Editor’s note: This commentary is by John Reuwer, M.D., who is a member of Physicians for Social Responsibility Committee to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.
Sept. 26 is the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. Why should Vermonters care about something that seems so abstract and far away? We are already exhausted trying to cope with other threats to life as we know it — pandemics, floods, fires, and other environmental calamities in quick succession, and growing wealth inequality that is putting medical care, housing, and a decent life out of reach for too many people. Coming to terms with 400 years of collective national racism is making daily front page news.
The reason we need not only to care, but to act is because the threat of a nuclear disaster is worse, and preventing it is easier than most people think. Those who study the risk of nuclear war remind us that the danger is increasing. Of the nearly 14,000 existing nuclear weapons, 95% are held by the U.S. and Russia, whose relationship is at a post Cold War low, with NATO practicing war games on Russia’s border. Chinese and U.S. warships are playing chicken in the South China Sea. Nuclear armed India and Pakistan have attacked each other in Kashmir. It wasn’t long ago that Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump bragged about the nuclear buttons on their desks as they traded threats of annihilating the other. The U.S. has recently withdrawn from nearly every hard-won treaty limiting nuclear proliferation, and is threatening not to renew the strongest one, the New Start Treaty, when it expires in February. Meanwhile, our government has committed to spending nearly $70 billion a year on new and more usable weapons and their delivery systems for the next 30 years. That works out to over $130 million per year of Vermont tax dollars. Each weapon built, moved, and stored is another chance for an accident or act of terrorism. The other eight nuclear powers are responding with their own build-ups, endangering us all the more, since there is no defense against these weapons.
On the positive side, 122 countries at the United Nations in 2017 adopted a Treaty to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons. Eighty-five nations have since ratified, and 45 nations have signed the treaty. Soon after 50 nations sign it, the production, storage, and transfer of nuclear weapons will become illegal for the signatories. For the first time since their creation, nuclear weapons will be declared globally unacceptable for the threat they pose to humanity. This will create political space for people in nuclear armed states to push for their elimination. Vermonters can help bring this process about by asking Peter Welch to co-sponsor H.R. 2419, the Nuclear Weapons Abolition and Economic and Energy Conversion Act of 2019, which addresses several of our major crises at once. We can ask Sens. Bernie Sanders and Patrick Leahy to introduce a companion bill in the Senate.
To reduce the risk in the short run, Vermonters can lobby their city councils and selectboards to repeat the successes of the nuclear freeze movement of the 1980s, when over 150 Vermont towns voted to stop the nuclear arms race. This was one of the greatest movement successes in U.S. history, and led to an 85% reduction of nuclear warheads worldwide. It may well be one reason we are still here. We can do this by passing resolutions under the banner of Back From the Brink, to pressure the federal government to take immediate steps to reduce the risk of disaster. Burlington, South Burlington, and Winooski have already done so.
The solutions to climate change, pandemics, and poverty are complicated and expensive. Defeating racism requires a painful look at our own behaviors. In comparison, nuclear disarmament is relatively easy. We built these cursed machines; we can take them apart. Doing so will free up huge amounts of money and human creativity to deal with the other threats to our and our children’s future. Please act now.
