Hiroshima Day, August 6, and Nagasaki Day, August 9, will be commemorated around the world this week. These days take on special meaning at a time when the U.S. and its allies are pressing Iran to forgo development of nuclear energy due to concerns that Iran also plans to develop nuclear weapons.
But is it feasible to continue an international regime built on nuclear haves and have nots? Can we expect countries like Iran and North Korea to indefinitely forgo the power and prestige of being a member of the nuclear club when Pakistan, India, Israel, China, and the U.S. all have the bomb?
Former Secretary of State George Shultz no longer believes it is. Shultz, a former member of the Reagan cabinet, has joined with other Cold War veterans -- including Henry Kissinger -- in calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons. If we want to keep these ultimate weapons of mass destruction from spreading, they say, we must abolish them all. That includes the largest stock pile in the world -- the one belonging to the United States.
In an exclusive interview with YES! Editor Sarah van Gelder, former Secretary of State George Shultz explains why he believes nuclear abolition is possible, and what he is doing to make a nuclear-free world a reality.
And author Jonathan Schell, in "A Powerful Peace," shows how it would be possible to negotiate the abolition of nuclear weapons.
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No Nuclear Weapons
An Interview with Former Secretary of State George Shultz, by Sarah van Gelder
George Shultz was there when nuclear disarmament slipped through our fingers. Today, he says, action is even more urgent.
Shultz: There is quite a list of people—large numbers of former secretaries of state, defense, and national security advisors—who have publicly stated their support. So we’d be in a position to say to a new president, "If you decide to go this way, here are a bunch of people from both sides of the aisle who are willing to stand up behind you and applaud."
www.yesmagazine.org/yes46shultz
A Powerful Peace
by Jonathan Schell
If the nuclear powers wish to be safe from nuclear weapons, they must surrender their own. They should collectively offer the world’s non-nuclear powers a deal of stunning simplicity, inarguable fairness, and patent common sense: we will get out of the nuclear weapon business if you stay out of it. Then we will all work together to assure that everyone abides by the commitment.
www.yesmagazine.org/yes46schell