ALL WE'VE BEEN SAYING IS GIVE PEACE A CHANCE
Spring 2001 ~ by Kathryn Albrecht
"Turncoats and the Horizontal Path"
We've each spent most of our lives fretting about rogue radiation. In September 1999, the Department of Energy opted for the "Expanded Operations Alternative" in Los Alamos National Lab's sitewide environmental impact statement. A "Green Alternative" involving the development of disarmament mechanisms and radioactive materials recovery and containment was nixed. The new mandate will take LANL's nuclear mission "to the highest foreseeable levels." High-explosives testing is slated to triple on the Hill. The radioactive dump there will double in size, and when trucked to WIPP, it will fill two-thirds of that vast repository.
Seven thousand pounds per year of depleted uranium, a powerful alpha-emitting carcinogen, is exploded above ground just upwind of Taos. Designed by Hitler and used extensively in the Gulf and Kosovo wars on tanks and other ferrous structures, this radioactive ceramic is routinely tested outdoors on the Pajarito Plateau (The Nuclear Reactor, Spring 2000). Leaked and declassified LANL strategic plans reveal intent to begin "assembling complete weapons" and developing new nukes, an objective violating every weapons treaty America has signed for 35 years.
The business of building and testing nuclear weapons harms hapless workers. Between 1993 and 1995, 244 employees working on Cassini's plutonium generators at LANL were contaminated. Before the century's end, five other plutonium-handling accidents occurred there, injuring eight (Albuquerque Journal, Jan. 1, 2001). The landfill at Sandia Labs in the Duke City is leaking radionucleides from unlined pits. The Pantex weapons dismantling plant in Amarillo logged 94 "safety incidents" in 1998. In 1999, three workers died in Tokaimura, Japan, as a result of the worst uncontrolled nuclear reaction since Chernobyl.
"Change only takes place through action, frankly speaking—not through prayer and meditation, but through action." —XIV Dalai Lama
So, what to do? Antinuclear activism began before the first bomb blew. Joseph Rotblat initiated research on atomic fission in 1939, coming to Los Alamos five years later. But seven months before the test blast at Trinity Site, Rotblat, upon hearing that Hitler's nuclear program had collapsed, quit the Manhattan Project. He refocused his energies on abolishing nuclear weapons, founded the Pugwash Conference for reversing the arms race, and won the Nobel Peace Prize. Leo Szilard, who, along with Albert Einstein, had urged FDR to build the Bomb, was the first scientist to leave the Manhattan Project after Nagasaki. Szilard founded the Council for a Livable World, a long-lived "political action committee" devoted to supporting avowed disarmament candidates for the U.S. Senate.
At the United Nations in 1946, the U.S.S.R. advocated banning of the Bomb. Instead, the Atomic Energy Commission was established, and it began to promote splitting the atom "for peaceful purposes." In 1954, following a series of catastrophic atmospheric tests, the abolition movement picked up steam. Films like "On the Beach," poignantly depicting humanity's last gasp after nuclear war, greatly raised public awareness of that risk. The 1970s saw massive organizing against nuclear electricity, and the accident at Three Mile Island brought the nuclear power industry to its knees. The Freeze-the-Arms-Race campaign attracted 1 million protesters to New York City in 1982. Soon, demonstrations against the Pershing and cruise missiles convulsed Europe.
During the two decades since, an impressive array of former high-level planners of thermonuclear war have "turned coat" and learned to not love the Bomb. For instance, Dr. Bruce Blair, once launch control officer of Minuteman missiles, now heads the disarmament-focused Center for Defense Information. He is the leading expert on U.S. and Russian command and control issues. Blair calls the nuclear strategic triad (the MX missile, B-1 bomber, and Trident submarine) "a vestige of Cold War inter-service rivalry." Former West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt once encouraged deployment of Pershing missiles in Europe. He now vigorously advances abolition. Robert McNamara, defense secretary under Kennedy and Johnson, was the architect of a massive nuclear deterrence and of the Vietnam War. He observes ruefully, "Many don't understand the fog of war. You make mistakes in war. How utterly destructive should they involve nuclear weapons!"
Gen. George Lee Butler, head of the Strategic Air Command until 1994, was the man who would have ultimately "pushed the Button," launching nuclear retaliation. He announced his conversion in 1996: "I have arrived at the conclusion that it is simply wrong for any mortal to be invested with the authority to call into question the survival of the planet. That is an untenable allocation of authority. ... There is no security in nuclear weapons. It's a fool's game."
IN THE FOLLOWING SEGMENT, WE’LL STUDY THE TREASURE MAP PLOTTED BY THESE EXPERTS AND THE GRASSROOTS, FROM LIKELY ANNIHILATION TO NUCLEAR ABOLITION:
“THE HORIZONTAL PATH”
I hail from an "I Like Ike!" Air Force town and went off to college straight as an arrow gripped in the talons of our national bird. One night I took in a film on campus, billed as "banned in Britain." Odd, I thought, for a BBC production. It was "The War Game," a visceral depiction of Europe after Russia accidentally lobs a short-range nuke at England, which of course (apologetically) responds in kind. This modest exchange of kilotonnage effects a virtual Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the Volga and the Thames. I was stunned. I stumbled back to the dorm and did not speak for days. When I finally emerged from my shell-shocked state, I was a peacenik and an abolitionist for life.
Threatening to nuke nations is the ultimate obscene gesture. Yet atomic bombs continue to proliferate. It amazes me how our neighbors in Los Alamos manage to cast an aura of rationality around the their community's raison d'etre. The Defense Authorization Act of 2001 mandates that Sandia National Labs develop a "bunker buster" mini-nuke despite America's public pledge to cooperate with abolition. The Defense Department boasts, "Nuclear weapons are still the foundation of a superpower and that will never change" (Los Angeles Times, July, 14, 2000). Well, there's an impressive bunch of peaceniks worldwide who live to refute that boast. And a fresh course has been charted from here to abolition, called the Horizontal Path.
Nuclear disarmament has typically been discussed in "vertical" terms (i.e., increases and decreases in the number of warheads). Recognizing that mankind has utterly failed to ban the bomb (yet since 1945 has not dared employ one in battle), "horizontalists" take a different approach. They recommend a series of gradual steps: (1) take all weapons off hair-trigger alert, (2) pin open the firing switches, (3) move warheads away from their delivery vehicles, (4) move them further away, (5) disassemble bomb components, (6) end all testing and production of fissile material, and (7) establish international verification and accountability mechanisms. Absolute abolition (implying the unlikely erasure of the knowledge of how to build a bomb) becomes de facto abolition, a politically expedient feasibility.
A CHANGE OF TUNE
Horizontal disarmament has high-ranking advocates. In November 1997, Pete Domenici remarked, "We should consider stepping back from the nuclear brink by de-alerting." In April 1999, NATO's 50th Anniversary Communique stated, "In light of the reduced salience of nuclear weapons, [NATO] will consider options for ... verification and disarmament." A year ago, George W. Bush declared, "We should remove as many weapons as possible from high-alert status ... and work closely with the Russians. Our mutual security need no longer depend on a nuclear balance of terror" (Wall Street Journal, May, 12, 2000). Granted, these fellas well know that their various (non-nuclear) Star Wars schemes are a billion times more lucrative than the manufacture of now "unsalient" nukes, but dismantling thermonuclear devices has got to be a huge step in the right direction.
The United Nations remains the international forum for advancing global disarmament. The General Assembly's "First Committee" is the Disarmament Committee. Last year, the five "nuclear powers" promised eventual "elimination of nuclear arsenals ... through a dozen systematic and progressive" steps. Currently, the most promising U.N. peace effort involves consolidating nuclear weapons–free zones (NWFZs) around the globe. 107 nations — over 50 percent of Earth's land mass — have declared themselves nuclear weapons-free. The manufacture, deployment, or transportion of nukes within NWFZs is illegal throughout Latin America per the Treaty of Tlatelolco, the South Pacific by the Treaty of Rarotonga, and Southeast Asia via the Bangkok Treaty. Mongolia, continental Africa, Las Vegas, Nevada and even Taos County are legally constituted NWFZs. (Do you old-timers remember this glorious resolution of the County Commission in the mid-1980s?)
To my surprise, Ronald Reagan's papers reveal that in 1982, when the Freeze campaign and European mass demonstrations applied the most pressure, our Space Cowboy was influenced to reverse the arms race (Boston Review, April, 5, 2000). Jimmy Carter, on the other hand, for want of an obtrusive anti-nuke movement (because we considered him cool), could not get the Senate to ratify the SALT II arms limitation treaty. Bush the First reigned during distinctly antinuclear times and consequently made deep slashes in strategic arsenals without Congressional protest, while negotiating the arms reduction treaties START I and II.
All this is to say that the grassroots antinuclear movement, in consort with like-minded governments worldwide, ought never cease pressing for nuclear disarmament. Think globally, act locally. At the "Stop Nuclear Madness" demonstration in Los Alamos July 16, you can connect with spokespersons of local, national and global peace organizations. Keynote speaker will be a defector from Livermore Labs. (Carpool from Taos Public Library at 9:30 a.m.) And don't ever give up! This dissident is going to take a little breather, and when I resurface, we'll tackle Iraq! Fun and games!
Kathy Albrecht thanks her family and Peace Action/New Mexico for inspiration and support ... plus all those freaks who've kept the faith. ¡La Lucha contínua!