Bloomington peace coilition

2/25/2019 in HT

This guest column was written by Bloomington resident David Keppel, who is spokesperson for Bloomington Peace Action Coalition.

Does humanity owe its survival to a television docudrama? In November 1983, President Ronald Reagan watched the film “The Day After,” a movie starring Jason Robard, which imagines the aftermath of a U.S.-Soviet nuclear war and its impact on Lawrence, Kansas. He was deeply shaken by the devastation. One reason he was receptive is that in the weeks preceding that screening, the world had come even closer to nuclear war than it had in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. NATO had just conducted Operation Able Archer, simulating a U.S. nuclear strike on Russia. Since the Russians had a war plan for an attack disguised as a mere exercise, they thought our exercise might be a real strike. Reagan, who had entered office as an ultra hawk, knew we had come to the brink of catastrophe.

Few Americans realize that the danger of nuclear war is again rising. The Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists stands at an ominous two minutes to midnight. Claiming Russian violations, President Donald Trump has renounced the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty. The administration is embarking on a $1.5 trillion nuclear modernization program to build a new generation of “usable” nuclear weapons. One of these, a stealth nuclear cruise missile, could be deployed at forward sites in Europe within striking distance of Russia. At the same time, the administration is deploying a so-called “low-yield” warhead (the W76-2) for the Trident nuclear missile aboard strategic submarines. With an impact slightly short of the Hiroshima bomb, these are considered “usable.” Yet our Trident missiles will also continue to carry warheads hundreds of times more powerful. If the Russians see an incoming Trident missile, they will likely assume the worst and fire their full nuclear deterrent, engulfing the world in an all-out nuclear war. Since “The Day After” was produced in 1983, scientists have learned that nuclear war would not only cause hundreds of millions of deaths from blast, firestorms and radiation sickness; it would also unleash such severe and rapid climate change (“Nuclear Winter”) that most life on Earth would go extinct.

In 2018, former Sen. Richard Lugar, along with former Secretary of State George Shultz and former Defense Secretary William Perry, wrote to Congress in opposition to the new warhead. “Perhaps the biggest fallacy in the whole argument is the mistaken and dangerous belief that a ‘small’ nuclear war would remain small. There is no basis for the dubious theory that, if Russia used a ‘low-yield’ nuclear weapon and the United States responded in kind, the conflict could stay at that level. Indeed, it is unlikely that there is such a thing as a limited nuclear war; preparing for one is folly.”

Despite this warning, Congress approved the funds for the W76-2. In the new Congress, some senators and representatives (including Elizabeth Warren and Ted Lieu) are trying to block its actual deployment.

Citizen action is essential. The nuclear freeze movement in the 1980s called for a U.S.-Soviet halt in the testing, production and deployment of new nuclear weapons. This proposal recognized that the greatest danger lay not in sheer number of weapons but in development of first-strike weapons designed to “win” a nuclear war, bringing both sides to nuclear hair-trigger. Today, that danger has returned with a vengeance, and again the key is to stop a new generation of nuclear weapons on all sides.

The freeze campaign took its proposal to town meetings across the nation and built a huge grassroots movement that forced Congress and the president to pay attention. Today again, the future is in our hands.

My reply:

The Russian state controls media inside Russia and uses a constant stream of propaganda to convince it's citizens that the west is evil. Citizens are told that Russian military forces protect them from the nefarious schemes of western nations and the US. The dictator Putin masquerades as the strong leader needed to repel western invaders.

Russia has an economy smaller than that of Italy. Economists describe it as a kleptocracy (rule by thieves). The only thing it has to sell are gas and oil and weapons. However, Putin props up the country internationally with threats designed to instill fear in the west such as constant airspace intrusions, bragging about new nuclear super-weapons and invading teritory from neighboring countries. This is the reality the Bloomington Peace Coilition needs to confront rather than trying to disarm America.

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