Nuclear deterrence is supposed to provide stability. Instead, it threatens just the opposite. By David P. Barash Editor’s Note: This article was originally published at the Daily Beast on March 2, 2022. Republished here with the author’s permission. The Ukraine crisis has led many nuclear weapons enthusiasts to say “We told you so.” They claim that when Ukraine agreed to give up its Soviet-era nukes (to Russia, of all countries) the newly independent country foolishly deprived itself of a valuable deterrent. Had the leadership in Kyiv been more hard-headed and far-sighted, the argument goes, Ukraine would now be much safer. […]
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One Person Can Change the World (and Prevent a Nuclear War)
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on January 31, 2022 at PopularResistance.org under the title, “SAVING THE WORLD FROM NUCLEAR WAR: And How One Man Did.” By Leonard Eiger and Glen Milner These are dark days for both our nation and the world. Climate change is wreaking havoc everywhere, a global pandemic continues its onslaught, our nation’s experiment in democracy is threatened by a slow-motion insurrection and, to top it all off, our nation has taken the lead in pushing Russia toward a war over Ukraine that is capable of going off the rails into a full-scale nuclear war […]
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Open Letter to Presidents Putin and Biden: No First Use!
At their Summit Meeting in Geneva on June 16th, US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin adopted a U.S.-Russia Presidential Joint Statement on Strategic Stability in which they reaffirmed ‘the principle that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought’ and announced that they will embark together on an integrated bilateral Strategic Stability Dialogue in the near future. ‘Through this Dialogue, we seek to lay the groundwork for future arms control and risk reduction measures.’ This agreement advances key points in an Open Letter to Presidents Biden and Putin in Advance of their June 16, […]
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Hold the LYNE on the Low-Yield Warhead!
The US Navy’s ballistic missile submarines have always had one sole mission (in the Navy’s own words): “strategic deterrence, which is the act of deterring a nuclear attack with a safe, secure, and effective nuclear-deterrent force.” In other words, the belief that another nation will be deterred from using nuclear weapons as long as it believes it will be destroyed (by nuclear weapons) as a consequence. Should deterrence fail, we would end up with what is known as mutually assurred destruction (MAD) and, in the case of a nuclear war with Russia, essentially the end of civilization as we know […]
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Don’t Expect Rulers of Nuclear-Armed Nations to Accept Nuclear Disarmament―Unless They’re Pushed to Do So
Characteristically, all the nuclear powers have rejected the 2017 UN treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons By Lawrence Wittner At the beginning of February 2019, the two leading nuclear powers took an official step toward resumption of the nuclear arms race. On February 1, the U.S. government, charging Russian violations of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, announced that it would pull out of the agreement and develop new intermediate-range missiles banned by it. The following day, Russian President Vladimir Putin suspended his government’s observance of the treaty, claiming that this was done as a “symmetrical” response to the U.S. action and that Russia would develop nuclear weapons outlawed […]
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