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Trump Fires Starting PIstol on Cold War II

April 11, 2019 By Bob Kinsey

Has President Trump fired the starting pistol on Cold War II?

Beatrice Fihn, executive director of ICAN, the International Campaign To Abolish Nuclear Weapons thinks so.

BACKGROUND OF THE INF-TREATY
The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty was signed by the US and Soviet Union in 1987 and became effective in 1988. It eliminated all nuclear and conventional missiles and their launchers with ranges below 3,420 miles.
The treaty grew out of the Soviet deployment of ballistic missiles with a range of just under the SALT II Treaty limit of 3,400 miles. Western European leaders had raised concerns that these weapons made them vulnerable to attack, and they threatened deploying new NATO missile launchers across Europe.
After many proposals and negotiations, finally, in 1986, Soviet president Gorbachev proposed the total elimination of all nuclear weapons by the year 2000; the US countered with a phased reduction of INF missiles in Europe and Asia, to zero by 1989.

It happened. The US and Soviet Union destroyed more than 2,500 weapons between them by June 1, 1991.

But, that was then and this is now.

INF TREATY WITHDRAWAL

On February 2, 2019, Secretary of State Pompeo announced that the U.S. sees Russia in non-compliance with the INF-Treaty and if in six months they have not come into compliance, the Treaty will terminate.

According to Ralph Hutchinson of the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance, in 2012, President Obama accused Russia of violating the INF-Treaty when it tested a new cruise missile. Russia has argued that the US bases in Poland and Romania that can launch Tomahawk missiles are a violation of the Treaty; Russia also notes the US use of drones is a violation of the Treaty.

Hutchinson goes on to say, “it must be noted that the US has embarked on a $1.7 trillion dollar plan to modernize its nuclear weapons stockpile, production infrastructure, and delivery vehicles including low-yield weapons and new missiles systems which inject new concerns into the security plans of other countries.”

Isn’t it possible that the US suspension of and withdrawal from the INF-Treaty is an irresponsible move that may open the path for a new-nuclear arms race, thus, Cold War II?    It highlights the importance of real multilateral, binding solutions like the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

Beatrice Fihn points out that with Russia and the US putting the entire world at risk, it is urgent for all responsible governments to stand up and join the Nuclear Ban Treaty.

HOW ABOUT THE BAN TREATY?

The Ban Treaty or “Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons” was passed by 120 countries at the United Nations in July 2017. In order to enter into force, the Treaty needs 50 countries to sign and ratify it. Seventy nations have signed the Treaty and 22 have ratified it including former nuclear weapons state, South Africa just this past February.
Considering the enormous consequences of nuclear war, doesn’t the world need to come together as one humanity under threat of annihilation and truly ban these weapons?

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Disarmament Quotes

We seek the elimination one day of nuclear weapons from the face of the Earth. 

Ronald Reagan, Inaugural Address, January 21, 1985

We are prone to self-righteousness if we call ourselves peacemakers, and yet do not perceive how the peace issue cuts through all the economic and social issues that we often try to keep separate. If the race for nuclear arms is encouraged by our fear of losing the affluent ways of life that we have taken for granted, then we must see how our fears and desires have left so many other human beings naked and hungry.

Malsolm Warford "The Church's Role in a Nuclear Age

Through the release of atomic energy, our generation has brought into the world the most revolutionary force since prehistoric man's discovery of fire. This basic force of the universe cannot be fitted into the outmoded concept of narrow nationalisms. For there is no secret and there is no defense; there is no possibility of control except through the aroused understanding and insistence of the peoples of the world. We scientists recognise our inescapable responsibility to carry to our fellow citizens an understanding of atomic energy and its implication for society. In this lies our only security and our only hope - we believe that an informed citizenry will act for life and not for death. 

Albert Einstein, January 22, 1947

“Everything I did at Kings Bay was a result of my faith and my commitment to challenge the idols whose only purpose is to destroy human life on an unimaginable scale. I went to Kings Bay to use my body to refuse to bow down to these idols. I went to try to bring attention to the idolatry that it is requiring of our nation and its people. I went in a spirit of prayer and repentance. I went in hope that this witness might invite other people to reflect on the obscenity and on the idolatry that it is before God.”

Liz McAlister Kings Bay Protestor 2019

Over the past 15 years, the goal of elimination of nuclear weapons has been so much on the back burner that it will take a true political breakthrough and a major intellectual effort to achieve success in this endeavor.

Mikhail Gorbachev, January 31, 2007

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending he sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children...This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron." --spoken to the American Society of Newspaper Editors 1953

Dwight Eisenhower US President 1953-1961

[T]he use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender. . . . [I]n being the first to use it, we . . . adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.

5-Star Admiral William D. Leahy Chief of Staff to President's Roosevelt and Truman, leader of Combined US-UK Chiefs of Staff during WWII

It is my fervent goal and hope…that we will some day no longer have to rely on nuclear weapons to deter aggression and assure world peace. To that end the United States is now engaged in a serious and sustained effort to negotiate major reductions in levels of offensive nuclear weapons with the ultimate goal of eliminating these weapons from the face of the earth. 

Ronald Reagan, October 20, 1986

There are still thousands of warheads loaded on operational systems and standing on high states of alert on virtually hair-trigger posture. And you have to ask yourself: Why is that? Who is the enemy? What is the threat? 

U.S. General Lee Butler Former Commander in Chief, U.S. Strategic Air Command in 1991-92

We endorse setting the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons and working energetically on the actions required to achieve that goal ... 

George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger and Sam Nunn, January 4, 2007

Elimination of nuclear weapons, so naive, so simplistic, and so idealistic as to be quixotic? Some may think so. But as human beings, citizens of nations with power to influence events in the world, can we be at peace with ourselves if we strive for less? I think not. 

Robert McNamara Former U.S. Secretary of Defense

A world free of the threat of nuclear weapons is necessarily a world devoid of nuclear weapons…. Nuclear weapons pose an intolerable threat to humanity and our habitat…. Others subscribe to Churchill’s assertion ‘Peace is the sturdy child of terror.’ For me, such a peace is a wretched offspring, a peace that condemns us to live under a dark cloud of perpetual anxiety, a peace that codifies mankind’s most murderous instincts….The beast must be chained, its soul expunged, its lair laid waste.

General Lee Butler Former Commander, Strategic Air Command, April 28, 1996

Now, understand, this matters to people everywhere. One nuclear weapon exploded in one city -– be it New York or Moscow, Islamabad or Mumbai, Tokyo or Tel Aviv, Paris or Prague –- could kill hundreds of thousands of people. And no matter where it happens, there is no end to what the consequences might be -– for our global safety, our security, our society, our economy, to our ultimate survival. 

Former President Barack Obama, April 5, 2009

So far as I can see, the atomic bomb has deadened the finest feeling that has sustained for ages. There used to be so-called laws of war, which made it tolerable. Now we know the truth. War knows no law except that of might. The atomic bomb brought an empty victory but it resulted for the time being in destroying the soul of Japan. What has happened to the soul of the destroying nation is yet too early to see... 

Mahatma Gandhi from The Essential Gandhi, Louis Fisher, ed.

It is my firm belief that the infinite and uncontrollable fury of nuclear weapons should never be held in the hands of any mere mortal ever again, for any reason. 

Mikhail Gorbachev, 1995

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