In 1981, the United Nations General Assembly created an annual International Day of Peace to take place on the opening day of the regular sessions of the General Assembly.\u00a0 The purpose of the day is for \u201ccommemorating and strengthening the ideals of peace both within and among all nations and peoples.\u201d<\/p>\n
Twenty years later, in 2001, the General Assembly, desiring to draw attention to the objectives of the International Day of Peace, gave the day a fixed date on which it would be held each year: September 21st.\u00a0 The General Assembly declared in its Resolution 55\/282 that \u201cthe International Day of Peace shall henceforth be observed as a day of global ceasefire and non-violence, an invitation to all nations and people to honor a cessation of hostilities for the duration of the Day.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Resolution continued by inviting \u201call Member States, organizations of the United Nations system, regional and non-governmental organizations and individuals to commemorate, in an appropriate manner, the International Day of Peace, including through education and public awareness, and to cooperate with the United Nations in the establishment of the global ceasefire.\u201d<\/p>\n
The United States has announced that its next test of a Minuteman III will\u00a0occur on September 21, 2011.\u00a0 Rather than considering how it might participate and bring awareness to the International Day of Peace, the United States will be testing one of its nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missiles that, 20 years after the end of the Cold War, continue to be kept on high-alert in readiness to be fired on a few moments notice.<\/p>\n
Of course, the missile test will have a dummy warhead rather than a live one, but its purpose will be to assure that the delivery system for the Minuteman III nuclear warheads has no hitches.\u00a0 As Air Force Colonel David Bliesner has pointed out, \u201cMinuteman III test launches demonstrate our nation\u2019s ICBM capability in a very visible way, deterring potential adversaries while reassuring allies.\u201d<\/p>\n
So, on the 2011 International Day of Peace, the United States has chosen not \u201cto honor a cessation of hostilities,\u201d but rather to implement a very visible, $20 million test of a nuclear-capable missile.<\/p>\n
Perhaps US officials believe that US missile tests help keep the peace.\u00a0 If so, they have a very different idea about other countries testing missiles.\u00a0 National Security Spokesman Mike Hammer had this to say about Iranian missile tests in 2009: \u201cAt a time when the international community has offered Iran opportunities to begin to build trust and confidence, Iran\u2019s missile tests only undermine Iran\u2019s claims of peaceful intentions.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2008, Condoleezza Rice, then Secretary of State, said, \u201cWe face with the Iranians, and so do our allies and friends, a growing missile threat that is getting ever longer and ever deeper \u2013 and where the Iranian appetite for nuclear technology is, to this point, still unchecked.\u00a0 And it is hard for me to believe that an American president is not going to want to have the capability to defend our territory and the territory of our allies, whether they are in Europe or whether they are in the Middle East against that kind of missile threat.\u201d<\/p>\n
The US approach to nuclear-capable missile testing seems to be \u201cdo as I say, not as I do.\u201d\u00a0 This is unlikely to hold up in the long run.\u00a0 Rather than testing its nuclear-capable delivery systems, the US should be leading the way, as President Obama pledged, toward a world free of nuclear weapons.\u00a0 To do so, we suggest that he take three actions for the 2011 International Day of Peace.\u00a0 First, announce the cancellation of the scheduled Minuteman III missile test, and use the $20 million saved as a small down payment on alleviating poverty in the US and abroad.\u00a0 Second, announce that the US will take its nuclear weapons off high-alert status and keep them on low alert, as China has done, in order to lower the possibilities of accidental or unauthorized missile launches.\u00a0 Third, declare a ceasefire for the day in each of the wars in which the US is currently engaged.\u00a0 These three actions on the International Day of Peace would not change the world in a day, but they would be steps in the right direction that could be built upon during the other 364 days of the year.<\/p>\n
_______________________<\/p>\n
David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The General Assembly declared in its Resolution 55\/282 that \u201cthe International Day of Peace [21 September] shall henceforth be observed as a day of global ceasefire and non-violence, an invitation to all nations and people to honor a cessation of hostilities for the duration of the Day.\u201d The United States has announced that its next test of a Minuteman III will occur on September 21, 2011. So, on the 2011 International Day of Peace, the United States has chosen not \u201cto honor a cessation of hostilities,\u201d but rather to implement a very visible, $20 million test of a nuclear-capable missile.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-transcend-members"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14211\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}