Alright, y'all welcome back to the show, it's Anti-War Radio, I'm Scott Horton, and our first guest on the show today is Paul Kawika-Martin.
He's from peaceblog.wordpress.com.
Welcome to the show, Paul, how are you doing?
I'm doing good, and the actual name of the organization is Peace Action.
Peace Action, that sounds like a pretty good deal.
My spin is more anti-war, but yeah, pro-peace, that's okay too.
So let's talk about this START Treaty.
I believe the most important issue in the world, I don't know how anybody could argue the point, America and Russia's hydrogen bomb stockpiles pointed at each other's civilian populations, threatening the extinction of all mankind and a hell of a lot of other species along with it.
What is being done?
Well, you're exactly right, just a little bit of history for your listeners.
Since 1945, the world has produced about 130,000 nuclear weapons.
Now nine countries possess about 23,000 warheads, and Russia and the United States make up about 95% of the world's total.
And these current warheads that we're talking about are like 10 to 100 times the destructive force of those that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which killed about 200,000 people.
Yeah, Dan Ellsberg likes to say that a Nagasaki bomb, an implosion plutonium fission bomb is the blasting cap for a thermonuclear hydrogen bomb.
Yeah, it's very difficult for us to imagine how powerful and how we would never want to see one of these things used.
So in any case, we have been moving down to slowly get rid of these things.
And we've been doing it through a lot of bilateral treaties between the US and Russia.
And the last treaty, which was called the START Treaty, a Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, expired last December.
And the Obama administration and Russia renegotiated a new treaty called the New START Treaty.
It would move us down to about 1,550 long-range bombs, each country, which is about a 20 to 30% reduction than what we currently have.
And also would continue these verification procedures that we have, which we're able to go into Russia, inspect, and make sure that they are cutting down and they do have safety procedures around their nuclear weapons so they're not stolen or given away.
And these verification things have all stopped since the last treaty had expired.
So right now, in the Senate, we're attempting to get this treaty to be ratified.
Last week, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted to move it to the full Senate floor, and it had bipartisan support.
And we all know the craziness that's going on in Congress right now and how partisan it is, but it had bipartisan support.
So what needs to happen now is it needs to come to the floor for a full vote and get the 67 votes it needs to be ratified.
It's a very small step to keeping Americans safer and to moving towards a vision of a world free of nuclear weapons.
Yeah.
Boys, times like this, I really miss Chuck Hagel.
He's the kind of guy who can speak reasonably to the Republicans and say, hey, listen, you're not allowed to disagree with me on this one.
Me and Dick Lugar, we figured this out, and you guys are going to go along.
And they would do it if he was there.
Yeah, it's pretty sad if this ends up dying because of partisan wrangling.
It does have bipartisan support outside of Congress.
It needs to have it inside of Congress.
And so one of the things your listeners can do is certainly call your senators today.
People, I'm sure, already have their number on the cell phone, 202-224-3121, 202-224-3121, and tell your senators you want to pass New START treaty and you want it to come to the floor for a vote as soon as possible.
Now, what was that number again?
202-224-3121.
And that's the congressional hotline.
We can reach your representatives and your senators.
And I got to tell you, Paul, I very rarely do call to action type stuff on this show because I'm just not feeling it.
I sort of feel like everybody's got to or somebody's got to at least agree with me before I can come up with any call to actions, what they actually ought to do about it.
But in this case, with this most important issue going on and going on right now in the U.S. Senate, there's only 100 of these guys up there.
And if those of us who really care about this can really work, we might get it done, right?
Change a couple of senators' minds.
That's all we need, right?
Make sure Kay Bailey and John Cornyn are on board.
Get a couple more of these right-wing lunatics to join up with Dick Lugar, and then we're OK.
Yeah, you're exactly right.
As it currently stands, we're probably at 64 senators that we know for sure.
And we're pretty sure we have the vote.
You need the 67.
Are they threatening a filibuster on this?
No, but we're not sure if the Republican leadership is willing to move forward to get it on the floor.
They haven't threatened any filibuster.
And even, too, we're a little uncertain about even Democratic leadership.
Let's not forget, we have a very important election, at least for these members of Congress, coming up in a couple of months.
And floor time on the Senate is very precious.
And so it's going to take pressure from people to say, this is something super important.
It needs to happen.
And we want to see it.
There's a very small chance it's going to happen before the election.
Most likely it would happen in the lame duck session after the election happens.
Yeah, it's funny.
It would seem to me, I don't know, if I was running for Senate, I'd be like, hell yeah.
Hey, everybody, guess what?
I just worked to reduce America's nuclear weapons stockpile and Russia's, too.
Re-elect Horton, right?
Seems like a great idea to me.
Nobody likes hydrogen bombs, do they?
No.
I mean, I think, unfortunately, I mean, it has 100% support of the Democratic side.
And there's certainly a handful of Republicans who are supporting it, and would probably support it if it came up to a vote today.
But you know how it is now.
It's so partisan that they, I think, one, don't want to see President Obama have a win.
Like, this is a win.
They negotiated a good treaty.
They're making Americans safer.
So let's not give that to them.
Two, they want to try to make it look like it's not making Americans safer.
Like, it's going to get in the way of building so-called missile defense, which is something Peace Action opposes building Star Wars missile defense.
But they want to say it gets in the way of that, which it doesn't.
They want to say it actually doesn't verify some of these spots in Russia.
You know, they're just trying to make arguments to, of course, put the President down and put the Democrats in a weak light, because this has been constantly, the Republican strategy has always been making Democrats look weak on defense.
And here's a case where certainly this is going to make Americans safer.
It's a very small step, and there's no doubt that the Obama administration could do more on nuclear weapons issues.
And there's no doubt some of the things that they're doing to get, to make this treaty happen is stuff that Peace Action doesn't agree with.
Case in point is they're increasing the funding for some of the nuclear weapons labs about $10 billion over the next 10 years.
I mean, $100 billion over the next 10 years.
And we don't support that.
But nonetheless, it needs to be passed.
If any of us want to see, either in our lifetime or our children's lifetime, a world where we don't have to worry about annihilation by nuclear weapons, this treaty has to pass.
So I hope people do make the call to their senators and put pressure on them.
Yeah, it's amazing.
The Cold War's been over for 20 years, you know.
And just to think that any politician would, would do anything to work against or to even just, you know, negligently refuse to help, to push through a treaty that could help reduce the stockpiles of hydrogen bombs on this planet for their own selfish gain is just unforgivable.
I mean, that ought to kill the re-election effort of any congressman or senator or politician, political party leader, anyone who's willing to literally screw around with the, with the nuclear weapons stockpiles for their own political gain.
They don't want it to look like Obama achieved something.
I mean, come on, he hasn't achieved anything.
Just pass the damn treaty, you know.
You don't have to give Obama credit.
We're talking about hydrogen bombs here.
The future history of mankind being written.
These people are willing to just throw us all away.
It's just insane.
But I guess that's what it means to be a politician.
Hang tight, everybody.
We'll be back with Paul Kawika-Martin from Peace Action.
It's peace-action.org.
Talking about the START treaty with Russia.
You can sign up for the Liberty Radio Network email updates at updates.lrn.fm and join us on Facebook at facebook.lrn.fm.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Wharton.
I'm talking with Paul Kawika-Martin from peace-action.org.
It's peace-action.org, actually.
And we're talking about the START treaty, the expired and now up for renewal nuclear weapons treaty with Russia.
And there's so many things I wanted to ask you about here in terms of this thing.
But I guess I wanted to start with a little bit of what I knew or heard, at least, about Obama's time in the Senate before he became our dear leader.
He apparently was right at home under the wing of Senator Dick Lugar, who, of course, is the co-sponsor of the Nunn-Lugar Act, which is the plan basically to buy up any excess fissile material from the former Soviet Union and bring it back here to the United States where it will be safe.
And this is something that the Senate passed, I think, right after the Cold War ended.
And it's never been fully funded.
They've never been able to really get it all taken care of.
And this was something that, if I remember right, Dick Lugar took Obama to Russia.
And they went around and discussed this.
And he really got taught the nuts and bolts all the way through.
And this was something that he was determined to do.
Has there been any progress on that issue, Paul?
Do you know?
Yeah.
And you're exactly right, Scott.
When Obama became senator, he was on the Foreign Relations Committee, which at the time was chaired by Senator Lugar.
And so they did strike up quite the relationship, including trips to Russia.
And one of the things that we want to give the Obama administration credit for is they have increased by a good 26% the funding for non-perforation programs like you talk about.
These programs are meant to either, one, get rid of excess fissile material.
That is the actual stuff like plutonium reframing that you can use to build weapons.
Of course, we don't want to see that get into the wrong hands.
And of course, less of that stuff in the world is going to make the world a safer place.
And so they have increased the funding significantly to help secure fissile material and to help get rid of this stuff.
And that is a good thing.
Unfortunately, the Democrats haven't been able to pass any of these funding bills this year.
So, it remains to be seen whether or not that funding actually gets to where it needs to go, because we're looking at a continuing resolution, which might just have funding levels from last year, which didn't include this increase.
But yes, the Obama administration has made some progress on the non-perforation front.
And the other big thing, if people remember from earlier this year, was this Nuclear Security Summit that President Obama and the Obama administration put together.
It was a historical summit here in Washington, D.C.
It was the first time that so many world leaders were together.
I think some people say since the founding of the United Nations, there were some 43 world leaders together to talk about how do we cure the world from the wrong people getting nuclear weapons, and how do we start moving toward a world free of nuclear weapons.
So, there have been several significant steps this administration has done around nuclear weapons.
And as I mentioned earlier, it's certainly not perfect.
We are concerned about this increase of funding for the nuclear weapons lab, but nonetheless, we've gone a long way since the last administration, the Bush administration, who, one, wanted to build smaller, more, quote, usable nuclear weapons, who removed itself from treaties, who thumbed its nose at countries at the non-perforation treaty review conference.
And I can go on and on on the horrible things that they did around nuclear weapons, including threatening non-nuclear states with nuclear annihilation.
So, we've come a long way with the Obama administration, but we still need to have a long way to go so people can continue to put pressure on the members of Congress and their senators.
That is an extremely important point about threatening nuclear war against non-nuclear states.
And Barack Obama, actually, I think for the first time, this was something that he and Hillary Clinton had debated, where he promised not to nuke Pakistan, and she criticized him during the election, because you should never promise who you won't nuke.
And even though they were talking about nuking terrorists in the mountains of Pakistan, not the nuclear-armed state of Pakistan, anyway.
But he then came out after becoming president, and I guess it was at this nuke security summit that you're talking about, and he promised he changed, officially changed American foreign policy forever.
We no longer will threaten a nuclear first strike against a non-nuclear weapon state unless it's Iran.
That's pretty much the case.
I mean, we didn't spell out Iran, which was good, because the Bush administration specifically spelled out several countries in what's called the Nuclear Posture Review.
This is the document which sets our nuclear policy and how we will and will not use nuclear weapons.
The new Nuclear Posture Review that came out under the Obama administration did not necessarily name countries, as the Bush administration named North Korea and Iran and Pakistan.
But this time we did name countries, which was good.
It said we would not use nuclear weapons on any non-nuclear state as long as they are in compliance with the Non-Perforation Treaty, which some people said that that may leave it open for Iran.
But my sources in the administration said that we certainly would never use nuclear weapons against Iran.
Well, except that if a war with Iran breaks out, we're going to have to, because we don't have the Marines to take on the human waves of Iranian soldiers pouring into Iraq and Afghanistan to murder our forces there, or to defend themselves.
That's the whole joke, right?
You start a war against a country four times the size of Iraq with five times the population, and it's all shaped like Colorado and Afghanistan.
There are these giant mountains.
There's no way to win an assault against Iran other than to threaten them with nuclear annihilation if they dare to fight back.
Yeah, Iran's a very tricky subject.
I was very fortunate to go to Iran a few years ago to try to learn more about the country.
A couple of things I think people should realize.
One, Iran has not attacked another country for over 200 years.
Now, you can argue whether or not funding Hamas and giving some funds to Hezbollah is doing it by proxy.
Also, there was this very tiny skirmish that happened within the last couple of years that just happened over their border.
But fundamentally, they haven't attacked another country in 200 years.
So, I find it very unlikely that they're going to start doing that now, especially when they're in their economic place that they're in.
Historically, they haven't done that.
So, I'm hoping that we can deal with that country through diplomacy and through other means, and we won't have to see any kind of military intervention, because I can't see any kind of military intervention in Iran going very well for that region and for the United States.
Yeah, good call.
Zbigniew Brzezinski says, man, we're going to be fighting everything between Israel and India.
You really think we can handle that?
I don't.
And, you know, this is Mr. Arc of Crisis himself.
This is the guy who was the guru of Let's Conquer Central Asia, and he's going, no, no, no, not Iran.
We can't do Iran.
Yeah, exactly right.
You know, it's just unfortunate that we have a military budget now that's a trillion dollars a year, give or take.
And so, when you're only tool in the toolbox is that hammer, everything looks like a nail.
And we need to figure out how we invest more money and other ways to deal with conflict and to prevent conflict.
You know, bringing people up out of poverty, more aid that's helping people, more in diplomatic regions, diplomatic realms.
I mean, these are the ways that we're going to solve conflict in the long term.
And the more that we spread more weapons out there, you know, we've seen it blow back happen time and time again.
We give weapons to one people to fight another people, then they end up getting back and fighting back to us.
I mean, this is just this circle of spending on military budget has not helped us, and it's not going to help us in the future.
All right, Paul Kawika-Martin from peace-action.org.
Pardon me, Paul.
Tell us again how we can contact our senators and what to tell them.
Yeah.
So, all you need to do is pick up the phone Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to about 6 p.m.
Eastern Time and dial 202-224-3121.
You can dial right now, 202-224-3121.
And just tell them that you want to speak to one of your senators in your state.
When they pick up the phone, tell them that you want to have your senator vote for the new START Treaty, and you want your senator to have that START Treaty voted on and ratified as soon as possible.
Hang up the phone, pick it up again, and you call your other senator.
Thank you.
Right on.
Everybody, that is Paul Kawika-Martin from peace-action.org.
Do what he said.
Call your senator.
Hydrogen bomb, the most important issue in the whole world.
202-224-3121.
