Edinburgh Peace and Justice Resource Centre

Decreasing the operational readiness of nuclear weapons systems. Read the letter here.
Dear Presidents Obama and Medvedev, Vice-President Joseph Biden, Prime Minister Putin, Secretary of State Clinton, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, and Congressional and Duma Committees on Foreign Affairs and Defense/Armed Services:
The authors of this letter write as the joint coordinators of an appeal to lower nuclear weapons operating status/operational readiness that was signed by 44 Nobel Prize - winners and which helped lead to resolutions in the United Nations General Assembly in October 2007 and 2008. (see appendix)
This letter is signed by NGOs and distinguished individuals from around the world who believe that nuclear disarmament is a matter of urgency, and that taking nuclear weapons off quick-launch capability is a vital first step toward nuclear disarmament.
We suggest that the current negotiations between the US and Russia over a successor to START be also used as forum in which the US and Russia negotiate an agreement to cease maintaining their large nuclear forces in quick-launch status.
We are very much encouraged by the repeated committments made by President Obama to negotiate with Russia to lower the operational status of nuclear weapons systems, as well as by the statements to that effect to which Dr. Henry Kissinger has lent his name, as well as by his involvement in a successor to START.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, in a September, 2008 article entitled 'Avoiding Human Extinction', placed the lowering of the operational status of nuclear weapon systems, the reductions in warhead numbers and the abolition of nuclear weapons among the top of measures needed to be taken to protect humankind.
U.S. scientists now predict, with a high level of certainty, that:
1) the detonation in urban areas of as little as a half of one percent of the explosive power contained in U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals could cause major disruptions in global climate leading to the starvation of hundreds of millions of the already hungry, and
(2) A war fought with even a few thousand strategic nuclear weapons, such as the U.S.-Russian weapons now maintained at high-alert status, would cause such cataclysmic changes in global climate and environment that growing seasons would be completely eliminated for years, thus dooming most of humanity to perish from famine.
It is unrealistic to assume that nuclear deterrence will work perfectly forever. With the passage of time, the use of nuclear weaponry, due to madness, malice, miscalculation, or malfunction becomes an inevitability. Thus it is imperative that as a first step towards reducing the immense danger these weapons pose to all nations and peoples, that the U.S. and Russia agree to remove their nuclear weapons from high-alert status.
We urge the US and Russian governments, Presidents Obama and Medvedev, Secretary of State Clinton and Foreign Minister Ivanov, to use the opportunity of the renegotiation/replacement of START to negotiate to immediately lower the operational readiness of U.S. and Russian nuclear weapon systems. This single act will do more than any other immediately available measure to make humanity and civilization secure in accordance with our shared objective of progress towards the abolition of nuclear weapons.
Sincerely,
John Loretz, Program Director, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) - 1985 Nobel Peace Prize)
Aaron Tovish, Mayors for Peace 2020 Vision Campaign
Steven Starr, Senior Scientist, Physicians for Social Responsibility, USA,
Dave Krieger, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Santa Barbara, Calif, USA
Kate Hudson, Convenor, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), London, UK,
Paul Ingram, Director, British-American Security Council (BASIC)
Decreasing the operational readiness of nuclear weapons systems
Douglas Mattern, President, Association of World Citizens, USA (Joint Coordinator 2004 Appeal on Operating Status by 44 Nobels)