Resources for 2009-2010 College Debate on Nuclear Weapons
Sep 15, 2009

For the 2009-2010 school year, the college debate topic is on nuclear weapons. The resolution states:

Resolved: The United States Federal Government should substantially reduce the size of its nuclear weapons arsenal, and/or substantially reduce and restrict the role and/or missions of its nuclear weapons arsenal.

To help debaters prepare, we put together a resource guide to background materials, publications, and organizations. Access the guide here. Included is information on START; force posture; CTBT; cost; blast effects; Iran; missile defense; NPT; North Korea; public opinion; scientific and technical skills; stockpiles; U.S. policy; a world free of nuclear weapons; and much more.

Statement on Passing of Senator Edward Kennedy
Aug 27, 2009

Council for a Livable World and the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation mourn the passing of Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA).

For many years, Kennedy was a leader of progressive causes, including the Council’s core mission of the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons. In 2007, the Council and Center honored Kennedy by awarding him the second annual Father Robert F. Drinan Peace and Human Rights award. The first recipient of the award was Father Drinan himself.

Kennedy was a leader in the movement to end the Vietnam War. In the 1980s, he rallied opposition to America’s involvement in conflicts in Central America. In recent years he has been the leader of opposition to the war in Iraq, first taking a bold stand against launching the invasion and then leading efforts to begin a responsible withdrawal. Kennedy called his vote against the authorization of the use of force in Iraq “the best vote I've made in my 44 years in the United States Senate.”

Kennedy was also a prominent advocate of nuclear disarmament. In 1982, he and Senator Mark Hatfield (R-OR) introduced the Nuclear Freeze Amendment, which called for a verifiable and mutual nuclear weapons freeze between the United States and the Soviet Union. Though the amendment was not passed, the popular support it received resulted in the eventual negotiation and ratification of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.

Following a trip to Russia in 1986, Kennedy relayed to President Reagan that the Soviets were willing to negotiate a separate treaty on nuclear weapons in Europe. This resulted in the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

During the Clinton administration, Kennedy led the fight for ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Though this fight was unsuccessful, President Obama has promised to resubmit the treaty for approval in 2010.

The youngest son in a family of political icons, Edward Kennedy’s life and work dominate the political history of the second half of the 20th century. We dedicated ourselves to the fulfillment of his dream of a world at peace, free of the terrible danger of nuclear weapons.

Video: Sestak Endorsement
Aug 21, 2009

At a press conference yesterday in Philadelphia, Council for a Livable World board member Brig. Gen. John Johns (USA, ret.) appeared alongside Congressman Joe Sestak (D-PA) to announce the Council’s endorsement of Sestak for the Senate seat in Pennsylvania.

Here’s the video:

Council Featured in NY Times on Evolution of Obama’s Nuclear Policies
Jul 06, 2009

Yesterday, the New York Times ran a 2,600-word front page article that explored the evolution of President Obama’s thinking about nuclear weapons. Council for a Livable World was featured prominently in the article for our endorsement of Obama in his 2004 Senate race.

Here are the four paragraphs about us:

But in 2003 Mr. Obama began his unlikely campaign for the United States Senate and answered a detailed questionnaire from the Council for a Livable World, an advocacy organization in Washington that evaluates candidates on arms control issues.

“He opposes building a new generation of nuclear weapons,” the organization said in a fund-raising letter supporting Mr. Obama’s candidacy. At the time, the Bush administration had proposed developing nuclear arms that could shatter deeply buried enemy bunkers.

“The United States has far more nuclear weapons than it needs,” the organization quoted Mr. Obama as saying, “and any attempt by the U.S. government to develop or produce new nuclear weapons only undermines U.S. nonproliferation efforts around the world.”

The organization said Mr. Obama also supported an American-financed effort to secure Russian nuclear arms, as well as ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, still in limbo two decades after Mr. Obama wrote about it.

Poll Shows Support for Obama’s Nuke Policies, But...
May 22, 2009

On Tuesday, May 19, a new Democracy Corps poll was released by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner. The poll included an in-depth examination of the American public’s views on the nuclear weapons policies of President Obama. Key findings from the poll ought to be taken into consideration by political activists and policy analysts.

The words we use to talk about the issues we care about can have an enormous impact on public opinion. The poll shows that while there is widespread support for Obama’s nuclear policies, Americans harbor doubt about the “nuclear weapons free world” formulation. This formulation, which is extremely popular among disarmament activists, may not always be the best way to communicate with the public at large unless it is made clear that we want to “take steps on the path” to a world without nukes.

If it appears at all like we are talking about unilateral U.S. disarmament, the American public gets freaked out and may reject things such as the START follow-on treaty and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Were such failures to occur, we would never forgive ourselves if the root cause was that we were not willing to vary our message depending on our audience.

Pentagon Budget Faces Uncertain Future
Feb 03, 2009

If you follow national security you know that the first Monday in February is the big, big day when the President typically submits his defense budget requests to Congress. And Monday night is the long, long night when people like Travis Sharp, our resident defense analyst, fight the paper monster to deliver us a cute, little brief we can all actually read and understand. (Ed: Travis does not endorse use of the word “cute” or “little” to describe his brief).

But this year Sharp has so far been spared the heroic duty, as the Obama administration delayed submission of its defense spending request to take an “exhaustive line-by-line” look at the federal budget. So, to kill some time he prepared a new report that documents the skyrocketing recent growth in defense spending, catalogs calls for budget cuts by key policymakers, looks at the complicated procedure the fiscal year 2010 budget is set to follow, and provides background information on four weapons systems to watch in 2009.

Speculators expect the new President to file for a $527 billion request for fiscal year 2010, 10 percent less than a $584 billion fantasy budget suggested by the Joint Chiefs of Staff under the Bush administration. Critics of defense thrift are already up in arms. “It doesn't make fiscal sense to cut the defense budget when everyone is scrambling for measures to stimulate the economy,” Robert Kagan argued in today’s Washington Post. On Iran, he added that “the already-slim chances of success will grow slimmer if Iranian leaders believe that the United States may soon begin pulling back from their part of the world.”

In reality, these arguments make little sense. First, military spending may provide some economic stimulus, but there are other types of spending – such as on infrastructure – that would better jumpstart the U.S. economy.  Second, Obama has shown no sign of withdrawing from Iran’s neighborhood. Quite the opposite, in fact – Obama has pledged unprecedented engagement in the Middle East. Of course, it helps to remember that the United States is on track to spend 99 times more than Iran on defense in 2009.

Statements by administration officials reveal that the President is actually intent on making defense budget choices that will boost the U.S. ability to wage stabilization and reconstruction missions such as those we face in Iraq and Afghanistan. These are the missions that the United States is likely to face in the Middle East and around the world in the years ahead. And, just in case, the U.S. military’s unmatched supremacy in naval and air forces will provide insurance against any potential big-state challengers.

So the ax instead may fall this year on expensive toys such as the Air Force’s F-22 Raptor, which hasn’t performed a single mission in either Iraq or Afghanistan, and the Navy’s DDG-1000 destroyer, a vessel originally designed to support land-based troops but that now is more appropriate for blue-water open naval warfare.

Other candidates for resizing are the Army’s Future Combat Systems and the missile defense system, which has yielded mixed results in various operational tests. During the campaign, then-candidate Obama promised to “responsibly deploy missile defenses that would protect us and our allies,” but “only when the system works.”

Experts respond to WMD report
Dec 02, 2008

The Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Proliferation and Terrorism released its final report today: World at Risk.

The Commission was created by HR 1, commonly known as the 9/11 Commission Act of 2007, in order to “address the grave threat that the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction poses to our country.”

The panel was chaired by former Democratic Senator Bob Graham and former Republican Senator Jim Talent.

Leading experts from the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, the Council's sister organization, issued reactions to the Commission’s findings. Read how the wonks get down after the jump.

The end is in sight
Dec 02, 2008

John Isaacs, executive director at Council for a Livable World (and green tie guy at left), has a new op-ed out in the Guardian UK this afternoon. Text is below.

The End is in Sight
By John Isaacs
Published in the Guardian UK on December 2, 2008

The security agreement signed by the United States and Iraq and approved by the Iraqi parliament last week marks the beginning of the end of the American occupation.

It is about time. For more than six years, this war has undermined the American position in the world, trampled Iraqi sovereignty and caused over 4,000 American and 176 British combat deaths – not to mention tens or even hundreds of thousands of Iraqi casualties.

Robert McNamara's Vietnam war-era claim that we can see "the light at the end of the tunnel" now appears to actually be true in Iraq.

President-elect Barack Obama, in a December 1 press conference, agreed that the war is in its end-game. The US-Iraq agreement, Obama said, "points us in the right direction. It indicates we are now on a glide path to reduce our forces in Iraq."

The agreement mandates that "all US combat forces" withdraw from urban areas in Iraq by June 30, 2009, and that "all US forces" withdraw from the country by December 31, 2011. The agreed-to language upholds Iraq's "sovereign right" to demand the departure of US forces anytime and recognizes the United States' "sovereign right" to remove its forces earlier than the end of 2011.

This timetable is consistent with Obama's pledge, stated over and over during the election campaign, to remove all US combat troops within 16 months of taking office in January 2009.

Indeed, the agreement to remove all American forces by the end of 2011 goes beyond Obama's promises, as he has talked of leaving a residual force in Iraq indefinitely to train and equip Iraqi security forces, fight terrorists and protect remaining American personnel. Obama may well run up against an Iraqi desire to be rid of American troops once and for all.

When negotiations began more than a year ago, those opposed to the continuation of the war feared the worst. It would be, they thought, an attempt by President George Bush to tie the hands of his successor. Anti-Iraq war activists also believed the agreement was an effort to leave a permanent American presence in Iraq with the control of oil substantially in American hands.

However, Iraqi government officials, concerned with the appearance of ceding too much power to the Americans, forced many concessions from the Bush administration. Indeed, the agreement represents a stunning reversal for the Bush administration, which until now rejected any timeline for troop withdrawals and clearly saw Iraq as an outpost and demonstration of America's military power in the Middle East.

Instead, no matter how Iraq turns out in the end, this war will be marked by historians as a disaster in both conception and implementation.

The beginning of the end of the war does not mean that there will not be many hiccups along the way. While there are fewer casualties than before, there is little doubt that fighting may flare up again. There is still very little agreement on power sharing between the Shias, the Sunnis and the Kurds, and those groups may resume violent clashes in the future.

Moreover, the accord included a number of ambiguities that could grow into sore points. The two countries left vague the freedom of action for US soldiers, future security commitments and the protection of Iraqi assets.

And while the Iraqi parliament, and perhaps the Iraqi people through a future referendum, have been required to approve the agreement before it can go into affect, President Bush refused to submit the agreement for approval to the US Congress.

Still the agreement, combined with the coming to power of a new American president who opposed the war in the first place, means that American military involvement in Iraq is finally coming to an end.

CLW supports U.S.-Iraq security agreement
Nov 26, 2008

This morning Council for a Livable World sent out a press release on the U.S.-Iraq status of forces agreement (known as a 'SOFA'). Text is below.

Washington, D.C. -- Council for a Livable World, a leading anti-Iraq war organization, announced its support today for the status of forces agreement recently signed by the United States and Iraq.

Iraqi and American negotiators have been working on the pact for over a year. The Iraqi parliament is expected to vote on the agreement on Wednesday. To pass, the agreement needs to get 138 votes out of 275 Iraqi lawmakers and also must be ratified by the Iraqi presidential council.

“Given where we find ourselves today, we see the agreement as the best way for the United States to leave Iraq promptly and responsibly,” said John Isaacs, executive director of Council for a Livable World. "The agreement reflects the views held by the majority of Iraqis and Americans that it is time for U.S. combat forces to start getting out of Iraq.”

Isaacs is available for comment today (Wednesday, November 26) from Washington, DC until 3PM.

The agreement mandates that “all U.S. combat forces” withdraw from urban areas in Iraq by June 30, 2009, and that “all U.S. forces” withdraw from the country by December 31, 2011. The agreement upholds Iraq’s “sovereign right” to demand the departure of U.S. forces anytime and recognizes the United States’ “sovereign right” to remove its forces earlier than the end of 2011.

For more information about the agreement, see the in depth analysis online.

The agreement also bars permanent American bases in Iraq, prohibits the United States from using Iraqi territory to launch attacks against other nations, and bars any residual U.S. forces in Iraq beyond the end of 2011.

“The signing of this agreement, along with the election of a new president who ran on a platform to end the war in Iraq, suggests that anti-Iraq war efforts have not been in vain,” added Isaacs. “Primary credit of course goes to the Iraqis. They drove a hard bargain.”

As with any complicated accord, not every part of the status of forces agreement is perfect. Downsides include both the Bush administration's refusal to send the agreement to Congress for approval and various ambiguities in the text that could lead to future disputes.

“Question marks remain in the agreement concerning freedom of action for U.S. soldiers, vague security commitments, and protection of Iraqi assets,” said Travis Sharp, a defense analyst at Council for a Livable World who studied the agreement. “Thankfully the text provides President-elect Barack Obama with flexibility to amend or cancel the agreement if he needs to.”

Galbraith: SOFA is 'stunning and humiliating' for Bush
Nov 26, 2008

Cross posted from Iraq Insider

Peter Galbraith, a top Iraq expert and former ambassador to Croatia, issued a statement today on the status of forces agreement (SOFA) recently signed by the United States and Iraq.

Galbraith serves as senior diplomatic fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, the Council's sister organization.

He said:

“The agreement represents a stunning and humiliating reversal of course by the Bush administration, which had vehemently opposed any timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. For the last two years, President Bush has pretended that Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki is a democrat and an American ally. In fact, Maliki is a sectarian Shiite politician who heads a government dominated by pro-Iranian religious parties. The U.S. presence now no longer serves the interests of Iraq’s ruling Shiite religious parties or their Iranian allies, so we are now being asked to leave. While U.S. withdrawal is made easier by the fact that both the Iraqi government and the new U.S. administration want American troops out, the confluence of events leading to the agreement underscores the folly of President Bush’s lost Iraq war."

Of course, we timed this statement to come out this morning because the Iraqi parliament was supposed to vote on the SOFA today. Now, however, it appears that not only has the vote been postponed until tomorrow, but the Shiites and Kurds also have acquiesced to a Sunni demand to hold a national referendum on the SOFA next year. Even if the SOFA is approved by parliament tomorrow, it could still be rescinded if it is rejected in the referendum next year.

I don't know if this is democracy, but the lack of any clear schedule and the multiple layers of caveats does remind me of the United States Senate. Now, if only we could get these guys to brawl the way the Iraqis have recently.