WomenPowerPeace

Oh no we won't: No new nukes!

No nukes is good news. On so many levels. We have to get rid of these things. Not ramp up to make new ones.

Do you know how few it would take to kill millions and to disrupt the world's ecosystem in a profound and permanent way? A handful. Do you know how many we got already? Thousands upon thousands.

Do you know who really wants to get their hands on them? Crazy people with a mission. Do you know how to make that easier? Keep building new ones.

The peace and security community works really hard every day to prevent this from happening. The W administration has been trying to get the funds and permission to make some dandy new usable nukes -- but so far, Congress has had the good sense and the balls to turn them down.

And they've done it again! The Senate just denied funding for the "Reliable Replacement Warhead." Yay. Thanks.

Today the Senate administered the last rites for the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW). The Senate Appropriations Committee passed an annual spending bill that rejected all funding for the new weapon.

The Senate's decision today marks the second year in a row that congressional appropriators have denied funding for the controversial program, and arms control advocates see little opportunity to restore money for the warhead during this abbreviated election year.

"This seals RRW's fate," said Devin Helfrich, a lobbyist for the Friends Committee on National Legislation. "Congress is on record for the second consecutive year firmly rejecting RRW. We don't see the next administration trying to revive this discredited program."

The weapons program was eliminated over strong objections from the retiring senior senator from

New Mexico

, Pete Domenici, who had been the warhead's most powerful congressional advocate.

Today's Senate action marks the culmination of a tumultuous career for RRW.

You don't have a nuke in your garage, do you?

The federal government would like to know if anyone has any spare bits of nuclear weaponry lying around. It happens now and then: you order a battery, and they send a nuclear trigger device instead. You know, the shipping department gets a little sloppy sometimes. La la.

But it's okay, because, you know, SO FAR when this has happened, someone notices, and tries to exchange for the thing they actually ordered. They'll just wait til they get the MP3 player, then they'll put the warheads in a nice padded envelope, and there ya go. All set.

Seriously. If you don't already think that it's a bad idea that we have thousands and thousands of weapons that could incinerate life on the whole planet -- what about the fact that we can't keep track of the damn things? That we're sending them to other countries?

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has ordered a complete inventory of the nation's nuclear arsenal and all associated components after the discovery last week that four secret nuclear missile parts had been mistakenly sent to Taiwan, an error that went unnoticed for more than 18 months.

Gates had already ordered a high-level investigation into how the four nose-cone fuse assemblies for U.S. intercontinental ballistic missiles were shipped overseas in place of common helicopter batteries -- the military's second major nuclear-related incident in less than a year. Senior Pentagon officials have called the episode "extremely embarrassing," and it has both strained relations with China and called into question the U.S. military's ability to maintain its arsenal of catastrophic weapons...

Taiwan received the four ballistic missile fuses from the DLA in August 2006, instead of the helicopter batteries that it was supposed to get as part of billions of dollars in U.S. military sales to the country. Taiwanese officials had been contacting the United States over the past year to determine what to do with the erroneous items, with U.S. officials at one point instructing their disposal, U.S. authorities told The Washington Post this week.

Okay, so the fact that we lose track of nuclear bits is one thing, fair enough. But let's address some other things in this piece, eh?

First, we keep forgetting that one of the engines of our economy is the production of big bad weapons. Not for our defense -- for sale. To anyone with the cash. We're arming the world. What good can come of this? Really -- WHERE is the up side? More guns, more bullets, more bombs, more fighter jets. Even if every purchaser is prudent and wise, it still spreads militarism and violence.

Second, as long as we separate the world into good and bad; us and them; white and black -- we're gonna make stupid decisions about what to do with "catastrophic" weapons. Some people already think WE're the bad guys because of what we're doing in Iraq. When is the administration in India gonna shift from "good" to "bad" -- and we'll have helped give them the bomb? Saddam was bad -- isn't the curren situation bad as well?

At the end of the day, the bottom line, the upshot is... humans are frail beings who do not deserve the power of the atom in our hands. It's amusing to point that out now; wait til a fatal mistake has taken its toll.

A new wave to ban the bomb?

The idea of nuclear catastrophe -- which means any use of a nuclear bomb, anywhere -- is so devastating that I just don't. Think of it. It's like climate change. If this is the end, let's party til it's over.

Or at least toil away in hopes of change in a crummy little office above a sushi restaurant. But not think on it. Cuz what's to be gained? Agita. I got enough already about the details -- lice, cancer, funny smells in the house. I don't need to dwell on the global burp that incinerates us.

So this fellow (Michael Krepon) thinks that we may be gaining a head of steam to get rid of nuclear weapons for good. He says there have been 3 waves toward elimination: one right after WWII; one during Reagan's years; one in the '90s, when we had high hopes.

Now we have a fourth rolling in. And he has this to say about it:

This wave is unusual because it is moving from the center outward. Its leading advocates—statesmen like George Shultz, Sam Nunn, Henry Kissinger, William Perry and Max Kampelman—have long resumes of distinguished public service. Because of their leadership, the fourth wave has more potential than its predecessors.  When foreign policy realists who have served in positions of great responsibility in the Nixon, Ford, Carter and Reagan Administrations join with a Democratic presidential candidate like Barack Obama in calling for nuclear abolition, clearly something noteworthy is unfolding.

The fourth abolitionist wave is also different because it is powered by subtle, slow-motion events rather than sharp external shocks. All abolitionist waves are driven by anticipatory dread of one kind or another. The sense of dread this time around derives from the erosion of global structures built to prevent proliferation, and the possibility of a horrific act of nuclear terrorism.  This wave is also different because it comes at a time when all major powers face two common enemies: nuclear terrorism and the demise of the global nonproliferation system. The fourth wave seeks to leverage these common concerns, and the best way to do that, in the view of Shultz & Co., is to reaffirm and take seriously nuclear abolition as the declaratory policy of the U.S. government.

They are correct.

Hey! We win one for the globe! and life on Earth!

[Dawg loves the snow. Her ball becomes so much more interesting and elusive.]

Money controls everything. Is why Congress has been wrangling over the federal budget for weeks and months. Is why we spend so much time and energy trying to figure out what's in that massive document.

And, is why we wanted to make sure no money would go toward new nuclear weapons. You know, those objects that have the power to end life on the planet? We have thousands of them -- seriously -- we really do NOT WANT MORE.

The Ws would like more, thank you. Last couple sessions, they tried to get funding for the (cutely named) bunker buster (RNEP). The anti-annihilation folks banded together and managed to get Congress to deny funding. Twice.

This time around, they wanted funding for the (deftly named) Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW). They buried these line items deep down in the gigantic budget, hoping to send dollars quietly toward nuclear research, labs, manufacturers, etc.

But, again, thankfully, people of passion, good sense, and integrity banded together and rallied their folks to oppose this foolish move.

And we won! How often od we win on getting money OUT of the Pentagon budget? Not often!

Wahoo! Let's chase a ball and bark for cookies!

Happy holidays!

Pakistan and the Bomb—How Did We Get Here?

A letter from WAND president emerita Sayre Sheldon:

   The New York Times of November 18 informs us that the U.S. has been spending millions for the past six years on a secret program to help Musharref  keep his nuclear weapons safe. An op-ed ominously warns that we may have to use our military to secure Pakistan’s nuclear weapons if the government collapses.

   Great: what did we do to deserve this? Plenty, it turns out.

   I can flash back to 1995 at the U.N. Non-Proliferation Conference—the fifth since the treaty was signed in 1970. I was there representing WAND as an NGO. One by one the delegates made their statements, offering condolences to the U.S. for the bombing in Oklahoma City. Behind the scenes they were saying: “Welcome to the world of terrorism. The rest of us know it well.”

   The conference was mostly business as usual: by which the delegates meant that the five declared nuclear nations would continue not getting rid of their weapons while the smaller nations would secretly work to develop their own. “Do what we say, not what we do” was the mantra of the five nuclear nations but it wasn’t working anymore: the “have-nots” were getting ready to join the nuclear club.

   India and Pakistan were in a nuclear arms race we were told: each busily demonizing the other, claiming they must have the capacity to deter the other—a carbon copy of the former U.S.—Soviet behavior. A young Pakistani scientist warned us that the chances of nuclear weapons being used again was growing every day and that with the world awash in nuclear materials and knowledge, future acts of terrorism could be on a scale never dreamed of. He ended his talk with “The U.S. led us into the nuclear age, now it has to lead us out.”

   Without much progress, the conference did end with the decision to extend the treaty indefinitely. This bound the nuclear nations to “pursue good faith efforts to achieve nuclear disarmament.”

   Three years later in 1998 India detonated its first bombs, soon to be followed by Pakistan. Amazingly, U.S. intelligence was taken by surprise. In 2002, India and Pakistan came close to a nuclear engagement over Kashmir.

   The 2000 Non-Proliferation Conference showed some much-needed action: adopting 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament, including the ratification of a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and strengthening the Anti-Ballistic Treaty (ABM). The nuclear nations had so far shown no effort to reduce their weapons but they at least showed intent to do so—and in 2002 the U.S. and Russia did sign an agreement to reduce theirs weapons to several thousand each by 2012.

  Five years later the world was pedaling backwards furiously with the U.S. leading the way. I went to the 2005 Conference—it was a complete failure, ending without any document. The Bush administration’s war on terrorism put nuclear weapons back into a central place in its security policies. The U.S. did not ratify the CTBT and unsigned the ABM treaty.  Preventive war policies in response to 9/11 resulted in abandoning the no first use of nuclear weapons policy and the prohibition forbidding their use against non-nuclear countries. Efforts to develop new nuclear weapons as well as upgrading  the old ones were narrowly voted down. To be fair, the major nuclear nations at the conference could blame the U.S for being the worst offender.while defending their own right to hang onto their weapons and do nothing about keeping their part of honoring the treaty.

   Even more indefensibly, U.S. policies of supporting India’s nuclear programs made Pakistan more nervous about their own. Scandals erupted as their exporting of nuclear technologies to countries around the world was revealed. Now the Pakistan genie seems to be threatening us all and that warning of nuclear terrorism we heard first in 1995 no longer sounds so far in the future. Although we in the U.S. have to remember that our nuclear weapons,  unlike Pakistan’s, are on alert—ready to go in minutes. 

Sayre Sheldon, WAND National Board Member and U.N. NGO representative.

Really, do we need to be on the brink of destruction ALL the time?

From the NYT today:

Large majorities of Americans and Russians favor taking nuclear weapons off high alert, sharply cutting the numbers of nuclear weapons, banning the production of weapons-grade nuclear material, and -- once advanced methods of international verification are established -- undertaking the complete elimination of nuclear weapons.

These steps correspond to key elements of a plan for "A World Free of Nuclear Weapons," developed by a bipartisan group that includes two former secretaries of state (George Schultz and Henry Kissinger), a former defense secretary (William Perry) and the former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee (Sam Nunn) -- sometimes called the "Reykjavik Revisited" plan. Some have been included in recent legislation, such as a bill introduced by Senators Chuck Hagel and Barack Obama (S.1977).

The WorldPublicOpinion.org poll was developed in conjunction with the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland (CISSM) and fielded by Knowledge Networks in the United States and the Levada Center in Russia.

It's probably wise to vote No.

Go ahead. Click here. It's easy! It's fun! It may save the world!

What to call a new nuke?

The ones who want to build it call it "Reliable Replacement Warhead."

Clever dogs. They know how to turn a phrase, eh? so you don't know what's behind the curtain.

In fact, they're nuclear bombs. New ones. The old ones are still reliable, and don't need replacing.

Here's some dandy shows on NPR about this stuff:

A show from last year, a full hour:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5541420

From the other day:

Cost of New Warheads Faulted in Tough Review

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9805264

New nuclear arms race?

Shocking, but true. Wish they'd told me about this before I went and made a new generation of people...

Published on Wednesday, March 7, 2007 by OneWorld.net | Common Dreams

New US Weapon Could Jumpstart Nuclear Arms Race, Warn Experts

by Haider Rizvi

NEW YORK - A U.S. plan to develop a new hydrogen bomb could spark production of new nuclear weapons by other countries, including several foes of the Bush administration, warn some of the nation's leading arms control and disarmament advocacy groups... Many analysts say the Bush administration's plan would undermine international efforts to control the spread of nuclear arms and would provide justification to those countries currently suspected of trying to build such weapons.

Lakoff on nuclear war: IT IS NUCLEAR WAR

Thanks to George Lakoff for addressing this issue in the strongest possible terms. If the U.S. keeps saying "all options on the table" in dealing with Iran, it is saying: first strike nuclear war.

And nuclear war is nuclear war: radioactive fallout, instant incineration of innocent people, years of aftermath, an invitation to total and mutual destruction.

To use words like "low yield" or "small" or "mini-" nuclear weapon is like speaking of being a little bit pregnant. Nuclear war is nuclear war! It crosses the moral line.

It crosses the moral line. Exactly. It is wrong. For Iran, for Iraq, and for the U.S. and our allies.

Nuclear war is wrong. Ugly. Irreversible.

How have we come to the point where we've forgotten what it looked like in Hiroshima and Nagasaki? This is a pivotal and terrible moment in our history.