Johan Galtung and Dietrich Fischer October 4, 1998

Tags: nuclear

weapons">nuclear weapons,
many consider this as perfectly normal. We must end that double
standard and recognize nuclear weapons for what they are:
instruments of terror.

The year 1996 brought us several steps closer to the day when
the threat of a nuclear holocaust no longer hangs over our heads:
On July 8, the World Court declared the threat or use of nuclear
weapons contrary to international law under almost any conceivable
circumstances and unanimously called on all states to conduct
negotiations leading to complete nuclear disarmament. On August 14,
the Canberra Commission on the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons, an
international group of leading scientists, former government
officials and generals, released its final report. It outlines a
concrete step by step plan to eliminate nuclear weapons in a
verifiable way. And on September 10, the United Nations General
Assembly approved the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty by a vote of
158 to 3.

Since then, the world has moved backwards, with India and
pakistan openly testing nuclear weapons, and North Korea suspected
of reneging on the treaty by which it promised to give up its
nuclear weapons program in return for two light water reactors.

A treaty must be concluded as soon as possible to ban nuclear
weapons altogether, like biological and chemical weapons. Why has
an agreement to eliminate nuclear weapons eluded us for so long?
If Hitler had used nuclear weapons and lost the war, they would
have been outlawed as cruel and inhuman long ago. But because they
were first used by the victorious side in a war considered just,
they have enjoyed an undeserved aura of legitimacy. Over the last
fifty years, many flawed arguments have been put forward intended
to justify the policy of nuclear deterrence.

It has been asserted, for example, that nuclear weapons have
helped prevent war. Yet the five declared nuclear powers have been
involved in eight times as many wars on average since 1945 as the
non-nuclear countries. Some credit nuclear weapons with having
prevented nuclear war, which is preposterous: without nuclear
weapons, there could not possibly be any nuclear war. Has nuclear
deterrence prevented a Soviet invasion of Western Europe during the
Cold War? There is no evidence that any such invasion was ever
intended. Even if it was, nothing can justify the risk of
escalating to nuclear war. At the peak, the superpowers' nuclear
arsenals had a destructive power nearly 10,000 times all the bombs
dropped during World War II, including the atomic bombs that
destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or, as President Carter said in
his farewell address, one World War II every second for a slow
afternoon.

It is conceivable that the threat of nuclear retaliation may
help deter a deliberate attack, but not every war begins that way.
When tensions are high, events may escalate out of a small
incident, and it is sometimes hard to say who did what first.
Relying on the threat of mutual destruction to deter war is as if
we sought to prevent traffic accidents by packing our car with
dynamite, putting a trip wire around it and telling everyone,
"Don't hit my car, or it will explode and kill you!" (and me too,
of course). This should deter others from hitting me
intentionally, but the slightest accidental collision would be
fatal.

On numerous occasions, we came close to a nuclear catastrophe,
due to misinformation, misunderstandings, or computer errors.
During the Cuban missile crisis, the United States was ready to
retaliate against the Soviet Union if Castro had shot down American
observation planes, convinced that he did so on Soviet orders.
That could easily have escalated out of control. In fact,
Khrushchev had ordered Castro to stop shooting at American planes,
but Castro ignored his orders. Fortunately, no plane was hit.

As long as the nuclear powers insist on the right to keep
their arsenals, some other countries will be tempted to acquire
nuclear weapons, too. Once terrorists get hold of nuclear weapons,
they may not shrink from using them. Unless we eliminate nuclear
weapons, it is only a question of time until they are used, whether
deliberately or by accident. We are playing Russian roulette with
our future. Moreover, the radioactive waste from their production
pollutes the environment and causes thousands of cases of cancer.

Despite decades of government propaganda, US and British
polls have found repeatedly that up to 85 percent of voters are in
favor of eliminating all nuclear weapons. We must tell the leaders
of the nuclear nations that we reject our role as involuntary
nuclear hostages. The abolition of nuclear weapons requires a
popular movement, in the same way as the abolition of slavery,
colonialism, and most recently apartheid came about only after
sustained public pressure.

Some grant we might be better off if nuclear weapons had never
been invented, but argue that now that we know how to make them, we
cannot disinvent them, and therefore have to live with them as long
as civilization exists. It is true that we cannot disinvent
nuclear weapons, but nobody has disinvented cannibalism either, we
simply abhor it. Can't we learn to abhor equally the thought of
incinerating entire cities with nuclear weapons?