Non-proliferation

The Sound of War

The Sound of War

February 1, 2023 at 12:04 pm

If the dull hum of a nuclear warhead ever mutates to a deafening and life-ending roar of a nuclear explosion, humanity will be extinguished—Tom Unterrainer, END Info 30, Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, March 2022   In 1935, retired US Marine Major General Smedley D. Butler (1880-1941), a veteran of AmericanRead More

From Commanders to Campaigners (Part I)

From Commanders to Campaigners (Part I)

January 11, 2023 at 11:49 am

Author’s Note: On 3 May 2019, a Thanksgiving Service was held in Westminster Abbey, attended by senior members of the Government and Royal Family, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Continuous At-Sea Deterrent (CASD)—charmingly known as ‘Operation Relentless’—of the Royal Navy’s nuclear-armed submarines. As you read this, one ofRead More

From Commanders to Campaigners (Part II)

From Commanders to Campaigners (Part II)

January 11, 2023 at 11:47 am

Author’s Note: In December, I interviewed Robert Forsyth and Robert Green, who served for many years in the Belly of a Beast—the British naval nuclear war machine—they now devoutly wish to see dismantled. I’ve told their stories in a separate article and you can find my entire email exchange withRead More

The Darkest Hour Before Detente?

The Darkest Hour Before Detente?

December 7, 2022 at 1:49 pm

“War is not the only thing that, to occur, must be waged.” —Judith Lipton and David Barash, Strength Through Peace   It now seems like a bygone age, but it was only on December 15 last year that the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs presented a draft Treaty on ‘SecurityRead More

Homage to a Peacemonger

Homage to a Peacemonger

November 2, 2022 at 12:17 pm

On September 24, the Canadian anti-war community suffered a grievous loss with the death, at the age of just 71, of Bill Blaikie, New Democrat MP for Winnipeg for nearly 30 years (1979-2008) and devout Christian believer in a peace on Earth secured not through the chimera of military ‘strength’Read More

Nuclear Warhead Bunker Under Construction San Cristobal Site 1, Cuba, October 1962 (Source:  John F Kennedy Library via Wikimedia Commons)

‘Luck is Not a Strategy’: Dodging Nuclear War

October 12, 2022 at 12:08 pm

“The world really is impossible to manage as long as we have nuclear weapons. It really is a terrible way to have to live in this world.” President John F. Kennedy to British Ambassador David Ormsby-Gore, 21 October 1962   Over 200 blood-soaked days into Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine,Read More

Anti-nuclear arms protesters display a banner during the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance (OREPA) rally at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA, 2011 by Brian Stansberry, CC BY 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

State of the State in a Nuclear Age

September 14, 2022 at 3:04 pm

Author’s Note This month’s ‘War & Peace’ column is dedicated to the memory of Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022), the last leader of the Soviet Union, who grasped—as he told the United Nations in 1988—that in the nuclear age, “disarmament” is “the most important thing of all, without which no other issueRead More

Mixed Progress on Banning ‘The Big One’

Mixed Progress on Banning ‘The Big One’

August 10, 2022 at 12:21 pm

One hears the word and wants to know more, but one also wants to forget it. One has heard both too much and not enough about Hiroshima. For the city evokes our entire nuclear nightmare…  Robert Jay Lifton, Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima (1967) Return to Hiroshima on AugustRead More

FH70 Howitzer in Ukraine. (Source: General Staff Ukrainian Armed Forces via Facebook)

Give Peace No Chance?

July 13, 2022 at 11:34 am

  1 Witch. When shall we three met again In thunder, lightning, or in rain? 2 Witch. When the hurlyburly’s done, When the battle’s lost and won. Shakespeare, Macbeth   Shakespeare’s Macbeth opens in the “fog and filthy air” of an “open place,” a no-man’s-land where three witches – theRead More

Kings Bay Plowshares 7 (Source: Facebook)

Sacred Duty: Revisiting the Kings Bay Plowshares 7

April 6, 2022 at 10:51 am

If we assume that life is worth living and that man has a right to survive, then we must find an alternative to war. In a day when vehicles hurtle through outer space and guided ballistic missiles carve highways of death through the stratosphere, no nation can claim victory inRead More