Questions about Nuclear Weapons

My Dad helped separate the isotopes of uranium that were dropped on Hiroshima.  I understood nuclear chain reactions and critical mass by age 12.  At UC Berkeley, we read John Hersey’s “Hiroshima.”  In 1962, my French TA rushed into class late, “A nuclear war is about to begin over Russian missiles in Cuba.  Class is cancelled.”  The 30 years that I taught physics at Bishop O’Dowd High School, 1971 – 2001, we always discussed nuclear weapons.  During Vietnam, the good fathers at Bishop O’Dowd drafted me to teach alternatives to violence, even though I’m better at physics.  In 1982 I spent several days in Hiroshima.  In my dreams I saw incoming nuclear missiles over the Berkeley hills. 

Our leaders, both political and military, both democrat and republican, have made at least one serious miscalculation.  This paper started with that first question, on deterrence theory.  But each question led to another.  My questions change each week, and are embedded in these papers.  You are welcome to talk with me.  I try to always listen to other points of view.  For many years God seems to have trained me to trust my opponents.  And I have received a number of compliments on some of my questions and thoughts.

Question 1   Is Nuclear War More Likely on Purpose, or by Blunder?

“Continuing possession of nuclear weapons makes nuclear war inevitable.”  Martin Hellman, Adjunct Senior Fellow for Nuclear Risk Analysis, Federation of American (Atomic) Scientists, recently published a paper including that conclusion.  Nuclear deterrence theory assumes that politicians are scientifically literate, always rational and never make mistakes.  

During the Korean War, a good friend, Louie Vitale, was ordered to shoot down an incoming Russian bomber over Alaska.  Fortunately, Louie decided to do a fly-by first.  An older lady at a window waved to him - it turned out to be an American airliner.  During the Cuban missile crisis, a Soviet submarine commander, Vasili Arkhipov, was pressured to launch a 10-kiloton nuclear torpedo at an American aircraft carrier.  Fortunately, he refused to launch. 

In 1980 a US missile, carrying a 9-megaton warhead, exploded in its silo near Little Rock, Arkansas.      9-megatons is 600 times the power of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.  Had its warhead detonated, the fallout would have killed many in New York City, not to mention most people in-between (see the documentary “Command and Control”).  Wikipedia details 75 more “nuclear weapon accidents.”  That same year, to resolve the Iranian hostage crisis, candidate Ronald Reagan suggested nuking Tehran (Iran).  In 2017 Donald Trump suggested nuking Pyongyang (N Korea).  The following year, he lowered the threshold to nuclear war with lower yield warheads, and abandoned an arms control treaty with Russia. 

In the future an egotistical or ignorant American President may decide to actually push that “red button.”  Or it could be a Russian mistake or miscalculation or blunder or ego or ignorance.  Or it could be a rogue nation, or a rogue military commander, or a terrorist group.  Someday our good luck will run out. 

Q2   What Are the Odds of Nuclear War?

Hellman says, “Even if nuclear deterrence could be expected to work for 500 years before we destroy ourselves… A child born today in America would have roughly one chance in six of being killed by a nuclear weapon over his/her expected lifetime — the same (odds) as in Russian roulette”.[1]  In each future century the odds of nuclear war, most likely by blunder, are roughly 20%.  In the next three centuries the odds of not having a nuclear war are only roughly 80% x 80% x 80%, that is, about 50%.  So the “half-life” of our nuclear civilization is about three centuries.  I pray my grandchildren are not still alive when we finally blunder into one.  But eventually it will happen, if not to us, then to our descendants. 

Even after President Trump or Chairman Kim, it is not hard to imagine the US and China beginning an exchange of nuclear warheads.  Let me assume the best we can possibly hope for.  Assume that many of China’s 350 warheads are disabled in a US first strike (We have deliberately refused to commit ourselves to any no-first-strike policy.)  And assume, optimistically, that our THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) anti-ballistic missiles actually do manage to disable all of China’s remaining incoming warheads, ie, no warheads strike the US.   I will also assume that we target no more than China’s 350 nuclear warheads.

Q3   Will Our ‘Grandchildren’ Die in a Nuclear Winter Famine?

A “small” nuclear war, involving the detonation of just 100 Hiroshima-sized (15 kiloton) atomic bombs is estimated to inject 5 million tons of smoke into the stratosphere, which will persist for perhaps 10 years.[2]  Computer models estimate this amount of smoke will block 7-10% of our warming sunlight.  Average temperatures will accordingly be colder than any during the last thousand years.  Growing seasons will be shortened by up to 30 days in this “nuclear winter.”  Rainfall will decline by 40-50% in some areas.  Grain producing nations will probably stop exporting.  Prices will skyrocket.  Hoarding will occur.  700 million people now on the edge of starvation, and hundreds of millions more who depend on grain imports, will die.  The death toll could be one, or even two, billion.[3]  That’s perhaps 20% of our human species.

The socialist economies may be prepared to distribute equitably the grain they have.  The American economy is not so disposed.  I fear that we Americans may also lose 20% of our population (60 or 70 million), because our great “wealth” is not distributed.  The only US leaders who understand this nuclear winter famine, as far as I can tell, are former Secretary of Defense William Perry, and a few others.

Q4   Are Nuclear Weapons Not Suicidal?

That is the best scenario.  The reality will probably be far worse.  Ballistic missiles travel half way around the earth in about half an hour, just like satellites do.  If one side fires first, the other side has only that half-hour to fire back before many of their launchers are wiped out.  When we and the Russians someday blunder, by any of the above scenarios, into a nuclear war, it will likely involve the detonation of most of the larger 2,000 Russian and 1,700 more-accurate US warheads currently deployed.  That will result in death by heat, blast, fire or radiation of at least several hundred-million people.  90% to 100% of our human species, and other large animal species, will starve to death over the next ten years of the resulting “nuclear winter famine.”  Less than 10% of us might survive, maybe the Quiet in the Land (the Mennonites), who know how to grow winter wheat, and how to share beloved community.  “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”  When 90% or more are dead, who is the winner?  Re-building civilization will take more than 1,000 years (Daniel Ellsberg, 2020 Dec 13).  Are nuclear weapons not suicidal?

There is an alternative to nuclear suicide.  Negotiate the abolition of all nuclear weapons.  Even Ronald Reagan could do this, with his “Trust, but verify” policy.  When everyone survives, everyone wins. 

Lorin Peters      <lorinpeters@yahoo.com>

These four questions are part of a series of 11 questions.  They change each week.

Questions 1-4 explore the probability and the consequences of a nuclear war.

Questions 5-7 explore the reasons we keep our nuclear weapons.

Questions 8-11 explore some ways of defending our country without nuclear weapons, or war itself.

I carry copies of all three sets of questions, with my thoughts on them.  Just ask, and I will be delighted to share them with you. 

Q5   So Why Do We Keep Our Nuclear Weapons?

When I was born, it was still called the Department of War.  But World War II was enormous, bloody and violent.  By the end of that war, many nations, including America, were hoping that war was not part of who we are.  “Department of Defense” suggests that we only defend ourselves, only when necessary.  We want to believe that we are not violent. 

But something else happened during that war.  The US invented a new type weapon using a new form of energy a million times stronger than chemical explosives.  No one else had such a weapon.  The men who invented it were frightened by the power it gives to threaten, or destroy, other nations.  They petitioned the government to put it outside the control of any one nation, for fear that other nations would compete to develop their own, and eventually get into a nuclear war.  Robert Oppenheimer, the “father of the atomic bomb,” helped lead this campaign.  For his effort, he was put on a loyalty trial, and forced out of the government. 

What did we do with this new weapon?  We allowed a few nations to develop their own.  The British were part of our bomb project.  French physicists were in the research loop.  The Russians and the Chinese, as permanent members of the Security Council, could not be forbidden to develop their own bomb.   The Indians and the Pakistanis, as foils to the Russians and the Chinese, were allowed to develop theirs.  We pretend that Israel does not have them.  But we tell other nations they can not make them, even if they have the materials and the knowledge to do so.  Anyone else who tries gets threatened – Cuba, Iran, North Korea - or gets bombed – Iraq (1979). 

Why do we not want other nations to have their own bombs?  Because we want as few other nuclear-armed nations as possible.  Some might argue that fewer nuclear nations makes us safer.  But there is no such thing as a safe nuclear war.  At the end we are all dead.  If safety were the issue, we would be pushing for a universal and verifiable ban of nuclear weapons.  We have already negotiated several arms reduction treaties with Russia.  No, we want fewer other nuclear states for a different reason.

Q6   Has the US Become an Empire?

In the early 20^th century, we also developed telecommunications, which made it possible for a CEO in one country, on one continent, to access information and make decisions and control what is happening in other countries, on other continents.  This made possible the creation of transnational corporations. 

At the end of WWII, France, Germany, Russia, and China were flattened and bankrupt.  Gandhi had finally persuaded Great Britain to free India, and all of its colonies.  The only major nation standing was the US.  We alone had the power to create a military empire.  Fortunately, we understood, from Gandhi and the British, that colonial empires were past.  Unfortunately, we created a corporate empire. 

What exactly is an empire?  When Hitler invaded Norway in 1940, Johann Galtung’s father, a respected military strategist, said,

“Don’t worry about Hitler.”

“What do you mean, don’t worry?”

“Hitler has no idea when to stop expanding, or even how to stop.”

Galtung has been studying empires ever since, and is now considered the world expert on them. 

He defines an “empire” as a state or nation which dominates and systematically extracts more wealth (resources, labor, and/or sales) from the states around it than it returns to them.  Empires collapse when their inconsistencies and self-contradictions overwhelm their stability.  In 1980, when Galtung predicted the Soviet Union would collapse in 1990, no one believed him.  When it fell in November 1989, his friends teased, “Johann, you were wrong.  You were off by two months.” 

Q7   Do We Have a Dept of Defense, or Dept of Empire?

Our corporations set up their businesses throughout the world.  Any nation which does not offer terms favorable to our corporations may find its government destabilized, or its economy sabotaged, or its leader assassinated, or its territory attacked (see John Perkins’ “Confessions of an Economic Hitman”).  Wikipedia lists 26 such “foreign interventions by the US” during the Cold War, 1949-1989.  Recently we have threatened Venezuela, Iran, Syria, Libya, Egypt, …  and sent our troops into at least Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Somalia.   Empires dominate through fear.  Nuclear weapons create the ultimate in fear.

We have at least 780 military installations, in 80 countries.  Russia has 20 installations in other countries.  China has one.  Does any other nation “defend” itself the way we do?  Are we defending our American people, or our corporate empire?  Which name, Dept of Defense, or Dept of Empire, is closer to the truth?

Galtung loves the American people.  But in 2000 he predicted the US Empire would fall (not to be confused with the fall of our republic) about 2020.  (A number of observers suggest that Donald Trump accelerated that process.  Stay tuned.) 

How will it fall?  Galtung’s theory does not predict the details of collapse, only the instability, of empires.  Given the instability of our markets, our economy will someday no longer support our insatiable military expenditures.  I once heard Galtung speculate that our cities might secede from the union due to the unfair distribution of tax revenues. 

However, Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell pointed out, in 1955, that even abolition of nuclear weapons will not save us forever.  “This hope is illusory. Whatever agreements not to use H-bombs had been reached in time of peace, they would no longer be considered binding in time of war, and both sides would set to work to manufacture H-bombs as soon as war broke out, for, if one side manufactured the bombs and the other did not, the side that manufactured them would inevitably be victorious.”[4]  The ultimate problem is war itself.  The solution is the abolition of war.  By the grace of God, Mohandas Gandhi and Gene Sharp have offered us the tools we need for this ultimate challenge. 

Lorin Peters

lorinpeters@yahoo.com

These three questions are part of a series of 11 questions.  They change each week.

Questions 1-4 explore the probability and the consequences of a nuclear war.

Questions 5-7 explore the reasons we keep our nuclear weapons.

Questions 8-11 explore some ways of defending our country without nuclear weapons, or war itself.

I carry copies of all three sets of questions, with my thoughts on them.  Just ask, and I will be delighted to share them with you.  Or when you see me with a question that’s not on this paper, ask for the new set.”

I have written, and am offering, these warnings out of concern for my grandchildren, and everyone’s grandchildren.  I’m also doing this in solidarity with my good friend Steve Kelly, SJ, who has done 12 years in prison for repeatedly attempting to disarm nuclear missiles (although the secrecy of “plowshare” actions does not build trust).

Related articles I have written:

“When Our Final War Has Begun,” discusses, not the carnage and horror, but only what I would do, if a nuclear war began in my life time – recommended only for those who are reconciled, spiritually and/or psychologically, to our own mortality and the destruction of all for which we have worked. 

“How Do We Get Out of This Mess?”

“Where There Is Fear…”

I will be happy to forward digital copies of this or any of the above articles.  Just email me.

Q8   Is War Necessary to Defend a Country from Invasion?

The problem with war is that military technologies have been escalating for five thousand years – from clubs to stones, to spears, to arrows, to long-bows, to guns, to cannon, to bombs, to missiles, now to nukes,  and lethal autonomous weapons systems.  President Trump demonstrated that nuclear deterrence will no longer protect us - he operated outside the law.  Nuclear war risk now stands at 20% per century, which extrapolates to 50% in 300 years (see Q2).  But in nuclear war there can be no winners (see Q4).  There is no military defense.  There is only nuclear suicide.

Fortunately, there is a solution to this dilemma.  It was first proposed by Mohandas Gandhi in 1942, when a Japanese invasion of British India seemed imminent.  He called it “shanti sena,” a peace army.  A shanti sena practices ‘unarmed civilian defense.’

Q9   What Happened When Russia Invaded Czechoslovakia?

In 1968, Russia threatened to invade Czechoslovakia.  The Czech Prime Minister, Dubcek, suggested they resist, not with violence, but with creative nonviolence.  The Russians arrived only one week later, giving the people virtually no time to plan or prepare their resistance.  So they improvised, brilliantly.  They gave wrong directions to the invading troops.  They rotated road signs, so Russian troops got lost.  Within one week, all of their radio stations went underground with mobile military transmitters.  The newspapers also went underground, and were distributed from the trunks of police-cars whenever the Russians were not watching. 

When tanks rolled into town, many Czechs offered the Russians flowers, or food and drink, or chocolates, or cigarettes.  The young women flirted with the Russians.  (I have watched a beautiful Italian peacemaker flirt with a squad of Israeli soldiers.  It was like a comedy - all six soldiers immediately forgot what they were sent to do.)  Then the Czechs asked the Russians, “Why have you come? 

They answered, “To rescue you from your dictatorship.”

The Czechs replied, “We have democratic elections.  We have free speech.  We like our government.”

Within a week, many Russian soldiers began refusing orders, and had to be rotated home.  Actually, they were assigned to Siberia, lest they contaminate European Russia with visions of democracy.  This rotation went on, week after week.  In the end, the Russians were forced to leave Prime Minister Dubcek in power, and also to compromise on many of their other demands. 

Q10   What Form of Resistance Defeated the Invading Russians?

That same year, 1968, Gene Sharp completed his PhD at Oxford University, with his 900 page survey and classification of all the different forms of nonviolence known in the history of humanity, and published it in 1973 as, “The Politics of Nonviolent Action.”  In 1985, he wrote his brilliant 160 page analysis and guide to “Making Europe Unconquerable.”  His work has been translated into at least 30 languages, and is credited with empowering the color revolutions – in Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia – and in the Arab Spring – Tunisia, Egypt, and others.  It has also been studied in many other oppressed societies. 

Sharp is considered the father of strategic nonviolence, which is premised on the withdrawal of consent to overbearing government, through mass civil disobedience.  This “people power” requires only a temporary commitment to nonviolence.  It changes the faces in government, but does not change the governing culture. 

In contrast, Gandhi is the father of principled nonviolence, which is premised on holding truth, and opening the hearts and minds of oppressors through the suffering of its “satyagrahis” (truth-holders). 

This “person power” requires a life-long commitment to nonviolence.  It works more slowly than strategic nonviolence, but the changes in the governing culture seem to be longer-lasting.  (My vigils and conversations here are an attempt to practice a very gentle form of this person power.)

Q11  “Making Europe (and America) Unconquerable”?

What happened in Czechoslovakia is a beginning template for how to make any country unconquerable.  In other words, how to deter attack or defend a country (even America) from an invasion, or from a coup, without war. 

Sharp begins by summarizing two improvised struggles against coups (Germany 1920, France 1961), and two improvised struggles against invasions (Germany 1923, Czechoslovakia 1968-69) from recent history.  Then he develops the concept of “civilian(-based) defense,” and proposes refinements through research, policy studies, feasibility studies, contingency planning, preparations, and training.  Such civilian defense can be applied as a supplement to military methods, or against a coup d’état, or after military defeat, or as a permanent and complete nonviolent defense policy.

This deterrence and defense are accomplished by social, economic, political, and psychological struggle, including noncooperation, strikes, boycotts, protests, civil disobedience, disruptions and interventions.  These are used to wage widespread noncooperation and to offer massive public defiance.  They aim to deny the objectives of the invaders, and to make their society politically indigestible and ungovernable by the invaders.  They also aim to subvert the loyalty of the aggressors’ troops and functionaries, to make them unreliable in carrying out orders and repression, and even to induce them to mutiny. 

Sharp’s fundamental insight is that violence is not the source of power in politics.  Rather its source is the cooperation of people and human institutions … which can be refused.  Nonviolent struggle can generally wield great power, even against ruthless rulers and regimes, because it attacks the most vulnerable characteristic of all hierarchical institutions: dependence on the submission and cooperation of the governed. 

Sharp then introduces “transarmament,” the process of changing over from a military defense to a civilian-based defense system.  He offers a number of helpful suggestions for how to help a nation work through many of their reservations about civilian defense. 

He offers detailed analyses of how to deter and prevent attacks, what to do first if attacked, how to shift strategies as the struggle evolves, and how to defeat occupations, coups, or repressions.  Finally he closes with steps in consideration and adoption of civilian defense, dangers to the Soviet Union (remember, he was writing in 1985), potential costs and benefits, and next steps for Europe, including the fact that Europeans had in the past improvised nonviolent struggle against both Nazis and Communists.  In each analysis, he recognizes and addresses the different situations of the different countries in Europe. 

Imagine an unconquerable Europe.  Imagine an America without war.  Imagine a world without war. 

What could we not do with all the resources and wealth that will release?

Lorin Peters

lorinpeters@yahoo.com

These four questions are part of a series of 11 questions.  They change each week.

Questions 1-4 explore the probability and the consequences of a nuclear war.

Questions 5-7 explore the reasons we keep our nuclear weapons.

Questions 8-11 explore some ways of defending our country without nuclear weapons, or war itself.

I carry copies of all three sets of questions, with my thoughts on them.  Just ask, and I will be delighted to share them with you.  I have written, and am handing out, this summary in hope for my grandchildren, and everyone’s grandchildren, and in solidarity with my good Jesuit friend, Steve Kelly, who has done 12 years in prison for repeatedly attempting to disarm nuclear missiles.  You are welcome to email me, and I will try to respond helpfully. 

[1] “Rethinking National Security,” Martin Hellman, Federation of American Scientists, 2019 May

[2] “Deadly Climate Change from Nuclear War,” Steven Starr, Physicians for Social Responsibility, University of Missouri, 2017

[3] “Nuclear Famine: Two Billion People at Risk?”, Ira Helfand, Physicians for Social Responsibility, 2013

[4] The Russell-Einstein Manifesto (9 July 1955)