Back from the brink

by Ira Schorr

The people of the United States and Russia still face the risk of being evaporated in an accidental nuclear war.

On January 25, 1995, millions of people were minutes away from being incinerated by a mistaken nuclear weapons launch. Russian radar had detected a U.S.-Norwegian rocket that looked like a U.S. Trident nuclear missile. The routine notice that it was a weather rocket was lost in the bureaucracy. The black suitcase containing Russian nuclear launch codes was already with President Yeltsin when he was informed that it was a mistaken alert.

There have been many false alerts on the U.S. side as well, including one in which a nuclear warfare training tape being run on the command center computer was mistaken for the real thing.

The Cold War officially ended after the Soviet Union fell apart eight years ago. Yet today, the people of the U.S. and Russia still face the risk of being evaporated in an accidental nuclear war. That risk is increasing because of deteriorating infrastructure and the poor state of the Russian economy.

There is something that can be done to greatly reduce this risk: take nuclear weapons off of hair trigger alert. De-alerting nuclear weapons does not require a change in the size of the U.S. or Russian arsenals. Nor are lengthy arms reduction negotiations or legislative debates needed. De-alerting simply requires a determination by national leaders to increase nuclear safety and abandon confrontational nuclear postures.

On December 9, 1999, a major national effort to de-alert nuclear weapons, the "Back from the Brink Campaign," was launched. That morning, a new video made by the Center for Defense Information, discussing nuclear dangers and how de-alerting can reduce them, was released at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Speakers included Bruce Blair, one of the world’s foremost authorities on the subject and a MacArthur Fellow; former Senator Dale Bumpers, now head of the Center for Defense Information; Beatrice Brailsford, Program Director of the Snake River Alliance, a statewide peace and environmental group in Idaho, and Arjun Makhijani, President of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Takoma Park, Maryland.

The heart of the campaign is outside Washington, D.C. That’s from where the pressure to persuade President Clinton as well as the House and Senate to de-alert nuclear weapons must come.

You can participate in the launch of the Back from the Brink Campaign by showing the video at a house party or on your local cable access channel. Free copies of the Back from the Brink Campaign video are available. To get one, send an e-mail to <srabb@earthlink.net>; write the temporary campaign office at 310 E. Center, Suite 205, Pocatello, Idaho 83201; or call our toll free number at 1-877-55BESAFE.

You can also arrange a news briefing in your community around the showing of the video. The campaign can send you sample press materials and other information in a packet that you can use and distribute to local media. The website of the campaign is at <www.dealert.com>.