime change
commitments, repeated US preparations and threats of first-strike nuclear
attacks, and the failures of US diplomacy. Add to this the Clinton and Bush I’s
failures to implement the 1994 Agreed Framework, Bush II’s vetoing Kim
Dae-jung’s Sunshine policy and rejection of the comprehensive agreement
negotiated by former US Secretary of Defense William Perry, and the Obama
administration’s “benign neglect.” As Perry and the renowned historian Bruce
Cumings explain, the purposes of North Korea’s nuclear
program are to preserve the Kim dynasty and the country’s independence.
Today, current diplomacy is
fraught. Bolton insists complete North Korean denuclearization needs to take
place within a year while Pompeo says meaningful progress must be made within
two years, and Trump says he is in no hurry. Kim Jong Un has denounced Pompeo’s
“gangster” demands for serious denuclearization steps before the US relaxes
sanctions and is now demanding a US commitment to replacing the Armistice with
a peace treaty before he makes serious concessions. Furthermore, contrary to US
expectations of immediate gratification, Siegfried S. Hecker, former head
of Los Alamos and the US physicist with the greatest exposure to the Democratic
People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) nuclear infrastructure, has argued that given
the size of the country’s infrastructure, its complete destruction could take 15 years.
While some doubt the seriousness
of Kim Jong Un’s denuclearization commitments, Joel Wit, who has played a
leading role in US negotiations with the DPRK since 1993, reports that, “Everyone
underestimates the momentum behind what North Korea is doing. It’s not a charm
offensive or a tactical trick.” In 2013, when Obama didn’t have a potential
negotiating partner in South Korea, DPRK diplomats informed the US that they
would give up nuclear weapons in exchange for an end to the United States’s
hostile approach. They said their buildup would be of “limited duration” until
better relations with US were possible. They
envisioned three stages in response to the US removing the
nuclear threat and ending sanctions: a freeze on nuclear weapons development,
disabling key facilities and nuclear weapons, and mutual diplomatic
recognition.
The US Movement
I wish that I could say we have a
massive US movement committed to our government fulfilling Article VI of its
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty commitment, and to signing and ratifying the Nuclear
Test Ban Treaty. But in response to Trump’s “fire and fury” threats, his
nuclear weapons upgrade, and the growing dangers of great wars, there is, in
fact, greater attention to, and more actions devoted to, reversing the nuclear
dangers.
For example, 80 members of
Congress have co-sponsored legislation to remove the president’s ability to
launch a first-strike nuclear war on his own authority, and Congressman Ro
Khanna has introduced “No Preemptive War Against Iran” legislation. One of the
country’s most popular television programs ran a chilling episode about the danger
of nuclear war resulting from miscalculation.
Fears about Trump and the bomb are
such that a coalition of antiwar groups held a no-first-strike conference at
Harvard University with the surreal spectacle of me, a Vietnam-era draft
resister, chairing a panel featuring the former high priest of US nuclearism,
Perry; the former missileer Bruce Blair; and Zia Mian of Princeton University.
In Massachusetts, the coalition
has been briefing congressional primary candidates, and a state legislator
running for Congress introduced a no-first-use bill. We also have a campaign of
both legal and civil disobedience actions challenging the nuclear weapons
upgrade at the Hanscom Air Force Base near Boston.
In the coming months the coalition
will be working to ensure that the nuclear agreement with Iran survives Trump and
Bolton, as well as doing our best to prevent a regime-change war. While working
to oust Trump and his corrupt coterie, nuclear disarmament advocates will
support diplomacy to extend the New
START Treaty and the survival of the Intermediate-Range
Nuclear Forces Treaty; work for deeper cuts in the great powers’ arsenals,
and find ways to encourage our partners in the nuclear umbrella states to break
ranks with their masters by signing and ratifying the No Test Ban Treaty.
Finally, with democratic culture
and institutions in peril, with people of color and immigrants most vulnerable,
and with Trump’s economic assaults on the 99 percent, we know that we must
shatter our self-isolating movement silos.
Moreover, the reality is that root
causes of potential nuclear annihilation and of the assaults on the
environment, including racist cultures of domination and injustice, are deeply
interrelated. Intersectional movement building is thus a priority for the
coalition, including opposing funding for new nuclear weapons as well as
opposing Trump’s racist, anti-immigrant ethnic cleansing.
It means insisting that our
elected leaders oppose Trumpian austerity and demand that money be redirected
to pay for food stamps, for education and for infrastructure investments, and
not for empire and its ultimate enforcers – nuclear weapons.
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Dr.
Joseph Gerson is president of the Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Common
Security, vice president of the International Peace Bureau, and the author
of Empire and the Bomb: How the U.S. Uses Nuclear Weapons to Dominate
the World.
Donations
can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at] comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives."
Eugene Victor Debs
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