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THE PRAGMATIST’S GUIDE TO NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT  
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Steve Olson
February 9, 2024
Seattle Times
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_ The United States has not seen a widespread nuclear disarmament
movement since the early 1980s. A new one is desperately needed —
but with a twist. _

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The 1980s movement was based on fear. In 1982, a million people,
alarmed by President Ronald Reagan’s nuclear buildup, gathered in
New York City’s Central Park
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oppose the nuclear arms race — still the largest one-day protest in
U.S. history. The next year, 100 million people — almost half the
population of the United States — watched the television movie
“The Day After,” which horrifically depicted the nuclear
destruction of Kansas City.
 

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Watch here [[link removed]]  

Fear can generate a fight-or-flight reaction, but it’s ultimately
counterproductive. People become so scared that they think nothing can
be done and give up. Or they ignore the issue entirely, at least on a
conscious level.

There are still plenty of things to fear. Nuclear treaties are
lapsing. National leaders have threatened to use nuclear weapons
against their enemies. New research, now being reviewed by the
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, has
strengthened the case that even a limited nuclear war could shut down
agriculture for years and doom billions to starvation. A large-scale
nuclear war could smother agriculture for more than a decade and end
civilization.

But fear isn’t necessary to spur action. There are two very
practical reasons to abolish nuclear weapons.

 
Early arrivals sign a petition seeking disarmament in a park near the
United Nations in New York as crowds began forming for a march and
rally in support of nuclear disarmament on June 12, 1982.  (AP
Photo/Warren Jorgenson  //  Seattle Times)
 

The first is their outrageous cost. The U.S. government is on track to
spend at least $1.5 trillion over the next 30 years modernizing its
nuclear weapons. That’s as much as the federal government currently
spends on the National Institutes of Health. Or, to put it another
way, four years of that spending, evenly divided among the 50 states,
would buy us an entirely new ferry fleet.

Key parts of the modernization effort, like the new Sentinel ballistic
missile program, are already massively over budget. Taking apart
nuclear weapons systems would cost a small fraction of the money now
slated to build new ones.

The second reason for getting rid of nuclear weapons is that they are
far more dangerous than they are useful. Nuclear bombs are too large
and destructive to deploy effectively in warfare. They would kill
soldiers and noncombatants on both sides of a conflict. Nuclear
fallout would drift far from a battlefield. Weapons have been getting
smaller and smarter, not bigger and dumber.

Nuclear weapons also don’t make sense politically. If a nuclear
weapon were detonated in a war — assuming that a general nuclear war
did not follow — the responsible nation would face devastating
conventional attacks and be ostracized internationally. No country has
been willing to face those consequences, at least not since the very
different circumstances that prevailed at the end of World War II.

The existence of nuclear weapons supposedly deters their use. No one
has been able to figure out what that nonsensical statement means.
Making a threat implies being willing to carry it out. The idea that
deterrence has worked ignores the history of crises, miscalculations,
and accidents that almost triggered nuclear war. Deterrence works
until it doesn’t.

Nuclear weapons are a federal responsibility. For us as
Washingtonians, that means working through our 10 U.S. representatives
and two U.S. senators to change nuclear policy. Except for U.S. Rep.
Pramila Jayapal, the members of our congressional delegation have
been, at best, guarded in their statements about nuclear weapons.
Washington receives about $20 billion a year in defense spending.
Reducing that flow of funds would seem to be a recipe for electoral
disaster.

But couldn’t at least part of our defense funding be spent in more
socially productive ways? After all, flying a nuclear bomb-carrying
F-35A jet for two hours costs as much as a nurse makes in a year.
Keeping more than 55,000 mostly young men and women here in Washington
well-trained and outfitted for future conflicts may help us feel more
secure. But it doesn’t build infrastructure, spark innovation, or
improve the health and well-being of the population at large.

Here, the Washington Against Nuclear Weapons coalition
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of Physicians for Social Responsibility [[link removed]], has been
exerting pressure on our representatives and senators to take a stand
against nuclear weapons. The Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action
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Kitsap submarine base outside Bremerton — works for disarmament
right next to the largest stockpile of deployed nuclear weapons
anywhere in the world. At the national level, the Ploughshares Fund
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working to reduce and then eliminate the existential threat these
weapons pose.

In 2021, the International Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear
Weapons
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which prohibits the development, production, use, and threat of use of
nuclear weapons, entered into force after being ratified by 50
countries. The nine countries that have nuclear weapons have so far
opposed the treaty, but they are nevertheless bound by the
1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons
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negotiate an agreement “on general and complete disarmament under
strict and effective international control.” That they have not yet
done so is both a bitter disappointment and a betrayal of their stated
intentions.

Nuclear disarmament will not be unilateral or immediate. Nations will
need to negotiate stepped reductions and means of verifying progress.
An especially urgent task is to eliminate the ground-based missiles
now clustered in underground silos in Colorado, Montana, Nebraska,
North Dakota and Wyoming, as well as in Russia and China. These
weapons are inherently destabilizing and dangerous. They have to be
launched within minutes if a president thinks a nuclear attack is
underway. A mistake, miscalculation, or moment of madness could spell
the end of the world.

Unlike efforts to slow climate change, which will require widespread
changes in how we live, the threat of nuclear annihilation could be
eliminated if nine men agreed to destroy about 12,500 pieces of
elaborately machined metal. Reagan and then-president of the Soviet
Union Mikhail Gorbachev almost agreed to junk their nuclear weapons in
1986. The only stumbling block was Reagan’s commitment to a nuclear
weapons defense program that was canceled a few years later.

True, people will always know how to rebuild nuclear weapons. Also,
nuclear power will almost certainly be part of the global response to
climate change. But the world will be a safer and less oppressive
place once our nuclear arsenals are gone.

Nuclear weapons are humanity’s most obscene invention. Our nuclear
arsenals threaten not only us and everything humans have ever created
but a natural creation that is inconceivably intricate and
interdependent. Getting rid of them will be a wonderful human
accomplishment.

_[STEVE OLSON is a Seattle author whose most recent book is “The
Apocalypse Factory: Plutonium and the Making of the Atomic Age
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Hanford and its impact on the world.]_

* nuclear weapons
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* Nuclear Disarmament
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* military spending
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* military budget
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* U.S. military budget
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* Doomsday Clock
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* arms race
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* nuclear arms race
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* Ballistic missiles
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* nuclear bomb
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* arms reductions
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* peace movement
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* anti-nuclear movement
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