the boisi center interviews no. 87: January 30, 2014 joseph gerson is disarmament coordinator, director of programs in New England, and director of the Peace and Economic Security Program for the American Friends Service Committee. He spoke with Boisi Center associate director Erik Owens and undergraduate research assistant Mary Popeo before his presentation on peace activism at the Boisi Center. owens: What is the best argument wars since Nagasaki. This is the area see that referenced in the International you’ve ever heard for maintaining a nu- of my specialized research. To speak of Court of Justice’s advisory opinion on clear weapons stockpile? deterrent policies, I think we have to look the use and threatened use of nuclear at the Soviet Union, Russia today, and weapons. Beyond that, you’re dealing gerson: I don’t think there is a decent China. This would be a revolutionary with the effects of radiation through argument because the use of these weap- approach in our discourse, but one has to time. People who are exposed at one ons is beyond abominable. At the very pursue truth. point may be dying of cancer two years, least, it’s genocidal. Even with a small five years, ten years, or thirty years later. exchange between, for example, India And even beyond that, you’re looking at and Pakistan, you have famine across the the genetic damage. I work with second- Northern Hemisphere and an estimat- and third-generation A-bomb survivors ed one billion people dead. I think the in Japan, who live with a constant fear of model should be South Africa, which had cancer. They talk to me about their sib- a full nuclear program and yet opted to lings who have died. The indiscriminate halt, reverse, and get rid of it. As people murder through time caused by nuclear in Hiroshima say, these are weapons of weapons certainly separates them from the devil. Not that I believe in a devil, but other weapons. nuclear weapons are fundamentally evil, and there’s no legitimate argument for owens: Have the nations of the world their use. abandoned the concept of tactical nuclear weapons? owens: What about arguments based on deterrence or future need? gerson: I don’t think so. They’re still in our stockpile, and the Russians have gerson: The deterrence model has them. When it comes to war, perceived dominated discourse. However, the limits and boundaries often disappear. reality is that the United States hasn’t owens: What separates nuclear weap- For example, it’s interesting to read practiced deterrence. As I explained in ons in your mind from other weapons? about Roosevelt’s condemnation of aerial my book, you can find the documentation Let’s assume that one would prefer that bombing in 1939, a few years after which from the Pentagon saying that deterrence we eliminate all weapons, but there’s a the U.S. was engaged in war. Our allies has never been our policy. The reality special worry about nuclear weapons. were bombing Hamburg and we were is not only the illegitimate use of the gerson: You begin with the mass, in- firebombing Japan. Once the technology nuclear weapons in Japan, but also their discriminate murder of huge numbers of and the weapons are in place, they can repeated use by the United States as a people. In addition to the moral outrages always be used. form of extortion and blackmail threats involved, you’re dealing with fundamen- in more than 30 international crises and tal violations of international law. You 1 the boisi center interview: joseph gerson owens: Speaking of technology, what gerson: There are two tracks: what UN, I watched heads of state, foreign do you see as the link between the pre- needs to happen among the govern- ministers and ambassadors express their sumed peaceful use of nuclear energy ments, and what needs to happen among outrage at the refusal of the U.S. to fulfill and the existence of nuclear weapons? Is popular movements. Speaking about the this legal commitment to co-convene the the former forever tainted as a result of former, in 2005, the treaty-averse Bush conference. the possibility of the latter? administration sabotaged the NPT review As we near 2015, we will see shell game and potentially the NPT itself. No agree- gerson: Nuclear power should not be politics from the Obama administration ment came out of the 2005 conference used on its own terms, independent of around nonproliferation, nuclear security and the NPT order was threatened. nuclear weapons. We have clearly seen and so on. However, the United States this in India, Israel, Pakistan and Iran. This made 2010 particularly important. needs to take meaningful steps toward Once a country has the technology, it is There were intense negotiations down disarmament before 2015, or the NPT not a big leap from so-called peaceful to the last minute, resulting in a funda- order will be in serious jeopardy. One production of nuclear power to nuclear hopes for deeper commitments from the weapons. nuclear powers to move toward fulfilling their Article VI commitments. Nobody Even before that, there’s the implicit dan- has enormous confidence in that, but ger of nuclear power plants. Fukushima “The reality is that that’s what we have to press for. was waiting to happen. Putting nuclear sometimes things plants on faults is insane. Here in the At the popular level, in 2010, I found U.S., we had Three Mile Island and triti- get so abstracted myself at the center of international NGO um leaks at Vermont Yankee. There are organizing to put pressure on govern- many immediate dangers. We are many that we totally ments. The peace movement does have years into this and yet no one knows what forget the human allies among governments. There are a to do with the waste, which poisons the number of governments working hard for environment and will threaten human dimensions. the NPT’s implementation. The UN High survival for thousands and thousands of Commissioner for Disarmament, Sergio years. The American Duarte, was very supportive. We even had Ban Ki-moon involved as a speaker. He This is one of the challenges as we work Friends Service came to a conference that I was involved on the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in organizing. It was quite remarkable. (NPT) and its review. The NPT was one Committee has Four of us, operating on a shoestring of the three most fundamental treaties budget, brought other people in along the of the 20th century. It has three pillars. always valued way with a larger committee overseeing As the Iranians and the North Koreans that human face.” the process. When the movement was have been reminding us for years, one of at a trough, we assembled 1,000 people the pillars is that nations that sign on to for the conference and had a march of the commitment to cease development 15,000 people from Times Square to the of nuclear weapons have the inalienable mental agreement. The nuclear powers United Nations. We’ll have to replicate right to use nuclear power for peaceful reaffirmed their commitments to Article that in 2015. purposes. Having nuclear energy is an VI and to negotiating the complete elim- international right that they have. This is owens: Could you tell us a bit about the ination of their arsenals. In the diplo- a major flaw in the NPT. American Friends Service Committee macy with the non-aligned nations, the and its work on this particular issue? popeo: As a program committee United States committed to co-convene member at the American Friends Ser- a conference on the creation of a Middle gerson: The Service Committee is a vice Committee (AFSC), I know we are East nuclear weapons and weapons of Quaker-based organization created in currently preparing for the upcoming mass destruction-free zone in 2012. That 1917, during the First World War. Around 2014 Preparatory Conference. What other got America through the conference, but this time, many of the other traditional preparations do you think are necessary afterwards the Obama administration peace organizations were created in the for the 2015 NPT review? Ideally, what was not willing to fulfill its commitment. U.S. and in Europe. AFSC has evolved would come out of the 2015 NPT review Needless to say, many governments were over the years but its principal commit- and what must we do in order to make very upset with the U.S. At the High ments are to respect the dignity of every that happen? Level Meeting on Disarmament at the individual, to eschew violence and to 2 the boisi center interview: joseph gerson work for nonviolent conflict resolution. In the archives, there is a letter written by the head of the Committee in August 1945, just days after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to President Truman, which was sent at the same time as a letter from the forerunner of the National Council of Churches, also condemning nuclear weapons. The Service Committee did early work with Norman Cousins. For those who survived the atomic bombs, the mutila- tion and devastation of people’s bodies was extraordinary. For women, there was discrimination in courting and marriage due to fears of genetic damage. Because America wouldn’t allow the Japanese to learn about the atomic bombings during in its testing, devastated many innocent My second contact was at the 1968 the occupation, people even feared that people. Democratic convention in Chicago. The radiation was contagious. With help from same gentleman, Tony Henry—who I In some ways, AFSC was ahead of the dy- the Service Committee, Norman Cous- later learned had been one of the four namic of the international disarmament ins brought a number of young women African-Americans who integrated the movement, which is now focused on the called the Hiroshima Maidens to New University of Texas—was involved in the human consequences of nuclear weap- York for plastic surgery.