Nuclear Disarmament More Urgent Than Ever

Nuclear Disarmament More Urgent Than Ever
IPS by By Mikhail Gorbachev 31 July 09 “………………. Nothing fundamentally new has been achieved in the area of nuclear disarmament in the past decade and a half. Twenty years after the end of the Cold War, the arsenals of the nuclear powers still contain thousands of weapons, and the world is facing the very real possibility of a new arms race………………..

The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) has not entered into force. The quantities of nuclear weapons held by Russia and the United States still far exceed the arsenals of all other nuclear powers combined, thus making it more difficult to bring them into the process of nuclear disarmament.

The nuclear non-proliferation regime is in jeopardy. While the two major nuclear powers bear the greatest responsibility for this state of affairs, it was the U.S. that abrogated the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM Treaty), has failed to ratify the CTBT, and refused to conclude with Russia a legally binding, verifiable treaty on strategic offensive arms.

Only recently have we seen indications that the major nuclear powers understand the current state of affairs is untenable…………………………….
The use and the threat of force, which, of course, are illegal under the UN Charter, were reasserted as a “normal” mode of solving problems. Official documents rationalized doctrines of pre-emptive strike and the need for U.S. military superiority.

Humanity must be wary of a new arms race. Priority is still being given to financing of military programmes, and “defence” budgets far exceeding reasonable security requirements keep growing, as does the weapons trade. U.S. military expenditures are almost as high as those of the rest of the world combined.

Disregard for international law and for peaceful ways of settling disputes, for the United Nations and its Security Council, is being proclaimed as a kind of policy………………….

……. If the holders of the largest stocks of nuclear weapons embark upon real reductions, others will no longer be able to sit it out and conceal their arsenals from international control. This is an issue that we must raise now if we are to have the kind of trust without which common security cannot be achieved.

GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES: OPINION: Nuclear Disarmament More Urgent Than Ever

July 31, 2009 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 1, 2 WORLD, weapons and war | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear weapons | Leave a comment

Unholy trinity

Unholy Trinity
ON LINE opinion by Bill Williams 28 July 09
“……………………..We have just entered the 65th year of humanity’s troubled relationship with nuclear arms, the world’s worst weapons of terror. So it’s a good time to be promoting their retirement and for Australia to be using every tool in its diplomatic kitbag to encourage the nine Nuclear Weapons States (NWS) to negotiate and implement a global treaty that eliminates their nukes once and for all.

On July 16, 1945 the Americans detonated their first nuclear weapon – the “Trinity” test – in the New Mexico desert, prompting its mastermind Robert Oppenheimer to recall the words of Vishnu in the Bhagavad-Gita: “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”

This fantastic power was unleashed upon the residents of the Japanese city of Hiroshima just three weeks later, at 8.15 on the morning of August 6, when the uranium-bomb – “Little Boy” – exploded above the city: by nightfall about 70,000 people were dead and since then an estimated further 180,000 have died. The cancer rates among the ageing survivors continue to rise even today.

But we all still live in the shadow of nuclear Armageddon. There remain 23,000 nukes in the arsenals of the nine Nuclear Weapons States (NWS): Russia, USA, UK, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and now North Korea. Two thousand five hundred of these weapons are retained on high-alert status, capable of launch within 15 minutes – and there’s no bringing them back. Meanwhile the risk of other nations joining the “club” is on the increase, with the current focus being on Iran. Bear in mind, however, that at least 44 nations have nuclear bomb-making capabilities, including all those states with civil nuclear power plants, which are producing plutonium as a fission byproduct in those reactors.

Unholy trinity – On Line Opinion – 28/7/2009

July 28, 2009 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 1, 2 WORLD, weapons and war | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear weapons | Leave a comment