Subject: [big campaign] New Huff Post from Creamer-Time to End the Threat of Nuclear Terrorism for Good
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Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 08:48:43 -0400 (EDT)
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Post-Bin Laden - It Is Time toEnd the Threat of Nuclear Terrorism for Good

    The death of Osamabin Laden eliminated the terrorist who most analysts believe was the mostcommitted to -- and capable of -- obtaining and using a nuclear weapon. 
 
     But there is onlyone way to truly eliminate the threat of nuclear terrorism. America must bejust as relentless in achieving President Obama’s goal of eliminating nuclearweapons from the planet as we were in pursuing bin Laden.
 
     Many “hardnosed”politicians and analysts consider the ideal of eliminating all nuclear weaponsfrom the world to be “naive” or “utopian.”
 
     I recentlyreturned from a seminar on nuclear policy in Vienna, Austria where presentersincluded some of the leading experts on the spread of nuclear weapons, nuclearpower, nuclear disarmament and nuclear terrorism.  I came away convinced that the term “naïve”could only be used to describe those who believe that we can continue to livein a world still bristling with nuclear weapons without endangering our veryexistence. 
 
     Last fall theSenate approved the New START arms control agreement with Russia that reducedeach side’s strategic nuclear arsenal to 1,550 nuclear war heads.   That treaty represented a major step forward– following on the original START Treaty negotiated between President RonaldReagan and Soviet Prime Minster Mikhail Gorbechev.  But this agreement is only a down payment onthe far more fundamental goal of completely ridding the world of all nuclearweapons.  
 
     Why is that goalso critical to our long-term survival? 
     
      All told thereare 25,000 nuclear weapons currently in existence.  Ninety percent of these are controlled by theUnited States and Russia.  They includethe strategic nuclear weapons that are now subject to the New START agreement,as well as thousands of tactical nuclear weapons that are intended to be usedon the battlefield – and many non-deployed nuclear weapons that remain instorage and are not currently targeted at the bases and cities of an adversary.
 
     The remainder arein the hands of the seven additional nuclear nations: China, Britain, France,Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea.  Currently China, Britain and France havehundreds of war heads each.  Israel has 80warheads.  And North Korea has ten.
 
     Notwithstandingthe end of the Cold War almost twenty years ago, thousands of war headsremained on alert – targeted at bases and cities in Russia and the UnitedStates.  From the time a radar-computersystem gives one of the two sides warning of an impending attack, the otherside has just minutes to decide if it should launch a counter attack or riskdefeat and obliteration.   
 
      But that is farfrom the worst of it.   Nucleartechnology is now 65 years old.  Theskill and know-how to create a nuclear weapon is widespread.  Increasing numbers of nations have sought toenter the nuclear club – most recently North Korea and potentially Iran.
 
     An increasinglyunstable regime in Pakistan controls a growing nuclear arsenal.  
    
     Worse, al Quedaand other terrorist organizations have vowed to obtain and actually use nuclearweapons.
 
     The status quo –the balance of terror – that for six decades prevented a nuclear war betweenthe U.S. and Russia is every day being made more unstable by the increasingnumbers of nuclear players – and by the potential entry of non-stateactors.  Far from being deterred by thechaos and human suffering that would ensue from nuclear war – actors like alQueda actively seek precisely that kind of cataclysm. 
 
     The more nuclearweapons that exist in the world – and more importantly the more weapons-gradefissile material that can be obtained to build a nuclear weapon – the morelikely it is that one, or many more, will actually be used.
 
     In the 1980’s thespecter of a “Nuclear Winter” helped spur the movement for nuclear armsreduction between the U.S. and Soviet Union. Studies showed that smoke caused by fires set off by nuclear explosionsin cities and industrial sites would rise to the stratosphere and envelope theworld.  
 
     The ash wouldabsorb energy from the sun so that the earth’s surface would get cold, dry anddark.  Plants would die.  Much of our food supply would disappear.  Much of the world’s surface would reachwinter temperatures in the summer. 
 
     A recent studypublished in Scientific American byscientists Alan Robock and Owen Brian Toon -- using modern climatic computermodels -- found that even a regional nuclear conflict between India andPakistan would shroud the entire planet in a cloud of dust for 10 years andwould massively diminish world food supply. 
 
     The fine dustparticles from nuclear fires would rise into the stratosphere where there is norain to clean the air.  As a consequenceit would take years to gradually settle to the earth’s surface. 
 
     Their studyassumed that India and Pakistan would each use 50 nuclear weapons.  The total of 100 weapons used represents only.4% of the world’s 25,000 nuclear weapons. It found that such a war would kill approximately 20 million people fromthe direct bomb effects and subsequent fires and radiation.  Their model shows it would likely killanother 1 billion people – about a seventh of the world’s population – fromstarvation caused by the agricultural collapse.
 
     These effectswould happen over a decade.  You canimagine that those threatened with starvation would not die quietly.  Rather the world would witness an economicand political crisis without any parallel in recorded history.
 
        Robock andToon tested their model against the actual the effects of volcanic eruptionssuch as those of Tambora in 1815, Krakatau in 1883 and Pinatubo in 1981. Theyfound that their model replicated observed results.  For instance, after the eruption of Pinatubo,sulfate aerosol clouds were carried around the world by winds.  As a result global temperatures dropped by anaverage of .25 degrees Centigrade.  Inaddition, global precipitation, river flow and soil moisture all decreased. 
 
    Mt. Tambora’seruption in Indonesia in 1815 was the worst volcanic eruption in 500years.  Dust from the eruption blockedthe sun and caused global temperatures to drop by .5 Degrees Centigrade.  1816 was known as the “year without summer.”   In New England – thousands of miles fromIndonesia – even though the average summer temperature dropped only a fewdegrees, crop-killing frosts happened in every summer month.  After each frost, farmers replanted only tosee their crops killed the next month.
 
     They also tested their model against theactual firestorms created by the nuclear attacks on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, thefire bombing of Dresden, and the fires caused by the 1906 San Franciscoearthquake.  Each actual episodeconfirmed their result. 
 
     Finally, Robock and Toon point toarcheological evidence that the collision of an asteroid with Yucatan 65 millionyears ago created a similar dust cloud that shrouded the earth and caused theextinction of the dinosaurs. 
 
     The Robock-Toonmodel found that smoke from the imaginary India-Pakistan regional nuclear warwould cover every continent within two weeks and would continue to have massiveimpacts on the global climate for ten years.
 
     The use ofnuclear weapons in any part of the world would affect every livingcreature.   Their use is simplyunthinkable.  Yet the United States andRussia maintain thousands on hair trigger alert.  And terrorists who affirmatively desire tocause global Armageddon actively seek their use. 
 
     If someone lookedback on our generation from the vantage point of a hundred years in the future,they would have a hard time imagining what we were thinking if we allowed thecontinued existence of weapons that we could never use without endangering ourvery existence.
 
     That is preciselywhy a quartet of retired Cold Warriors: former Republican Secretaries of StateHenry Kissinger and George Schultz, former Defense Secretary William Perry andformer Georgia Senator Sam Nunn – have combined to sponsor a campaign toeliminate all nuclear weapons.  
 
      That’s also whyPresident Obama has renewed Ronald Reagan’s often-forgotten call for a nuclearweapon free world. 
 
      Eliminatingnuclear weapons will not be easy – and it must be done in a series of stepsover a number of years.  But there shouldbe no doubt whatsoever that it must be humanity’s goal.  
 
     Immediate stepsinclude U.S. Senate ratification of the nuclear test ban treaty that would banall future nuclear tests.  The UnitedStates signed this treaty years ago, but it has yet to be approved by theSenate.  As a practical matter, final U.S.approval is necessary in order to put this treaty into effect.  In the short term, given the United State’senormous advantage in nuclear test data, this treaty would freeze in place aU.S. nuclear advantage.  Yet it has beenopposed by Neocons who want one day to create a new generation of nuclearweapons that they believe may need to be tested.
 
      Our governmentshould also begin a new round of arms reduction talks with the Russians.  As a practical matter, non-nuclear states aresimply unwilling to accept the view that they should forego the possession ofnuclear weapons if the United States and Russia – which control 90% of all thenuclear weapons on the planet – do not meet their obligations under the NuclearNon-proliferation Treaty to continuously reduce their stockpiles.
 
     One of thecentral components of a strategy to achieve a nuclear weapon free world must bethe negotiation of a new international treaty to control and prevent the newproduction of weapons-grade fissile materials. The know-how to create nuclearweapons will never disappear.  Butfissile materials – highly enriched uranium or plutonium – that can be used tocreate these weapons – can be controlled. Nuclear reactors used for peaceful purposes do not necessarily requireweapons grade fissile material.  Neitherof these elements occurs in nature in a form usable to build nuclearweapons.  Both must be created by humanmanufacturing processes that can be monitored and prevented with appropriateinternational agreements.  Currentweapons-grade fissile materials could be locked down under internationalcontrol, and further production could be banned.
 
     The eliminationof nuclear weapons is certainly one of the most important issues on the humanagenda. 
 
    A few years ago aplanetary scientist named David Grinspoon wrote a book called, LonelyPlanets. It explores thequestion of extraterrestrial life. 
 
     Toward the end ofhis book, Grinspoon speculates on the chances of survival for intelligent lifein the universe.  He argues that everycivilization of intelligent creatures must pass through a gauntlet that testswhether the values and political structures of the society are capable ofkeeping pace with the exponentially increasing power of the society’stechnology.  If its values and politicalstructures can keep pace withtechnological change, the society may pass into a phase of enormous freedom andpossibility.  If it does not, the powerof its own technology will destroy it. Perhaps, he postulates, civilizations are like seahorses.  Many are born, but only a few survive.
 
    For the firsttime, sixty-five years ago, human society entered that gauntlet.  Our technological growth reached a point oftakeoff that for the first time gave us the power to destroy ourselves and alllife on our tiny, fragile planet.  Fromthat moment on, the race was on.
 
     The next severalgenerations of humans will decide how that race turns out.  We won’t simply observe it, or describe it; we will decide it.  Whatever the future holds will be a result ofhuman decision for which we are all responsible.
 
    We will decide ifwe pass through that gauntlet or – like our cousins the Neanderthals – becomeevolutionary dead ends.  We will decideif humanity passes into a new era of possibility and freedom – or the humanstory simply ends.
 
Robert Creamer is a long-timepolitical organizer and strategist, and author of the book:  Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win,available on Amazon.com. Follow him on Twitter @rbcreamer.

     

 

     

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