Stop the Next War Now (26 page)

Women who have sat at the peacekeeping table tend to agree on a number of points: for example, that we can start building peace only by ending the violence in our homes, our schools, and our streets; and that sustainable peace hinges on the presence of economic and social systems that put the majority of people and their needs at the center of development. As Gandhi said, “There is enough in the world for all our needs, but never enough for one man’s greed.”

If women allocated the world’s resources, they would surely choose to invest in the much broader notion of human security—through the economic development of poorer nations, environmental protections, and social services—instead of buying more weapons or helping corporate America become ever wealthier. Women would see hiv/aids as a real security threat faced by millions and would provide money for drugs instead of fighter jets.

But women do not yet enjoy democratic representation in the world’s powerful institutions. Very few women participate in meetings that determine the conditions of security and the distribution of resources, and fewer still are hammering out peace agreements around negotiating tables.

However, in October 2000, for the first time in its history, the UN Security Council passed a resolution, Resolution 1325, that called not only for the protection of women in conflict zones but also for their participation in the decision-making process at the peace table. In passing this resolution, the Security Council acknowledged that women are essential for waging peace.

Even in those countries where atrocities against women were particularly widespread and horrific and where efforts at peace and reconciliation have mostly consisted of men forgiving men for crimes against women, women have started to find a seat at the table. In southeastern Europe, women from Kosovo’s new assembly have banded together across party lines to form a women’s caucus, a nonpartisan effort in a community traumatized by conflict and ethnic strife.

Creating a world without war is too important to be the responsibility of any single government or institution, no matter how powerful. The United Nations, the peace movement, the women’s movement, the human-rights movement, and the economic-rights movement must all come together.

Let us, as we move further into the twenty-first century, assure women their proper role in putting an end to the unspeakable horrors of war and in rediscovering our shared humanity. Let us give women the opportunity to unlock the frozen rivers of our hearts so the healing waters can flow.

“History tells us that every oppressed class gained true

liberation from its masters through its own efforts. It is necessary

that woman learn that lesson, that she realize that her freedom

will reach as far as her power to achieve her freedoms.”

—Emma Goldman

ENDING THE NUCLEAR

CRISIS:

A PRESCRIPTION

FOR SURVIVAL

HELEN CALDICOTT

Helen Caldicott is an Australian-born pediatrician and the author of five books, including
The New Nuclear Danger
. President emerita of Physicians for Social Responsibility, she also founded Women’s Action for Nuclear Disarmament in 1980. Currently she is president of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute.This essay was excerpted from an interview with Julia Scott that took place on Chicago Public Radio’s
Worldview
on October 12, 2004.

When the Cold War ended in 1989, I was thrilled. I was in Australia at the time, and I went into my garden and thought, That’s it. They’ll get rid of the bombs. The first President Bush unilaterally eliminated ten thousand bombs. Never before had a U.S. president done that. It wasn’t until 1997 that I found out that nothing had changed—the weapons were all on hair-trigger alert, with America still determined to win a nuclear war against Russia, which could cause partial nuclear winter and end most life on earth. When I found that out, I thought, How did that happen? Why didn’t they get rid of the bombs?

President Clinton set up a nuclear-posture review in 1994, which the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who liked their missiles, destroyed. One general was overheard saying, “If you threaten our missiles and our early-warning system, baby, that’s threatening the family jewels.” America then developed a policy called “lead and hedge”—lead in the development of nuclear weapons, and hedge our bets. The United States has more than five thousand hydrogen bombs targeted on Russia. Since the Cold War, we have increased the number of our targets, to include China. And Russia keeps its own bombs at the ready.

What’s really dangerous is not just proliferation, but the sheer number of hydrogen bombs that still exist: thirty thousand, of which Russia and America own 97 percent. They’re the true “rogue” states, facing off just as they did in the Cold War and maintaining a huge storehouse of bombs that could be captured by terrorists. The Chechen rebels, for example, could seize control of the command system in Russia just as they took over that theater in Moscow or the school in Beslan. A nuclear war could happen tonight, by accident. It could happen in the United States, even, if computer hackers broke into the early-warning system.

America is in the process of building and testing five hundred new nuclear weapons every year. Clinton started that, but it continued under Bush, and it will create lateral proliferation as other countries look at America and say, “Well, if you’re doing it, we will too.”

As a physician, I see the earth as a patient in the intensive care unit. We have an acute clinical crisis on our hands and must take urgent action. My prescription for survival is that the American people rise up as they did in the 1980s, when 80 percent of Americans supported the nuclear weapons freeze. We must force the administration to negotiate with Vladimir Putin to set up a process to eliminate nuclear weapons between Russia and America in the next five years.

We must also close down the 103 nuclear-power plants in America and generate our electricity with plentiful supplies of wind and sunlight instead. As it is, terrorists don’t need to build nuclear weapons—weapons of this magnitude are available all over the country, in the form of nuclear reactors. The cooling pools inside the reactors contain up to thirty times as much radiation as the reactor core—enough to equal a thousand Hiroshima bombs.

If we close the plants down, we at least won’t make any more nuclear waste. What we can do with the nuclear waste inside the core and the cooling pools I really don’t know, and neither does anybody else. I’ve been debating with the nuclear industry for thirty-five years, and its representatives have always said, “Don’t worry, we’ll work out what to do with the waste.” I used to reply, “That’s like my saying to you, ‘You’ve got pancreatic cancer and you’ll die in six months, but don’t worry, I’ll find the cure in twenty years.’”

The industry’s solution is to package the waste and deliver fifteen hundred shipments every year for the next thirty years to Yucca Mountain in Nevada, a site transected by thirty earthquake faults. Vice president Dick Cheney is in favor of the Yucca Mountain project, and he wants to build fifty new nuclear power plants in the next twenty years. Here is a man who doesn’t understand what he’s doing, yet he is making the most profound decisions for the rest of the human race, for the rest of time.

It’s been estimated that fewer than 3 percent of the people in Congress are scientifically literate, yet they’re taking actions with extraordinary medical consequences. In this age of profound scientific discovery, it’s terribly important for people to understand the health implications of government initiatives, especially nuclear ones. And it’s equally important for physicians to teach the American public about the dangers of nuclear power and nuclear war—for example, the increased risk of cancer, especially for children, who are much more sensitive to the carcinogenic effects of radiation than adults are.

We’ve got to return to sanity and decide we’re going to save the earth for our children, if we indeed want them to have a future.

“The pens which write against disarmament are made

with the same steel from which guns are made.”

—Aristide Briand, French statesman, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, 1926

NONPROLIFERATION:

THE U.S. IMPERIAL DOUBLE

STANDARD

RANDALL FORSBERG

Dr. Randall Caroline Forsberg is the executive director of the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies and the publisher of the monthly
Arms Control Reporter
. She helped found the Freeze movement and authored the 1980 Nuclear Weapon Freeze proposal. Forsberg was appointed by President Clinton to the Advisory Committee of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.

One of the most shocking developments of recent years has been President Bush’s rejection of treaties meant to help stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction. The Bush administration arrogated to the United States the “right” to invade a country, overthrow its government, and launch a multiyear occupation in flagrant violation of U.S. and international laws on the grounds that Iraq might have had some chemical-weapon remnants left from the 1980s, and could theoretically have become involved in a military or terrorist threat against us. At the same time, the United States systematically blocked and undermined the very international treaties designed to prevent the global spread of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and to verifiably reduce the nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons that exist today—on the grounds that these treaties might limit America’s freedom to acquire, test, deploy, and even use such weapons!

The hypocrisy and imperial arrogance of this double standard (proclaiming to other nations, particularly Arab and other non-Western countries, that they should do as we say and not as we do) have played a major role in provoking worldwide anger and disrespect for the United States and in strengthening support for the terrorist acts that continue to be carried out by Muslim fundamentalists.

The United States has blocked or weakened nearly every international agreement intended to help reduce proliferation dangers:

A reduction of our own nuclear arsenal
. In 2001, Russia proposed that each side cut its arsenal from around ten thousand nuclear weapons to just fifteen hundred, and that the withdrawn weapons be verifiably dismantled. President Bush refused this excellent offer. Instead, the Bush administration limited the latest Strategic Offensive Reduction Treaty (sort), signed in 2002, to “de-alerting” several thousand warheads (that is, putting them in reserve). But there is no dismantlement requirement or verification mechanism, and the treaty limits do not take effect for ten years—and then expire the next day!

A global ban on all nuclear-test explosions
. The United States has actively pursued negotiation of this treaty starting in 1963 and signed it when it was agreed upon at the United Nations in 1996. Then the Republican-controlled Senate refused to ratify it. As a result, India and Pakistan were free to conduct their first nuclear-weapons tests in 1998, making them the latest additions to the “nuclear club.” Repeatedly, from 2002 to 2004, the United States was virtually the only country in the world to vote against a resolution expressing support for this treaty. Without American support, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty cannot enter into force, even though work to complete a global verification network is proceeding on schedule.

Verification of the biological-weapons ban
. Between 1996 and 2001, the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, with representatives from more than fifty nations, worked hard to negotiate a “protocol” to enforce the 1972 ban on the possession and use of biological weapons. This new protocol would permit on-site inspection to ensure the compliance of treaty parties. (Such a protocol would have been helpful in Iraq and Libya, among many other places.) When the Bush administration took over, it announced abruptly that the United States opposed the verification protocol because it might lead to the exposure of industrial secrets of biotech firms. Although many countries had spent years developing a process that would avoid this consequence, the Conference on Disarmament proceeds by consensus, so once the United States refused to continue the talks, the hard-fought accomplishments of many nations were simply discarded.

A ban on weapons in outer space
. The United States alone has opposed the start of talks in the Conference on Disarmament to draft a treaty that would prevent the use or placement of weapons in outer space, for example, for the purpose of destroying satellites placed there by other countries. Again, since the conference proceeds by consensus, this has prevented any discussion of such a treaty. The United States is currently the only country with programs to develop weapons that could be used in space.

Missile nonproliferation and the ABM Treaty
. Claiming that the United States needed to defend itself and other countries against a “rogue state” armed with a small number of long-range nuclear-tipped missiles, in 2002 the United States unilaterally withdrew from the AntiBallistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, which had been in effect since 1968. Widely protested around the world, this nullification of the treaty with Russia allowed the United States to begin testing antiballistic missiles. Then, in another unprecedented step, in 2004 the Bush administration approved the deployment of a costly new antimissile system that has failed in tests and been publicly described by the secretary of defense as not effective—but that would, officials claim, be improved over the years. At the same time, the Bush team reversed the previous administration’s policy of negotiating an agreement with North Korea to permanently end its testing and export of all missiles with a range of more than two hundred miles. Since North Korea has been the source of all longer-range missiles acquired by so-called rogue states, this decision virtually guaranteed that new missile threats would continue to emerge—thereby justifying the U.S. government’s $100-billion to $200-billion investment in the nonoperational antimissile system.