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Daniel Ellsberg’s message to us, and to future generations

Bulletin, By Martin E. Hellman | June 16, 2023

Dan Ellsberg was a brave man. In an effort to end the Vietnam War, he risked spending the rest of his life in jail by leaking the Pentagon Papers. In so doing, he changed history—and our knowledge of our own history.

I’ve been privileged to know Dan for almost 40 years, as a friend and as an activist who is trying to save humanity from our self-created nuclear Doomsday Machine. So it was with sadness and a sense of impending loss that I read his March 2 post, where he revealed that he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and had been given less than six months to live. When the Bulletin invited me to write this piece about Dan, I had a conversation with him so he could tell us what he would like to say to us and to future generations, upon his death. (He died on June 16 at his home in Kensington, Calif., at age 92.)

What do you think should be done to bring stated and actual policy in line with one another?

Dan’s laughter was sparked by seeing the goal stated so baldly, especially since both Ronald Reagan and Joe Biden had stated that, “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”

Dan then noted that America’s nuclear posture is “directed toward meeting that mission” (that is, winning a nuclear war), even though such a mission is “infeasible and impossible.” He decried the American nuclear establishment for giving “no importance whatever to expressing in public what their actual aims and interests and options are.” He also noted that Russia does roughly the same thing and that this refusal to acknowledge reality has to change.

In The Doomsday Machine, Dan recommends a two-step process to make the world safer (see pages 335-350). First, he notes, current, bloated nuclear arsenals and unrealistic war fighting plans would destroy the planet if used. He then says that:

… you can’t eradicate the knowledge of how to make nuclear weapons and delivery systems. But you can dismantle a Doomsday Machine [that would destroy the planet]. … the existence of one such machine [does not] compel or even create a tangible incentive for a rival or enemy to have one. In fact, having two on alert against each is far more dangerous for each and for the world than if only one existed.

… the current danger of Doomsday could be eliminated without the United States or Russia coming close to total nuclear disarmament, or the abandonment of nuclear deterrence, either unilaterally or mutually (desirable as the latter would be). …

This dismantlement of the Doomsday Machines is not intended as an adequate long-term substitute for more ambitious, necessary goals, including total universal abolition of nuclear weapons. We cannot accept the conclusion that abolition must be ruled out “for the foreseeable future” or put off for generations.

Our subsequent conversation dealt with a variety of aspects of nuclear risk and how to reduce it.

The Pentagon Papers, Vietnam, and nuclear risk……………………………………………………………………….

Nuclear weapons are a Sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads

Marty: Let’s come back to what you would like to say to future generations—or people right now even.

Dan: Right now, that there is, and has been for 70 years, a very significant danger of the end of civilization: the death of most humans on Earth within a year by the effects of nuclear winter and nuclear fallout. And that almost nothing has succeeded in lowering that probability, although there are many things that could be done and should have been done. But perhaps it is not too late to accomplish those things now.

We are living, as John F. Kennedy put it, “under a sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads.” And that thread has not been strengthened in the slightest over the years.

What is happening now in the new Cold War is that the chance of reducing that risk is vanishing, the door is in the process of closing.

Is it already too late? We don’t know. But I choose to act, and I urge others to act as if it’s not too late. And I can be very specific on what that would mean.

We need coordination of action that also applies to climate change. It is hard to imagine a way of reducing the global emissions of CO₂ that does not involve coordinated action between the major emitters like the US, China, India, Russia, and Europe.

Coordinated action of a kind that seems almost impossible after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, exploited as that has been by the West to reintroduce a Cold War in which the aims of the adversary are magnified, in which military solutions are looked for. So the chance of lowering the arms budget has virtually disappeared. But, even more importantly, the chance of doing any of the things that would lower the risk of nuclear winter has been almost eliminated at this point.

For over half a century, the existence on both sides of vulnerable land-based ICBMs[5] has been the hair trigger to the Doomsday Machine. They pose a use-it-or-lose-it mentality which encourages each side to launch its missiles on ambiguous warning, lest they be destroyed—in order to attack the ICBMs of the other side.

Coordinated action of a kind that seems almost impossible after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, exploited as that has been by the West to reintroduce a Cold War in which the aims of the adversary are magnified, in which military solutions are looked for. So the chance of lowering the arms budget has virtually disappeared. But, even more importantly, the chance of doing any of the things that would lower the risk of nuclear winter has been almost eliminated at this point.

For over half a century, the existence on both sides of vulnerable land-based ICBMs[5] has been the hair trigger to the Doomsday Machine. They pose a use-it-or-lose-it mentality which encourages each side to launch its missiles on ambiguous warning, lest they be destroyed—in order to attack the ICBMs of the other side.

The numbers [of nuclear warheads] per se don’t matter so much, except for reducing them down to a level that could not produce Doomsday, could not produce omnicide. The potential for that catastrophe has existed for decades and can be eliminated without giving up deterrence.

Does any nation have the right to threaten to kill billions of people? I would say they don’t, and they cannot possibly justify it by a need to deter nuclear attack on themselves, since much smaller arsenals would serve that purpose.

But it gets very tricky when you add that little thing of deterring a nuclear attack against your allies. That produces a very strong incentive to make it look as though you believe you could lower the damage to your own nation, and God knows we have acted as though we believe that hoax since the ’50s or ’60s.

When it comes to that, it’s a total license, as McNamara found, to build a first-strike weapon, to try and make it credible that you’ll respond to an attack on your ally by initiating nuclear war against a nuclear weapon state. And there’s no limit to what you can spend under that crazy assumption.

In other words, it’s been a madman threat from the very beginning……………………….. How do you move people from a totally insane plan to which they’re committed? ……………….. How do you persuade them away from a plan that is batshit crazy?

The risk of a nuclear war

,………………………………………………………….. My guess is that there is not a high likelihood of nuclear war in the current stalemate in Ukraine, so long as Putin is not confronted with losing Crimea or all of the Donbas. But if American troops or Polish troops or German troops were to maintain those tanks and planes that are being given to Ukraine by the West, or to man them, that would be a very significant change, because it could confront Russia with actually losing the Donbas or Crimea. And I think, in those circumstances, Putin would be strongly tempted, as we would be in similar circumstances, to break through that with “small” nuclear weapons in an effort to bring people to their senses and say, “This can’t go on. You’ve got to negotiate at our terms.” Putin’s use of nuclear weapons in that kind of scenario could succeed, but probably would not.

And another thing that I’ve learned, Marty, and that I think is not sufficiently appreciated, is that men in power are willing to risk world annihilation rather than to accept a short-term loss. And it’s not a question of realism or unrealism, it’s a willingness to gamble. They know it’s not likely to succeed, but that doesn’t mean they won’t do it, because there is a chance that it may succeed, which is enough to get them to gamble the world.

Our presidents have that power every hour of every day.

Dan’s father’s awakening………………………………………………………….

The need for action: a fool’s errand?

Dan: People just don’t realize how big this is. What do they do? They don’t do anything one way or the other. The death of humanity is not something that moves them to vote. They act as if there is no chance to make any difference. As if it’s impossible to change things.

Yet, we all thought the Berlin Wall coming down was impossible. Nelson Mandela becoming president of South Africa without a violent revolution seemed impossible.

In the same way, I currently cannot see any chance of getting rid of ICBMs, or of no-first-use. But miracles do happen. I choose to act as if it makes a difference. And it’s just a choice. I can’t defend that. It’s just a better way to live. It’s the way I choose to live. We can work to prevent the cataclysm.

And I think one aspect of that is, 12 months into this Ukraine war, suggesting anything that involves a chance to end it is seen as being on the wrong side. Yet going on as we have has risks vastly disproportionate to any advantage that would be gained in another 12 months of stalemate. The latest leaks indicate exactly what The Pentagon Papers showed: that the people inside perceive themselves as in a stalemate for at least the next 12 months. So what will the effort to break through the stalemate in the 12 months be likely to accomplish? Very little. And what’s the possible downside? The end of everything, essentially.

And likewise, on Taiwan. It’s outrageous. We are risking everything over the issue of the control of Taiwan. When I say risking everything, I mean we are risking all-out nuclear war. And would people, a thousand years ago, have taken such a risk? I think if they could have, they would have. So we’re not worse than people were. We just have a lot more at stake. This is not a species to be trusted with nuclear weapons.

Concluding the interview

Marty: In your email to me, you said, “Other than dying, I’m okay.” I like your humor.

Dan: Well, we’re all dying. I’m in very good shape. For my best friends, I would not wish better than to have the last month I’m having with my wife and my friends like you.

Editor’s note: A 2018 Bulletin interview with Daniel Ellsberg about his book, The Doomsday Machine, can be found here.

Notes……………………………………………………………………………………. https://thebulletin.org/2023/06/daniel-ellsbergs-message-to-us-and-to-future-generations/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=MondayNewsletter06192023&utm_content=NuclearRisk_DanielEllsberg_06162023

June 20, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | PERSONAL STORIES, Reference, weapons and war | 2 Comments