US President Barack Obama speaks with Russia’s President Dmitriy Medvedev (R) in Seoul on March 26, 2012, during their bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the 2012 Seoul Nuclear Security Summit.

 

In an article appearing on the Christian Science Monitor website, David Krieger and Daniel Ellsberg, respectively president and distinguished senior fellow at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, questioned the sincerity of US President Barack Obama’s purported bid to address threats posed by unsecured nuclear material in a recent gathering at the Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul, South Korea.

“If Mr. Obama is truly concerned about nuclear safety, he should seriously consider doing away with the 450 inter-continental ballistic missiles deployed and ready to fire at Russia on a moment’s notice,” the article read.

The authors said these nuclear missiles are “first-strike weapons [i.e.] most of them would not survive a nuclear attack,” and in the event of a warning of a Russian nuclear attack, there would be an incentive to launch all 450 of these Minuteman missiles before the incoming enemy warheads could destroy them in their silos.

The US-Russia flight times of these missiles are “30 minutes”, the article explained, leaving only “12 minutes or less for the president to decide whether to launch global nuclear war.”

“If the warning turned out to be false (there have been many false warnings), and the US missiles were launched before the error was detected, World War III would be underway.”

The report argues that even a “successful” US nuclear first strike would create such enormous nuclear firestorms that would in turn cause the “catastrophic disruption of global climate and massive destruction of the Earth’s protective ozone layer, leading to global famine.”

“The black smoke [caused by the firestorm] would be heated by the sun, lofted like a hot air balloon, and would remain in the stratosphere for at least 10 years. There, it would block and prevent a large fraction of sunlight from reaching the Earth’s surface. The sharp reduction of warming sunlight would rapidly produce global Ice Age weather conditions. This would eliminate or dramatically reduce growing seasons for a decade and would likely cause the starvation of most or all humans.”

The article adds that along with other effects – including prolonged destruction of the ozone layer – “most complex life on Earth could be destroyed.”

“Scientists say the process would be similar to when an asteroid hit the Earth some 65 million years ago, raising a global dust cloud that reduced sunlight, lowering temperatures and killing vegetation. That caused the extinction of the dinosaurs and 70 percent of the Earth’s species.”

The analysts, however, note that the cause of the humankind’s extinction in this case will not be an external, celestial event, but rather the launching of thermonuclear weapons we had created by our own “cleverness, supposedly for our own security.”

“Nuclear weapons do not make the US or the world more secure. In particular, the Minuteman III missiles – land-based, vulnerable, on high alert, and susceptible to being triggered by a false alarm – make us less secure,” the authors said.

The article concluded by calling on anyone who “cares about humankind having a future” to protest the nuclear missiles’ tests and call for the elimination of all nuclear-armed inter-continental ballistic missiles as an initial step toward the total abolition of nuclear weapons.

“Now is the time for the people and nations of the world to stand up against the potential extinction of the human species and demand that political leaders pursue the path to zero nuclear weapons, a path mandated by the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the International Court of Justice. Until then, protest and civil resistance will be necessary.”