Are Nuclear Weapons Bad? How the US justifies its nuclear arsenal

 

The only use of nuclear weapons in war was in 1945 

Early in World War II American scientists, some of them from Germany and  Austria, became alarmed that Nazi scientists were developing an atomic bomb. Leo Zillard and Albert Einstein contacted President Roosevelt warning about the possibility. The response was to authorize under strict secrecy the Manhattan Project which rushed the research and development of the US uranium and plutonium atomic bombs.  

Following the massive deaths and injuries caused by these bombs on  Hiroshima and Nagasaki, US policymakers made the case that these horrific weapons were so terrible that no one would dare use them again.  President Eisenhower warned of the emerging "military-industrial complex,"  and extolled "Atoms for Peace" in part to mitigate the horror of nuclear bombs. However, the development of nuclear energy also led to further development of nuclear weapons.1 

Deterrence is a dangerous myth2 

Deterrence became the very grounds on which successive governments justified their nuclear arsenals. 

The US emerged from World War II as the sole possessor of nuclear weapons.  

"Though it inspired greater confidence in the immediate postwar  years, the U.S. nuclear monopoly was not of long duration; the Soviet  Union successfully exploded its first atomic bomb in 1949, the United  Kingdom in 1952, France in 1960 and the People’s Republic of China  in 1964."3 

Soviet nuclear scientist Yulii Khariton later said, "When we succeeded in  solving this problem [of building an atomic bomb], we felt relief, even  happiness -- for in possessing such a weapon we had removed the  possibility of its being used against the USSR with impunity." Israel, North 4 Korea, India, Pakistan, and Iran all sought nuclear weapons as a safety precaution against other nuclear nations. 

At the Brink

We’ve come far closer to worldwide nuclear war than most of the world knows. During the Korean War, Richard Nixon nearly bombed the peninsula using a nuclear weapon but was persuaded against it at the last minute. During the Cold War, nuclear submarine launch officer Stanislav Petrov refused orders to launch, almost certainly preventing a nuclear exchange. Better known to the public, careful negotiation stopped a nuclear exchange during the Cuban missile crisis. It’s only through clear negotiated agreements and disarmament that we’ve avoided armageddon, and now the world is rearming and not talking to one another. 

Atmospheric testing on nuclear weapons 

Atmospheric testing of US nuclear weapons began in 1947 at the Nevada  Test Site, then the Marshall Islands, off Kiritimati Island in the Pacific, plus three in the Atlantic Ocean. Several years later the USSR tested at Novaya  Zemlya island, and Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan. Global radiological contamination from more than a thousand tests is still a major health problem worldwide. Whole populations in exposed regions continue to show increased rates of cancer and more non-specific effects undermining good health.5 

Are nuclear weapons illegal? 

International treaties outlaw biological and chemical weapons as weapons of mass destruction. The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons is 6 binding only for signatory nations, and none of the nuclear nations have signed. Humanitarian law outlaws use of weapons that fail to discriminate between civilians and combatants or create disproportionate harm to people or the environment. The United Nations Security Council enshrines five nuclear nations with a veto, which has assured that the  United Nations does not declare nuclear weapons illegal. 

Why are there so many nuclear nations? 

Because governments have militarized their approaches to security between cultures and nations that have failed to negotiate mutual safety. Why can't we just get along? 

Changing US Culture and Working Towards a World Without Nuclear Weapons

At the Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility, we are actively working towards building a culture of peace and demilitarization in order to eliminate nuclear weapons for good. While our voice is credible, we are few. That’s where you come in. By supporting our work, you can help us expand our voice so that we can confront reactionary politics and war profiteers. Help us fight for peace and the prevention of nuclear war today. 

References

  •  https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2003_12/Lavoy#: 1 

  •  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/14/nuclear-deterrence-myth-lethal-david- 2 barash 

  • 3 https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/atomic# 

  •  https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/bomb-soviet-tests/ 4  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4165831/ 5 

  • 6 https://disarmament.unoda.org/wmd/nuclear/tpnw/#

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Nuclear Policy Priorities

We are living in the context of a new nuclear arms race, this time in a multi-polar world. We need our members of Congress to stand for nuclear justice and disarmament, not for nuclear war. this year’s legislative session. Congress has the opportunity to push forward powerful policies to put America back on a path of nuclear disarmament and to address these, our Nuclear Weapons Task Force has developed a set of nuclear weapons policy priorities that we are urging Congress to support.

Support the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons

We call upon our government to join the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, also known as the nuclear ban treaty, which would prohibit the possession or use of nuclear weapons in order to achieve a healthier, safer, and more peaceful future. Embracing the goals and provisions of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons is a Back from the Brink resolution which calls on the President to embrace the goals and provisions of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and makes nuclear disarmament the centerpiece of the national security policy of the United States. It also establishes the sense of Congress to endorse the following common-sense nuclear policy reforms:

  • renouncing the option of using nuclear weapons first;

  • ending the President’s sole authority to launch a nuclear attack;

  • taking the nuclear weapons of the United States off hair-trigger alert;

  • canceling the plan to replace the nuclear arsenal of the United States with modernized, enhanced weapons; and

  • actively pursuing a verifiable agreement among nuclear-armed states to mutually eliminate their nuclear arsenals.

Continue the U.S. moratorium on nuclear testing

There is no benefit to nuclear weapons tests and decades of evidence of the harm. The United States has not conducted an explosive test since 1992, checking the efficacy and reliability of its weapons with alternative tests that produce no nuclear yield, like computer simulations. With communities around the world still recovering from the nuclear tests of the past 75 years, we must continue the U.S. commitment to the global testing moratorium. The Senate version of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2021 includes $10 million to prepare the Nevada test site to resume nuclear testing. The House version contains a prohibition on such funding. Members of Congress consistently push to resume testing, so we must remain vigilant.

Put America on the path toward nuclear disarmament

  • Renounce the option of using nuclear weapons first 

  • End the sole authority of any US president to launch a nuclear attack

  • Take U.S nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert

  • Cancel the plan to replace the entire US nuclear arsenal with enhanced weapons

Compensate civilians exposed to NUCLEAR radiation

Before the United States military used nuclear weapons against civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they built and tested them on American soil. The Manhattan Project was spread across the country with facilities at Hanford, Washington; Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Los Alamos, New Mexico; Livermore, California and eventually the Trinity test site in south-central New Mexico. Downwind communities were neither protected nor informed of airborne radiation releases from these facilities.

This failure to inform and protect continued throughout the ensuing decades of the Cold War as uranium mining, production, and testing contaminated soil, air, and groundwater. Testing at the Nevada Test site lasted from 1951-1992. The United States conducted testing in the Marshall Islands from 1946-1958. Many mining and production facilities continue to be active and cleanup at closed facilities is incomplete. Even today, generations later, we see the devastating health effects of exposure to ionizing radiation released from these facilities.

In 1990, The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) began compensating and offering health care to exposed people within a few of these communities. Without Congressional action, RECA will sunset. Congress should renew RECA to continue protecting these very vulnerable groups; strengthen RECA to offer more comprehensive and accessible compensation; and expand RECA to include the communities currently left out.