Well, ah, Bill Arkin—I--I should save this for later but I—I think his—his fine description of what he rightly calls the nuclear establishment just sharpens the question that’s in my mind that I’ll put to him now. Maybe we can talk about it later. And that is um, I would agree with him that the military is by no means a monolith, and quite a few distinguished members of it have been peeled off or peeled themselves off recently, and come out in favor of eliminating nuclear weapons, but I would love to engage the question of just who this nuclear establishment is. And politically speaking, what its power consists of and where the bottom line is, politically. Is it in the labs, is it civilian defense, is it the military, is it a republican congress, what is it? I just would love to engage that—that question, which, ah, Bill has so usefully, ah, put before us here.

Ah, you’ve been holding a conference here on low level radiation and my subject is of course, nuclear weapons and nuclear war, which deals with rather higher levels of radiation. Ah, but I’m not going to bother in this company to try to make the case that these dangers are all of one piece, and to tell you again how the issue of nuclear weapons and especially the danger of proliferation can’t be detached from the issue of nuclear power, that neither of these can be detached either from the stupendous ecological damage already done by both the weapons industry and the nuclear power industry and that the deaths that have been caused and are being caused today by this pollution and by the consequences of nuclear testing, are as real as those of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I’m just going to assume that the bear fact that you’ve invited me and Bill Arkin and ah, A—Admiral Carroll, ah, to speak to you, ah, signifies that you—that we have an agreement on this point. Ah, I do wish to say, ah, however, to begin with, that I’m deeply aware that I appear before an audience of winter soldiers in the cause of fighting nuclear damage and nuclear danger—of people such as Alice Stewart and Carl Morgan and Helen Caldecott to name just a few who have put lifetimes into this work, not only in the moments which have been quite rare, when nuclear matters were in the forefront of the public mind, but in the lean times—the times of public indifference or even opposition. And the way I see it, be steady, persistent, often cumulative, sometime unsung and quiet endeavors are but the very backbone of our common effort. And without lives like this lived in the service of the cause, the occasional dramatic calls for a nuclear freeze or, as today, for nuclear abolition are words in the wind. And that’s why I consider it such a great, great honor as well as a great opportunity to address this audience today.

I have four things I want to talk about. Corruption, opportunity, danger, and action. And I associate each of these with a period, and these are, respectively, the Cold War in which nuclear danger grew to imperil the species, the years immediately following the Cold War in which new and unparalleled opportunities opened up, and third, our present year in which we saw the nuclear tests by Pakistan and India and other adverse signs of pre—proliferation, and fourth and finally the future, which I hope and believe will be a period of action—action to rid the world of nuclear weapons.

So, I’m going to begin with corruption and the Cold War. When the first bomb flashed over the city of Hiroshima on August 6^th of 1945, we here in the United States entered into a period of what I think of as an unremitting moral emergency that has lasted down today—to today. Those are uncompromising words, but I think they’re true. In fact, I think that one of the weirder aspects of our condition is learning what it feels like to live with such an emergency for more than a half century without doing anything serious about it. The emergency, however, can be described easily and the last thing I want to do before this audience is rehearse one more time the effects of nuclear weapons. But since I think that human beings—we human beings have a mysterious capacity to get used to almost anything—to forget on a daily basis what we know and even perhaps as we know it, to in a way forget it, I’d be remiss if I didn’t remind us that mere possession of nuclear weapons has committed us in some circumstance or other to killing tens of millions of human beings, most of them entirely unengaged in any combat, and that this cannot honestly be sanctioned by any civilized moral code or feeling.

What is more, during the Cold War, we and our Soviet counterpart together, put, of course, the very existence of the human species along with other life on earth in deadly jeopardy. And this state of affairs was and remains unprecedented in all human history. Sometimes we thought about it. More of the time we put it out of mind and on a few occasions, we went to the brink and couldn’t be sure that we’d all wake up to see the sunrise the next morning. But whatever we were doing the peril remained. It was there.

And as the arsenals grew and it became clear that the result of an attack would, in effect, be the ruin of the attacker as well, common sense had to be thrown out along with morality, and mutual assured destruction became the watchword of the day. But to this black picture another important circumstance must be added. And this was the widespread conviction, especially in the nuclear powers that any escape from the nuclear predicament—I mean, any hope actually of eliminating the weapons—was impossible. Here in the United States, the syllogism went as follows: Nuclear disarmament requires inspection, the Soviet Union was a secretive totalitarian state and wouldn’t permit inspection, and couldn’t, therefore nuclear disarmament was ruled out and I know they had a parallel piece of reasoning in the Soviet Union.

The belief so difficult to shake off that nuclear disarmament was impossible under the conditions of the Cold War was the most demoralizing and degrading aspect of what I call the corruption of those days. It meant that even the people of good will were paralyzed. They scarcely, or I should say, we scarcely dared even to mention the goal that alone could deliver us from the intolerable position of thre—threatening to slaughter millions—namely the elimination of nuclear weapons.

Consider, for example the freeze movement. It was a great and positive outpouring of concern about nuclear danger. But what was its goal, its dream? Merely to arrest the deterioration—that is to keep everything as it was and which we could destroy ourselves many times over. And of course, many of—over the years might call out to ban the bomb, but how many in their hearts believed that this would happen. This perceived impossibility completed their despair. For it’s one thing to believe that one’s species has wandered into a suicidal trap and it is another far worse thing to believe that in principle there is no exit from it.

And yet, nothing on this earth is eternal. And one fine day, to just about everyone’s astonishment, the Berlin wall came down, the Soviet Union vanished like a bad dream, and we entered a new age. And that brings me to opportunity.

The suddenness of that event, I think, caused a certain bewilderment among us from which we have yet to recover, and I think we’re far from having absorbed the end of the Cold War, even today. And when I say we, I very much include those of us in the anti-nuclear movement. I would spare you quoting one more time the old and wonderful saying of Einstein that "everything has changed but our mode of thinking and so we drift to unparalleled catastrophe," but I’m quoting it again because with the end of the Cold War, we’re doing it a second time. And this second failure to change our thinking may be even worse in a way than the first failure, since today what we are in danger of passing up is an opportunity to solve the problem—actually to clear these horrible devices out of our lives.

But the fact is that the political shape of things on our planet has been revolutionized--in my opinion, in an exceedingly positive way. And in no area are the implications greater than in the area of nuclear arms. Have we, I sometimes wonder, become so used in this 20^th century, this bloodsome century to terrible news that we’re unable now to take in good news?

I don’t want to be pollyannaish, but I’d like you to consider just a few of the basic facts of our cur—current circumstances, politically speaking. First, the world is at peace. As a matter of fact if I ah, reckon rightly, maybe someone can contradict me, there is at present no full scale war being waged between any two sovereign nations. I’m not a historian, but I do wonder whether there’s another moment in all history of which that could be said.

Second, today, no threatened power—no defeated power threatens to upset a ve—victor’s peace as Germany did for instance after 1919, propelling the world back into war.

Third, no ideological rivalry threatens to divide the world, as occurred so soon after 1945, shattering the chance for peace and bringing on the Cold War and the nuclear arms race. As I say, I’m not trying to paint too rosy a picture, because I know full well that terrible slaughters, including episodes of attempted and partially successful genocide have erupted again and again in the post Cold War period. But these do not and probably cannot bring with them nuclear danger which is our subject today.

What of nuclear weapons, then? Here we find a strange scene. Here the opportunity I spoke of is greatest, but accomplishment is least. The notable subjective fact is that as a country, we have done so little, and perhaps I have a difference in emphasis here from Bill Arkin, ah, merely continuing with the Cold War disarmament talks—and even these are stalled. The notable objective fact however is that if in our revolutionized, international situation, we were to choose to act, there is no seeming limit to our possible accomplishment. For the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soo—Soviet Union cleared away the declared barrier of political impossibility that stood in the way of nuclear abolition and even of championing that, and was the source of our tacit despair. No totalitarian system now stands in the way, no obstacle to full inspection and full cooperation remains, and indeed Russia has now invited teams of Americans to come in and help safeguard their nuclear materials and we spent about 10 billion dollars on that.

Now, perhaps there are other obstacles in the way, having to do with cheating in the context of an abolition agreement and so—so on—but these, I’d like to suggest, without going into them, as perhaps, ah, Admiral Carroll will, when he speaks on the military aspect of this, are pigmy sized compared to the obstacle that has now been swept out of the way. In other words, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, what appeared to be the Gordian knot stopping us from full nuclear disarmament was dissolved. We can see our way, it appears, we can see our way out of our trap, and release ourselves from the defa—despair which afflicted us during the Cold War.

As I see it, it’s as if having been locked for 50 years in a mine shaft in which it looked as if we were doomed to live out our days, there suddenly appeared a crack in the ceiling and a shaft of light came in. We still lie dazed and a bit blinded on the mine floor and we’re still far from having reached the surface but now at least we know that if we start climbing, the destination we seek is there, that we can leave the underworld in which we have lived for a half a century and emerge into the light and air, into full and clear possession of life again.

Now this new situation, it seems to me, has profound implications for all of us who are concerned in our various ways with nuclear danger. And also for the character of the action we propose and the ways in which we propose it. It means that, again, for the first time, we place hope first and fear second. It means that in addition to inviting people to do what they so understandably hate to do, namely peer into the hell of nuclear annihilation, we can offer a credible and positive vision of a world without nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction. It means that we can offer participation in a great and positive enterprise that has every chance of succeeding—not just some desperate make-shift that will buy us a few more days pre—reprieve from annihilation.

Fear is indeed inherent in the nuclear dilemma, but there is a wisdom in the old saying, do not take counsel of your fears. And now, for the first time, we can take counsel so to speak, of our love, asking ourselves what kind of world we would like to live in, and acting to create it. Now each of the tasks before us is brand new. Each one imposes on us an agenda of hard work that is intellectual, imaginative, as well as political. It won’t be easy. We’ve been fatalistic so long, that it’s hard, even fearsome to start hoping again. We must offer a vision, but we haven’t yet done it. What would a world without nuclear weapons be like? How would it work? What of conventional weapons and conventional war in that world? Nor are we certain yet what the path to that would be, although people like Admiral Carroll have begun to think through in some de—detail what will be required. But I’ll return to that subject very briefly in a moment.]

But first I want to speak to a—I come to my third subject which is danger. Ah, perhaps some of you saw in yesterday’s paper, on an inside page, although I can’t imagine why, that according to Am—the American government, a lieutenant of ah, Mr. Bin Laden has been seized, ah, a lieutenant who was seeking to obtain, ah, nuclear weapon materials. Ah, now, we’ve talked a great deal about the danger that terrorists will get hold of nuclear weapons and use them, and I don’t know—I can’t evaluate that report—whether it’s true or what, and there was very little detail, but I would point out that it’s the first time, unless I’m mistaken—I may have missed something—that it’s been alleged that a member of a known active terrorist group at—as our government tells us has actually carried out deadly terrorist bombings has actually sought nuclear weapons material.

And this—and in this we see what I think of as a kind of symbol of the new danger that is before us and what makes our time rather short. Ah, because this story can stand, of course for the danger of proliferation in general, and I’m not going to try to describe that, but merely to mention again the tests in India and Pakistan. For while we human beings have remained asleep and inactive since the end of the Cold War, the nuclear danger has proved adaptive. Deprived of its old political shape in the Cold War, it is rapidly assuming a new shape. It has sent its seed down into a new soil and new nuclear progeny have been springing up in South Asia and elsewhere.

We welcome very much the decisions that point India and Pakistan toward signing the CTB, but we can’t help noticing at the same time that [Jane’s Intelligence Weekly?] tells us that India possesses enough plutonium for 400 ah, nuclear weapons. In other words, even as the danger of a full-scale holocaust has indeed receded, although we can’t forget that the machinery for it still is there and still exists, th is new danger has sprung up, and some, indeed are saying that the new danger is greater than the old. I’m not sure that I agree, but very likely it will become so if we don’t act swiftly and comprehensively against nuclear arms.

In a word, our situation is not static; it is moving. It is deteriorating—all of which is to say that what I’ve called the gift of time—time to get nuclear danger under control and actually rid ourselves of it before it gets us under control and gets rid of us—that time is limited and can end. The defection of a billion people from nuclear sanity in South Asia is certainly no laughing matter, yet in one respect, I’d like to point out we’re lucky. Before the tests, when I was talking with my abolitionist friends and we discussed the seeming overwhelming strength of the argument, and bemoaned the world’s indifference to the question, a moment often arrived when someone would say, well, perhaps the world won’t pay attention until the terrorist finally succeeds in getting hold of a nuclear weapon and using it somewhere in the world. But instead of a nuclear catastrophe, we’ve had the 12 underground tests. The next time, though, it may not be 12 tests, but 12 or 20 or 50 cities.

So finally I come to my fourth period, namely the future and to action. It would be nice, of course, if the action were to begin in Washington, but that hasn’t happened and I’m not crossing my fingers. And that leaves the rest of us. When people ask where to begin something it always seems to me that a good answer is to start where you are and with what you’ve got. And the main thing you’ve got is yourself. I know that people often feel powerless to accomplish anything as vast as abolishing nuclear weapons, but I confess that I’m impatient with this resignation. In the 1960’s Martin Luther King didn’t say he was powerless, and Eastern Europe in the 1980’s Lech Walensa in Poland and Vatslav Havel in Czechoslovakia didn’t say it. The realists of the day gave them no chance—none whatsoever of defeating Soviet power. But where is the Soviet Union today?

So let me tell you just very briefly about a couple of things that are stirring, although—and many of you are perhaps aware of them, but you’d never know it to read ah, our newspapers or watch television—ah, one is that there’s a very large number of characters, including, um, ah, military ones who have come out in favor of ah, abolition, and notably among them is General Lee Butler, the former—the last commander of, ah, [S…?] before it was turned into Stratcom, and he shows every sign of staying with this issue.

Ah, in the religious community, quite a bit is happing—happening. Ah, in the Catholic Church the [Pax Christi?] group which has more than a hundred bishops belonging to it is ah—has advanced a very strong statement and is inviting the other bishops to sign it and to, ah, return to this issues they did to such good effect in the 1980’s. The American Friends Service Committee is busy again as is perhaps—I don’t have to mention to you—the medical community is getting involved as are—are lawyers, and I, in fact, [to?] think this is an especially promising form of action. I’m not sure that this time around we’re going to have demonstrations in the streets, at least not yet, but I think what we can have is a kind of institution building within the medical community to give life and force to the American Medical Association’s commitment to this goal, which is another notable fact, so that when they meet there should be a committee that meets on the abolition of nuclear weapons on the nuclear question, and advances this agenda, and puts it on the political agenda in Washington. And thus also with lawyers and other professional groups. I think it’s a very promising venue that has, ah, staying power and clout.

In New England, ah, Peace Action, American Friends Service Committee and other groups are going to bring this issue to town meetings ah, in—next year, next spring, and have begun to organize for that as was done to such good effect during the freeze time.

And there are many other things that are beginning to happen. There was a meeting here in July that many of you may know about, among some of the groups that ah,--that—that—that brought us the freeze, ah, asking what we can do on a coordinated be—basis to act now for abolition, and we’re having a follow-up meeting in Chicago on October 9^th.

So, I think what’s happening is there is a minority, still small, but very dedicated—I think of it as being like a kind of coral leaf—a coral reef that is growing day by day, and we don’t know when that’s going to break the surface. It hasn’t happened yet, but I do believe it will happen one day.

To conclude, I just want to say, speaking for myself that I’m sick of mass terror, I’m sick of mass murder, of threatening genocide and worse, but also, I’m sick of complaining about it and sick even of thinking about it. All that horrible thinking the unthinkable. I don’t want to think any more or to have to write any more books. I want to act. I want to put nuclear weapons out of business. So I propose that instead of breaking our brains trying to think the unthinkable, we start doing the un—the do-able. What’s more, I don’t want one more noble defeat. I want to win this time and I believe we will win. So my message is a simple one. Today, for the first time, we can abolish nuclear arms, so let’s do it.