Friends,
Join Prevent Nuclear War/Maryland in
celebration of the Ban Treaty Entering into Force on January 22/Johns Hopkins
University To Be Challenged On Its Nuclear Weapons Research.
To celebrate, there will be a car caravan gathering at the 29th
Street side of Wyman Park before leaving at noon, and a vigil from noon to 2 PM
outside Johns Hopkins University, 34th and N. Charles Streets, Baltimore with the main banner announcing nuclear weapons are illegal.
After the car caravan completes its route through north Baltimore, those
participants will join the vigil to urge Johns Hopkins University to renounce
nuclear weapons contracts. Eventually, there will be a march over to the
building where President Ron Daniels has an office, and the UN Treaty to
Prohibit Nuclear Weapons will be taped on the building door.
We are creating messages
to post on the vehicles in the car caravan. If you have a suggested
message, let me know. Finally, note that Joe Gerson will do a Zoom
conference on the Treaty to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons on January 27, hosted by
Homewood Friends Meeting. Kagiso, Max
A New Day for Human Survival: On the Promise of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons
"Human beings and nuclear weapons cannot coexist."
commondreams.org/views/2021/01/21/new-day-human-survivial-promise-treaty-prohibition-nuclear-weapons
January 21, 2021
Visitors to Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum view a large scale panoramic photograph of the aftermath of the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima, on August 5, 2020 in Hiroshima, Japan. Between 90,000 to 146,000 people were killed and the entire city destroyed in the first use of a nuclear weapon in armed conflict. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images)
On Friday,
January 22, people in cities and towns across in the United States and around
the world, will celebrate the entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition
of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).
Those
gathering, online and elsewhere, stand in sharp contrast with the electric
sense of fear felt by policy makers and others that President Trump might push
the nuclear button in the immediate aftermath of his failed coup. With
President Trump facing possible criminal conviction and terminal bankruptcy,
and having the power to initiate nuclear war on his own authority, Nancy Pelosi
had good reason to press the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Milley, to
ensure that the president couldn’t take us all with him as he went down. For
several days, headlines focused on the danger of nuclear war, which should
facilitate arms control and disarmament advocacy in coming months.
On at least
24 occasions, U.S. presidents have prepared and/or threatened to initiate
nuclear war.
For decades,
absent such desperate circumstances, many world leaders and policy makers have
understood that accidents and miscalculations—including the belief the nuclear
war can be fought and won—could lead to nuclear catastrophe and urged action to
eliminate nuclear weapons. A year before President Kennedy and Soviet Premier
Khrushchev went "eyeball to eyeball" during the Cuban Missile Crisis,
speaking from the dais of the U.N. General Assembly, Kennedy warned:
"Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles,
hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by
accident or miscalculation or by madness." The weapons of war, he urged
"must be abolished before they abolish us."
Since that
day, during international crises and wars—on at least 24 occasions—U.S.
presidents have prepared and/or threatened to initiate nuclear war. Similarly,
leaders of each of the eight other nuclear powers has made similar threats at
least once. Human survival indeed hangs from the slenderest of threads, a
reality confirmed by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists expert panel who
have set their Doomsday Clock at 100 seconds to midnight, the closest to
catastrophe since the clock was created in 1953 at the height of the Cold War.
During the
75 years since the unnecessary and functionally criminal indiscriminate atomic
bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, A-bomb survivors, scientists and
physicians, scholars, community-based activists, diplomats and many national
leaders have worked to prevent apocalypse and to create a nuclear weapons-free
world.
A high point
came in 1970 when, after years of protests, diplomacy and negotiations, the
Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty came into effect. This seminal treaty was a
grand bargain made between the nuclear haves and have nots. In exchange for the
non-nuclear weapons states foreswearing development or possession of nuclear
weapons, the nuclear powers recognized their right to generate nuclear power
for peaceful purposes (a mistake) and, in article XI, committed to engage in
good faith negotiations for the complete elimination of their nuclear arsenals.
Refusing to
compromise their omnicidal power and bowing to the interests of their
respective military-industrial complexes, the "good faith"
negotiations never occurred. India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea have
since become nuclear powers, thus increasing the threats to human survival.
Quantitative and qualitative nuclear arms races also followed, with the United
States now on track to spend $2 trillion (an unimaginable sum) to replace its
entire nuclear arsenal and its delivery systems.
Concerned
about the prospects for human survival, and with the nuclear powers refusing to
take meaningful steps year after year to fulfill their Article VI commitment,
countries as diverse as Sweden, South Africa, Ireland and Mexico sought a means
to break through the nuclear powers’ rationale; that national security concerns
and the need to maintain nuclear deterrence required the maintenance of
"modernization" of their nuclear arsenals. In 2013 the non-nuclear
weapons states found their way to the obvious alternative paradigm: what
nuclear weapons do to people.
The first of
three Humanitarian Consequences of Nuclear Weapons conferences, held in Oslo
that year, diplomats from 127 nations and civil society activists gathered to
learn what nuclear weapons actually do and the dangers they represent. At the
second conference, held the following year in Nayarit, Mexico, with all the
nuclear powers absent except North Korea, conference organizers felt free to
begin the conference with the testimonies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki A-bomb
survivors. They described their suffering, losses, and the literal “Hell on
earth” that they had witnessed, and they repeated their fundamental truth that
"Human beings and nuclear weapons cannot coexist." Power point
presentations by representatives of the International Committee of the Red
Cross and Chatham House in London demonstrated why no institution can
meaningfully respond to the massive death and destruction inflicted by a single
nuclear weapons detonation in a city.
The most
telling moment in Nayarit came when, after hearing these testimonies and
details about nuclear weapons "modernizations" and warfighting
doctrines, a young African diplomat rose. With his pleading arms outstretched,
he cried out "What are these people thinking?"
The outcome
of the third and final Humanitarian Consequences conference, held in Vienna in
December, 2014, was sealed shortly after it began. Following opening statements
came the testimonies by a courageous Hiroshima survivor and an Australian Maori
who described the deadly impacts of uranium mining. These framed the
conference, but the coup de grace came from a woman who was assisted onto the
stage in her wheelchair. Beginning with a heartrending cry that "My
government has killed me" and in her passionate and unscripted speech, she
explained how fallout from nuclear weapons testing (underground as well as
atmospheric) had sickened her with cancer and taken the lives of many patriotic
citizens of St. George, Utah. No one in the Palace hall was left unmoved, and
the pathetic rebuttal by the U.S. ambassador was painfully embarrassing to all.
Following
speech after speech by the assembled diplomats, the conference closed with the
Austrian government’s pledge, joined by nearly all of the participating states.
It reiterated the risks posed by nuclear weapons, described what it termed as
the "legal gap for the prohibition and elimination of nuclear
weapons" that must be filled (i.e. a means to hold the nuclear powers
accountable to Article VI of the NPT, and urged governments to join Austria
in taking action to reduce the dangers of nuclear war).
That appeal
led to the convening in 2017 of negotiations at the United Nations which
concluded with the promulgation of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear
Weapons by 122 governments—none of them nuclear weapons states.
There are no
guarantees that the TPNW will move any of the nuclear powers, all of which are
spending vast fortunes to upgrade their nuclear arsenals and delivery systems,
and whose political systems are deeply influenced by their military-industrial
complexes.
Having
secured the necessary ratifications, the Treaty enters into Force on January
22, 2021. While opposed by the nuclear weapons states and their military
allies, the Treaty further undermines the legitimacy of nuclear weapons and is
designed to reinforce the NPT. It prohibits the development, production,
manufacture, acquisition, possession, stockpiling, transfer, stationing,
installation, and the threat to use nuclear weapons. Among its most important
articles are those that forbid non-nuclear weapon states to assist the nuclear
activities of the nuclear powers, for example refueling nuclear-capable
bombers, the mandate to assist nuclear weapons victims, and the requirement
that Treaty nations "encourage States not party to this Treaty to sign,
ratify, accept, approve or accede to the Treaty."
"Encouragement" could take many forms: lobbying government officials,
funding nuclear disarmament advocates, discouraging investments from
corporations and financial institutions involved in the production of nuclear
weapons. Ultimately, even sanctions!
There are no
guarantees that the TPNW will move any of the nuclear powers, all of which are
spending vast fortunes to upgrade their nuclear arsenals and delivery systems,
and whose political systems are deeply influenced by their military-industrial
complexes. The authors of the Prohibition Treaty understand that there are no
short cuts to universalizing adherence to the treaty. They know that road to
nuclear weapons-free world is a long and difficult one.
While
activists in the United States take inspiration and encouragement from the
TPNW, over the next several years, the most critically important campaigning
will be in the so-called "umbrella states." These are the NATO
nations, others in the Asia-Pacific, and the Russian dominated Commonwealth of
Independent States, functionally protectorates that rely on the U.S. and
Russian nuclear arsenals. Should one or more of these dependent states break
ranks by signing and ratifying the Treaty, it will threaten to unravel the
political fabric of the world’s nuclear disorder.
That
possibility is not farfetched. A massive majority of Japanese want their
government to sign the TPNW. Australia’s Labor Party, which was narrowly
defeated in the country’s 2019 election, is committed to signing the treaty.
And in the Netherlands a parliamentary majority voted in favor on the Treaty.
Those of us
here in the United States who have confronted the humanitarian consequences of
nuclear weapons and understand the urgency of nuclear disarmament have our own
work cut out for us. In addition to doing all that we can to preserve
constitutional democracy, to stanch the pandemic, and support revitalization of
our economy, we can hold President Biden’s feet to the fire. He has pledged to
extend the New START Treaty with Russia, due to expire in February, and to
rejoin the JCPOA nuclear deal with Iran. Biden previously stated his opposition
to the U.S. "first use" nuclear warfighting doctrine that could lead
to miscalculations and "use them or lose them" missile launches by
U.S. rivals. With Senator Markey and others in Congress urging a no first use
policy, we should be encouraging our president to spend his political capital
to ensure human survival.
And, as we
look for the funds to revitalize our pandemic ravaged economy, we should be
encouraging the president (and Congress) to act on his doubts about the value
of replacing U.S. ground-based ICBMs and standoff cruise missiles which undermine
rather than augment our real security.
The TPNW
provides an encouraging opening. Human survival could well depend on taking
advantage of it.
Joseph
Gerson is President of the Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Common Security,
Co-founder of the Committee for a SANE U.S. China Policy and Vice President of
the International Peace Bureau. His books include Empire and the Bomb, and With
Hiroshima Eyes.
Our work is
licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel
free to republish and share widely.
Donations can be sent
to Max Obuszewski, Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 431 Notre Dame Lane, Apt. 206,
Baltimore, MD 21212. 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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