How to end fear

The U.S. and Russia confront each other with a combined total of more than 14,000 nuclear weapons, more than 1,500 of which are on hair trigger alert, able to be launched in less than 15 minutes. For decades the nuclear weapons states have said that they are wise enough, and their technology perfect enough, for us to trust them with weapons that can destroy the world.

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said US-led NATO's eastward expansion has destroyed the very essence of the European security order which was written in the Helsinki Final Act of 1975. The bloc's expansion, he claimed, was a 180-degree turn away from the Paris Charter of 1990. He said the latter was made together with all European states to finally leave the Cold War in the past. "We won't survive the coming years if someone loses their nerve in this overheated situation," Gorbachev said. "This is not something I'm saying thoughtlessly. I am extremely concerned." With both sides flaunting their respective nuclear arsenal, Gorbachev told German magazine Der Spiegel the world "will not survive the next few years" if either side lost its nerve in the current stand-off. "Moscow does not believe the West, and the West does not believe Moscow. The loss of confidence is catastrophic." Russia informed the Americans that they were refusing any more US help protecting their largest stockpiles of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium from being stolen or sold on the black market. The declaration effectively ended one of the most successful areas of cooperation between the former Cold War adversaries. “I think it greatly increases the risk of catastrophic terrorism,” said Sam Nunn, the former Democratic senator from Georgia and an architect of the “cooperative threat reduction” programs of the 1990s.  If that was not enough, the Chief of the Integrated Defence Staff Air Marshal PP Reddy warned that India should be prepared for war on both fronts, namely China and Pakistan. He also said that a nuclear war in the subcontinent could not be ruled out.

A war involving the current nuclear forces of the U.S. and Russia would kill hundreds of millions of people in the first 30 minutes and cause a full blown nuclear winter. The soot from the fires started by more than a thousand nuclear explosions would blot out the sun dropping temperatures around the globe to Ice Age levels. Ecosystems would collapse, food production would plummet, and the vast majority of the human race would starve.

But even a much smaller war would have catastrophic global consequences, and the possibility of limited nuclear war also grew this past year. There was a significant increase in fighting between India and Pakistan along their tense border in Kashmir. A war between India and Pakistan, involving just 100 small nuclear weapons, would not cause a full nuclear winter, but it would disrupt climate and food production enough to put 2 billion people across the globe at risk of starvation.

Incredibly, in the face of these terrible threats, the nuclear weapons states are all planning major upgrades of their nuclear forces. Here in the U.S. the administration is considering a modernization plan that will cost over $300 billion in the next 10 years, and nearly a trillion dollars over the next three decades.

In December, 158 countries gathered in Vienna for the third International Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons and affirmed the need to base nuclear weapons policy on the evolving data about the medical consequences of nuclear war. The pope, the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and 44 countries called for a new treaty to ban nuclear weapons. The Austrian government issued a pledge to build support for such a treaty in the New Year, and to lead efforts to pressure the nuclear weapons states to honor their existing commitments to negotiate the elimination of their nuclear arsenals. A few days later, the Nobel Peace Prize laureates, meeting at their annual summit, called on all nations to “commence negotiations on a treaty to ban nuclear weapons at the earliest possible time, and subsequently to conclude the negotiations within two years.” In the realm of civil society, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons now involves more than 350 organizations around the world working to ban nuclear weapons.

These peace groups have helped to bring back to the public attention the horrific consequences of nuclear war. What is needed is to go beyond a moral outcry and to attack the system which creates war. Good intentions will not solve the problem of war. But actions if they are to be effective require more than refined sensibilities. It is not enough that behaviour is well motivated: if it is to be effective it must be appropriate. Members of peace organisations need to learn just what is involved in keeping people free from the tyranny of death by war at the hands of nuclear weapons. There is an alternative. Abolish capitalism. If they really care about people and our planet they will want to campaign for socialism.