Today, all the nuclear weapons states are modernizing and updating their arsenals, despite treaties and agreements over the years that reduced global nuclear arsenals from a height of 70,000 bombs. Sadly, our country, the US, has been the provocateur for nuclear proliferation over the years:
Truman refused Stalin's request to turn the bomb over to the newly established UN and put it under international control after the catastrophic devastation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where it is estimated that at least 135,000 people died instantly, despite the UN's mission to "end the scourge of war".
After the wall fell, and Gorbachev miraculously ended the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe, Reagan refused Gorbachev's offer to abolish nuclear weapons in return for Reagan abandoning US plans for Star Wars to achieve domination in space.
Clinton refused Putin's offer to cut to 1,000 weapons each and call everyone to the table to negotiate an abolition treaty, provided the US stopped its plans to violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and put missiles in Romania and Poland.
Bush actually walked out of the ABM treaty in 2000 and now Trump has walked out of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Force agreement with the USSR.
Obama, in return for a modest cut in our nuclear arsenals that he negotiated with Medvedev of 1500 nuclear bombs, promised a one trillion dollar nuclear program over the next 30 years with two new bomb factories in Oak Ridge and Kansas City, and new missiles, planes, submarines and warheads. Trump continued Obama's program and even raised it by $52 billion over the next 10 years [i]
China and Russia proposed in 2008 and 2015 negotiations on a Model Treaty they put on the table to ban weapons in space and the US blocked any discussion in the consensus-bound UN Committee for Disarmament
Putin proposed to Obama that the US and Russia negotiate a treaty to ban cyberwar, which the US rejected. [ii]
Walt Kelly, the 1950s cartoonist of the Pogo comic strip, has Pogo saying, "We met the enemy and he is us!"
With the negotiation of the new Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, we now have a breakthrough opportunity for citizens and Cities and States around the world to take action to reverse course from plummeting our Earth into catastrophic nuclear disaster. At this moment, there are 2500 nuclear tipped missiles in the US and Russia targeting all of our major cities. As for New York City, as the song goes, "If we can make it here, we'll make it anywhere!" and it's wonderful and inspiring that this City Council is willing to add it's voice to demand lawful and effective action for a nuclear free world! Thank you so much!!
[i] https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2017-07/news/trump-continues-obama-nuclear-funding
[ii] https://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/28/world/28cyber.html
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