Dear Progressive Reader,
Today marks the first anniversary of the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. In this document, signers agree that they are “Reaffirming that any use of nuclear weapons would also be abhorrent to the principles of humanity and the dictates of public conscience . . . [and are] Determined to act with a view to achieving effective progress towards general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.”
While the United States is not among the nearly ninety signatories, the treaty still represents a global movement in hope that the world might be able to move away from the threat of nuclear destruction. Last year, Ralph Hutchison and John LaForge wrote that the treaty “is no magic wand. Nine nuclear-armed states claim that the treaty doesn’t apply to them . . . [but it] can be a kind of a lever and a beacon for achieving the elimination of nuclear weapons, a goal every government on earth claims to desire.” As Medea Benjamin noted about the importance of the treaty in her recent list of good things that were accomplished in 2021, “At a time when the outcome of the nuclear talks with Iran are uncertain, and when conflicts with Russia and China regarding Ukraine and Taiwan are intensifying, such a reminder is critical.”
Meanwhile, the respected Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Science and Security Board voted this week to keep its Doomsday Clock at one hundred seconds to midnight. In their statement, they cite the threats of nuclear war, the global climate crisis, and the continued development of biological weapons, as existential threats to humanity. “In view of this mixed threat environment—with some positive developments counteracted by worrisome and accelerating negative trends,” the world, they state, is “no safer than it was last year at this time . . . . This decision does not, by any means, suggest that the international security situation has stabilized. On the contrary, the Clock remains the closest it has ever been to civilization-ending apocalypse because the world remains stuck in an extremely dangerous moment. In 2019 we called it the new abnormal, and it has unfortunately persisted.” The Clock, which first appeared on the Bulletin’s cover in June 1947, is now seventy-five years old, but has never been closer to midnight. It was at its most distant, seventeen minutes to midnight, in 1991 following the end of the Cold War with the former Soviet Union.
In other news this week, Robert Weissman and Savanah Wooten critique the bloated Pentagon budget. “Cutting the Pentagon’s budget,” they note, “and reinvesting the savings into anti-poverty, climate justice and public health programming would reap economic and human rewards far and wide.” Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies ask, “After a year of Biden, why do we still have Trump’s foreign policy?” They detail ten items where changes could have been made, but have not. Sarah Lahm looks at the election fraud craze as it is playing out in a small county in Minnesota where 2020 ballots are being questioned by Trump loyalists, even though Republicans won every office by wide margins. And Ed Rampell provides a portrait of the late actor Sidney Poitier.
Finally, the world renowned Vietnamese Buddhist and pacifist Thích Nhất Hạnh has passed away at the age of 95. Laurence M. Stern, former reporter and editor at The Washington Post, who wrote for The Progressive about Washington, D.C. from 1964 until 1979 under the pseudonym “Potomacus,” provided us this portrait in July 1971:
In his brown Buddhist robes the Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh is a slight figure who seems, but for the suffering in his eyes, to be barely out of his adolescence. In fact he is forty-four years old, a monk since he joined a Zen community at the age of sixteen, the author of ten books, including three acclaimed volumes of poetry. Since 1966 Thich Nhat Hanh has been in exile from his native South Vietnam, unable to return because of his outspoken opposition to the war and to the military rulers in Saigon. He is the observer of the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam at the Paris negotiations. A few weeks ago he visited Washington—perhaps his last such visit, since Saigon has announced it is revoking his passport—and offered these “three steps that the United States can take to end the war in Vietnam”:
“One—to declare unilaterally an immediate cease-fire, stopping all aerial bombing and ground missions and the use of chemical defoliants, and withdrawing to positions of self-defense. This action will not only stop the destruction of human life but will also clearly prove the American intention to end the war. It will draw considerable sympathy and support within and without Vietnam. It will encourage Vietnamese on both sides to stop shooting at each other.
“Two—to pledge complete withdrawal of all U.S. military forces from Vietnam and to announce a timetable for such withdrawal. This action will assure Vietnamese who support the National Liberation Front that foreign soldiers are not going to be in the country any more, and there is no reason to support a war that kills only Vietnamese. It will also allow Vietnamese on both sides to come together to seek a political settlement.
“Three—to stop supporting the present Saigon government in its attempt to impose itself longer on the Vietnamese people. This action will lead to the end of corruption and dictatorship in Saigon, to the release of political prisoners, to the restoration of religious and civil liberties, and to the formation of a peace government that can get the overwhelming support of the Vietnamese people.”
The most urgent of these steps, the indispensable step, is a ceasefire, Thich Nhat Hanh insisted. In a voice barely audible, he said: “The Vietnamese people are so tired of war. Vietnamization is just an attempt to continue the war with fewer American troops but more American arms. What we need most, what we need now, is an ending of the killing.”
Please keep reading, and we will keep bringing you important articles on these and other issues of our time.
Sincerely,
Norman Stockwell
Publisher
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