On Nuclear Disarmament for Iowa
by Paul DeatonWhen Dr. Helen Caldicott moved from Australia to the United States, she became what Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy called, “the First Lady of the Nuclear Freeze Movement in the 1980s.” Less well known is that Dr. Caldicott traveled around Iowa with Tom Harkin during his first campaign for election to the United States Senate in 1984, so she has an Iowa connection. When speaking in Iowa and elsewhere, her tactic was to scare the daylights out of her audience with a graphic description of the medical consequences of nuclear war. At times, she would leave the audience in tears and then recruit them to the cause. She gave a serious speech on a serious matter that had a visceral impact on the audience.
In her memoir, A Desperate Passion, Dr. Caldicott expands on this, “I encountered a phenomenon I have since come to understand very well. Psychic numbing…is used to describe a state of denial which is, I think, similar to the first stage of grief described by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross in her landmark book On Death and Dying. It affects individuals and groups of people who are unwilling to come to terms with the magnitude of the nuclear threat; they block it out of their consciousness.” Dr. Caldicott’s strategy was to take her audiences through Kubler-Ross’ five stages of grief to social action on nuclear disarmament. One finds this to be an emotional and, at times, depressing methodology. I would argue that this approach is not best suited to the nuclear disarmament debate in Iowa in the 21st Century.
When we consider the World War II origins of nuclear weapons, it was what Tom Brokaw calls the “greatest generation” that created our current situation and the risk it entails. As members of that cohort age and die, it becomes clear that they will not bring society to resolution on nuclear proliferation or disarmament. It is no longer their problem. When aging cold warriors like Henry Kissinger, George Schultz, Sam Nunn, Brent Scowcroft and Linton Brooks speak in favor of nuclear disarmament and for an end to nuclear weapons testing, it is like our parents telling us what we should do. Many tout their support as evidence of bi-partisanship toward nuclear arms reduction. As a member of the baby boom generation, I listen to their advice, yet have to frame a solution to this issue in a way that matters now and is relevant now. The world has changed since the 1980s and especially since the fall of the Berlin Wall. It time to finish listening to our parent’s generation and pursue our own course toward nuclear disarmament.
The existence of thousands of nuclear weapons in the world presents risk. The expansion of the nuclear club from the original five (United States, Russia, Great Britain, France and China) to include India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea is evidence that the global community is going the wrong way on arms reduction. Some estimate that there are more than 23,000 nuclear warheads in the world, with the vast majority of them owned by Russia and the United States. The risk is that some of them would be detonated by accident or design. The more nuclear weapons there are, the more risk there is that they would be detonated. During the Reagan administration, the posture towards nuclear weapons was one of strength through proliferation, with the deployment of Cruise missiles with nuclear warheads being one example of how the United States countered the fact that the Soviet Union possessed more nuclear weapons than the United States. This approach no longer keeps us safe. Our framework for addressing the nuclear threat has to be one of managing the risks the existence of nuclear weapons creates.
There will always be “bad guys” who want to obtain a nuclear weapon and use it to threaten others. Whether it would be a terrorist like Timothy McVey who blew up the Murrow Federal Building in Oklahoma City or a jihadist whose goal is to return society to a 6th century caliphate state, it does not matter. The fact that nuclear weapons exist in the world creates risk. For Iowa, and maybe for the world, there is an approach to nuclear disarmament.
Perhaps the most important step we can take is to confront the nuclear issue, by talking about it with our friends and family. Don’t let others engender fear. Most of us were not involved in creating nuclear weapons. It is up to us to encourage our government to move towards minimizing the risk of them in the world. None of us wants to pass the legacy of a world with nuclear weapons to our children and grandchildren.
Support the administration’s initiative on nuclear disarmament. President Obama laid out his policy in the Prague speech last spring and it includes re-negotiation of the START treaty between the United States and Russia, and ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Urge our senators to support ratification of these treaties, For our efforts towards nuclear disarmament to be successful; the United States must engage the rest of the world.
As Thomas Jefferson said in a letter to John Page in 1763, “the most fortunate of us, in our journey through life, frequently meet with calamities and misfortunes which may greatly afflict us; and, to fortify our minds against the attacks of these calamities and misfortunes, should be one of the principal studies and endeavours (sic) of our lives.” We must no longer accept that the medical consequences of nuclear war will bring us only grief and worry; that we should fear for our safety. Having inherited nuclear weapons, we must, as Jefferson suggests, fortify our minds, through education and study, through conversations with friends, family and our elected officials, so that we can take social action. In doing this, the risk of nuclear weapons may be gone from the earth.
I submit to the reader that if we Iowans can do this, so too can the rest of society. ~Paul Deaton is a native Iowan living in rural Jo
hnson County. Check out his blog, Big Grove Garden. E-mail Paul Deaton
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