NuclearBan.US urges Members of the US Congress to join their colleagues who have publicly declared their support for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW or Nuclear Ban Treaty) and nuclear weapons abolition by co-sponsoring the Nuclear Weapons Abolition and Economic and Energy Conversion Act and/or signing the ICAN Legislative Pledge.
1. The majority of Americans want a world without nuclear weapons.
According to the results of a 2020 Chicago Council Survey, “most Americans don’t want a world with nuclear weapons…Two-thirds of Americans (66%) believe that no country should be allowed to have nuclear weapons, including majorities of Republicans (54%), Democrats (78%), and Independents (64%).”
2. This is very probably necessary if we are to survive as a species.
We’ve been indescribably lucky that we are still here after many accidents that could have resulted in detonation, and a dozen close calls besides the Cuban Missile Crisis that could have started nuclear war. Even a small portion of the world’s 13,000 nuclear weapons could cause a climate catastrophe that could starve billions around the world.
Even one detonation could destroy enough infrastructure and personnel to make a meaningful medical response impossible. Radioactive fallout, which can affect human and environmental health for generations, respects no national boundaries.
It is hard to imagine any military gains, temporary or permanent, that could possibly justify such a human and environmental catastrophe.
3. Most of the world wants to end the nuclear nightmare, and it’s entirely possible.
It’s just a matter of political will, and there’s a promising new tool: the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW or Nuclear Ban Treaty). At the United Nations in July 2017, 122 countries adopted the treaty. It entered into force in January 2021. As of October 2022, has already been signed by 91 and ratified by 68 countries.
4. The TPNW creates an international norm that stigmatizes nuclear weapons as unacceptable, like chemical and biological weapons.
In the ratifying countries, it is now illegal to develop, test, produce, manufacture, otherwise acquire, possess, stockpile, transfer, station, install, deploy, use or threaten to use nuclear weapons. Importantly, it’s also illegal in the ratifying countries to assist, encourage or induce anyone else to do any of those things. This can be interpreted as financing them as well. In other words, everything to do with nuclear weapons is forbidden in the ratifying countries.
5. The TPNW will affect business as usual.
Even if the US and the other nuclear nations do not join the TPNW, they will be affected by it. Corporations that use taxpayer money to make and maintain nuclear weapons and institutions that finance them are already starting to face divestment and legislative risk. Soon, they may also face criminal prosecution in the ratifying countries.
6. The TPNW is unique in that it is comes from the world to the nuclear nations.
The Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty (NPT) was agreed by the five nuclear-armed nations in 1968. 54 years later, the number of nuclear-armed nations has increased to nine, none of whom are making good on the NPT’s promise to eliminate nuclear arsenals “in good faith” and “at an early date.”
The TPNW is different, but complementary. It has its roots not in what is politically easy, but in recognition of the unacceptable humanitarian effects of even one nuclear detonation. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for facilitating the TPNW.
7. Aside from profit and power, there is no known benefit to keeping nuclear weapons.
Unlike conventional weapons, nuclear weapons can cause the literal end of the world, yet they have never been shown to prevent invasions or attacks, nor to win wars – not even WWII. “Nuclear deterrence” is the unproven theory that threatening retaliation with indiscriminate city-destroying nuclear weapons somehow keeps us safe.
General Lee Butler, head of US nuclear forces 1991-1994, has said these weapons are obsolete: “I am the only person who ever looked at all 12,500 of our targets. And when I got through, I was horrified. Deterrence was a formula for disaster. We escaped disaster [during the Cold War] by the grace of God…It is my profound conviction that nuclear weapons did not, and will not, of themselves prevent major war. To the contrary, I am persuaded that the presence of these hideous devices unnecessarily prolonged and intensified the Cold War. In today’s security environment, threats of their employment have been fully exposed as neither credible nor of any military utility…There is no security in nuclear weapons. It is a fool’s game.” [source?]
8. Nothing short of total global elimination of nuclear weapons can reduce the risk to zero.
General Colin Powell, former US Secretary of State, said: “I had 28,000 nuclear weapons under my supervision…The one thing that I convinced myself after all these years of exposure to the use of nuclear weapons is that they were useless. They could not be used. If you can have deterrence with an even lower number of weapons, well then, why stop there? Why not continue on, why not get rid of them altogether…This is the moment when we have to move forward and all of us come together to reduce the number of nuclear weapons and eliminate them from the face of the earth.” [source?]
9. Nuclear abolition is in our national interest.
Given the potential for nuclear accidents, miscalculations, or war that could lead to destruction of our country and even extinction of our species, and given the exorbitant cost of continuing to “modernize” the arsenal when we have urgent domestic human, environmental and infrastructure needs, it is arguably in our national security interest to work together with the other nuclear-armed nations to dismantle every single warhead, and cooperatively control fissile materials so that no nation, group, or terrorist can ever acquire them. The TPNW lays out a process by which this could be achieved.
NuclearBan.US published Warheads to Windmills: How to Pay for a Green New Deal in 2019 and distributed it to members of Congress. We believe that the US could play a vital role in helping to solve the two greatest existential threats of our times by shifting the taxpayer resources wasted on nuclear weapons toward green technologies that can address the climate crisis.
10. The US Federal Government must act.
The U.S. invented nuclear weapons, used them in war, and has led every step in the nuclear arms race. We need hundreds more US legislators to join the rest of the world in moving beyond the age of nuclear weapons. It is unfortunate and dangerous that many are influenced by their corporate campaign donors or by their own unquestioning belief in “deterrence,” and thus they choose to keep “modernizing” (spending billions to expand) arsenals.
If the US President were to sign the TPNW, it would be a powerful statement of willingness and leadership. It could kickstart serious negotiations among the nine nuclear-armed nations. No bombs would be eliminated right away. Nobody would suddenly become any more vulnerable than they already are. Nobody expects the US to disarm unilaterally (but even if we did, we would still have the world’s most powerful conventional military by a wide margin). Senate ratification could follow once agreements and guarantees have been put in place to ensure all countries eliminate all of their nuclear weapons.
With every day that war and failed negotiations raise the risk of nuclear catastrophe ever higher, we urge our legislators to think about the big picture, to give nuclear disarmament the urgent attention it requires, and to focus on the best solutions we have available.