[00:00:20] Speaker A: Hello, everyone. Welcome this evening on behalf of Nassau's Adult Education Committee. I. I'm Lynn Scales. I'm one of the pastors here for faith formation, mission and outreach. And we are so grateful to co host this event with the Coalition for Peace Action. Reverend Moore, thank you so much for helping get the word out. We are grateful for the turnout and we hope you're enjoying your dinner. And if you would like seconds, there's enough for seconds. So feel free to get up, get coffee, get something to drink, get more food if you would like, throughout our evening together. Also, if you're not familiar with the building, the bathrooms are here in the right outside this room at the end of the hallway. It is such a joy to have Ward Hayes Wilson with us this evening. The author of it is a Future Without Nuclear Weapons, Ward is the founder and executive director of Realist Revolt, an organization working for the elimination of nuclear weapons with realism and hope. A conference at Nassau Presbyterian in 1980 shaped Ward's interest in nuclear disarmament and his commitment has taken him to over 23 countries, the Pentagon, many universities and conversations on nuclear weapons policy. Ward is completely partnering with presbyteries on an overture for consideration the 227th General assembly, which will happen in 2026. Lee Butler, a four star general commanding US strategic nuclear forces turned advocate for the elimination of nuclear weapons, says of Ward's work the most intelligent, comprehensive and compelling argument ever advanced against nuclear weapons. Ward is also the brother in law of our own Ann Thompson. Lord. And so we are grateful for the family here tonight and that they've given you a reason to be here in Princeton this week and also want to offer a blessing for our meal. [00:02:43] Speaker B: So. [00:02:43] Speaker A: So let us pray. Dear God, we give you thanks for this evening. For those of us who have been able together in this place to listen with hope and to act with perseverance. We thank you for everyone who has been a part of feeding us this evening, for making this meal and for serving it. We pray that you fuel us, that we would be fueled to pursue peace with everything we have. Amen. [00:03:20] Speaker C: Can you turn me up a little? Sure, I think. Thank you, Len. Yeah. I was here in 1980 and Wallace Alston put on an incredible conference with the guy who was the negotiator of SALT 2 and Freeman Dyson from the Institute for Advanced Study. And it was just out of control. I was sitting as you face out from the pulpit, I was sitting in the balcony on the upper left hand side listening to Helen Caldecott who went on to found physicians for so many social responsibility and it was life changing. So keep in mind that churches are places of worship, but they also change people's lives. I'm going to lay out for you a realist case for eliminating nuclear weapons as a realistic I'll argue only from facts and history. I'll avoid horror and morality. There's no doubt that the use of nuclear weapons has been and would be horrible and immoral. But for reasons I'm going to explain, facts are what we need at this moment. I like facts. I have a rather skeptical view of how fast human nature can change and when the stakes are high. I think it's essential to be realistic, as realistic as possible. I'm a genuine realist with a small R. I think you probably are too. This isn't working. This approach is a little bit of an anomaly. I am a little bit of an anomaly. I am an uncredentialed man in a field where credentials are deemed essential. But last week in Washington, Barry Bleckman, co founder of one of the more influential think tanks in Washington, the Simpson center, called me the leading voice in nuclear disarmament. That seems unlikely and it puts a lot of pressure on. But listen to some of the endorsements of the book I've written called It Is Possible A Future Without Nuclear Weapons. Len stole my fire with Lee Butler, but he's remarkable. He's a remarkable man. And when he leaned across his kitchen table and said to me, wad, I want you to get out there and do something about this. Four star Generals are always Obeyed. Richard Rhodes, the Pulitzer Prize winning historian who wrote the definitive four volume history of nuclear weapons, said, in this stunning breakthrough work, Ward Hayes Wilson brilliantly dismantles the false claims that have kept a nuclear sword of Damocles dangling over our heads for so long. Jay Ramos Horta, the current president of the country of Timor Leste and a Nobel Peace Prize winner, said, it is a book that should be read by every decision maker and everyone else across the world. And Oscar Arias, former president of Costa Rica and the Nobel Peace Prize winner, was so impressed he made a video endorsing this approach and said, ward Hayes Wilson's new book makes me believe that the elimination of nuclear weapons is possible in our lifetime. And Don Oscar is in his 80s, so he means right now. World leaders, seven Nobel Peace Prize winners, generals, physicists, activists, UN officials, scholars, parliamentarians, former mayor of Nagasaki have all endorsed this new realist approach. These powerful, well informed and thoughtful men and women all take this new approach to eliminating Nuclear weapons very seriously. You should too. The notion that anything having to do with our national security, with long standing government policies, that that could be influenced by myth, seems fantastical. But let me take you back to that first moment, to the instant when the mythology was born. It's nighttime on a high plateau in the American Southwest. Hours of waiting filled with tension. The rumble of distant thunder, the occasional flash of light from lightning, and then the incredible explosion. And one observer called it a great blinding light, as if God himself had appeared among us. Then an explosion like a vision from the book of Revelation. Someone else described the awesome roar which warned of doomsday and made us feel that we were blasphemous to dare tamper with the forces heretofore reserved to the Almighty. J. Robert Oppenheimer said later that in that moment he thought of the words from the sacred Hindu text, the Bhagavad Gita. Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds. And there it is. Did you feel it? The evidence is right there in front of you. God himself, the Book of Revelation. Almighty Doomsday, destroyer of worlds. They were talking about a supernatural power. And we still talk in those same mythical terms today. We use apocalypse, a battle between gods and monsters at the end of the world, as a synonym for nuclear war. We also call nuclear war Armageddon, the location in the Bible of the last battle at the end of days. We say nuclear weapons will always exist as if they weren't technology at all, but some sort of eternal and everlasting God. And we capitalize the bomb in the same way that we capitalize one other word, God. Our talk reveals our beliefs. We talk about nuclear weapons with awe in our voices. We have talked. We still talk about them in mythological and religious terms. Oppenheimer actually was telling the truth. Not the literal truth, not in any way the realistic truth, but he was telling us the truth about how he felt and how the others felt too. They felt they had discovered God like power. They had somehow stumbled on the hammer of God, a hammer that could be used to smite their enemies. Suddenly, they were no longer geeky physicists. Now, inexplicably, they had become Shiva, the Hindu God of destruction. Ares, the remorseless Greek God of war. Tia, the terrible one handed Norse God of implacable victory. And then Hiroshima was bombed and Nagasaki was bombed and the Japanese surrendered in just four days. It seemed like proof, the absolute confirmation, as if any were needed, that these awesome weapons conferred godlike power on their possessors. And the frightful mythology that would darken the entire world for decades to come was born. The mythology of nuclear weapons is embodied in three core beliefs. Nuclear weapons are decisive in war. Nuclear weapons are the ultimate weapon, and nuclear weapons guarantee our safety. We have lived with these beliefs for almost 80 years. They shape our thinking and are the foundation of our policies. It's hard to accept that they might not be true. They're so familiar, so completely woven into the fabric of our lives, they seem axiomatic, unquestionable. But myths always masquerade as facts. According to Britannica, While the outline of myths from the past or from a society other than one's own can usually be seen quite clearly, to recognize the myths that are dominant in one's own time and society is always difficult. Every myth presents itself as an authoritative factual account, no matter how much the narrated events are at variance with natural law or ordinary experience. This is a realist case for eliminating nuclear weapons. So let's cast a cold and objective eye on each of these core beliefs. The proof that nuclear weapons are decisive in war rests entirely on Hiroshima. It is the only non theoretical experience we have. But what forced Japan to surrender was not the bombing of two cities, but the entry of the Soviet Union, which had been neutral, into the war. Of the many reasons to believe that it was the Russian entry into the war that forced Japan to surrender, let me mention just four. First, we know that Japan surrendered because of the Soviet declaration, because that's what they said they would do. When the Supreme War Council, the ruling body of Japan, reviewed the war situation In June of 1945, they agreed that if the Soviets declared war, they would have to surrender. General Kawabe Torashiro summed up the consensus by saying, the absolute maintenance of peace in our relations with the Soviet Union is imperative for the continuation of the war. When two months later, at midnight on August 8th 9th, the Soviets did declare war, Japan's leaders responded by holding a series of frantic meetings, calling the Supreme War Council into emergency session to discuss surrender for the first time in 14 years of war, holding hours of contentious debate, and finally by tearfully deciding at 2am to surrender. So they said they would surrender if the Soviets came into the war. The Soviets came in and within 26 hours they had agreed to surrender. What could be clearer than that? Second, we know city bombing didn't force them to surrender because Japan's leaders didn't care about city bombing. In the summer of 1945, the United States carried out one of the most ferocious campaigns of city bombing the world has ever known. 68 cities were destroyed on average, one every other day. Yet the Supreme War Council never discussed city bombing or what to do about it. In fact, as far as we know, they only ever mentioned it twice. Once in May, once in August. Cities were going up in smoke. But as far as the Supreme War Council was concerned, it wasn't even worth discussing. When Navy Chief of Staff Toyoda Soemu, a member of the Supreme War Council, was asked in his post war interrogation about the bombing, he said, I do not believe that the question of air raids came up in the minds of the Supreme Council at all. That is, there was no idea that we must surrender. To avoid even a single additional day of bombing. Japan's leaders said they would have to surrender if the Soviet came into the war. They never said they'd have to surrender if more cities were bombed. Based on the facts, it's hard to build a case that Japan's leaders cared about city bombing. Third, war is fundamentally a military contest. Military contests are decided by military outcomes. When Wyatt Earp, his brothers and Doc Holliday shot it out with the Clanton brothers at the OK Corral, it wasn't the side that shot the most bystanders that won. The gunfight was the side that shot the most gunslingers that won. Killing civilians War is about defeating military forces. Killing civilians may be emotionally satisfying to the bloody minded, but it is essentially irrelevant to the outcome. And history confirms this. Winston Churchill didn't urge surrender when London was bombed and Coventry was flattened. Hitler didn't surrender when Hamburg was burned and 37,000 people were killed. Leningrad was besieged for 872 days and something like a million Russians starved to death. But Stalin never considered surrendering. But perhaps the event that shows most clearly how little importance civilians have in wartime occurred in China. 1938. The Japanese broke through in central China. It looked as if they were going to break out and overrun the entire country. Chiang Kai Shek, then the leader of China, ordered that the dams on the Yellow river be blown. The subsequent flooding throughout most of central China did in fact slow the Japanese advance. Chinese were able to regroup. You could argue that Chiang's decision saved China from Japanese conquest. The flooding also, however, killed 500,000 Chinese civilians. Chiang, by his own order, killed a half a million of his own people. If Japan's leaders surrendered because of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they were some of the most tender hearted war leaders in history. But that seems unlikely because Japan's leaders were mostly military men who were inculcated with Bushido, a harsh and Demanding warrior's code that came down from the samurai. Bushido insisted, for example, that leaders who made mistakes commit ritual suicide and soldiers should never surrender. To see how seriously the Japanese took this, consider Iwo jima. When the US invaded Iwo Jima, there were about 22,000 Japanese soldiers on the island. Of those 22,000, only 216 were taken prisoner. That means that 99.1% of Japanese soldiers fought to the death. They took Bushido very seriously. Rather than being tender hearted, it seems likely that Japan's leaders believed that civilian deaths were simply part of the sacrifice countries have to make in war. So the proof that nuclear weapons could force countries to surrender in just days is no proof at all. It is a myth that nuclear weapons were decisive in ending World War II. By the way, it's not realism to imagine that killing civilians wins wars. There are two ways that nuclear weapons can prove that they're the ultimate weapon on the battlefield. And when you use them for long range attacks against your adversary's homeland. Let's look at each in turn. We know that nuclear weapons are effectively useless on the battlefield, because that's what the facts tell us. Typical battlefield opposing troops or frontline troops are about a third of a mile to a few yards apart. A 10 kiloton battlefield weapon. And the majority of Russian land based battlefield Nuclear weapons are 10 kilotons. So about 2/3 of the Hiroshima bomb. The typical 10 kiloton explosion creates a circle of severe effects that about a mile across, with diminishing effects out to about five miles. Which means if you use a nuclear weapon against their frontline troops, you will kill some of your frontline troops. But size is not the only problem. Nuclear weapons release radiation, a poison that gets blown wherever the wind blows it. That same 10 kiloton explosion can spread lethal radiation up to 25 miles in an hour. And less dangerous fallout hundreds or even thousands of miles farther. Their size and the uncontrollable nature of radiation make it almost impossible to find a practical useful role for nuclear weapons on the battlefield. But it's not just a hypothetical example that tells us that nuclear weapons are useless on the battlefield. That conclusion has been ratified by the government of the United States. In 1991, President George H.W. bush decided to unilaterally retire all but a symbolic handful of the United States battlefield nuclear weapons with the support of the military, that is Colin Powell in the background saluting in that picture. Apparently, after years of careful study, US political and military leaders became convinced that battlefield nuclear weapons had so little Utility, they could safely be scrapped whether anyone else scrapped the theirs or not. Similarly, we know that nuclear weapons would be suicidal to use in long range attacks against an enemy's homeland. Countless war games and studies have confirmed the fact. And again, the conclusion has been ratified by an American president. No less a hawk than Ronald Reagan said a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. The reason is simple. You fight a war with nuclear weapons. After the war ends, your country will be crippled, starving, poisoned, and no longer in control of its own destiny. Canada isn't going to be our 51st state. After a nuclear war, we'll be the 11th province of Canada. Nuclear weapons are simply too big and spew out too much uncontrollable poison to be practical weapons of war. Their military utility is simply a myth. It's true that nuclear weapons make the largest explosions, but it's not realism, by the way, to mistake size for utility. Of course, nuclear weapons advocates say that no one actually wants to use nuclear weapons in war. Their real value is for deterrence, threatening to retaliate with nuclear weapons if we're attacked. The awesome psychological power of nuclear weapons, advocates say, is what guarantees our safety. Most people assume the experts are right. After all, there's never been a nuclear war. Actually, deterrence has failed a number of times. In 1948, even though the US had a monopoly on nuclear weapons, Joseph Stalin wasn't deterred from blockading Berlin in a dangerous standoff that lasted 11 months and could have escalated into war at any moment. During the Korean War, even though the US moved nuclear capable bombers to Guam and then leaked that information, that didn't stop the Chinese from sending hundreds of thousands of soldiers into the fight. In 1973, everyone knew the Israelis had nuclear weapons. It had been reported in the New York Times. But that didn't stop Egypt and Syria from launching a war against the Israelis. In 1982, the Argentines attacked the Falkland Islands, even though the United Kingdom had nuclear weapons and the Argentines had none. And in the run up to the Gulf War, the US solemnly declared to Saddam Hussein that it would use the strongest possible responsewe know what that is if he launched chemical weapons against US forces, set Kuwaiti oil wells on fire, or attacked US allies. Despite this, the Iraqis set more than 600 oil wells on fire and repeatedly launched Scud missile attacks on Israel. But the most frightening deterrence failure came during the Cuban Missile Crisis. President John F. Kennedy knew that if he blockaded Cuba with so many troops, so close to each other, with so much tension Even the slightest mistake could spiral into global nuclear war. But despite the risk, Kennedy went ahead with the blockade. And there were times when we came within a hair's breadth of things getting out of control. Perhaps the most serious was on Saturday, October 27, 1962, at the height of the crisis, with both sides on hair trigger alert. When a guidance system on an American U2 spy plane taking air samples over the North Pole malfunctioned and the pilots strayed off course 300 miles inside the Soviet Union. The Soviets saw it and scrambled MIGs to shoot it down. The US saw it and scrambled F102s to find it and protect it. But because it was the height of the crisis, U.S. forces were at DEFCON 2, one step below nuclear war. And during and in DEFCON 2, the policy of that air command required that all the fighters in the Alaska command have their normal air to air missiles removed and replaced with nuclear air to air missiles. So the only weapons those American fighters had as they roared towards Soviet airspace were nuclear weapons. If those two groups of fighters had found each other and fought it out, there would have been a nuclear explosion over the Soviet Union and almost certainly a nuclear war. They didn't run into each other. But it wasn't the magic of deterrence that prevented war. Years later, when Robert McNamara, Kennedy's defense secretary, was asked how we all survived the crisis, he said it was luck. And he was right. That's a sobering thought. Nuclear deterrence failed during the Cuban Missile Crisis. But on that day, like the other days when nuclear deterrence failed, we were lucky. The fate of civilization, your fate, my fate, was decided by chance. By its very nature, nuclear deterrence has to be perfect. Even a single failure could end up in a catastrophic war. But this requirement for perfection creates a problem. Because of our human nature, all human beings are fallible. We all make mistakes. I make mistakes. Do you ever make mistakes? From the lowest soldier to the highest leader. None of us can be perfect. And human beings are intimately involved in nuclear deterrence. Deterrence is not a machine that runs on its own in a corner. It's a back and forth process entirely governed by, by human beings. So if human beings are prone to folly, and we are, and if human beings are involved with nuclear deterrence and we manage every step, then nuclear deterrence is by definition inherently flawed. It will fail. It cannot run perfectly forever. Eventually our luck will run out and one of those failures will end in catastrophe. It's not a question of if, it's just a matter of when. We should have known from the beginning that nuclear deterrence couldn't guarantee our safety. As any genuine realist will tell you, there are no guarantees in life. By the way, it's not realism to rely for your security on a strategy that will inevitably end in catastrophe. Okay, so when we look realistically at nuclear weapons, it's clear that much of what we believe and feel has been shaped by myths. Myths of almighty power, of guaranteed security. So now that we can see the reality, what are we going to do about it? How do we eliminate nuclear weapons? First step is to convince people that there is a solution, that it is not hopeless. And we can do that. We know nuclear weapons can be banned. We can prove it, because both chemical and biological weapons have been banned. Biological Weapons Convention took just two years to negotiate. It's worldwide. It's worked for 50 years. No violations. It's a treaty that works. Chemical Weapons Convention took longer to negotiate, but it's been in force for 27 years. It's one worldwide. There have been a few violations, but even so, it is also a treaty that has worked. Nuclear weapons treaties take small, tentative steps. They take decades to negotiate. They apply mostly just to two countries, and in the last 10 years, most of them have been abandoned. So why have chemical and biological weapons treaties been so successful, but nuclear weapons treaties are not? The answer is that the negotiations went so quickly and have been so successful for biological and chemical weapons. Because when the biological and chemical weapons conventions were being negotiated, they had something that nuclear weapons negotiations never had. When they were being negotiated, there was a clear, convincing, and widely held consensus that chemical and biological weapons are lousy weapons. Take biological weapons. Everyone knew they were deadly dangerous weapons that could kill a lot of people. But it was also painfully obvious that they were stupid weapons that lacked any real military utility. The COVID pandemic illustrates the point. If a single virus can jump from a lab or a wet market or whatever to a single individual, and in three years, you have 11 million people dead around the world. Imagine what a disaster it would be to fight with weapons that blast millions of pathogens into the air, the sea and the soil, use biological weapons, and the diseases they let loose will come back to harm your troops, your economy, your country. It doesn't take a genius to see that as weapons they're nearly useless. Same is true to a lesser extent with chemical weapons. Chemical weapons were used extensively in World War I. And what people saw was that they didn't give either side a strategic advantage and they were extremely hard to control. If the wind changed Direction you could end up killing your own troops. Chemical weapons were banned first in 1925 and then more stringently in 1997 for the same reason biological weapons were banned. They were lousy weapons. The key in both cases was this consensus, the widely held belief that the chemical and biological weapons were both dangerous and virtually useless. So if nuclear weapons are useless on the battlefield and useless for long range wars, and if they're fatal over the long run, to use them for deterrence, well, then they are virtually useless, dangerous. The reality is they're lousy weapons with a great reputation, an overblown reputation. Once you strip away the awe and the mythology, it is obvious that they're lousy weapons. We know that we can eliminate nuclear weapons. We know the only thing that's been holding us back for all these years is a mythology no more real than cobwebs and fear. We know that mythologies cannot survive when held up next to reality. Reality explodes. Mythologies, so nuclear weapons can go. That's an enormous relief. It's very good news. But it's more than that. It's also a demand for you to act. Nuclear war is not something that happens to other people. It will happen to you. Some will die. Some will struggle to live in a dangerous, dark, and much more difficult world. After a nuclear war, your cell phone battery will die. You will long for water that is clean. Your clothes will stink. You will watch, helpless as disease takes people close to you. And whatever ambitions you may have had will mean nothing. The danger of nuclear war is real. In the past, you could tell yourself that nuclear war was a risk we would just have to live with. But now you know that's not good enough. We can avoid nuclear war. So you must act. Civilization depends on it. You cannot love your children, your spouse, your parents, your friends. You cannot love this world and the life in it and not strive with all your might to protect it. So what can you do? Start by having faith. No large and important undertaking should ever be attempted without an underpinning of faith. [00:37:28] Speaker D: Faith. [00:37:29] Speaker C: And let your faith be the foundation of your determination. Then build community. Meet together, make friends, support each other, practice the arguments, and discuss ways to bring others in. And when you're ready, take action. First of all, renounce the false religion of nuclear weapons. Deride these weapons that are not only stupid, but enormously dangerous. Boldly speak the truth. Nuclear weapons are lousy, clumsy, blundering, useless weapons. And if we foolishly keep them, one day they will devastate our world. But just to be clear, renouncing nuclear weapons is not the same as surrendering them. It's not a call to idealistically lay down our arms so our noble gesture will inspire others. The actual dismantling of these weapons will come only after their mythic power is broken, only when there is a consensus that these are lousy weapons. Only after a worldwide. Only then can a worldwide treaty be carefully and correct, completely be put forward to abolish them. And then the real work is to persuade, persuade your friends, persuade the media, persuade influencers, but especially persuade elected representatives at all levels to renounce nuclear weapons. To admit publicly that our obsession with them is no more than a false religion fueled by a dark mythology. The lesson of the Biological Weapons Convention is clear. Once a worldwide consensus exists that nuclear weapons are lousy weapons, the work of negotiating a treaty that bans them for all nations for all time will go faster and more smoothly than we could have ever dared to hope. You know, we were once a confident, optimistic country. When the Great Depression hit in the 30s, we didn't despair. We didn't hunker down and numbly wait for it to pass. We decided to build our way out of it. And the signature project of that was the Grand Coulee Dam, the largest dam in the world at that time. Even when times were tough, we dreamed big. When World War II broke out, we were faced with a perilous situation. We had to fight two dangerous and powerful adversaries on different sides of the globe at the same time. We didn't worry, we didn't hesitate. We never had any doubt we would win. Look at the faces of these kids going off to war. They're smiling, they're saying, don't worry, mom, we got this. And then we went to the moon. Not because we had to. We went because we loved the challenge of doing something that seemed impossible. Daring to do something no one had ever done before. At our best, we have enormous capacity. But the unspoken threat of nuclear weapons and nuclear war saps our spirit. It is as if we are perpetually living on death row. What a difference it would make to shake off the darkness and put our fears aside and become again those people who were so confident, so optimistic. Today, many Americans are tormented by anxiety. Deaths from drug addiction, alcoholism and suicide, so called deaths of despair, have risen precipitously and continue to rise. Our headlines shout out our fears about the future. Our hopelessness is painfully obvious. The world we live in is a world that is haunted. Somewhere in some corner of our brains, there's a fear that maybe today, maybe Tomorrow, maybe next month. But someday, all that we have and all that we have built will be suddenly and shockingly turned to smoke and ashes. We have lived with that nightmare in the back of our minds for decades. Generations have been born into the grip of those beliefs. Imagine that that dark foreboding which has hung over us for more than 60 years could finally be dispelled. Imagine leaving the conviction that doom is inescapable. Leaving that conviction behind and moving out into the light. Look down on the civilization we have made. We and those that came before us together have constructed a thing of beauty that shines with a thousand points of light. Imagine for a moment that we could be safe, that that world could be safe. Imagine a future without nuclear weapons. It will not be a world without risk. It will not be a world without war. It will not be a perfect world. But it will be a world that is not haunted by a sense of inescapable doom. It will be a world where our hopes can return and our confidence can flourish. Those who say that our fate will be determined by nuclear weapons, in their telling, the weapons are big and we are small. We are powerless. The weapons are in control. But I do not believe that. And I don't believe you believe that either. Ultimately, machines will not decide what happens to humanity. Technology is our servant, not our master. Human destiny is in the hands of human beings. We have to put aside our insecurities and fears. We have to tear down the false reputation that for so long forced us to live in the shadow of catastrophe. We have to build a consensus that these are lousy weapons with no practical purpose. A consensus that will finally convince us all to abandon these dangerous and useless weapons. So let us turn our eyes toward the dawn. The ocean is vast and deep. The storms now raging on it might well wash us down. But the time for fear is past. There are no guarantees, and we should have set out long ago. But it is not too late to seek a newer world. With courage as our watchword, with reality as our guide, and with faith our constant companion. There is no landfall that is beyond our reach. Thank you very much. You've got questions, I can tell. Yeah. Do you want to bring the microphone around to the questions or just make them shout? [00:45:10] Speaker A: I'll bring the mic. It's having a little trouble, but so. [00:45:14] Speaker E: Thank you so much. It's a wonderful talk. So the first question is about history. So I want to ask that. You did mention that, you know, Soviet Union declared the, you know, war against Japan, right? And then, like a Japan surrender but the, the timeline is on August 6th the US dropped the first bomb in Hiroshima. And then August 8th the Soviet Union declared the war. And then the second war, a second bomb is on August 9th. There's a lot of talk about the Joseph Stalin actually has declared war because of the US actually dropped the bomb. The reason why is, you know, they want, they feel that if they didn't came in so they will lose a lot of so called advantage, you know, in a so called post war kind of, you know, the change that the political geopolitical landscape change. Right. So what is your view that? And second question is about go back to early 1940. How close is the German Nazi getting to be able to produce the bomb? And then US actually started and then there's a lot of actually action taking place. So I'm just wondering like you know, in your view that if. Assume that if what happened? If the German actually did get the bomb first rather than the U.S. okay, great question. [00:46:51] Speaker C: I love that question. I'll start with the Stalin. Stalin agreed at the Tehran Conference in 1943 that three months after the end of the war in Europe, the Russians would come into the the war. When they came in on August 8th at midnight, they attacked with 1.2 million men. So it takes a long time to get that sort of attack organized. There's some evidence that Stalin may have moved the deadline for the attack up 24 hours, 48 hours maybe. But he was fully committed and they were going to come in. I'd love to have a long argument with you about Rocheman versus the Russians coming to the war. But these people have been very patient and maybe we'll talk afterwards about. I mean there's a long chapter about why it's not the bomb. It's Russians in here. And I've written too many articles about it. There's one in my first scholarly article that I ever published was in International security security in 2007 I think so. And it addresses this question about the Japanese. I think there's no question that Japan surrendered because of the Soviets coming in. They just didn't care about civilians enough to be shocked or to anyway. But we could argue about it some more. I love the subject. I'm a historian, I study it all the time. So the Germans made a crucial calculation error and there's still argument about whether or not it was intentional or not. But they weren't actually pursuing the bomb very actively. However, what if they had gotten the bomb first? Hitler was a dictator, he was unscrupulous. Maybe what would have happened? 12 years ago, I started writing a book called Hitler Gets the Bomb. And it's fictional, obviously, but the upshot is they lose anyway. The US Transfers the Marines from the Pacific to make an invasion across onto Cherbourg or onto Normandy in the same way that they did, but earned earlier, a year earlier because it's a crisis. They put off the war against Japan. The Germans lose a lot of bombers trying to bomb England. People in England walk out of the cities at night and walk back in so that they don't get killed by an atomic bomb. The Germans try to use the bomb tactically after the invasion and kill. They wipe out three quarters of the Panzer Lehr division because the radiation goes back and all, all the German soldiers are killed. And ultimately the Allies win the war a little bit ahead of when they would have won it otherwise. I had a long conversation with Freeman Dyson about calculating how often the Germans would have been able to build a bomb and kind of all the ins and outs of where they would have done it, stuff like that. Anyway, again, I love that question. We could have a long conversation about it. [00:50:11] Speaker D: Richard. [00:50:11] Speaker F: Yeah, I'm 100% behind you with the need to get rid of nuclear weapons. But how do we convince the other nuclear countries? I mean, they're a lot more dangerous than we are, more likely to make a mistake. And I mean, I'm afraid I have to point out Israel, who've always never declared that they have nuclear weapons, but we've had them for. We've known it for years. And I almost don't quite understand, do we gain anything by just we giving up nuclear weapons but everyone else has them? [00:50:39] Speaker C: We don't give up nuclear weapons. We don't. We don't. [00:50:41] Speaker F: Everybody's got to give them up. [00:50:43] Speaker D: No. [00:50:43] Speaker C: The President stands up and he says, look, we've been thinking about this and we realized, just like Bush did actually in 91, these are lousy weapons. We invented them. We know. And we're going to. We're not going to get rid of a single weapon. But what we're going to do is lead a worldwide effort to convince everyone how stupid these weapons are are. And the interesting thing is the US Wouldn't be alone, because the day after that announcement, the 73 countries that have already signed and ratified the TPNW and the 25 additional countries that have signed it but not yet ratified it, and the 30 countries that have regularly supported it, something like 130 countries would immediately line up behind the United States and we'd be at the head of a majority of the world's government countries. And then maybe the UK would come along because they spend 10% of their military budget on nuclear weapons. And what are they getting, what are they buying? What have they ever gotten from those weapons? And maybe India comes because they outnumber the Pakistanis pretty significantly. And, you know, they have that still a certain amount of that Gandhi thing going on. They don't really want to be nuking people, maybe. And the big get would be China, because if you could. So the US is now at the head of this coalition that includes some nuclear powers and a ton of other countries and maybe the Chinese, who never took nuclear weapons very seriously. For 25 years, China had, you know, how many weapons they had that could reach the United States. For 25 years they had 20, 20 weapons. They clearly hadn't bought into the whole U.S. soviet, let's build 70,000 weapons weapons thing. So maybe the Chinese come along and then it's pretty much over because we lean on the Israelis, the Chinese lean on the Pakistanis and the North Koreans, and now it's just Russia. And the thing about dictators is they want weapons they can use. They love weapons that make people afraid. But if everybody says, ah, those weapons, they're stupid weapons. Dictators are like, give me something that can make people afraid. I want to invade South Korea. I don't want people laughing at me for building stupid weapons. The thing about it is they're not useful. And even dictators want useful weapons. Yes. Oh, all right. [00:53:10] Speaker G: You may have already answered this, but I'm always worried about communication as the number one thing. And, and I don't think there's enough being done in terms of communication that allows us to have that conversation. Raises a level of comfort that we're all on the same page that we understand the whole issue. That's, you know, when I see not coalescing around the United Nations, I don't think they're a good banner of example. So it's a real concern from my perspective, that communication and the common word that helps us understand it's just not happening yet. We need that. [00:53:49] Speaker C: Don't you think? Lousy translates into Russian. [00:53:53] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:54:00] Speaker A: Hi. [00:54:01] Speaker B: So I was just wondering about what steps can international organizations like the UN. [00:54:07] Speaker A: Or EU take to eliminate nuclear weapons on a larger scale than individually teaching people about the ineffectiveness of them? [00:54:17] Speaker C: Well, that's a good question. I don't know. Do you have any suggestions? [00:54:27] Speaker A: No, I was asking you. [00:54:33] Speaker C: Well, the UN could sure pass resolutions. They could certainly. And it would probably do okay in the General assembly as long as it were something that didn't go to the Security Council where it would get vetoed by the US Or Russia or somebody. But you could certainly have a General Assembly. And actually, there were 212 countries that voted for the TPNW. It might make a lot of sense to take that route. It's a long and slow thing to get the UN to take action. I think it's a smart question. I think it would make sense to approach some international organizations. And when you're ready, let me know and we'll think something up and we'll send some letters. Okay. If you want to. I mean, would you like to convince an international organization to do something to eliminate nuclear weapons? All right. Well, when the bombs fall, don't think of me. [00:55:47] Speaker D: In the current war between Iran and Israel, the big threat is nuclear weapons. The west is trying to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Israel has them. And for some reason, Iran hasn't been convinced that acquiring nuclear weapons is useless and they're going to destroy their country for acquiring a weapon that is useless. How do we convince them? How does it come about? [00:56:21] Speaker C: Well, there are two things. One is I am not persuaded. And I'm not an expert on Iran, but I'm not persuaded. They're really serious. How long did it take us to build nuclear weapons? So FDR starts, I think it took like two and a half years. Okay, granted, we're bigger and more economically powerful than Iran, but how long has Iran been chasing a bomb? More than 20, 25 years, something like that. Supposedly, if they really believe that their military survival depends on having nuclear weapons, they would have built them a long time ago. That's my assessment. I could be wrong. I can't read their minds. I don't know what they're up to. But the larger question is why do countries hang on to nuclear weapons? The U.S. obviously, George H.W. bush, realized that nuclear weapons had serious utility issues. The thing is, nuclear weapons are the currency of power. Sometimes in history, weapons take on symbolic importance, just the way certain currencies, international currencies, take on symbolic importance. So the British pound sterling or the solidus of the Byzantine Empire or the US Dollar maybe for a few more years, have a special kind of cache because they're the currency that everyone wants. Nuclear weapons. Battleships, mounted knights, chariots were all the currency of power at one time or another. There's a big museum in Germany, and you go and you can see a lot of Assyrian monoliths that they put up the emperors put up after they had conquered someplace and they always carved lots of chariots into these things because that's the symbol of power. The thing about currencies of power is that they're a lot like currencies. Currencies can crash. You remember when people were saying that real estate prices would never go down, and then suddenly the current, the market for real estate went. I think the same thing can happen to currencies of power. People suddenly realize that a weapon isn't as useful as they thought it was, and the reputational marketplace for that weapon crashes. I think that's how you get people to stop buying nuclear weapons for their symbolic value, because that's really why people get them. They want, I mean, Kim Jong Un. So In World War I, the Kaiser was building battleships. And he said to the King of Italy one day, they were talking and he said, you know, I never could get any respect from the other leaders in Europe, but now with my battleships, they'll listen to what I say. And of course, battleships in World War I made no military difference whatsoever. And in World War II, they mostly served just to be sunk. They were long past their military utility, but their symbolic value was still important. Symbolism is a weird component of the nuclear weapons debate that's never, never addressed. Then this young lady with the blue shirt after that. Thank you for everything you've shared what you're sharing tonight. Having gone to college a couple miles away from Three Mile island shortly after a meltdown, I was raised at college. [01:00:12] Speaker B: To be a school strong anti nuke person. [01:00:17] Speaker C: Even though it's somewhat off topic, it's not a weapon. Could you speak about nuclear power? Okay, so I have a confession to make. I really, really want nuclear weapons to be eliminated. The problem from an international perspective is that South Africa, who are really strong against nuclear weapons, have a lot of uranium that they sell and they have a lot of nuclear reactors. And Kazakhstan, which is one of the leaders of the international movement to stop testing, sells a lot of uranium as well. And I used to talk to physicists at Princeton and at the Institute for Advanced Study, and they said, nuclear power is terrible. Terrible, or they said, it's perfectly all right as long as you're careful. I don't know. I mean, the thing that's interesting to me about nuclear power is that we are so afraid of it. It's like bats or snakes. You know, there's like an instinctive fear of that poison. You cannot see, smell, touch, hear, feel. I don't know. I don't know. I wish I had something better to tell you, except that for now, politically, I'm going to pass on nuclear power, because I don't know that much about it. And I want the South Africans, I want Kazakhstan, I want those allies. [01:01:57] Speaker A: Yes, you do. [01:01:57] Speaker C: Okay, I do. [01:02:01] Speaker H: Speak into it. Okay. So first of all, because I've known Ward since I was in kindergarten, we used to sing a song by Tom Lehrer. [01:02:11] Speaker C: But don't tempt me. I would love to sing it right now. [01:02:15] Speaker H: First we got the bomb and that. [01:02:17] Speaker C: No, no, don't tempt me. [01:02:18] Speaker H: Because we love peace and brotherhood. Yeah, I don't know how many of you know that song, but it's apropos of the way things are, because at the end, Alabama gets the bomb. So it kind of makes you think about, where are we going with that if everybody keeps building on it? But secondly, one of our little questionnaire things here, number seven, these weapons will always exist because you can't disinvent nuclear weapons. The technology is there. So you can all agree that they're lousy weapons, but they're always big dictators and the technology is there. So what's the plan on keeping it in a cave? [01:03:05] Speaker C: Well, first, blunderbusses are lousy weapons, too. And we still know how to make blunderbusses, but we don't have to, you know, monitor people and make sure they don't put blunderbusses into their arsenals because they're lousy weapons. They used to explode. Actually, a better example is petards, which was this kind of explosive device on the end of a stick, and you'd run up to the wall and try to shove it over the wall before it fell off the stick and blew you up. But they didn't have to ban petards, but because nobody wanted to build them. And the whole thing is no technology has ever been disinvented. This is a total piece of trickery by the advocates of nuclear weapons. No technology has ever been saying, you can't disinvent nuclear weapons is like saying, I can never die because I can't be reverse born. Being reverse born is a process that doesn't exist. Disinventing weapons is a process that doesn't exist. They're just fooling us. They're tricking us. You know, human beings invent stuff, and it either gets used or it gets taken out with the trash. And our job is to make nuclear weapons be one of those things that goes out with the trash. Obviously, any international treaty would have careful restrictions and monitoring and stringent controls and all the Things that we have in place because somebody will wake up and remember, once these had symbolic importance, maybe they can again. So you have to guard against that. But typically, once a currency loses its cachet, it never gains that cache back. If we can get nuclear weapons to lose their cachet, I think we'll be all right. And even if we're not, even if some idiot builds 10 nuclear weapons and blows them up, we're still in a better world with 10 cities destroyed than with a nuclear war where the Northern Hemisphere is devastated. You know, priceless works of art are gone forever. Real estate values, deeds for property sale have disappeared. Billions, trillions of dollars of business value have evaporated in a moment. Millions of people killed. You know. Yeah, let's do. Okay. Yes, go ahead. [01:05:52] Speaker I: Hi. Excuse my accent. You said you are not expert in Iran, correct? You happen to find one? I was born in Iran, although I practice medicine and surgery in this area for almost 57 years. Stupid is the key word. You have to see the character who are in this game. Iran under the Shah did have the nuclear reactor built by us in Tehran University's area that I'm the graduate of medical school of Tehran University, 1966. I came here in 1968. There was no problem till Ayatollah came. How many people what my problem is that Ayatollah how many Jews, Christian, other religion these people have ever met and been friend with. They are in a cocoon of themselves. They have no idea what is going on in the rest of the world. So they feed themselves. So what happened? What was this stupid thing till 2000, the US after the war, Iran, Iraq. That Saudi Arabia helped Iraq very much. And the other Persian Gulf area, Pakistan was helping Saudi Arabia. In fact, the security around the King were more Pakistani rather than Saudis. So it seemed there was understanding if there was something happen, Pakistan would help Saudi Arabia with atomic bomb. So they become and always they have had problems. Problem Shiite Sunni, that problem with Pakistan. So that's one problem. Us, I mean, Israel and Iran, they had good relationship. In fact, when I was in military, I was in Air Force. They were basically practicing together on F4. And then Iran was the only one who got F14. And United States didn't give it to anyone. So the power they were practicing together. I'm sorry, everyone. So here you have Ayatollah who have no idea the suspicion of Pakistan. Then Israel come to the situation as recent as about a year ago when the whole Gaza tragedy started. Somebody in United States in Israel said the head of the snake is in Iran. We can drop 7 to 8 bomb in the entire of the Iran to destroy it. If you remember, one of the ministers in Israel said, we can drop a bomb in Gaza, why don't we do that? And I said, okay. The distance between Gaza and Tel Aviv were one of those things is only 39 miles. So what would happen? Yeah. So this is the situation. Move forward today. Somebody who happened to be a neighbor of mine and very important job at Princeton Physics Department. Israel has between 80 to 200 atomic bombs and Iran has none. Look at the level of hypocrisy. You go and one, destroy Tehran, a city of 15 million people. Imagine New York, Queens, everything, Brooklyn, everything. And I just got the team. BBC said, Trump send a message to Iranians, please leave Tehran. How could you move the population of 15 million people? So that is the whole thing that comes back to key word of stupid. [01:10:21] Speaker C: I think, I think nuclear weapons, the mythology is particularly pernicious because it makes you think that you have godlike power and we don't. We don't. And that's a very dangerous thing. We had two. Yeah, I think I read that you are hoping to take a resolution, maybe more than one, to the General assembly of the Presbyterian Church. Yes. Could you say a word about that and how those of us, especially Presbyterians, can be supportive of those resolutions? Thank you. The Presbyterian Peace Fellowship asked me to help them write a resolution on nuclear weapons. An overture. Overture allows a church to send, I guess a request to the National General assembly in 2026 in Milwaukee. And then if the church agrees, it becomes church policy. I wrote something, I helped them write something, something that says, let's all look at nuclear weapons objectively and realistically for a year. Let's do some study on this. With the idea that I could help to make some study materials that would encourage Presbyterian churches to say, look, these are stupid weapons. Let's tell our legislators or whatever, whatever each church decided to do. But it is not something that requires money. It's simply a request for study. And I've had excellent help from the people here at Nassau Presbyterian. They found a University of Princeton junior who's going to volunteer all summer to help line up churches. We've got a packet we're sending out. I'm in contact with the co moderator of the San Francisco Presbytery who says, says, we'll get it, don't worry. So that's one. You need two presbyteries to get it to go to the General Assembly. I'm working on Chicago Gabe is working in Atlanta. If any of you know, any Presbyterian churches know of a church that is progressive, know of. I'm leaning on my in laws to their church and they're on their session, you know, they should be able. Please let me know. I think it's important that all the denominations line up in support of this kind of work. We need. My vision is to get three groups involved. I want young people involved because they're courageous and they don't have a lifetime of belief that nothing can happen. I want churches because they were a mainstay in the move in the 80s, in the freeze movement. I'm talking to the Methodists. I have an Episcopalian, a retired Episcopal bishop who's a friend of mine. I'm in touch with Bishop Wester, Archbishop Wester. And so I think religious organizations and I think there's a really strong argument to be made that nuclear weapons are a false God. The believing in nuclear weapons is blasphemy. And so I think we can really build support in churches. And please help with that. If you know someone, if you. I'll give everyone my card. If you can think of anyone, please get in touch. And then let's go on to other churches. You were talking about the Unitarians. Let's do them. Let's think of other denominations where you have inroads and let's really make this happen. Anybody want a card to get in touch with me? Here, you can have a card, Bob. There you go. [01:14:26] Speaker I: Thank you. [01:14:30] Speaker C: But she had her hand up for a question. Oh, card. [01:14:33] Speaker D: Here you go. [01:14:33] Speaker C: Sorry. [01:14:37] Speaker B: Speaking of, do you have a question? [01:14:42] Speaker C: All right, you can go first. You were. He's already got the mic in his hand. It's that thing. Possession is 9/10 of the law. [01:14:51] Speaker J: Hi, I'm Al. I'm of no particular importance to the military Intelligence industrial complex. I like to talk. You have a lot of food for thought. I think I've changed. Some of my answers here. [01:15:07] Speaker C: Get me. [01:15:07] Speaker J: Thinking a little bit and on rare occasions it's not a bad thing. I'm wondering if you're not fighting a battle you prematurely won somewhere down the line and indulge my fantasy a little bit. A caveman picked up a rock and threw it in another caveman. Five minutes later, the other caveman picks up a rock and throws it. Same with bows and arrows. Same with boats. Same lion clad ship. Same with submarines. Same with airplanes. Same with bombs, rockets. Five minutes later, somebody else uses one. There has not been a nuclear bomb detonated I believe in since the first two were detonated. [01:15:55] Speaker C: You're a really smart guy. [01:15:59] Speaker J: I have a feeling there's a couple of other smart guys out there, too. And I wonder if other countries haven't come to the same realization that they are lousy weapons. They're essentially not using it. They're just not going to sign a piece of paper. [01:16:19] Speaker C: See, I think this is that thing about the symbolism and the weapon. Like, I'm pretty sure somebody told me it's an open secret in Washington that nuclear weapons are useless as weapons. So I'm guessing that people in Germany and France and the uk, they know that too, but they believe that the symbol is worth having. You know, it's a little like money. If I were alone on a desert island, this piece of paper with the ink and some pictures on it would be worthless, except maybe it'd be good for kindling. But that's because. But it has importance in a society because we give it importance. It's a symbol. It's not a thing. It's a symbol. And I think the symbolic nature of nuclear weapons is the problem. We imagine that they're this. Imagine instead of nuclear weapons, we were all carrying big statues of a God that everyone was afraid of. And that everyone wanted one of those statues because. Because then everyone would be afraid of the statue. And as long as the religion holds, you're in great shape if you've got one of the big statues. So that's why I want to crash the religion. Did I answer your question? [01:17:47] Speaker I: Okay. [01:17:49] Speaker J: My thoughts on guns in America. It's just something to worship. [01:17:56] Speaker C: It's got. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I agree. [01:18:01] Speaker A: So this will be our last question, but I'm sure war would be happy to talk with you afterwards, too. [01:18:09] Speaker B: Thank you. I am Sarah Al Said. I'm from Egypt. We met before. I'm a researcher with the Union of Concerned Scientists. But prior to that I was a postdoc at Princeton's Program on Science and Global Security. And I still hang out there as a guest because my position with the Union of Concerned Scientists is remote. So I have to preface what I'm going to say by saying I've heard a version of this talk before, but for a different audience, and that was at the Ban Treaty, the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons. [01:18:37] Speaker C: Don't you think this one's gotten better? [01:18:38] Speaker B: Don't you feel like it's gotten better? But it's target. Yeah, you're improving all the time. Yeah. On the question of churches, so the Vatican is on board with the Ban Treaty, but the Ban Treaty Narrative is one of, sorry, stigmatizing nuclear weapons because of the humanitarian consequences. I know you have your issue, you have a critique set up for the humanitarian consequences. And I'm wondering, okay, I mean, what is it with the Presbyterian Church now? Is it that they would like, to the extent that you are appealing to, to them now, Is it that they would like a new tool in their arsenal or is it because they are not convinced of the power or the validity or legitimacy of the humanitarian consequences narrative? That being said, at the third meeting of states parties, I was surprised to see that one of the reports being presented by one of the working groups doing intersessional work from meeting to meeting was based on a consultative process with states on their security concerns. Those are the non nuclear weapons states. What are their security concerns in relation to nuclear weapons states and nuclear umbrella states to the extent that they valorize nuclear weapons. And in there, it's not just about humanitarian consequences. As a matter of fact, humanitarian consequences that dedicated only a small part of the report. As a matter of fact, the report does a very good job of critiquing nuclear deterrence based on uncertainty, rationality, critique, etc. Risk calculation or the difficulty in calculating risk, etc. So could you speak a bit to that? [01:20:26] Speaker C: Yeah, speak. [01:20:28] Speaker B: Could you speak a bit to like, why are you using your argument? [01:20:32] Speaker C: Okay, the false goal. This is a great question, Sara. Thank you. Weapons. Nuclear weapons are a subset of weapons. Weapons are a subset of tools. We have been making, inventing, adopting, using and abandoning tools for 2.3 million years. So there is an evolutionary process about how tools get adopted, used and abandoned that is deeply ingrained in us. And the criteria that is almost 99% of the time the criteria for doing something, deciding whether to keep or abandon a tool is utility. There are a few exceptions. Japanese decided they would keep samurai swords for 200 years, so they closed off all their borders so that no one could come in with gunpowder. And they fought with samurais because it was culturally important. And then Admiral Perry showed up at the Yokohama, was it Yokohama? Anyway, showed up and fired some cannons and they said, oh, we better get some gunpowder weapons. When you talk about a tool and you ask people to consider whether to get rid of it or to keep it, they naturally think in terms of utility. They don't think in terms of morality. This tool is immoral. They don't think in terms of humanitarian impact. They think in terms of utility. The easiest line of attack against nuclear weapons, the one that is natural for the way people already think, is to attack their utility. And I don't know why, nobody did this before, but, you know, it's a killer. I was at the Stimson center and there were former State department people and 20 year olds and the permanent representative of Costa Rica to the un and I could be wrong, but I swear everyone in the room was on board at the end. I think utility is enormously powerful as a way of attacking nuclear weapons. So I think the humanitarian critique is also powerful. And nuclear weapons are inhumane and they are immoral. I just think, you know, take away the first and strongest argument and then use immoral as well. You know, say they're useful, they're useless. And I've dreamed of being able to do a presentation with Archbishop Wester and I can get up and do all the utility stuff and then he'll stand up and say, and oh, by the way, they are so immoral it's incredible to think about. So I am not against any of the other arguments against nuclear weapons. I just think you've got to handle that main one first. Because what they've been saying for 70 years is, oh, yeah, they're immoral, but you know, you've got to have them because they're useful. So you got to kill that argument first and then you're on your way. Then, then, then we can do this. We can do this. We can stop meeting and small meetings and wishing that we were doing better and having more people choose join us and stuff. We can do this. So let's get it done. Oh, and please fill out the afterword. If you haven't filled out the afterword side of your, you can't fold that up and throw it away. I took so many notes. You were writing notes to Kate. I watched you. [01:25:15] Speaker B: It.