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CounterPunch.org
Imagination and Nuclear Weapons
Posted
By David Krieger On May 9, 2019
Einstein believed
that knowledge is limited, but imagination is infinite.
Imagine the
soul-crushing reality of a nuclear war, with billions of humans dead; in
essence, a global Hiroshima, with soot from the destruction of cities blocking
warming sunlight. There would be darkness everywhere, temperatures falling into
a new ice age, with crop failures and mass starvation.
With nuclear
weapons poised on hair-trigger alert and justified by the ever-shaky hypothesis
that nuclear deterrence will be effective indefinitely, this should not be
difficult to imagine.
In this sense, our
imaginations can be great engines for change.
In our current
world, bristling with nuclear weapons and continuous nuclear threat, we stand
at the brink of the nuclear precipice. The best case scenario from the
precipice, short of beginning a process of abolishing nuclear arms, is that we
have the great good fortune to avoid crossing the line into nuclear war and
blindly continue to pour obscene amounts of money into modernizing nuclear
arsenals, while failing to meet the basic human needs of a large portion of the
world’s population.
The only way out
of this dilemma is for the leaders of the world to come to their senses and
agree that nuclear weapons must be abolished in order to assure that these
weapons will never again be used. Given the state of the world we live in, this
is more difficult to imagine.
What steps would
need to be taken to realize the goal of nuclear abolition?
First, we would
need a treaty to ban nuclear weapons. Such a treaty was agreed to in 2017 by a
majority of countries in the United Nations, the Treaty on the Prohibition of
Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). The treaty is now in the process of being ratified and
will enter into force when ratified by 50 countries. Unfortunately and
predictably, none of the nine nuclear-armed countries have supported the TPNW,
and many have been overtly hostile to the treaty.
Second,
negotiations would need to commence on nuclear disarmament by the nations of
the world, including all nine of the nuclear-armed countries. The nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) already obliges its parties to undertake such
negotiations in good faith. Specifically, it calls for negotiations to end the
nuclear arms race at an early date and to achieve complete nuclear disarmament.
The nuclear-armed states parties to the NPT have failed to fulfill these
obligations since 1970 when the treaty entered into force.
Third, the
negotiations would need to be expanded to encompass issues of general and
complete disarmament, in order not to allow nuclear abolition to lead to
conventional arms races and wars. Again, the state parties to the NPT are
obligated to undertake such negotiations in good faith, but have not even begun
to fulfill this obligation.
If we can use our
imaginations to foresee the horrors of nuclear war, we should be able to take
the necessary steps to assure that such a tragedy doesn’t occur. Those steps
have been set forth in the two treaties mentioned above.
What remains
missing is the political will to implement the treaties. Without this political
will, our imaginations notwithstanding, we will stay stuck in this place of
potential nuclear catastrophe, where nuclear war can ensue due to malice,
madness, miscalculation, mistake or manipulation (hacking). Imagination is
necessary, but not sufficient, to overcome political will. Even treaties are
not sufficient unless there is the political will to assure their provisions
are implemented. To do this, imagination must be linked to action to demand a
change in political will.
The time is short,
the task is great, and terrible consequences are foreseeable if we continue to
be stuck at the nuclear precipice.
To do nothing is simply unimaginable.
Article printed from CounterPunch.org: https://www.counterpunch.org
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"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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