AUGUST 8, 2019
by ALICE SLATER
Photograph Source: U.S.
Navy Public Affairs Resources Website – Public Domain
August 6th and 9th mark
74 years since the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where only one
nuclear bomb dropped on each city caused the deaths of up to 146,000 people in
Hiroshima and 80,000 people in Nagasaki. Now, with the US decision to walk away
from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Force (INF) negotiated with the Soviet
Union, we are once again staring into the abyss of one of the most perilous
nuclear challenges since the height of the Cold War.
With its careful
verification and inspections, the INF Treaty eliminated a whole class of
missiles that threatened peace and stability in Europe. Now the US is leaving
the treaty on the
grounds that Moscow is developing and deploying a missile
with a range prohibited by the treaty. Russia denies the charges and accuses
the US of violating the treaty. The US rejected repeated Russian requests
to work out the differences in order to preserve the Treaty.
The US withdrawal should be
seen in the context of the historical provocations visited upon the Soviet
Union and now Russia by the United States and the nations under the US nuclear
“umbrella” in NATO and the Pacific. The US has been driving the nuclear arms
race with Russia from the dawn of the nuclear age:
— In 1946 Truman rejected Stalin’s offer to
turn the bomb over to the newly formed UN under international supervision,
after which the Russians made their own bomb;
–Reagan rejected
Gorbachev’s offer to give up Star Wars as a condition for both countries to
eliminate all their nuclear weapons when the wall came down and Gorbachev
released all of Eastern Europe from Soviet occupation, miraculously, without a
shot;
— The US pushed NATO right
up to Russia’s borders, despite promises when the wall fell that NATO would not
expand it one inch eastward of a unified Germany;
–Clinton bombed Kosovo,
bypassing Russia’s veto in the UN Security Council and violating the UN treaty
we signed never to commit a war of aggression against another nation unless
under imminent threat of attack;
–Clinton refused Putin’s
offer to each cut our massive nuclear arsenals to 1000 bombs each and call all
the others to the table to negotiate for their elimination, provided we stopped
developing missile sites in Romania;
–Bush walked out of the
1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and put the new missile base in Romania with
another to open shortly under Trump in Poland, right in Russia’s backyard;
–Bush and Obama blocked any
discussion in 2008 and 2014 on Russian and Chinese proposals for a space
weapons ban in the consensus-bound Committee for Disarmament in Geneva;
–Obama’s rejected Putin’s offer to
negotiate a treaty to ban cyber war;
–Trump now walked out of
the INF Treaty;
–From Clinton through
Trump, the US never ratified the 1992 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty as Russia
has, and has performed more than 20 underground sub-critical tests on the
Western Shoshone’s sanctified land at the Nevada test site. Since
plutonium is blown up with chemicals that don’t cause a chain reaction, the US
claims these tests don’t violate the treaty;
–Obama, and now Trump,
pledged over one trillion dollars for the next 30 years for two new nuclear
bomb factories in Oak Ridge and Kansas City, as well as new submarines,
missiles, airplanes, and warheads!
What has Russia had to say
about these US affronts to international security and negotiated treaties? Putin
at his State of the Nation address in March 2018 said:
I will speak about
the newest systems of Russian strategic weapons that we are creating in
response to the unilateral withdrawal of the United States of America from the
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the practical deployment of their
missile defence systems both in the US and beyond their national borders.
I would like to make a
short journey into the recent past. Back in 2000, the US announced its
withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Russia was categorically
against this. We saw the Soviet-US ABM Treaty signed in 1972 as the cornerstone
of the international security system. Under this treaty, the parties had
the right to deploy ballistic missile defence systems only in one of its
regions. Russia deployed these systems around Moscow, and the US around
its Grand Forks land-based ICBM base. Together with the Strategic Arms
Reduction Treaty, the ABM treaty not only created an atmosphere of trust
but also prevented either party from recklessly using nuclear weapons,
which would have endangered humankind, because the limited number of
ballistic missile defence systems made the potential aggressor vulnerable
to a response strike.
We did our best to dissuade
the Americans from withdrawing from the treaty.
All in vain. The US pulled out of
the treaty in 2002. Even after that we tried to develop constructive dialogue
with the Americans. We proposed working together in this area to ease concerns
and maintain the atmosphere of trust. At one point, I thought that a compromise
was possible, but this was not to be. All our proposals, absolutely all of
them, were rejected. And then we said that we would have to improve our modern
strike systems to protect our security.
Despite promises made in
the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that the five nuclear weapons
states–US, UK, Russia, France, China–would eliminate their nuclear weapons
while all the other nations of the world promised not to get them (except for
India, Pakistan, and Israel, which also acquired nuclear weapons), there are
still nearly 14,000 nuclear bombs on the planet. All but 1,000 of them are in
the US and Russia, while the seven other countries, including North Korea, have
about 1000 bombs between them. If the US and Russia can’t settle their
differences and honor their promise in the NPT to eliminate their nuclear
weapons, the whole world will continue to live under what President Kennedy
described as a nuclear Sword of Damocles, threatened with unimaginable
catastrophic humanitarian suffering and destruction.
To prevent a nuclear
catastrophe, in 2017, 122 nations adopted a new Treaty for the Prohibition of
Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). It calls for a ban on nuclear weapons just as the world
had banned chemical and biological weapons. The ban treaty provides a
pathway for nuclear weapons states to join and dismantle their arsenals under
strict and effective verification. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear
Weapons, which received the Nobel Peace Prize for its efforts, is working for
the treaty to enter into force by enrolling 50 nations to ratify the
treaty. As of today, 70 nations have signed the treaty and 24 have
ratified it, although none of them are nuclear weapons states or the US
alliance states under the nuclear umbrella.
With this new opportunity
to finally ban the bomb and end the nuclear terror, let us tell the truth
about what happened between the US and Russia that brought us to this perilous
moment and put the responsibility where it belongs to open up a path for true
peace and reconciliation so that never again will anyone on our planet
ever be threatened with the terrible consequences of nuclear war.
Here are some actions you
can take to ban the bomb:
+ Support the ICAN Cities
Appeal to take a stand in favor of the ban treaty
+ Ask your member of
Congress to sign the ICAN Parliamentary Pledge
+ Support the Don’t Bank on the Bomb Campaign for nuclear
divestment
+ Support the Code Pink Divest
From the War Machine Campaign
+ Distribute Warheads To Windmills, How to Pay for the Green
New Deal, a new study addressing the need to prevent the two
greatest dangers facing our planet: nuclear annihilation and climate
destruction.
+ Sign the World Beyond War
pledge and add your name to this critical new campaign to make the end of war
on our planet an idea whose time has come! www.worldbeyondwar.org
More articles by:ALICE SLATER
Alice Slater is a founder of Abolition 2000, which works for a treaty to ban nuclear
weapons.
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