March 31, 2000
“Fail Safe” Sparks the Anti-Nuclear Movement
WASHINGTON, DC: Nuclear disarmament advocates plan to capitalize on heightened public awareness of the danger posed by nuclear weapons thanks, in part, to CBS’s remake of the 1964 nuclear weapons thriller, “Fail Safe.” Groups such as Project Abolition, Disarmament Clearinghouse, Global Security Institute and Peace Action are organizing hundreds of watch parties for concerned citizens nationwide to view “Fail Safe” on April 9, 2000. For information about watch parties in your area, please call 1-800-997-2224.
In “Fail Safe,” a computer glitch triggers an accidental attack by US nuclear bombers on Russia, resulting in the destruction of Moscow and the subsequent annihilation of New York City. Organizers of the watch parties believe that the numerous nuclear weapons accidents that have occurred over the last 50 years are proof that leaving 3,600 Russian and 2000 US nuclear warheads on permanent hair trigger alert, poses an unnecessary risk to our global security.
“The re-make of Fail Safe should help re-awaken the American public to the nuclear danger,” says Kevin Martin, Director of Project Abolition. Organizers point to an incident in 1995 that brought the world minutes from an all out nuclear war when a routine satellite launch was mistaken by Russia as a U.S. nuclear missile attack. “Ten Years after the end of the Cold War, we have the opportunity to eliminate the scourge of nuclear weapons from the face of the earth, if enough people demand it,” says Martin.
According to former U.S. Senator Alan Cranston who currently heads the Global Security Institute, “Fail Safe” is a dramatic story of how there could have been, and still could be, an accidental nuclear war. There have been more than 1000 false alarms leading to the mistaken assumption that one nuclear super power had fired against the other. At least three of these came dangerously close to triggering a nuclear exchange between the two nuclear super powers, including in 1995 when Russia mistook a Norwegian weather satellite launch for a nuclear attack.”
Aids woke President Boris Yeltsin in the middle of the night and alerted him of an approaching U.S. Trident nuclear missile. For what is believed to be the first time in history, the Russian President activated his “nuclear briefcase” for a retaliatory attack against the West. Just six minutes before the final impact of the missile, the Russians switched on a special communications circuit that connected Kremlin headquarters with silo-based missiles, missile-carrying trains and submarines – the Russians were, in effect, at “Battle Stations.” Minutes before the launch of Russia’s nuclear arsenal, the alarm was determined to be false.
According to CBS advertising executives, between 20 and 30 million viewers are expected to tune in to the live broadcast of the movie that is based on the best-selling novel by Harvey Wheeler and Eugene Burdick. The groups organizing the watch parties want the US and Russia to take concrete steps to de-alert nuclear weapons and move toward global nuclear disarmament. Currently Representative Edward Markey of Massachusetts is sponsoring Congressional Resolution 177 which seeks to take U.S. nuclear weapons off high alert as part of a diplomatic effort to urge Russia to do the same. Markey has 90 co-sponsors of the measure.
For more information about locations of watch parties, to arrange interview with organizers, or Congressman Markey, please contact Adam Eidinger at 202-547-3577 or 202-744-2671.
Posted by zack_allen at 11:32 AM
March 28, 2000
Do As We Say, Not As We Do
Defense: The world can see through our hypocritical preaching about nuclear arms control
“Oh gosh, I forgot, we do have 6,000 strategic nuclear warheads of our own at a high state of alert, 15 minutes away from blowing up any city in the world. But our nuclear bombs are carried by ‘Peacekeeper’ missiles and are not intended as weapons of mass destruction.”
Could that have been President Clinton last week when the leaders of India and Pakistan both turned down his call to abandon their hot and heavy nuclear arms race? Obviously not, but it does underscore U.S. hypocrisy on this issue.
Clinton was right to be concerned that a half-century of animosity on the subcontinent is accelerating into the very real possibility that those two bitter enemies will use the nuclear weapons they have been testing, with devastating consequences for them and the rest of the world.
In both countries, there is a fevered pitch of excitement about the prospect of developing powerful nuclear forces that can be used to settle historical territorial, ethnic and religious disagreements. There, as in other parts of the world, the nuclear club is expanding, and a giddiness even in progressive circles in democratic India about the usefulness of those weapons defies rational explanation. The sad truth is that the world has learned to live with, if not love, the bomb, and until some major city disappears in a nuclear conflagration, nuclear arms control is a tough sell. Nuclear weapons are a cheap route to national power.
But it is also painfully obvious that the U.S. has zero credibility in urging other nations to abstain from reliance on a weapon that remains the cornerstone of our own defense policy–an unspeakable weapon that we have been the only ones to use, which we are now in the process of modernizing as an even more destructive implement of war. Despite the end of the Cold War, we are the rogue nation that nuked huge populations of innocent civilians and, to this day, we have never disavowed the right to the “first use” against a presumed enemy. Our national policy remains the doctrine of “mutually assured destruction,” which threatens to end all life on the planet and, as its acronym suggests, made no sense even when the Soviet Union was a viable enemy.
Indeed, shorn of a credible enemy, we no longer seem capable of focusing on the need to rid the world of nuclear weapons and have dramatically regressed in the pursuit of arms control. We bemoan the spread of bomb-making technology to unstable regimes from North Korea to Iraq. But this administration has failed miserably to advance the cause of nuclear nonproliferation or to build on the success of previous Republican administrations in pursuing a regime of arms control with those who inherited the Soviets’ nuclear arsenal, an arsenal more threatening than ever because of the steady disintegration of Russian command and control.
Clinton is in the absurd position of urging India and Pakistan to sign the nuclear test-ban treaty when only last fall the U.S. Senate refused to ratify that very treaty. The test-ban treaty was the cornerstone of U.S. efforts under six previous presidents to secure an effective worldwide nuclear nonproliferation treaty, which is now in a shambles.
Nor has this administration made any progress in getting the Russians to ratify the START II treaty. The U.S. is now poised to violate that treaty’s basic commitment to cut each side’s strategic nuclear arsenal in half. Instead of cutting back to the 3,000 strategic warheads permitted by the START II treaty that the Senate has ratified, the administration has embarked on a program to modernize 6,000 of those warheads. The administration also has hastened development of a ballistic missile defense system that would make hash of the Antiballistic Missile Treaty.
But no amount of investment in such a Star Wars-based missile defense would leave the American people secure from an enemy that possesses nuclear weapons and is determined to use them. Nuclear weapons can be smuggled into this country the same way that truckloads of marijuana and cocaine daily cross our borders undetected.
Get serious. As dozens of nations now energetically pursue membership in the nuclear club, and as it becomes that much more difficult to keep the sick genie possessed of nuclear weapons material and knowledge in the bottle, there is only one path to the security of our nation and others: abolishing nuclear weapons. That means a concerted effort by existing members of the nuclear club to end the testing, development and deployment of nuclear weapons and to define them, as we have with biological weapons, indelibly, as non-weapons totally unfit for the pursuit of any human purpose.
Robert Scheer is a Contributing Editor to The Times
Posted by zack_allen at 11:19 AM
March 25, 2000
Support Is Sought to Stop Use of Nuclear Weapons
Millions of Americans will watch a live reenactment of the 1964 Cold War thriller Fail Safe on CBS television starring and produced by George Clooney.
Fail Safe is a gripping fictional tale of accidental nuclear war. Unfortunately, the nuclear threat remains all too real even now, ten years after the end of the Cold War. More than 35,000 nuclear weapons are still in existence with most poised to launch at a moment’s notice.
The broadcast of Fail Safe will reawaken many people to the nuclear danger.
Kevin Marin, director, Project Abolition, Fourth Freedom Forum, stated we have 30,000 nuclear weapons in the world. “We are raising the consciousness of nuclear weapons. It is a civic issue and there are people concerned,” said Martin.
The Fourth Freedom Forum initiated Project Abolition in 1999 to increase public awareness of nuclear danger and build grassroots support in the United States for the reducation and elimination of nuclear weapons.
Project Abolition is based at the Fourth Freedom Forum headquarters in Goshen, Indiana.
One of the co-chairpersons is former Senator Alan Cranston, president of the Global Security Institute.
The Fourth Freedom Forum and the Global Security Institute urge that nuclear weapons be taken off hair-trigger alert and invite Russia to do the same, cancel plans for a national missile defense that will provoke a new arms race, renew negotiations with Russia for deep cuts in our nuclear arsenals, reduce the $40 billion per year that the U.S. spends on nuclear weapons and reinvest the money in human needs.
On Fail Safe National Call-in Day, Monday, April 10, the Forum urges everyone to end the nuclear madness. Call 202-456-1111 or 202-456-1414. For information to remove nuclear weapons call 1-800-4-DENUKE or visit www.disarmament.org.
Posted by zack_allen at 11:17 AM
March 22, 2000
Cranston Changes Award Night to Appeal for Nuclear-free World
Former U.S. Senator Alan Cranston, a longtime Los Altos-area resident, was honored March 14 for his contribution to the cause of nuclear arms elimination.
“An Evening Honoring Senator Alan Cranston,” a fund-raiser for the Global Security Institute and Lawyers Alliance for World Security, drew local Democratic leaders and more than a few celebrities, including Dr. Jane Goodall, comedian Robin Williams and actor Michael Douglas
“An Evening Honoring Senator Alan Cranston,” a fund-raiser for the Global Security Institute and Lawyers Alliance for World Security, drew local Democratic leaders and more than a few celebrities, including Dr. Jane Goodall, comedian Robin Williams and actor Michael Douglas.
Accolades for Cranston and his receipt of the W. Averell Harriman Award from the Lawyers Alliance came in written form from President Clinton, Goodall, Gov. Gray Davis and senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein.
Even after leaving the Senate in 1993, Cranston pushed for nuclear arms reductions, launching an effort at the 1995 State of the World Forum to abolish nuclear weapons worldwide through educating U.S. citizens and world leaders.. Joining in the fight was former Soviet Union president Mikhail Gorbachev. Cranston is currently president of the new Global Security Institute, which continues the work of abolishing nuclear weapons while advocating new models of governance to strengthen the United Nations.
Despite all the talk of arms reduction and the end of the Cold War, Cranston told the gathering, “We have more nukes than we have targets.”
Cranston’s institute is overseeing the production of “Sleepwalking to Armageddon,” a documentary on nuclear dangers being made by CBS “Sixty Minutes” producer George Crile and Russian TV associate Artyom Borovic.
Cranston said production is about halfway through and the program could be ready for viewers as early as this fall.
“The nuclear threat has not gone away,” wrote Goodall, the renowned ethologist, in her March 2 letter to Cranston. “More and more countries around the globe have acquired nuclear technology. Nuclear weapons are tested, with great damage to the environment, with great risk to human and animal life.” She told Cranston, “No one has done more than you have” to promote arms elimination.
“I think it’s uncivilized for civilization to depend upon terror for its security,” Cranston said in a 1998 interview. “That undermines the nature of the civilization.”
The event, held at the Westin St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, was not without a few light moments, thanks to Goodall, who did a monkey imitation in a video greeting, and Williams, who remarked: “If Jane Goodall made that noise at the Dulles (International Airport in Washington, D.C.), nobody would notice.”
Also attending from Los Altos were former Los Altos Mayor Jim Thurber and wife Emily, both members of the event’s dinner committee, and from Los Altos Hills, Cranston’s sister, Eleanor Cameron.
Cranston called the event “a great success,” toward getting his message out. “We are getting more and more people concerned about the perils we face,” he said.
He noted poll after poll shows 85 percent of people around the world would feel safer in a world with no nuclear weapons, but people and governments haven’t made getting rid of them a higher priority.
“We’ve had over 1,000 accidents (involving weapons) so far, and we’re still ‘launch on warning’ – firing before the other guy gets to us.”
The program for the event, which sold out its 260 dinner seats, featured Cranston with his grandchild and a wish that summed up his anti-nuclear efforts: “I want my grandchild and all children to live in a world free of the nuclear threat.”
Posted by zack_allen at 11:15 AM
March 18, 2000
Nuke Attack Threat Still Real, Cranston Says
A major U.S. city is the most likely target of a nuclear attack by a terrorist group, a prominent nuclear disarmament group is warning.
The Global Security Institute, headed by former U.S. Sen. Alan Cranston, is hoping to jar the public from its post-Cold War complacency about the dangers of a world where nuclear weapons are ever more easily acquired.
Cranston, 85, on Tuesday received the Averell Harriman Award from the Lawyers Alliance for World Security for what it described as “his lifelong dedication to the worldwide abolition of nuclear weapons.” He served as U.S. senator from 1969 to 1993, and became dedicated to nuclear disarmament after a meeting with Albert Einstein following the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima.
“The threat that terrorists or rogues like Saddam Hussein will buy, bribe or steal their way to Russian nukes rises,” Cranston said, “as soldiers and scientists supposed to protect them are poorly paid or not paid at all, their morale approaching zero.”
Cranston quoted nuclear experts including former U.S. nuclear weapons negotiator Robert Galluchi and U.S. Gen. Charles Horner, commander of the Allied forces in the Gulf War, who predict nuclear weapons will be used in U.S. territory within 10 years.
But not all nuclear arms experts view the threat of nuclear terrorism as credible.
Sumit Ganguly, a visiting professor at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, said, “I don’t buy it. I know I’m in the minority in this position.”
Building a nuclear weapon is “exceedingly difficult,” said Ganguly, a specialist in nuclear non-proliferation with an emphasis on Pakistan and India. Pakistan had to “beg, borrow and steal” to get materials to build a “rudimentary” nuclear weapon, he said. “It’s almost impossible for a terrorist working in a garage to manufacture a nuclear weapon.”
Cranston also warned about the risk of an accidental launching of a nuclear warhead, citing more than 1,000 “misunderstandings” that have occurred over the years.
Cranston and Ganguly, however, agree that the five main nuclear powers — the United States, Russia, China, France and Great Britain — have failed to adhere to the terms of the 30-year-old Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which states as its goals the reduction and eventual abolition of nuclear weapons.
Ganguly said the five have completely violated the principles of the part of the treaty that calls for the five nations to pursue “good faith efforts” to bring about nuclear disarmament. “I have seen little or no good-faith effort in the post-Cold War era.”
Cranston added the lack of results by the five nations will lead other nations to conclude, “Maybe we need (nuclear arms) too.” Pakistan’s recently developed nuclear weaponry “is a pretty good example of the price of our not keeping our bargain,” he said.
The Global Security Institute is involved in the production of a documentary, “Sleepwalking to Armageddon,” which is intended to “wake up people,” said Cranston. The film is planned for release this fall.
He said the “bottom line” of the abolition movement “is that it defies common sense to think that nuclear weapons can be around forever and never be used.”
Ganguly hopes another type of common sense will prevail: “The important thing about nuclear weapons is that their capacity for doing horrific destruction makes people peer into the abyss and pull back.”
Posted by zack_allen at 11:12 AM
March 14, 2000
Remarks by Senator Alan Cranston
The threat posed by nuclear weapons – the issue that brings us together – surpasses in a way all others.
Many issues are important.
But if we blow ourselves up in a nuclear holocaust, no other issue will matter.
It was fruitless to even think about abolishing nuclear weapons during the cold war.
Then along came Mikhail Gorbachev who put an end to it, changed the world, and worked for abolition.
And along came Ronald Reagan, who repeatedly advocated abolition, and explored it at Rejkavich with Gorbachev.
Unfortunately, their talks broke down over the divisive issue of missile defense.
So today the danger of a U. S. – Russian nuclear exchange still hangs over our heads.
The peril that nuclear weapons will be used is actually greater tonight than it was at the height of the Cold War.
We and the Russians both have more nukes than we have targets.
We both maintain our bristling arsenals in a state of wartime-like, hair-trigger alert.
The weapons stand ready to be fired a few seconds after the fateful order is received from the Kremlin or the White House.
We both still rely on an incredibly dangerous doctrine – LAUNCH ON WARNING.
In a sudden crisis it allows only 15 minutes – or less – for the U. S. or the Russian president
to decide whether or not to fire, while under the impression – correct or incorrect – that missiles fired by the other side- intentionally or unintentionally – are about to arrive.
The chaos in Russia has led to a sharp decline in command and control of her nuclear arsenal, and to a deterioration of her early warning system – increasing the danger of an accidental or unauthorized launch.
The threat that terrorists or rogues like Saddam Hussein will buy, bribe or steal their way
to Russian nukes rises as soldiers and scientists supposed to protect them are unpaid or not paid at all, their morale approaching ground zero.
Our national security- and our very lives – are clearly at risk.
But this is not just a military issue.
It is also a moral issue, an ethical issue, a spiritual issue.
Shortly after Hiroshima I met Albert Einstein, who warned me, as he warned others, that nuclear weapons could exterminate the human race, perhaps extinguish all life on this planet.
I’ve been working to prevent a nuclear cataclysm ever since, before, during and after my time in the Senate.
But our country and our superpower rival ignored the warnings of Einstein and other physicists, launched the nuclear arms race and both developed and still rely upon yet another dangerous doctrine: MUTUAL ASSURED DESTRUCTION. Otherwise known as MAD.
Is it worthy of our nation to rely for security upon terror, upon the threat to annihilate millions of innocent humans?
Is a policy that puts the human race- perhaps all life – at risk of extermination worthy of what we call civilization?
Is it wise?
It has taken the human race billions of years to reach its present stage of development, on its way to an unknown, uncharted future of limitless horizons – a future that our generation could in a mindless moment deny to all the countless generations yet to come.
I believe its overwhelmingly likely that life exists elsewhere in the universe.
But suppose it doesn’t?
Then we are toying with the risk that we will rashly snuff out the only life that exists in all God’s creation.
General Lee Butler, who served as Commander-in-Chief of the Strategic Air Command during the Cold War, is appalled that the nuclear policies of those dark days are still the order of the day.
He warns:
“We cannot at once hold sacred the miracle of existence and hold sacrosanct the capacity to destroy it.
“Deterrence . . . at best is a gamble no mortal should pretend to make.. At worst it invokes death on a scale rivaling the power of the Creator.”
Our nation, the most powerful upon earth, the creator of the bomb, the only nation ever to use it, bears a special responsibility.
The responsibility to lead the world away from the brink of Armageddon to a more noble future of peace and love, of progress and tranquility.
That is the goal the Global Security Institute, LAWS, and many other institutions and individuals the world over, among them generals, admirals, scientists, diplomats, and presidents and prime minister of many lands, are working to achieve.
With your help, and your participation, we shall succeed.
For that, on behalf of multitudes born and unborn, I thank you.
Posted by zack_allen at 11:10 AM Michael Douglas Presents Senator Alan Cranston with the W. Averell Harriman Award
Friends, we are all privileged to share in honoring Senator Alan Cranston tonight. He is an inspiration to anyone who values public service.
After Alan graduated from Stanford, he became a foreign correspondent for the International News Service. He quickly noticed while in Europe, the grave danger of fascism and published a version of Mein Kampf to alert Americans. Hitler sued him for copyright infringement.
In the 1950’s, Alan revived the California Democratic Party. He has been one of the most influential members of the Democratic Party in the last half a century. Elected to the United States Senate in 1968, he served there for four terms with extraordinary effectiveness on numerous significant committees. He was even the Democratic whip. He is considered a leader in many positive causes: civil rights, human rights, women’s rights, protecting the environment and others.
His retirement from his position in the Senate has not diminished his intense public service. He helped found the Gorbachev Foundation/USA as well as the State of the World Forum. In 1996, he organized a statement calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons signed by 63 generals and admirals from 17 countries. In 1998, he organized a statement on the same subject that was issued by 130 current and former heads of state of 48 nations. Currently he is at work on a third worldwide appeal for nuclear disarmament to be executed by the mayors of the world’s major cities.
When he was a Senator, Vice President Walter Mondale said, “The saint of the Senate is now Senator Alan Cranston of California. He is the most decent and gifted member of the United States Senate. His commitments are in tune with the deepest values of our nation. There comes a time in almost every person’s public life when you have to decide finally what’s more important — your conscience and your nation or yourself. I never worry where Alan Cranston will be on that decision.”
It is that spirit of selflessness that inspires us here tonight. Senator Cranston consistently demonstrates that one who does not seek credit for their good deeds accomplishes the greatest amount.
He carries a quotation from the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu with him
in his wallet. It says,
“A leader is best when people barely know that he exists.
Less good when they obey and acclaim him.
Worse when they fear and despise him.
Fail to honor people, and they fail to honor you.
But of a good leader, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled,
they will all say, We did it ourselves.”
Senator Cranston, Alan, you are the wind in our sails. We are gratified to have the privilege of working with you, inspired by your leadership. On behalf of Lawyer’s Alliance for World Security, I am honored to present to you the Averell Harriman Peace Award. Senator Alan Cranston!
Posted by zack_allen at 11:08 AM Nuclear Disarmament in the 21st Century
Since 1981 Lawyers Alliance for World Security has been a nonpartisan organization of professionals concerned with promoting the rule of law and the control and elimination of threats posed by nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction. Averell Harriman became US Ambassador to the Soviet Union under President Franklin Roosevelt. As one of America’s great statesmen he was a resolute voice for the control of weapons through law. The Averell Harriman Award is presented to those who strive in that tradition. Previous recipients include the Chemical Manufacturers Association for its support of the Convention banning chemical weapons, and Ambassador Richard Butler for his work promoting the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
I am pleased to be here this evening to honor my good friend and close colleague Senator Alan Cranston for his work in promoting the abolition of nuclear weapons. Today, at the dawn of a new millennium, the international community is moving headlong toward a critical junction. We have reached a crucial decision point where, on the one hand, prudent and responsible action in the short term could help to ensure global security for years to come, while on the other hand, capricious and reckless behavior could have disastrous and irreversible consequences. I and others have noted that we are nearing a fork in the road in terms of international efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.
The signpost at this fork reads the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which was described by Madeleine Albright as “the most important multilateral arms control agreement in history.”
It is under siege. The Treaty was created 30 years ago and in 1995 I led U.S. government efforts to make the Treaty permanent. An agreement was reached in which the nuclear weapons states promised 182 nations to make systematic progress to reduce nuclear weapons globally with the ultimate goal of eliminating them. This commitment reaffirms the central bargain of the Treaty – non-proliferation in exchange for eventual nuclear disarmament. With last year’s rejection by the Senate of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the drive toward unilateral U.S. deployment of a national missile defense against so-called “rogue states”, and the nuclear tests by India and Pakistan, the NPT regime is in grave trouble.
Indeed, I believe that we have reached that fork in the road. The time to decide which path to take – the one that leads toward a world marred by as many as fifty to sixty states possessing nuclear weapons with nearly every conflict carrying the potential to go nuclear, or the one protected by a healthy and robust non-proliferation regime – is now, and the stakes are high. To choose the right path means to take steps to honor the commitments that I helped negotiate in 1995; to pursue sincere efforts to provide non-nuclear weapon states with legally binding assurances against the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons, to bring the CTBT into force, and most importantly, to pursue steep reductions in existing nuclear arsenals with the aim of their ultimate elimination.
I can only hope that with the efforts of Alan and others like him, the right path will be clear. All that stands between us and a world moving rapidly toward the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons is the political will of the nuclear powers to push forward with nuclear disarmament efforts, a political will to lead. Thank you.
Posted by zack_allen at 11:07 AM
March 06, 2000
Clinton Statement on the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons
Thirty years ago — March 5, 1970 — the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) entered into force. The countries that negotiated the NPT had clear and important goals. They wanted a safer, more secure world in which states not possessing nuclear weapons would foreswear their acquisition, and in which states with nuclear weapons would work toward eliminating them. They wanted an effective verification system to confirm these commitments. And they wanted to ensure that countries could use the atom peacefully to improve the lives of their people without spurring nuclear weapons proliferation.
On that day in 1970, 43 countries committed themselves to the vision of the NPT. Today, there are 187 parties. Over the past 30 years, the NPT has served as an increasingly important barrier to the spread of nuclear weapons. The United States remains committed to achieving universal adherence to the NPT and will continue working to bring all remaining countries into the Treaty..
The strength and effectiveness of the NPT today are a legacy of countless individuals who crafted and promoted this irreplaceable Treaty. I am proud that during my Administration the parties to the NPT made a major contribution to lasting peace and security by agreeing in 1995 to make the Treaty permanent.
Adherence to the NPT, together with inspections called for in the Treaty by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), provide assurance to countries that their neighbors’ nuclear programs are peaceful. The United States strongly supports the IAEA and calls on other NPT parties to work with us in strengthening the IAEA’s ability to ensure compliance with the Treaty.
Such compliance allows countries with nuclear technology to share the many peaceful benefits of the atom, reducing the risk that this cooperation will not result in weapons activities. Improved human health, increased food production, and adequate supplies of clean water are only a few of the many ways in which nuclear techniques contribute to a better world.
The NPT also calls for Parties to “pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament.” Remarkable progress in nuclear disarmament has occurred since the end of the Cold War. Under the START process, the United States and Russia have committed to reduce deployed strategic nuclear warheads by approximately two-thirds from Cold War levels. We have agreed to a START III framework that would cut these arsenals by 80 percent from those peaks, and we will intensify our efforts to work with Russia to bring this agreement into effect.
Already, the United States has eliminated some 59 percent of our overall nuclear weapons, and many U.S. facilities once dedicated to the production of nuclear weapons have been shut down, deactivated, or converted to other uses.. Our nuclear weapons are no longer targeted against any country; our Army, Marine Corps, and surface and air Navy no longer deploy nuclear weapons; and our bomber force no longer stands on alert.
NATO has reduced the number of nuclear warheads dedicated to its sub-strategic forces in Europe by 85 percent, and NATO’s dual capable aircraft, the Alliance’s only nuclear forces, are no longer maintained on alert status, and their readiness levels have been reduced from minutes to weeks.
The United States and Russia are cooperating to ensure no further production of weapons-usable material, the safe storage of existing quantities of such material, and internationally supervised elimination of surplus stocks of nuclear materials.
We will continue the U.S. moratorium on nuclear testing and work to establish a universal ban through the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. The Conference on Disarmament should take the next essential step for global nuclear disarmament by negotiating a fissile material cutoff treaty now, without conditions.
The United States is committed to the ultimate elimination of all nuclear weapons. Achieving this goal will be neither easy nor rapid. Accordingly, the United States rededicates itself to work tirelessly and expeditiously to create conditions that will make possible even deeper reductions in nuclear weapons, and ultimately their elimination.
Posted by zack_allen at 11:05 AM Actor Michael Douglas to Honor Senator Alan Cranston with Peace Award
SAN FRANCISCO: On Tuesday, March 14, 2000, UN Ambassador for Peace and Actor, Michael Douglas, will present Senator Alan Cranston with the W. Averell Harriman Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Cause of Peace and World Security on behalf of the Lawyers Alliance for World Security (LAWS) at a special gala dinner at the Westin St. Francis beginning at 6:30 pm. Distinguished guests include Senator Barbara Boxer, Ambassador Thomas Graham, and Ambassador Richard Butler. Special guest appearance by Actor Robin Williams.
The annual Harriman Award will recognize the Senator’s life-long dedication to peace and to the reduction and eventual elimination of nuclear weapons Previous recipients include General Lee Butler, Ambassador Richard Butler, and Robert McNamara.
During his 24-year Senate career, Senator Cranston had a hand in shaping and guiding through the Senate many of the most important legislative measures that came up for consideration. Especially noteworthy were his efforts for world peace, specifically his efforts to end the Vietnam War and to improve relations with the Soviet Union. Senator Cranston was a devout supporter of arms reductions and nuclear arms control, helping to lead Senate consideration of the SALT II and START treaties, and in efforts to promote a Middle East peace based on the security of Israel.
Since leaving public office, Senator Cranston has been a leader of worldwide efforts to reduce, marginalise, and ultimately abolish nuclear weapons. Senator Cranston is the founder and President of the Global Security Institute, which undertakes to lead citizens and policymakers to work toward the worldwide abolition of nuclear weapons. Senator Cranston explains: “Shortly after the bombing of Hiroshima, I was warned by Albert Einstein that nuclear weapons could devastate all life on the planet. I have since dedicated my life to abolishing nuclear weapons.”
The Lawyers Alliance for World Security advocates prudent and practical policies designed to reduce the dangers posed by nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction. LAWS seeks to promote policies that would bolster the nuclear non-proliferation regime, promote nuclear arms control and disarmament, and to encourage the development of the rule of law.
Proceeds from this event will benefit the Global Security Institute and LAWS.
Posted by zack_allen at 11:03 AM