US Nuclear Weapons in Europe Violate Treaty Law

BY JOHN LAFORGE

 APRIL 26, 2024
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Image bu Maria Oswalt.

The US Air Force practice of deploying nuclear weapons on military bases in other countries — and training foreign pilots to attack third countries with H-bombs — is called ‘nuclear sharing’ or ‘forward basing.’ The system has been repeatedly condemned in recent years by lawyer’s groups, international law experts, UN delegates, civil society, and foreign affairs offices from around the world.

The US currently stations around 100 of its B61 thermonuclear gravity bombs in Germany, Belgium, Italy, Holland and Turkey. It may soon station more in England. All six plus the US have ratified the 1970 Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). International criticism was directed at Russia when it moved some of its H-bombs into Belarus in 2023. Little attention has been paid to the clear and authoritative condemnation of the transfer of US to Europe that has only increased in recent years.

Critiques of US nukes stationed in Europe are based on the nonproliferation treaty’s first two articles. The Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, explained the violation in a July 25, 2023 working paper, submitted to the UN’s 11^th Review Conference for NPT:

“The incompatibility of nuclear sharing with the NPT is based on a straightforward application of NPT Articles I and II. Article I requires NPT nuclear-armed states ‘not to transfer to any recipient whatsoever nuclear weapons … or control over such weapons directly, or indirectly.’ It further requires the nuclear-armed states ‘not in any way to assist, encourage, or induce any non-nuclear-weapon State to … acquire nuclear weapons or control over such weapons.’ (emphasis added) Article II imposes the corollary obligation on NPT non-nuclear weapon states not to be the recipient of any such transfer or assistance.

“These provisions should be read in light of NPT Review Conference commitments made subsequent to the 1995 decision to indefinitely extend the NPT. … The 2000 Final Document, ‘reaffirms that the strict observance of the provisions of the Treaty remains central to achieving the shared objectives of preventing, under any circumstances, the further proliferation of nuclear weapons and preserving the Treaty’s vital contribution to peace and security.”

The International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (German section) in an April 5, 2023 submission to the UN Human Rights Council said: “…the components of technical nuclear sharing together with Germany’s participation in operational planning in NATO’s Nuclear Planning Group under Article 31 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, constitute a violation of the spirit and purpose of the NPT.”

The Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), in an August 2, 2023 statement to the United Nations in Geneva, said nuclear sharing: “[R]uns counter to the fundamental tenets of the treaty and is a threat to the entire regime.”

In its July 28, 2023 edition, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ article on nuclear sharing, by Moritz Kütt, Pavel Podvig, Zia Mian, reported: “The NPT prohibits both the acquisition of nuclear weapons by non-weapon states and the transfer of nuclear weapons to such countries by the five nuclear weapon states who are parties (Russia, China, the US, the UK, and France).” (emphasis added)

China explicitly condemned U.S. nuclear sharing on August 2, 2022, when the head of its United Nations delegation, Fu Cong, addressing the United Nations NPT Review Conference, said: “The so-called nuclear sharing arrangements run counter to the provisions of the NPT and increase the risks of nuclear proliferation and nuclear conflicts. The United States should withdraw all its nuclear weapons from Europe and refrain from deploying nuclear weapons in any other region.”

Indonesia, speaking on behalf of all 120 countries of the Non-Aligned Movement at the August 2022 NPT Review Conference, said: “… nuclear weapon-sharing by States Parties constitutes a clear violation of non-proliferation obligations undertaken by those Nuclear Weapon States under Article I and by those Non-Nuclear Weapon States under Article II.”

The US H-bombs’ threatening nearness to Russian territory did not deter President Putin’s military incursion into Ukraine. The invasion has proved that nuclear deterrence is a fraud, that the weapons are useless and can be eliminated, and that nuclear de-escalation in Europe can be accomplished simultaneously with the US coming into compliance with the NPT. Only weapons profiteering and imperial military hubris keeps it from happening. ###

PS. The attached image is a photo of the official patch, complete with a US B61 H-bomb, of the USAF 701st Munitions Support Squadron (MUNNS) stationed at Belgium’s Kleine Brogel Air Base.

John LaForge is a Co-director of Nukewatch, a peace and environmental justice group in Wisconsin, and edits its newsletter.

The Oppenheimer Omission

BY GRAY BRECHIN

 APRIL 26, 2024
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Oppenheimer and Lawrence at the 184-inch cyclotron, University of California (Berkeley) Radiation Laboratory. Photo: US Department of Energy.

University of California administration swelled with pride after producer Christopher Nolan shot scenes for his Academy Award-winning blockbuster Oppenheimer on the Berkeley campus, but that was not always the case.  In doing so Nolan gave the campus star billing in the epochal drive to build the atomic bomb before the film’s main action moved on to Los Alamos.

As an undergraduate at UC in the late 60s, I wondered why the name of one of the world’s greatest physicists who had worked there was absent, whereas that of his colleague, Ernest O. Lawrence, had been affixed to the sprawling Lawrence Radiation Laboratory and the Lawrence Hall of Science on the hill above campus as well as to the Lawrence National Laboratory in Livermore south of Berkeley.  A prestigious award and endowed lectureship also bore his name which features prominently in The Centennial Record of the University of California in contrast with that of Oppenheimer who gets scant mention. My U.C. dissertation and book, Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin, suggests that the omission of Oppenheimer was not accidental, for the “Father of the Atomic Bomb” was once an embarrassment to a university so intimately tied to its production and promotion as well as to subsequent generations of omnicidal weapons.

Nordically tall, blond, and Midwestern, Ernest Lawrence (played in the movie by Josh Hartnett) won the University’s first Nobel Prize for his co-invention with graduate student M. Stanley Livingston of the cyclotron which would lead to the Bomb. Unlike his leftish and cerebral Jewish colleague Oppenheimer — whom the brilliant physicist Hans Bethe said could make anyone, including himself, feel a fool — Lawrence put at ease the Regents and wealthy businessmen whom he needed to finance his and Livingston’s ever-larger atom-smashers. After his early death in 1958, the Regents commissioned a hagiography of Lawrence titled An American Genius and raised funds for the namesake Hall of Science adjacent to his 184-inch cyclotron where Lawrence’s team began the separation of Uranium-235 needed for “The Gadget.” When the hall was completed, curators placed the illuminated portraits of twenty-six Great Men of Science near the entrance that began with Hippocrates and culminated with Berkeley’s Nobel Laureate.

The absence of Oppenheimer from the Gallery of Greats and the shrine-like Memorial Hall once at its center was only one of several holes in the building’s historical record, for Lawrence’s work on the atomic bomb was given little mention and none was given to his enthusiasm for the hydrogen bomb for which the national laboratory at Livermore was built, while Oppenheimer appeared with him in only one photograph. Such omissions were likely not accidental, for the university’s close involvement with superweapons gave it adverse publicity at a time when indiscriminate fallout from nuclear tests and the prospect of fiery annihilation tarnished its reputation for disinterested research.

Lawrence’s declassified papers reveal that a top-secret Committee on Planning for Army and Navy Research met more than a year before the first atomic explosion to plan the university’s continued involvement in weapons work. After years of stringency, Dr. Lawrence was keenly interested in finding ways by which nuclear research and the funding necessary for it could continue after the war. His friend Dr. Merle Tuve submitted notes on how to assure that funding. Those present at the meeting understood that an appearance of civilian control would have to be given to the program to deflect public criticism of “Big Navy” or “Big Army,” so good public relations was essential. Tuve wrote that “If the attitudes are right, the funds will be forthcoming with little difficulty. The continuity of funds for research is far more important than the magnitude of the funds” A gusher, however, would not be unwelcome.

When the Atomic Energy Commission’s first chairman, David E. Lilienthal wrote that “The doors of the treasury swung open and the money poured out,” he foresaw what President Eisenhower would later call the Military-Industrial Complex, but Eisenhower neglected to add academia to the Complex for its eager acceptance of available funds. Those on the ground floor and with the inside track stood to profit handsomely as a little-known archipelago of mining, research, and production sites devoted to nuclear weapons development sprang up across the nation and beyond. Professor Lawrence himself advised or sat on the boards of corporations heavily invested in weapons and reactor production while advising top government officials about the nation’s needs. Having known him well, Lilienthal was unimpressed by the objectivity of U.C.’s star physicist. He called Lawrence “the salesman” or “Madison Avenue-type” of scientist in his diary and bemoaned the institutionalized legacy of his promotional skills.

The Brookings Institution in 1998 attempted for the first time to determine how much the nuclear arms race had cost U.S. taxpayers. Its Atomic Audit estimated the 70,000 nuclear weapons manufactured to that point had cost more than $5 trillion of which only a small fraction was ever made public. The biological and psychic cost of the bombs was incalculable as were the public benefits that had to be sacrificed to its voracious demands. Proud as the University of California may now be of Oppenheimer’s presence on the Berkeley campus thanks to Nolan’s film, its official history should be amended to explain its own role in the aftermath of the work that he and Lawrence once did here.

Gray Brechin, Ph.D, is a geographer and the author of Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin (University of California Press 1999 and 2006.) The audiobook is now available.

Moving to Universal Health Care, Beginning in the States

BY PATRICK MAZZA

 APRIL 26, 2024
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One of the greatest systemic failures in the U.S. is healthcare. Even after the 2010 passage of the Affordable Care Act:

+ 26 million Americans, or 7.9% of the population, still lack health insurance.

+ 51% of working age adults have difficulties affording health insurance.

+ 38% of working age adults delayed or skipped needed medical care or prescriptions over the year before polling was conducted in 2023 because they couldn’t afford it, while 57% of those who did reported their medical problem became worse.

+ 41% of adults are carrying medical debt, amounting to 100 million Americans, with a quarter of those owing $5,000 or more, while 1 in 7 of those in debt have been turned away from medical care because of unpaid bills.

The problem is high monthly payments and high deductibles, which Obamacare did not solve. Across the U.S., many are working for the obvious answer, genuine universal health care through single-payer health insurance, which cuts out private health insurance entirely with its bloated administrative costs, not to mention how it often cheapskates on needed care.

Failure to make progress at the national level has moved the center of action to the states. Many states are seeing movement to single payer. It is a key example of building the future in place, of working at the grassroots to provide solutions for systemic failures by building models that eventually can be adopted at broader levels, in this case the national. States are an appropriate place-based venue to begin building health-care solutions because they have sufficient scale to create trust funds that manage medical payments.

Among standouts in state action:

+ The Oregon Legislature last year created a governing board to design a universal health care plan for introduction to the 2025 session and implementation in 2026. Under the plan a state health care trust fund would be established.

+ California has created a process to apply for a federal waiver allowing it to implement a single-payer plan. A bill with the design of the system was introduced into the most recent legislative session, but is not expected to move forward until a waiver is granted. Then funding will require passage by a ballot initiative.

State plans will require federal waivers. Currently federal law prohibits states from pooling Medicare, Medicaid and other insurance funds into a singular state systems. A bill introduced by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) in 2023, the State-Based Universal Health Care Act(HB6270), provides a pathway to gaining waivers.

Working in Washington State

I recently sat down with Carey Wallace, board chair of Whole Washington (WW), one of the groups working toward universal health care in my home state, to talk about grassroots organizing efforts going on here. WW, led by healthcare providers, has a board substantially made up of nurses. Wallace is one herself, with over 20 years’ experience, so she has seen upfront how deficiencies in the current health care system affect people’s lives.

WW’s proposal, similar to other states, is to create a health care trust fund.  Under the proposal, employers would be mandated to provide health care coverage, while all state residents would be eligible for coverage through the trust fund. So even when unemployed people would still be insured. The trust fund would pay all bills, eliminating co-pays, premiums, deductibles, out-of-network charges, and high prescription costs.. Coverage would be comprehensive including dental and vision. WW estimates the plan will save 7,000 lives annually while preventing 6,000-7,000 medical bankruptcies each year, at the same time shaving $5-$13 billion off healthcare expenses by reducing administrative costs.

The plan would start as a public option. The opt-in feature is designed to overcome potential legal challenges that would rise if private health insurers were mandated to join. Healthy San Francisco, working toward universal health care in that city, overcame a similar legal challenge. The federal waiver would resolve this issue, and the system could move to full statewide coverage

In 2021 the Washington Legislature created the Universal Health Care Commission to design a system. But progress has been slow, with no consensus on a single-payer design and “no sense of urgency,” Wallace says. “It was kind of set up to fail. I think we knew going in it wasn’t going to get us where we wanted to go, but it was a really good platform to push the issue.”

Health care advocates were also disappointed by the failure of the most recent legislative session to pass even a memorial supporting universal health care.

“What makes this arrangement so unfortunate is that SJM.8006 was a concession bill given to the universal healthcare movement to quell their discontent that SB.5335 — a real single-payer universal healthcare bill — would not be given a hearing in the state Senate,” writes WW Executive Director Andre Stackhouse.

“We were told that while everyone . . . agrees about the importance of universal healthcare, that SB.5335 was not ready for a hearing, that it needed to be vetted through Washington’s Universal Health Care Commission, and that a joint memorial was a more achievable next step.”

So facing what looks like a chicken and egg problem, WW continues efforts to put a universal health care measure on the ballot, aiming at a 2025 run. The group has tried to gain the 400,000 needed signatures three times over recent years, but its purely volunteer efforts always topped out around 100,000. It is virtually impossible to place an initiative on the ballot without paid signature gatherers, Wallace notes.

WW’s run at the ballot in 2020 was interrupted by the Covid outbreak. In 2022, when it tried again, “It was hard to reconnect,”  Wallace says. That seems to be a story across many forms of activism. “We can get our people out, but getting outside of our silo has been difficult. We recognized we need to do other things to reconnect.”

Staging town meetings

So WW with other groups are taking it on the road in town meetings across the state. WW will present its proposal over the first 20 minutes and then ask people to present their own healthcare stories. The first will take place in Olympia April 25 in alliance with Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility and RIP Medical Debt. The three groups will also stage town meetings May 4 in Tacoma and June 1 in Seattle. The theme will be Healthcare Not Warfare, in tune with WPSR’s peace mission. WW will also hold a number of town meetings on its own and with other groups in a range of urban and rural communities. For more on the times and locations, the schedule is here.

Through the town meetings and other organizing efforts, WW hopes to build the grassroots base and financial capacity to mount the 2025 initiative effort. Health insurance and privately owned health care organizations will mount a ferocious campaign against an initiative, so it will take a widespread effort with substantial financial backing to pass it.

WW was inspired in this effort by a successful Michigan campaign to place and pass a 2018 ballot measure creating an independent redistricting commission. It took the job of drawing legislative district boundaries out of the hands of the legislature in order to prevent gerrymandering. The group that forwarded the initiative, Voters Not Politicians, staged 33 town meetings in 33 days. Starting with limited resources, it managed to obtain the needed signatures to place the initiative on the ballot and then win a victory.

“Getting in front of real people was really helpful to them,” Wallace says. She hopes for similar success in Washington state. “There’s a lot of ways what we’re doing is the same. This is a nonpartisan dialogue. This is not a Republican or Democrat issue.”

Building a future with decent and affordable healthcare for all is a steep climb. Efforts spanning many decades have failed to achieve it at the national level. The best chance to eventually achieve that is to work in specific places, in states with favorable political climates, by building grassroots momentum to create universal health care systems. In Washington, as in other states, that is exactly what is happening. As with so many other issues where action is stalled at the national level, we can begin to make change where we live. We can build the future in place.

This first appeared on The Raven.