{"id":60539,"date":"2015-07-06T12:00:59","date_gmt":"2015-07-06T11:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=60539"},"modified":"2015-07-05T10:14:51","modified_gmt":"2015-07-05T09:14:51","slug":"july-this-month-in-nuclear-threat-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/07\/july-this-month-in-nuclear-threat-history\/","title":{"rendered":"July: This Month in Nuclear Threat History"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"armas-nucleares-4.jpg_1718483346<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

July 1, 1968<\/strong> \u2013 The U.S., U.K., the Soviet Union, and 58 other nations signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).\u00a0 The Preamble of the agreement, which today includes 191 state parties, referred explicitly to the need for a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty which has not yet been realized due mostly to the U.S. Senate\u2019s unwillingness to ratify the treaty (as manifested by that body\u2019s rejection of the CTBT on October 13, 1999 by a vote of 51-48).\u00a0\u00a0 Comments:\u00a0 While the NPT\u2019s focus on preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons has been only marginally successful, the other purpose of the treaty, to seek negotiations in good faith to end the nuclear arms race and achieve nuclear disarmament has been a dismal failure.\u00a0 There does not appear to be much light at the end of the tunnel after the conclusion of another NPT Review Conference on May 22, 2015 in which the United States and Britain blocked a consensus agreement to establish a deadline date to hold a conference on mandating a nuclear-weapon-free-zone in the Middle East and Canada objected as well on the basis that the agreement does not include participation by Israel \u2013 a nonsignatory to the NPT that possesses an unacknowledged secret arsenal of approximately 100-200 nuclear weapons.\u00a0 Nevertheless, one positive trend resulting from this year\u2019s review conference was what the Washington Post <\/em>called, \u201can uprising of 107 states and civil society groups that are seeking to reframe the disarmament debate as an urgent matter of safety, morality, and humanitarian law,\u201d and are committing to dramatically step up efforts to work toward Global Zero.\u00a0\u00a0 (Sources:\u00a0 Jack Mendelsohn and David Grahame, editors.\u00a0 \u201cArms Control Chronology.\u201d\u00a0 Washington, DC:\u00a0 Center for Defense Information, 2002, pp. 10-11, 22 and Dan Zak. \u201cU.N. Nuclear Conference Collapses Over WMD-Free Zone in the Middle East.\u201d Washington Post<\/em>.\u00a0 May 22, 2015.\u00a0 http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wmd\/national-security\/un-nuclear-conference-collapses-over-wmd-free-zone-in-the-middle-east\/2015\/05\/22\/8c568380-fe39-11e4-8c77-bf274685e1df_story.html<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

July 4, 1999<\/strong> \u2013 At a Blair House meeting on this holiday morning, President Bill Clinton met with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan at a time when India and Pakistan (which had fought each other in three wars:\u00a0 1947, 1965, and 1971) were fighting again, this time in an undeclared war (later referred to as the Kargil Conflict) over Northern Kashmir.\u00a0 Tensions were high as top Indian leaders warned the U.S. that their nation was convinced that Pakistan was \u2018operationalizing\u2019 its nuclear missiles and that they intended to blockade the Pakistani port of Karachi.\u00a0\u00a0 President Clinton later testified that, \u201cI knew my only real job on the Fourth of July was to get Pakistan back across the line of control\u2026because otherwise, we\u2019re just out there rolling the dice, hoping to goodness that nothing terrible would happen.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Comments:\u00a0 Although this crisis did not escalate into a nuclear conflict, it is just one of many global close calls as nuclear Armageddon was yet avoided again.\u00a0 However, recent events reveal ongoing nuclear tensions between the two nations.\u00a0\u00a0 The United States and the larger international community must redouble its efforts to persuade India and Pakistan to reduce and eventually eliminate their nuclear arsenals.\u00a0 (Sources:\u00a0 \u201cAvoiding Armageddon:\u00a0 Our Future, Our Choice.\u201d\u00a0 PBS-TV<\/em>, Ted Turner Documentaries, 2003.\u00a0 www.pbs.org\/avoidingarmageddon<\/a> and Tim Craig and Annie Gowen.\u00a0 \u201cIndian Border Operation Rattles Nuclear Neighbor.\u201d\u00a0 Washington Post<\/em>. June 12, 2015.\u00a0 www.highbeam.com\/doc\/1P2-38395110.html<\/a>. )<\/p>\n

July 7, 1961<\/strong> \u2013 Former Harvard University economics professor and Rand Corporation analyst Carl Kaysen sent a memorandum on this date to President John Kennedy\u2019s National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy reporting that a Soviet nuclear strike of just 100 warheads (a very small portion of today\u2019s Russian nuclear arsenal) against U.S. cities, in the absence of large-scale civil defense bunkers and shelters, would kill an estimated 62-100 million of the total (then) U.S. population of 180 million people.\u00a0\u00a0 Comments:\u00a0 More than half a century later, with a current U.S. population of over 300 million people and with each side possessing thousands of nuclear weapons, the figures for U.S. and global nuclear war deaths dramatically exceed Kaysen\u2019s calculations.\u00a0 Including the paramount factor of resulting nuclear winter global climate impacts, a major nuclear war would kill billions and seriously threaten our species\u2019 existence.\u00a0 Civil defenses and missile defenses would not significantly alter this calculus of megadeath. (Source:\u00a0 Eric Schlosser.\u00a0 \u201cCommand and Control:\u00a0 Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Incident, and the Illusion of Safety.\u201d\u00a0 New York:\u00a0 Penguin Press, 2013, p. 547.)<\/p>\n

July 16, 1945<\/strong> \u2013 The top secret U.S. Manhattan Project culminated with the successful test of the world\u2019s first nuclear weapon in the desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico before dawn.\u00a0 Code-named Trinity, it was the rehearsal for the August 6-9 atomic bombings of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and it represented the first of 1,030 nuclear tests conducted by the United States and one of over 2,000 such tests conducted by the nine Nuclear Weapons Club members in the last seventy years.\u00a0\u00a0 President Truman\u2019s personal journal of July 25 recorded that, \u201cWe have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world\u2026An experiment in the New Mexico desert\u2026caused the complete disintegration of a steel tower 60 feet high, created a crater six feet deep and 1,200 feet in diameter, knocked down a steel tower half a mile away and knocked down men 10,000 yards away.\u00a0 The explosion was visible for more than 200 miles and audible for 40 miles and more.\u201d\u00a0 Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson\u2019s report to the president noted that, \u201cI estimate that the energy generated to be in excess of the equivalent of 15,000 to 20,000 tons of TNT\u2026there were tremendous blast effects\u2026there was a lighting effect within a radius of 20 miles equal to several suns in midday; a huge ball of fire was formed which lasted for several seconds.\u00a0 This ball mushroomed and rose to a height of over 10,000 feet.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Physicist Ernest O. Lawrence, an eyewitness to the blast, described his experience of a, \u201cgigantic ball of fire rising rapidly from the earth\u2026The grand, indeed almost cataclysmic proportion of the explosion produced a kind of solemnity in everyone\u2019s behavior immediately afterwards.\u00a0 There was a restrained applause, but more a hushed murmuring bordering on reverence in manner as the event was commented upon\u2026\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Comments:\u00a0 While many U.S. military and scientific observers celebrated the beginning of the Nuclear Age, others realized that this event may<\/u> have represented the beginning of the end of the human species.\u00a0 (Sources:\u00a0 Jack Mendelsohn and David Grahame, editors.\u00a0 \u201cArms Control Chronology.\u201d\u00a0 Washington, DC:\u00a0 Center for Defense Information, 2002, pp. 5, 24. and Gar Alperovitz.\u00a0 \u201cThe Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb:\u00a0 And the Architecture of An American Myth.\u201d\u00a0 New York:\u00a0 Alfred A. Knopf, 1995, pp. 250-251.)<\/p>\n

July 27, 1956<\/strong> \u2013 During a training exercise, a U.S. B-47 bomber crashed into a storage bunker holding three Mark 6 nuclear bombs at Lakenheath Air Force Base near Suffolk, England killing the entire crew.\u00a0 Bomb disposal experts later determined that it was a miracle that one Mark 6 bomb (with a potential yield in the range of 6-180 kilotons) with an unprotected, exposed nuclear detonator did not explode.\u00a0 If it had, this \u201cBroken Arrow\u201d nuclear accident might have inadvertently triggered World War III!\u00a0\u00a0 Many years later, Sandia National Laboratory reported that at least 1200 nuclear weapons were involved in significant accidents just in the period between 1950-1968.\u00a0 By 1968 approximately seventy missiles armed with nuclear warheads had been struck by lightning.\u00a0\u00a0 Comments:\u00a0 If global nuclear arsenals are not dramatically reduced and eliminated as soon as possible, an accidental, unintended, or unauthorized nuclear detonation will likely trigger a nuclear Armageddon.\u00a0 (Source:\u00a0 Eric Schlosser.\u00a0 \u201cCommand and Control:\u00a0 Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Incident, and the Illusion of Safety.\u201d\u00a0 New York:\u00a0 Penguin Press, 2013, pp. 170, 327-329, 556.)<\/p>\n

July 28, 2012<\/strong> \u2013 The alleged airtight security of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex, promulgated over the decades by numerous U.S. government representatives from the Oval Office, the nuclear weapons laboratories, to include the Department of Energy and Nuclear Regulatory Commission, that unauthorized access to and theft of U.S. nuclear weapons was virtually impossible suffered yet another blow when a small group of Christian pacifists belonging to the anti-nuclear Ploughshares movement (an organization involved in dozens of protests over the years at the Nevada Test Site and other components of the U.S. nuclear complex) breached the Y-12 National Security Complex\u00a0 in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.\u00a0 On this Saturday evening, Sister Megan Rice, 82 years old, Michael Walli, 63, and Gregory Boertje-Obed, 57, cut through the barbed-wire fences at the Oak Ridge complex, which holds enough highly-enriched uranium to make thousands of nuclear warheads, and proceeded to splash human blood on the windowless uranium processing building\u2019s walls, spray-paint peace symbols, and drape the access doors with crime-scene tape.\u00a0\u00a0 After being convicted in May 2013, Sister Rice and the two men spent two years in prison before a May 8, 2015 appellate court ruling held that the U.S. government had overreached in charging them with sabotage and ordered them released.\u00a0 Comments:\u00a0 Sister Rice follows in the footsteps of a long line of other nonviolent anti-nuclear activists, both religious and secular, who feel that the U.S. and other Nuclear Club members are violating global disarmament pledges and unwittingly threatening the world with nuclear disaster.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s making countries feel compelled to have weapons.\u00a0 If you have them, we have to have them.\u00a0 We don\u2019t want to end the (nuclear) industry.\u00a0 We want to transition it into something that\u2019s useful.\u00a0 What could be better than making something that\u2019s life-enhancing rather than life-destroying?\u201d<\/p>\n

(Source:\u00a0 William J. Broad.\u00a0 \u201cSister Megan Rice, Freed From Prison, Looks Ahead to More Anti-Nuclear Activism.\u201d\u00a0 New York Times<\/em>. May 26, 2015.\u00a0 http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/05\/27\/science\/sister-megan-rice-anti-nuclear-weapons-activist-freed<\/a> )<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 wagingpeace.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

July 1, 1968 \u2013 The U.S., U.K., the Soviet Union, and 58 other nations signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The Preamble of the agreement, which today includes 191 state parties, referred explicitly to the need for a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which has not yet been realized due mostly to the U.S. Senate\u2019s unwillingness to ratify it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[148],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60539","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=60539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60539\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}