BOTTOM-UP NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT
There are extraordinary stories of very close encounters with nuclear Armageddon (the apparently invisible “Dark Swan” before its horrendous manifestation). One such incredibly narrow escape occurred in 1979 during Jimmy Carter’s presidency (1977-81).
As told by Bruce Blair, nuclear security expert and co-founder of Global Zero (politico.com June 11, 2016): “... President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski received back-to-back calls in the middle of the night informing him of the imminent destruction of the United States. The second call reported an all-out attack. Brzezinski was seconds away from waking Carter to pass on the dreadful news and convince him of the need to order retaliation without delay (within a six-minute deadline). Brzezinski was sure the end was near.
“Just before he picked up the phone to call Carter, Brzezinski received a third call, this time cancelling the alarm. It was a mistake caused by human and technical error. A training tape simulating an all-out Soviet attack had inadvertently slipped into the actual real-time attack early warning network...”
On 10 November 2016 when Ashton Carter adorned the venerable strategic thinker with the Distinguished Public Service, the DOD’s highest civilian honour, the US Secretary of Defense also recalled the 1979 close shave for the Soviet Union, the US and indeed the whole world (defense.gov):
“... Zbig was called at 3.00 AM one night in 1979 and told the Soviet Union had commenced a nuclear attack on the United States with 200 missiles. He explained years later that he knew, quote, “everybody would be dead in 28 minutes” so he said, “if that was the case, I was going to make sure we had lots of company.” And with that Zbig, our one-man deterrent, made sure the Strategic Air Command bombers were taking off. Thankfully, the reported Soviet attack turned out to be incorrect – Zbig was given the right information shortly thereafter, and he made sure to recall the SAC order...”
23.03.2017 22:50
Described by Ash Carter as “one of the finest strategic thinkers and policymakers of our time”, Zbigniew Brzezinski followed what General Curtis Le May, USAF Chief of Staff, had done during the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis when he ordered his bombers to take off with a total nuclear payload of some 7,000 megatons – the equivalent of over 400,000 copies of “Little Boy” (the 15-kiloton atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on the morning of 6 August 1945).
In a lecture delivered at the University of Cambridge on 13 May 2013, former Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans also narrated another close call at the time of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis when two officers in a Soviet submarine had decided to fire a nuclear torpedo against an American carrier USS Randolf, the nearest target, but were overruled in the nick of time by the commander of the four-boat fleet who happened to be on board. “So it was, by a one-to-two minority vote, that World War III was avoided,” Evans recalled. gevans.org
The 13-day crisis (16-28 Oct 1962) had cast its spell of inchoate but singular dread over the world but, thank God, it passed off without a catastrophic nuclear exchange. The atomic scientists in Washington didn’t have the time to reset the Doomsday Clock to register the great existential threat.
Evans commented: “It is not the quality of (command and control) systems or statesmanship that led us to avoid a nuclear weapons catastrophe for so long, but sheer dumb luck – and it is utterly wishful thinking to believe that our Cold War luck can continue in perpetuity...”
To quote Bruce Blair, a former nuclear-missile launch officer (politico.com):
“On a day-to-day basis, the U.S. nuclear forces can deliver nearly 900 warheads to targets around the globe. Given a couple more days to get ready, the number of deliverable warheads would grow to nearly 2,000...”
Russia can also count on as many nukes.
Blair’s message: “The only real protection against nuclear disaster is total elimination of nuclear weapons...” 657 words 24.03.2017 00:16
Addressing students at the National Nuclear Research University in Moscow on 22 January 2014, President Vladimir Putin responded to a question by Artem Bekerev, a third-year cybernetic undergrad: “... My personal position is that at some point, humanity must renounce nuclear arms. But for now, we are far from this, in the sense that other nations aside from Russia have nuclear arms as well – and many of them -- and they are not going to renounce this means of armed combat. Such a step (to nuclear-disarm) by the Russian Federation would be very strange in these conditions, and could lead to some fairly serious, grave consequences for our nation and our people...”
(kremlin.ru Moscow January 22, 2014 15:00)
In one of his interviews with President Putin for a four-part documentary (scheduled for broadcast by the Showtime television network on 12-15 June 2017), film director Oliver Stone asked if the US would be dominant in a “hot war” with Russia. “I think no one would survive (in a nuclear conflict),” Putin said, as report in Sputnik News 11.06.2017.
Speaking at the UN in Geneva on 18 January 2017, President Xi Jinping of China called for a world without nuclear weapons. “Nuclear weapons should be completely prohibited and destroyed over time to make the world free of nuclear weapons,” he said.
Speaking alongside the new UN Secretary-General Antonio Guteres, Xi also said: “Big countries should treat smaller countries as equals instead of acting as a hegemon, imposing their will on others...” He didn’t say it’s one way of curbing nuclear proliferation.
On 22December 2016 president-elect Donald Trump twittered: “The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.” 23 words to lend further momentum to the recently-resumed nuclear arms race under the Obama Administration.
Within a week of Trump’s inauguration as the US 45th president, the Doomsday Clock was reset from three to two and half minutes to midnight – the closest to apocalypse since 1953 at the start of the nuclear arms race between the US and the Soviet Union, following their thermonuclear debut (the US on November 1952 and the SU August 1953).
The Chicago-based Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has explained why: among other factors including climate change, nuclear volatility has been cited, with the two nuclear superpowers seeking to further modernise their arsenals while remaining politically at odds in war-torn countries like Syria and Ukraine.
Soon after the start of the nuclear arms race following the introduction of the hydrogen bomb, British mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell and American scientist Albert Einstein put the world on red alert when they issued their historic statement known as the 1955 Russell-Einstein Manifesto. They pointed out that “the best authorities are unanimous in saying that a war with H-bombs might quite possibly put an end to the human race. It is found that if many H-bombs are used there will be universal death – suddenly for a minority (including those vaporized at ground zero) but for the majority a slow torture of disease and disintegration...”
In 1955 the US reportedly had 3,057 nuclear warheads, including probably not more than a score of H-bombs (having tested the world’s first Super on 1 November 1952). Although the Soviet Union was credited with having 200 nukes, it successfully tested its first megaton (1.6 MT) thermonuclear on 22 November 1955. And although Britain had 10 atomic bombs in 1955, the British Lion tested its first H-bomb in mid-May 1957.
In 2017 nine countries have the Bomb, and there are altogether more than 15,000 nuclear weapons in the world, mostly thermonuclear. Russia and the US deploy slightly less than 2,000 nuclear warheads each, and each of them is presently stockpiling about 7,000.
These hot numbers are existentially fraught for humankind whose days are numbered in the algorithm of nuclear conflict.
In an article in TIME January 27, 2017, calling for change in the current dangerous situation, former Soviet leader and president Mikhail Gorbachev cited as the most urgent global problem “the militarization of politics and the new arms race.”
He wrote: “Stopping and reversing this ruinous race must be our top priority.
“The current situation is too dangerous...
“I recall a Politburo meeting in 1986 at which the defense doctrine was discussed. The proposed draft contained the following language: “Respond to attack with all available means.” Members of the politburo objected to this formula. All agreed that nuclear weapons must have only one purpose: preventing war. And the ultimate goal should be a world without nuclear weapons...”
Gorbachev concluded: “President Franklin D. Roosevelt once said that one of the main freedoms is freedom from fear. Today, the burden of fear and the stress of bearing it is felt by millions of people, and the main reason for it is militarism, armed conflicts, the arms race, and the nuclear Sword of Damocles.
“Ridding the world of this fear means making people free. This should be a common goal. Many other problems would then be easier to resolve.
“The time to decide and act is now.”
Act now to remove, dismantle and destroy the nuclear Sword of Damocles hanging over the head of the human race. Free Homo sapiens from the fear and the existential threat of a catastrophic nuclear war.
To quote the concluding message of the 1955 Russell-Einstein Manifesto: “We appeal as human beings to human beings: remember your humanity... if you cannot there lies before you the risk of universal death...”
July 2010 saw the release of the landmark 90-minute documentary film COUNTDOWN TO ZERO, directed by Lucy Walker, and the publication of Apocalypse Never by Tom Daley.
In an interview, Daley said it was a coincidence that the book and the movie came out virtually exactly at the same time, and that both had the same ambition: to talk to ordinary folks about the nuclear peril, and that abolition of nukes should be the solution.
The film premiered at the E Street Cinema in Washington, D.C.
A review in Daily Variety concluded that the film makes “a convincing argument that the human race is on borrowed time...” And, “it’s only a matter of time before something terribly ugly happens...”
On 12 June 1982 one million people demonstrated in New York’s Central Park against nuclear weapons and for an end to the Cold War arms race.
At the peak of the “nuclear freeze” campaign to oppose the installation of the American Pershing II missiles in Europe, three million people took part on October 1983 in simultaneous demonstrations across the continent, 300,000 of them in London.
The huge impact of swelling public consciousness, public conscience and public sentiment moved both Presidents Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev to the threshold of a historic agreement for total nuclear disarmament at their second meeting, held in the Hovde House at Reykjavik, capital of Iceland, on the late Sunday afternoon of 11 October 1986. That year the world had the largest number of nuclear warheads – 70,481, including 45,000 Soviet and 24,401 US, according to Robert S. Norris and Hans M. Kristensen in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists July/August 2006.
The year 1986 also witnessed the Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament, also known as the Great Peace March (GPM). 1,200 people took part in the nine-month trek of about 3,700 miles from 1 March 1986 in Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. on 15 November 1986. Their goal: to raise public awareness about the growing danger of nuclear proliferation, and to advocate complete, verifiable elimination of nuclear weapons.
Conceived by Los Angeles businessman David Mixner, the GPM Statement of Purpose has explained in its preamble:
“The Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament is an abolitionist movement. We believe that great social change comes about when the will of the people becomes focused on a moral imperative. By marching for nine months across the United States, we will create a non-violent focus for positive change, the imperative being that nuclear weapons are politically, socially, economically and morally unjustifiable, and that, in any number, they are unacceptable.
“It is the responsibility of a democratic government to implement the will of the people, and it is the will of the people of the United States and many other nations to end the nuclear arms race...”
On the day of taking the oath of office as the 45th US president, Donald Trump twittered: “January 20th 2017, will be remembered as the day the people became the rulers of the nation again.”
On the same day, Trump also twittered: “What truly matters is not which party controls our government, but whether our government is controlled by the people.”
Kenneth C. Davis wrote online CNN 5 April 2011: “... The real beauty of the American story is that the great strides achieved in this country – from its birth out of revolution, through emancipation and abolition, suffrage, Native American citizenship and civil rights – have come painfully and haltingly, usually from the bottom up, not the top down...”
Gareth Evans, Australian foreign minister (1988-96) and co-chair of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament 2009, has stressed in his 2013 Cambridge lecture: “The really crucial need, of course, is to somehow capture imagination of publics around the world to generate bottom-up pressure on governments, without which – as I well know from 21 years in Australian politics – it is extremely difficult to engage their attention and commitment...”
What’s known in brief as people power is needed to change, and to end the nuclear status quo.
“The message from national security experts and citizens around the world is clear: the only way to eliminate the global nuclear danger is to eliminate all nuclear weapons,” says Basic Instinct star Michael Douglas.
“It’s time to set the world’s course to zero.”
To quote from “The Great Peace March” theme song by Holly Neer:
“... Life is a great and mighty march!
Forever for love and for life on the Great Peace March.”
For Global Nuclear Disarmament!
If the American people succeed in their humanitarian revolution to denuclearize the military and set in motion an irresistible global movement to rid the world of all nuclear weapons, they can, and they will MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.
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