THE CASE FOR NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT
(The above famous symbol contains the superimposed semaphone symbols for N.D., standing for nuclear disarmament, within a circle representing the unborn child., and the new threat nuclear weapons posed to them. It also represents the broken Cross, symbol of the death of mankind. It was designed by Gerald Holtom for the first Aldermaston March, and unveiled a few weeks beforehand in the small hall at St Pancras Town Hall, according to Peggy Duff, Organizing Secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, in her book LEFT, LEFT, LEFT, Allison & Busby Ltd, 1971. Later it was adopted by Americans as a general peace symbol, but its meaning is much more specific: NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT.)
Link to CND website: www.cnduk.org
(Comments: tony.papard@btinternet.com)
Moral case
Morally nuclear weapons are totally indefensible, because they target entire cities and areas of countryside indiscriminately. It seems very clinical to sit in a bunker, or in a nuclear armed submarine beneath the ocean, and press a button. The operator doesn't see the effects of their action, just as the airman releasing the conventional bombs from a plane high over a city doesn't see the terrible effects on the ground.
Now take another scenario. Suppose, instead of nuclear weapons, we took millions of innocent men, women and children from another country hostage, and said in the event of an attack on our country we would burn them alive, torture them, hold blow-lamps in the faces of screaming children and babies until they died, and then kill many of those that remained and their descendents by deliberately taking them inside a nuclear reactor and exposing them to deadly radiation. Would that be an acceptable way for a civilized society to behave? Would Messrs Blair, Bush, Putin and the rest of the leaders of the nuclear powers be able to stay out of jail, let alone be re-elected, if they advocated such a policy?
Yet there is absolutely no difference. Everybody who supports nuclear weapons, and the so-called 'nuclear deterrent', is saying this is exactly what they would be willing to do. The intention and threat is almost as bad as doing the awful deed itself, for with nuclear weapons once we have put our name to it, rest assured it will be done in our name if the circumstances arise. The men who have to press the button are trained to respond to orders without questioning what they are doing. They, and those who give the orders, are far worse than even the Nazi killers in the concentration camps, because of the sheer scale of what they are willing to do at the press of a button.
Such a policy is so wicked and evil it beggars belief that any society calling itself civilized can even contemplate it. Dropping conventional bombs on civilians is exactly the same only on a smaller scale, just as in previous centuries slaughtering innocent men, women and children by hacking them to death with swords was also a totally indefensible crime.
That people who call themselves Christians can put their names to such a terrible war crime, to such a monstrous act of inhumanity and depravity, makes them absolute hypocrites. The founder of the Christian religion told the disciple Peter to put away his sword when Christ was being taken away and soon to be executed by crucifixion. And as for defending one's country, it should be remembered that Jesus Christ lived in an occupied colony of the Roman Empire, yet never once suggested his followers should even take up arms against their occupiers, let alone slaughter innocent men, women and children in the occupying army's homeland.
I am not a Christian, but I believe Christ and other teachers spoke the truth - 'those who live by the sword shall die by the sword', and violence never solves anything. To take innocent lives is completely beyond the pale.
Nuclear weapons are of another order of wickedness, evil and stupidity altogether, for not only do they kill, maim and torture human beings in the most terrible way, they destroy the animal kingdom and also the entire environment. If a nuclear war ever broke out we could well destroy our entire planet. How arrogant of mankind, let alone supposedly religious people, to decide they have the right to kill, maim and destroy life and the environment on such a huge scale, or even to threaten to do so.
As soon as it became possible to create nuclear weapons, they should have been banned internationally. They certainly should never have been used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and immediately after the Second World War was the perfect opportunity to renounce them forever by international agreement.
Legal case
Because of their tremendous power and completely indiscriminate nature, nuclear weapons are totally illegal. Even their threatened use against civilian populations is a war crime. The argument always was that they were a 'deterrent', more about that in the next section. But what is even more worrying is that USA and others are now planning a new generation of 'bunker-busting nukes' and other smaller battlefield nuclear weapons which are actually meant to be used in a war situation. This blurs the distinction between conventional and nuclear warfare, so is particularly dangerous as it could easily lead to uncontrolled escalation.
Let's be perfectly clear, even small nuclear weapons are totally illegal. Their blast and radiation cannot be controlled to insure there is no 'collateral damage' to quote the fashionable military expression for murder of innocent civilians. Even if it could, the danger of escalation to full-scale nuclear war makes the use of small-scale nuclear weapons totally beyond the pale. There can be no legal justification for polluting the environment, and endangering civilians, with these weapons. They must be banned.
Military case
Nuclear weapons are militarily useless. Since the Second World War, when they were illegally used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki when the war was virtually over and the Japanese government was already suing for peace, nuclear weapons have never been used precisely because they are militarily useless.
This is not just because of fear of retaliation. The Vietnamese didn't have the nuclear bomb, yet they defeated nuclear armed USA. The same with the Afghans in their war against the nuclear armed Soviets. Britain's nuclear bomb didn't deter non-nuclear Argentina from reclaiming the Malvinas/Falkland islands. USA's nuclear weapons certainly didn't prevent 9/11. So why the bloody hell do we still cling on to these dangerous, evil and totally useless Weapons of Mass Destruction?
Purely as a status symbol. The big 5 nuclear powers, USA, Russia, France, Britain and China, all have permanent seats on the UN Security Council. The nuclear non-proliferation treaty, drawn up to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons to non-nuclear countries, lays down that the existing nuclear powers will take steps to reduce and eliminate our nuclear stockpiles. This process has stagnated, and now a new generation of nuclear weapons is being planned. USA wants the smaller, war-fighting nukes described above, and to take nuclear weapons into space. Britain looks set to buy some of the new generation of U.S. nuclear weapons to replace Trident. This is all pure madness.
Let's be clear once and for all - nuclear weapons haven't stopped wars, and they haven't won wars either. The shock of the first two atomic bombs on Japan MAY have accelerated their surrender by a few days, but at what a terrible cost. Nothing, not even the shortening of the War, can justify killing thousands of innocent civilians in this way. And why drop the second bomb on Nagasaki before the Japanese government even had time to respond to the first bomb on Hiroshima? These were just tested on the Japanese as revenge for Pearl Harbor and because the Americans wanted to see the effects of their terrible new weapon on men, women, children and animals. That's how incredibly evil the Americans who built and dropped these bombs were. As evil as the Japanese who killed and tortured prisoners, and as evil as the Nazis who killed millions in the concentration camps. As evil as the RAF pilots who blasted and burned innocent men, women and little children to death in their totally illegal and barbaric air raids over Germany. In modern warfare, civilization breaks down completely and there are no depths of evil and depravity all sides will not resort to.
Nuclear weapons, bringing death and destruction on such a massive and long-lasting scale, are simply more efficient at killing and maiming innocent people, but no less evil, and just as much of a war crime as the Holocaust. In any nuclear war far more than 6 million would die, the entire planet would be at risk. No wonder they called the Cold War nuclear standoff MAD (supposedly standing for Mutually Assured Destruction).
Nuclear weapons haven't kept the peace. Nuclear armed states have fought and lost many wars against non-nuclear armed states as shown above. Because they dare not use such a terrible weapon after the outrage over the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they are militarily unusable, and may they always stay that way until they are banned completely.
It wasn't nuclear weapons which kept the peace in Europe, but the Yalta and Potsdam agreements, bolstered by the NATO and Warsaw Pacts, which divided the Continent between the Soviet and Western spheres of influence. This was why the Soviets never tried to invade Western Europe, and why the West never intervened in Hungary in 1956 or Czechoslovakia in 1968. Outside of Europe the West wasn't deterred from confronting the Soviet Union and its allies, look at the Korean and Vietnam wars, and of course the Bay of Pigs attempt to overthrow the Castro Cuba government.
People might cite the Cuba missile crisis as an example of when war was deterred by nuclear weapons. This is the biggest lie and fallacy of all. The Cuba crisis was CAUSED by nuclear weapons. If Krushchov hadn't been preparing to put nuclear weapons in Cuba, the crisis would never have occurred in the first place. At the time, the Soviet Union was surrounded by nuclear weapons on its very borders, in Turkey, probably in Alaska, and certainly under the seas around the Soviet Union inside US and British Polaris submarines. Yet the threat of a few nuclear missiles in Cuba caused JFK to bring the world to the brink of a nuclear war, which was only avoided when the USSR backed down at the last minute. If nuclear weapons had been banned from the outset, and the U.N. had been given the power to insure this ban was enforced, the Cuba missile crisis would never have occurred in the first place. Nuclear weapons can cause wars, but they can't prevent them. If they could, we'd give every country nuclear weapons and have world peace. Just look at all the wars which have been fought, many involving the nuclear powers, since 1945.
Nuclear weapons are spreading around the globe, largely because the big nuclear powers refuse to give up their own nuclear weapons for reasons of prestige and status. India and Pakistan now have them, a very volatile region where wars and skirmishes have frequently broken out over the disputed territory of Kashmir. Will we all feel a lot safer when every country in the world has nuclear weapons, including the Israelis and Palestinians, the North and South Koreans, every country in Africa, Asia and South America?
The nuclear threat hasn't gone away with the Cold War. It is more real than ever. Since the dismantling of the Soviet Union it is possible some of their nuclear weapons/material could end up in the hands of suicide bombers who would willingly blow themselves up in the process. As they spread to more and more unstable countries, their use becomes more likely, especially if that country is ruled by a ruthless dictator who, deep in his nuclear-proof bunker, doesn't care what happens to the civilian population of his country. If USA, UK and Russia develop mini-nukes then their eventual use in war is virtually certain. Then we are on the road to certain global catastrophe.
We are already poisoning the environment, and causing catastrophes around the globe because of global warming, etc. All these things must be tackled urgently, and none is more urgent than the complete and universal ban on nuclear weapons, policed by the United Nations and monitored by U.N. inspectors and spy satellites.