A new ‘Plan A’ for humanity: defusing the nuclear time bomb

Cape Breton Post

Contributed | August 4, 2022

Mushroom clouds rise up from the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively, after atomic bombs were dropped on them in August 1945. - Wikimedia Commons - Contributed

Seventy-seven years ago this month, two Japanese cities — and hundreds of thousands of lives — were destroyed by just two bombs.

Today there are over 13,000 nuclear weapons (most far more powerful than the ‘crude’ atomic monsters of 1945) in the unsafe hands of the world’s Mushroom Cloud Club: China, France, India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, United Kingdom and the United States.

The American war crimes committed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were made possible in part by Canadian uranium, mined (at great human and environmental cost) on colonized Dene lands in the Northwest Territories. And Canada is one of only 32 ‘nuclear-endorsing’ states — 27 of them in the world’s only nuclear-armed alliance, NATO — daring to base their ‘defence’ on a depravity: the threatened use of weapons of genocidal mass destruction.

Potential flashpoint

Indeed, as a member of NATO’s Nuclear Planning Group, Canada actively participates in detailed preparations (and elaborate rehearsals) for nuclear war: an exchange with Russia likely, according to a 2017 simulation from Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security, to kill 90 million in the first 24 hours.

The simulation, called ‘Plan A,’ drew solely on known deployments and official doctrine; and it hypothesized that the apocalypse would start with Russia firing a tactical nuclear weapon from its exposed Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad. Five years later, as Moscow’s illegal invasion of Ukraine grinds on, Kaliningrad is a flashpoint that could, any day, ‘go nuclear’ for real. But it is only one tinderbox among many.

Speaking at an international conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Human Weapons (HINW) in Vienna on June 20, Princeton University’s Dr. Zia Mian — a lead researcher on the ‘Plan A’ project — argued that “our fundamental problem in the nuclear age is the problem of the state: no state has ever asked its people if it wants to be defended by mass murder,” despite (or because of) the fact that “public opinion seeks a world free of nuclear weapons, even in the nuclear-armed states.”

National survey

Canadians, certainly, have never been asked that politically explosive, morally radioactive question, though it seems clear what their answer would be. In April 2021, a Nanos national opinion survey showed 74 per cent in favour of Ottawa joining the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), the ‘Ban Treaty’ adopted by 122 states at the United Nations in 2017. Many Canadian towns and cities also support the TPNW, including Ottawa, Toronto — and the Cape Breton Regional Municipality, which on July 12 (proclaiming Aug. 6 ‘Hiroshima Memorial Day’) called unanimously for “all states, including Canada, to sign and ratify” the ban.  

Since 2013, CBRM has been a member of the global ‘Mayors for Peace’ community of more than 8,000 anti-nuclear municipalities, including 110 across Canada, campaigning for a nuclear-weapon-weapon-free world: for a peaceful rather than explosive end to the time-bomb delusions of ‘deterrence.’

As the recent proclamation declared: “The illegal and barbaric Russian invasion of Ukraine, and Russia’s threats to use nuclear weapons, demonstrates the utter failure of nuclear weapons to prevent or deter war.” For it is no coincidence that both nuclear superpowers, Russia and the United States, are also conventional war junkies, arrogantly ‘boasting’ vast military-industrial complexes.

Local group releasing 'concept paper'

To quote Hiroshima-survivor Setsuko Thurlow, a Canadian citizen since the 1950s, “the only thing ‘deterrence’ deters is disarmament.” And the only thing it incentivizes is proliferation, the desire to seek ‘status’ or ‘shelter’ in an increasingly nuclearized world.

How can the ‘fundamental problem’ identified by Dr. Mian — the gulf between pro-nuclear states and anti-nuclear publics — be bridged?

This Hiroshima Day, Peace Quest Cape Breton is releasing a ‘Concept Paper’ exploring the merits of a ‘Canadian Citizens’ Assembly on Nuclear Disarmament’: 100 citizens, selected to represent the diversity of the country, empowered to make policy recommendations to parliament. The idea has already been endorsed by a number of organizations, academics, and activists, including Setsuko Thurlow, who noted at a recent ‘Nuclear Ban Forum’ in Vienna that “such an Assembly would hear from all sides of the issue — including from my side, as a survivor.”

Wouldn’t it be neat, if Canada was the first country to ever ask its citizens: when it comes to the Bomb, which side are you on?