“Good evening, my fellow Americans.
I want to speak frankly with you tonight about a
reality that the nuclear powers have so far refused to acknowledge as the arms
race goes forward unchecked. We have arrived at a point in history when the
destructive power and complexity of our weapons systems have become so overwhelming
that their strategic usefulness cancels any good that they could possibly do to
maintain security for our own or any other nation. We all know this. President
Reagan acknowledged as much when he said back in 1984 “a nuclear war can never
be won and must never be fought.”
The clearest demonstration of this reality is
contained in computer models that show how few nuclear detonations would be
necessary to plunge the world into a cooling phase so widespread that
agriculture would be affected for a decade—in effect, a death sentence for the
planet. It would take the use of only 3 to 5 percent of existing U.S. nuclear
weapons to loft into the high atmosphere enough dust and ash to circle the
earth and make the growing of food impossible. Even a limited exchange between
two nuclear powers would amount to planetary suicide. Retaliation, the basis of
deterrence strategy, would only hasten the end of all we love.
This is a major reason why 122 non-nuclear
nations have signed the United Nations treaty outlawing the manufacture and
deployment of nuclear weapons. None of the nine nuclear powers have signed this
treaty, because established political, military and corporate thinking asserts
that the power of these weapons have been a deterrent to further global war.
People of good will may argue that the policy of
deterrence has prevented apocalypse. Our challenge is that deterrence is not a steady,
stable condition but instead an ever-changing unstable one. The relentless
march of “we build/they build” technological competition is constantly
providing new weapons delivery systems. These systems are attached to ever more
complex electronic monitoring devices, and these devices are in turn attached
to fallible humans, the whole enchilada subject to the unspoken paradox of
deterrence: in order to never be used, the weapons must be ready for instant use.
My fellow citizens, no one has more respect than
me for the professionalism of the various branches of our military. Our problem
is that the prevention of an extinction event like nuclear winter is dependent
upon not only our own personnel and equipment making zero mistakes, but also
upon the other nuclear powers doing the same—forever.
But we must face the tragic reality that
accidents and misinterpretations are not only possible with technologically
complex systems—they are inevitable. This we have learned the hard way, from
the Challenger disaster, from Chernobyl, from Fukushima, from the two 737 Max 8
disasters, just to name a significant few. We are caught in a pervasive
illusion, a web of denial: we acknowledge that planes can crash and chemical plants
can explode, but we do not seem to be able to acknowledge, because we have
become so dependent upon it, that the mighty deterrence system of the existing
nuclear nations itself could fail if we continue the arms race.
We need to question our most fundamental
assumptions, and if they are about to lead us off a cliff, must we not turn
around and begin to take steps away from that cliff?
Today I, as Commander-in-Chief, am taking the
first step backward with three initiatives. First, I pledge that the United
States will never under any circumstances initiate the use of nuclear weapons.
Second, as a further confidence-building gesture, I am bringing back to base
two of our Trident ballistic missile submarines, and I am ordering our
intelligence services to be on the lookout for reciprocal gestures from the
other nuclear powers. If we see clear evidence of such gestures, our nation
will respond in kind, beginning, I fervently hope, a virtuous circle of
military stand-downs and a consequent relaxation of tensions. Third, I am
calling for an ongoing international conference of military and diplomatic
leaders to share with each other the dire implications of a hair-trigger
deterrence system and to come up with realistic ways to go beyond it and
prevent disaster. I expect the personnel of both nuclear and non-nuclear
nations to participate, given that they all have a mortal stake in a positive
outcome, and also given that there are many nations who continue to assume that
their self-interest and survival requires nuclearization.
Now I fully realize many citizens and strategic
experts will question the usefulness or even the common sense of these
proposals. Since the end of the World War Two, a war which coincided with the
beginning both of the atomic age and the cold war standoff with other
superpowers, the peace has been kept through overwhelming military strength.
The United States will maintain this superior strength even as we explore this
new landscape where strategic advantage is no longer available by way of more
weapons of mass destruction. The same technology which enabled these weapons to
be built will also be up to the task of verifying whether nations meet
professed commitments that will allow a world free of the scourge of nuclear
weapons.
My final point is that not only we have been
overtaken by inconvenient nuclear realities, but also America must lead in the redirection
of the immense resources we have been pouring into nuclear weapons and their
delivery systems. The very survival of
the planet demands that we transform our own so-called military-industrial
complex—and incentivize other advanced into doing the same—into a global powerhouse
that will provide sustainable energy and prevent rising temperatures from rendering
vast reaches of the planet uninhabitable. We have no other choice but to thread
the needle between potential global cooling by nuclear winter and the climate
emergency of excess carbon dioxide.
God bless the United States of America, and equally
bless the other nations of the world as we work together to move in the
direction of a planet that works for all.”
