The next step for the self-preservation of mankind in this nuclear age is to have a worldwide peoples’ referendum on any use of nuclear weapons to guarantee world security.
THE NEXT STEP FOR HUMANITY IN THE NUCLEAR AGE
By
Ernest L. Graves
The next step for the self-preservation of mankind in this nuclear age is to have a worldwide peoples’ referendum on any use of nuclear weapons to guarantee world security. This is because our present system of world security is a failure threatening our collective existence. Heretofore, we have left the decision to use or not to use nuclear weapons for our security to the elite managers of the separate states of this world and not to the people. And look at what the leaders have wrought—the bombs have gotten 1000 times more powerful than those dropped on Japan; the number of nations in the nuclear weapons club has increased from five to nine (or ten) with Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea outside the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT); more national leaders have their fingers on the control triggers of nuclear bombs, more weapons and fissile material to safeguard and thirteen more nations seeking membership in the nuclear weapons club—all of which is an attestation to the fact that the world security system designed by our leaders is breaking down and threatens the collective existence of mankind.
In 1945 our leaders chose to rely on nuclear weapons as the keystone of our defense, paying little heed to Einstein’s dire prophecy: "The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our mode of thinking and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe."
This reliance on nuclear weapons has continued apace—through 1949 when Russia developed the plutonium bomb, which in turn led to the nuclear arms race and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when President Kennedy faced the possibility of the catastrophe of a nuclear war with Russia arising from the failure of leaders to alter their "mode of thinking" about their respective security, which was to counter the threat of death and destruction with yet greater death and destruction.
The staggeringly awesome consequences, narrowly averted, which flow from this "mode of thinking" is brought home to every thinking person by the Single Integrated Plan our leaders had prepared to counter the threatened Soviet attack. With 27,000 nuclear weapons in our "overkill" stockpile we had planned to launch "a massive strike against the Communist bloc in the first 24 hours of conflict, with estimated casualties of between 360 and 450 million people." (Journal of Atomic Scientists, May/June 2006) And this estimate supposedly did not include the casualties the Americans, Canadians and other allies would suffer from the Soviet retaliation.
In President Kennedy’s famous post Missile Crisis peace speech of June 10, 1963 the obscene number of these estimated casualties caused him to assert that those who advocate making war in the nuclear age as having "...a collective death wish for the world..." and that "... peace, therefore, is the rational end of rational man." Robert Kennedy, who was the constant companion of the president during the crisis, also subscribed to his brother’s view of the events for his book, Thirteen Days, when he observed that the crisis had "brought the world to the abyss of nuclear destruction and the end of mankind."
Forty-five years after this speech and our leaders still have not gotten the message of Einstein and Kennedy and instead rely on nuclear weapons as the keystone of our world security. So too, do a growing number of the nations of the world, both friendly and unfriendly. When it is considered that in that same forty-five years the nations in the nuclear weapons club have increased from five to nine and still growing. The casualty estimates of the Cuban Missile Crisis for only two countries seem modest when compared to the casualties that can result from a modern nuclear war of nations, whether intentionally or unintentionally.
When it is further realized that in modern warfare it is estimated that 90% of the causalities are innocent civilians, then the ludicrousness of the present system of collective world security is made apparent. The U.S. and other nations possess nuclear weapons supposedly to protect the lives of innocent civilians of the world, yet these innocent civilians are the very ones who are at risk of extermination in the hundreds of millions—maybe even ending mankind’s stay on this planet—by nuclear war. It is utter idiocy to protect the world’s innocent civilians by exterminating them. This is particularly so when an informal Pew poll of 2005 reveals that 74% of the world’s people don’t want this kind of protection, for in the final analysis, it is the innocent civilians of the world who are the ones who will suffer 90% of the extermination.
Still, the risk of nuclear war is growing greater as each day passes with the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the talk of a war of civilizations despite the warnings of Einstein and Kennedy. Add President Reagan, who called for the abolition of "all nuclear weapons" which he described as "...Totally irrational, totally inhumane, good for nothing but killing, possibly destructive of life on earth and cavitations...", and former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara who would declare nuclear weapons to be "...immoral, illegal, militarily unnecessary, and dreadfully dangerous."
Recently there are an increasing number of knowledgeable people, both in and out of government, who have expressed their discontent with the danger, the efficacy, and the morality of basing the world security on nuclear weapons. Here is what Fred Charles Ikle, former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy in the Reagan administration and who served Presidents Nixon and Ford as Director of the U.S. Arms Control Disarmament Agency, had to say about this problem in 2006: "The continuous spread of nuclear technology is turning into a disaster of unimaginable proportions. It is beyond the control of any national government or any international agreement." (Annihilation From Within)
Compare the words by a specialist on the subject with the similar ideas expressed in the questions officially debated at the World Economic Forum for 2007: Is the world close to tipping into an unstoppable cascade of proliferation of nuclear arms? Is there a danger that weapons of mass destruction will fall into the hands of terrorists who would stage a nuclear 9/11? What can be done to prevent any of this happening?
What is of even greater significance was a conference that was held at the Hoover Institute about abandoning our collective reliance on nuclear weapons globally, thereby ending the threat these weapons pose to the world of nations. This conference was called by George P. Shultz, a distinguished fellow of the Hoover Institute at Stanford and former Secretary of State, and Sidney H. Drell. A statement under the banner, A World Free of Nuclear Weapons, was joined in by Mr. Schultz and Mr. Drell, as well as William A. Perry, a former Secretary of Defense; Henry A. Kissinger, former Secretary of State; Mr. Sam Nunn, former Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and others attending the conference. The tenor of the statement issued January 4, 2007 by the conference was that in view of the present and future proliferation of nuclear weapons, plus the probable failure of present or future safeguards which "...are not adequate to the danger...," we must all remove nuclear weapons from our military arsenals. A step by step abandonment of global reliance (use or employment) of nuclear weapons for our ultimate security was recommended.
These references demonstrate that there is a growing body of influential opinion that believes our present system of making nuclear weapons the cornerstone of the world security is wrong. It is wrong because it is too dangerous, too precarious and too immoral a basis upon which to rest the security of the nations of the world. Admittedly the Schultz group, working from the top down, is seeking to get the governments of the world to agree to their plan. However, there are major forces in and out of governments that hold a contrary belief and will oppose any attempt to relinquish reliance on nuclear weapons as the ultimate guarantor of the security of nations.
The above highlights some of the crucial questions that affect all of us because they involve our continued existence on this globe. Questions which have not previously been answered adequately are: 1.) Should any one person or elite group of national managers of the nuclear club nations have the power to exterminate the human race? 2.) Should any one person be allowed the power to order the extermination of 360 to 459 million innocent civilians? 3.) When innocent civilians represent 90% of the 360 to 459 million who may be exterminated by such conflict, who is to decide – the elite managers of nations or the peoples of the world – whether nuclear weapons shall be used to guarantee world security? 4.) Do not the people have the moral right to decide upon their total extermination or even the extermination of the lives of 360 to 459 million or more innocent civilians? 5.) Is it ever right or just or fair that the people have not the right to participate or be heard on such a decision?
The position taken here is that it is for the peoples of the world to decide whether this world’s security is protected by nuclear weapons because, in the final analysis, it is the innocent civilians of the world who will suffer 90% of the casualties and face the ever present risk of the possible extermination of the whole human race. After all, governments exist for the benefit of man, not man exists for the benefit of governments.
One may ask: How did it come about that the lives of all the world’s people could be put at risk in the name of security by nuclear weapons of war that may be unleashed without the people having a say in the matter? The answer is: The A bomb and its progeny a 21st Century technology weapon of war was superimposed on a 17th Century Westphalian system of political and social order; a study in the dissonance between our world social and political progress and our scientific progress.
The atom bomb was developed in strictest secrecy during World War II by the military under the auspices of President Roosevelt when he was Commander in Chief of the armed forces of the United States. Not even the Vice President knew about it, let alone the public. After the death of President Roosevelt Harry Truman ordered the bombs ordered dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A year later his administration established the structure of sole presidential control over the use of atomic weapons by the Atomic Act of 1946. Later the National Security Council was created to assist the president in making the decision, but his was the sole finger on the nuclear trigger. After an unsuccessful attempt to internationalize control of nuclear weapons with the Baruch Plan in the UN, the world resumed its reliance on nuclear weapons for the world security system. This concept of the world security system has been incorporated in the National Security Strategy of 2002 and 2006. By these documents the United States proclaims its preeminence in military might, a missile defense system, and the right of interdiction and military preemption (read prevention) where the President, and the President alone, sees fit.
Thus have we entered the atomic age with nuclear weapons for our world security with the attendant questions unresolved. The questions arise from the dissonance between the thinking in our political and social world and our scientific and technological capacity. It now appears that we out ran ourselves for the weapon of war we created is too advanced, too dangerous to the survival of the species and the mass killings of innocent civilians by its usage is too immoral for man to be trusted with at our present stage of political and social progress.
When the American Revolution was taking place the world’s security system was constructed on the 17th Century Westphalian model of the nation-state. By the prevailing rules of the time a king had dominion over his subjects and the power to declare war using each and all of the weapons of war the limited technology then provided. We modeled ourselves on this nation-state system, with important modifications.
These modifications embodied the different conception the United States of America had of the function of a state and government. It was the novel idea that governments exist for the benefit of the people, not that people exist for the benefit of governments or kings. The idea is embodied in our constitution and may be summarized in Lincoln’s famous phrasing—a government of the people; by the people; and for the people. Under this conception it is the people sitting in congress, not the king, who have the absolute right to make the decisions that affect their survival, as in the power "...to declare war" (Art. I, sec. 8). Between then and now this democratic idea has been adopted in theory by most of the nations of the world. Today there is hardly a nation existing on this globe that would deny the moral right of the people to determine all matters that fundamentally affect their collective survival.
At the time of the drafting of the Constitution there was no conflict between the legislative power of Congress "to declare war" (Art. I, Sec.8) and the excutive power of the President as "Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States." (Art. II, Sec. 8) This was mainly attributable to the limited scope of the killing and destruction caused by the then weapons of war. It was not until World War II when we saw the mass bombing of innocent civilians with conventional arms and the total destruction of innocent civilians with the A bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that a conflict between the two powers of the Constitution was readily discernible. By the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, when we contemplated killing 360 to 450 million innocent civilians using the more deadly plutonium bombs, that we began to understand the full nature of the conflict between the legislative and executive powers stated in our Constitution or the consequences to us all by this weapon we had created.
It isn’t only a conflict between the executive powers of the president and the peoples’ legislative powers written in our Constitution that is at issue here. It is the fact of the very existence of nuclear weapons that has already encroached on the peoples’ right of self-government, self-defense and threatens the very existence of mankind on this planet. Consider the following.
First, it is the President as Commander in Chief who has the sole power to use or not use nuclear weapons in defense of the world’s security system. It’s not the people who have the power of decision. Why is this? It is because in the atomic age we may all get incinerated in the time it takes for democratic debates; and the 18th Century correctives of impeachment, election removal and the limits on the spending power are meaningless. By necessity it becomes the president who decides the fundamental question to risk or not to risk our very survival by his decision to use or not use nuclear weapons. This makes us all—the world’s people—totally subject to the will and disposition of our president or any other leader of the nuclear weapons club.
Thus does modern technology and the executive power of the President as Commander in Chief override our precious Constitution in the atomic age. It is as Mr. Pinkney is reported by Madison to have said in the Constitutional Convention: he "was for a vigorous executive but was afraid the executive powers of the existing Congress might extend to peace & war which would render the Executive a monarchy, of the worst kind, to wit an elective one." (Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787)
Second, with nuclear weapons the premise was the aggressor always wins. This posed an intolerable threat to the U.S. when the nuclear weapons are possessed by other nations and our response is mutually assured destruction (MAD), which is premised on both sides being rational. This logic of nuclear weapons has led us to maintain 700 bases, on every continent but Antarctica, as we have sought, unsuccessfully, to guarantee the world’s security with our preponderance of conventional arms and nuclear weapons. This was the Empire approach to the problem; but it is failing to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons as previously noted.
Third, with the invention of nuclear weapons a war between nations, then as now, could lead to the slaughter of innocent civilians in the obscene numbers of 300 to 500 million and risk ending all civilization, perhaps even human life itself, on this planet. This presents all of us with the real dilemma of our time. To preserve the world’s security system with nuclear weapons we must, (1) risk the destruction of the world and mankind, (2) offend all civilized concepts of morals by bestowing on one man the power to order killing people in inordinate numbers, and (3) we must abandon the universally cherished democratic principle of the peoples’ right to self-government and the right of self-survival that belongs to them as a matter of the existential right to declare war. The power to unleash and use nuclear weapons in the nuclear age is substantively identical to the existential right to declare war in an earlier age. And that is a matter of choice that adheres to the people exclusively. The elite managers of government may make a similar decision but it is subservient to the people’s prior right.
We have established that the peoples’ right to decide whether or not the use of nuclear weapons to preserve the world’s security system is every bit as much an existential right of the people as their right to declare war. As President Kennedy stated in his "Peace" speech after his experience in the Cuban Missile Crisis: "And is not peace, or the abolition of nuclear weapons in the last analysis, basically a matter of human rights – the right to live out our lives without fear of devastation – the right to breath air as nature provided – the right of future generations to a healthy existence."
But one looks in vain for a codification of the remedy. Nowhere is there a right of the people to approve or disapprove of the use of nuclear weapons to guarantee the world security system. It is not specifically spelled out in any country in the world. Maybe it is implied in the nation-states which have renounced war, but it is not found in any constitution or organic document of state. A fact which in itself is odd when it is remembered that the American Declaration of Independence spelled out that man was endowed by his creator with the inalienable right to life and it is this peoples’ right that, individually and collectively, is being usurped by the present deciders of the world security system.
This is particularly true when we recall that at the American constitutional convention Mr. Pinkney of South Carolina said that to give the president the substantive right to declare war would be to create an elective monarch of the worst kind. Or the similar words spoken by Mr. Gerry of Massachusetts when he said that he "...never expected to hear in a republic a motion to empower the Executive alone the power to declare war." Gradually the world embraced this democratic ideal of a government run for the people with the peoples’ right of choice over the existential right to declare war. That is, until it was supplanted by the president’s de facto power as commander in chief over the use of nuclear weapons. And this was accomplished without the amendment process as required in Article V of the U.S. Constitution. A like power to play a decider role in the nuclear weapons game now exists for the nine leaders (and growing) of the nuclear weapons club.
This is not an insignificant right that was guaranteed by the American Constitution and existentially implied in the concept of democracy which has been accepted by the world’s nations of the UN. Once it was just the people of America who could assert this existential right to declare war (and its logical equal the right to accept or reject the use of nuclear weapons to secure the world’s security system) while now all the world’s people can claim the existential right of democratic government. It is the right of the world’s people, not its elite managers, to accept or reject this use of nuclear weapons for security. And that carries with it the correlative of the necessary relinquishment of the people’s existential right to declare war.
That’s fine, the peoples of the world have a right to accept or reject the use of nuclear weapons to guarantee the world’s security system. But how do the people of the world lawfully express their existential right when it does not exist in any organic document and it has not been codified into basic law? It’s now time the world’s people collectively begin to assert this right; by civil disobedience founded on necessity, by protest demonstrations, and by contacting the UN and network organizations demanding a suitable vehicle for expressing this personal existential right.
We have previously said a world wide referendum on any use of nuclear weapons to guarantee the world’s security system is needed to save humanity. But no remedy exists for the exercise of this existential right of the world’s people in the world organization, the UN, we formed in 1945. There are three obstacles in looking to the UN for a remedy: (1) The UN Charter does not recognize the use of nuclear weapons as a personal existential right. (2) The UN Charter has no provision for a referendum. (3) The UN by treaty only acts through the nation-state structure. Nevertheless, we continue to assert a world referendum, formal or informal, is required. The following suggestion is modeled on the referendum system the European Union created for each nation to join.
Starting with the right of the world’s people to accept or reject any use of nuclear weapons one may assume that a referendum of the world’s people will reflect the negative Pew Poll result on any use or reliance on nuclear weapons to guarantee the world security system. Thus, the Pew poll of the world’s people can be treated, preliminarily, as a peoples’ affirmative answer to the following referendum question: Should the Universal Declaration of Rights be expanded to include the right to be free from any use of nuclear weapons or threat of use by any nation? This can then serve as the basis for a peoples’ movement, with writing directly to the UN or to Amnesty International, the World Federalist Movement, or other network members affiliated with the UN advising them of the writer’s support for such an expansion of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Rights. This would be a self-standing, independent, bottom-up approach to the abolition of nuclear weapons. This position would satisfy the first obstacle of the UN.
Next is the George P. Schultz group and its efforts to move nations from the top-down to make the world free from the threat of nuclear weapons by having nations abolish them from the world. Thus, the two groups will be working for the same end: the abolition of nuclear weapons; one group working from the bottom-up and one group working from the top-down. The two groups obviously are complementary and cross potentiating. One group aids the other by adding popular acceptance to the logical necessity of the other. One has access to international organizations and can raise capital for national referenda on the abolition of these weapons and the other can provide the mass public support of a movement in all nations.
Because a war between nations in the nuclear age is a global matter involving the existential right of the entire world’s people, we endeavored to fit the remedy into the UN structure. But the concentration on global remedies doesn’t preclude considering the actions of individual nations that are relevant. One such action was the Ludlow Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This amendment, proposed in 1938, required a national referendum to confirm a declaration of war passed by Congress except in the event of an invasion of the United States or its territorial possessions. By a vote of 209-188 the House returned the resolution to committee after President Roosevelt wrote a letter to the Speaker of the House saying that he considered that the amendment would be impracticable in its application and incompatible with our representative form of government. In the course of this letter the President stated:
Our government is conducted by the people through representatives of their own choosing. It was with singular unanimity that the founders of the Republic agreed upon such free and representative form of government as the only practical means of government by the people. Such an amendment to the Constitution as that proposed would cripple any President in conduct of our foreign relations, and it would encourage other nations to believe that they could violate American rights with impunity.
In so far as the existential right to declare war in a democracy is analogous to the right of the people of the world to decide to use or not to use nuclear weapons in defense of the world security system, the Ludlow amendment and the President’s letter are very instructive in the following ways:
1.) In a nation which accepts the democratic principle that governments exist for the benefit of the people the existential right of the people to declare war is honored and recognized.
2.) A proper method of ascertaining the people’s will is by a national referendum. This method was employed in the United States in 1938, when the President saw nothing amiss with the attempt to amend the Constitution using this procedure, provided the substance of the amendment complied with the constitution and the procedure for the enactment was proper.
3.) The Ludlow amendment was first presented in 1938 some three years before America declared war in 1941. At that time the "representative system" of the U.S. Constitution—with its provisions of a voting reversal, impeachment and the spending power limitation—operated with the right of the legislative declaration of war that were relatively consonant with the scope and effectiveness of the war-making capacities of the technology at the time. But that is not the case with nuclear weapons and missiles. Now the public’s right to declare war is too lugubrious and too painfully slow to be effective for us, the people of the U.S. (or the people of the world) to have a meaningful existential right to declare war. One man—the president, among eight or nine other leaders—now holds the existential right of decision (like kings of old)—over all of our very existence. The only way to avoid this loss of the existential right of all the peoples of the world is act now before the necessity arises by prohibiting anticipatorily any use of nuclear weapons (peremptorily).
4.) The removal of one class of weapons from our arsenal of defense, whose mere possession endangers us all, in no way countervenes the U.S. Constitution or impedes the conduct of foreign affairs which were the concerns expressed in President Roosevelt’s letter.
5.) The methods proposed for obtaining a modification of the Universal Declaration of Rights in no way stops or prohibits the efforts by the Shultz group from getting various nations, one by one, to include such a provision in their organic document, charter or constitution.
The above represents the reasons we have proposed the following referendum question to be presented the world:
Should the Universal Declaration of Rights be expanded to include the right to be free from any use of nuclear weapons or the threat of their use by any nation?
Because the abolition of nuclear weapons would still leave smaller nations the easy prey of larger nations with conventional arms and because the world must learn to cooperate, not annihilate, the people aught to be offered the opportunity to answer the following universal referendum on war:
Should the Universal Declaration of Rights be further expanded to include the right for the people to be free of war or the threat of war?
.