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This is Obama’s chance to leave the world a lasting legacy – Opinion – Editorial – General – The Canberra Times

This is Obama’s chance to leave the world a lasting legacy

The Canberra Times HELEN CALDICOTT AND TIM WRIGHT

12/12/2008 US President-elect Barack Obama has shown he has the power to change hearts and minds. Soon he’ll also have the power to render the planet dead and uninhabitable for the rest of time with just the press of a button.

Despite the end of the Cold War, the United States still maintains a supersized arsenal of 10,000 nuclear warheads, more than half of them deployed, and about a quarter of them on hair-trigger alert. They come at a whopping cost of $US50 billion ($A76 billion) a year, roughly the amount needed to pay for universal health care for every US citizen.

Most of America’s nuclear weapons are hundreds of times more powerful than the two atom bombs that obliterated the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Each of them directly threatens global security and human survival. No doubt Barack Obama will find it more than a tad discomforting when, come January, he’s granted this incredible power. Unlike the last three Oval Office occupants, he believes that the world would be better off without nuclear weapons…………………..Commendably, the Australian Labor Party promised before last year’s federal election that in government it would ”drive the international agenda for a nuclear weapons convention”. But it hasn’t followed through, choosing instead to continue the usual mantra of countries with powerful nuclear-armed allies like the US: it’s too soon to be thinking about an abolition treaty……………This October, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon lauded the idea of a new treaty in his UN Day speech, and the Dalai Lama had earlier said that a nuclear weapons convention is ”feasible, necessary and increasingly urgent”. Indeed, if we’re to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and avert nuclear catastrophe elimination through a binding treaty is our only option. Now is the time to pursue it.

All countries have a legal obligation, under the Non-Proliferation Treaty and customary international law, to achieve nuclear disarmament. It cannot be postponed indefinitely. This is the ruling of the world’s highest court, the International Court of Justice……………………………History will judge Barack Obama, the next American leader, by his success or failure on this crucial issue. Ridding the planet of nuclear weapons the ultimate instruments of terror could be his single most important legacy.

This is Obama’s chance to leave the world a lasting legacy – Opinion – Editorial – General – The Canberra Times

Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, radioactive, uranium

December 13, 2008 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | weapons and war