AMHERST — Even though a nuclear conflict remains hypothetical, Dr. Ira Helfand of Leeds wants people to understand that a war using these weapons of mass destruction is closer than ever to happening.
“The danger of nuclear war has never been greater,” Helfand says.
Helfand, a member of the steering committee for the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons that won a Nobel Peace Prize last year, will be speaking at the Jewish Community of Amherst, 742 Main St., at 3 p.m. Sunday to draw attention to a national campaign known as “Back from the Brink: The Call to Prevent Nuclear War.”
The campaign aims to bring about fundamental changes in U.S. nuclear policy and ramp up efforts to convince American political leaders to be part of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, reached in July 2017 at the United Nations, and which requires all ratifying countries “never under any circumstances to develop, test, produce, manufacture, otherwise acquire, possess or stockpile nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.”
One of the challenges, Helfand said, is overcoming public complacency and what are perceived to be more immediate concerns.
“While this problem is not interfering with our lives at the moment, it has the absolute potential to destroy our world as we know it,” Helfand said.
Conditions across the globe are ripe for use of atomic bombs for the first time since they were detonated over Nagasaki and Hiroshima Japan in 1945, Helfand said, pointing to the ongoing issues on the Korea peninsula, the deteriorating relationship between the United States and Russia and skirmishes between the nuclear-armed countries of India and Pakistan.
“If nuclear weapons are on the table, they will be used,” Helfand said.
Helfand said this week’s report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change about the growing urgency of addressing climate change means the world is not getting safer, which has been used as an argument for the appropriate time for scaling back on nuclear arsenals. But a warming planet means there will be more potential for disputes over increasingly scarce resources, Helfand said.
He adds that people should be concerned about President Donald Trump’s policies, but he is optimistic after facing an equally and extremely dangerous situation at the height of the Cold War in the 1980s with the Soviet Union and President Ronald Reagan in the White House. Within a few years, world leaders at the time had worked on compacts to reduce nuclear weapons.
“While this is an ambitious agenda for Back from the Brink, we’re just asking to achieve what we’ve already done once,” Helfand said,
Helfand said many cities and towns have embraced the campaign, and his presentation will be about how to mobilize an expansion of the base of support.
The U.S. Conference of Mayors, city councils in Baltimore and Los Angeles and the California state Legislature are among the most prominent to offer support, as well as city of Northampton and the towns of Amherst, Cummington, Goshen, Leverett, Plainfield and Williamsburg. They were recently joined by former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry and Daniel Ellsberg, the former U.S military analyst who gained fame for releasing the Pentagon Papers in 1971.
During his talk, Helfand will provide data about the effects of both large scale and a limited nuclear war, actions the public can take and how U.S. policy can be changed.
More information is available at www.preventnuclearwar.org.
Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.
