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To: The presidents, prime ministers, and legislatures
of China, France, India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, the United
Kingdom, and the United States
From: Add your name here!
We, the people of good will, of all walks of life,
living on all continents and professing different creeds and religions,
direct your attention to the threat of an all-out nuclear war that can
erupt very easily either due to deliberate actions of any nuclear-weapons
state or because of unintentional, human, technical or other mistake.
We are witnessing that the threshold for the use of
nuclear weapons in limited or large-scale attacks recently has been
dramatically lowered, bringing the entire world to the brink of a nuclear
Armageddon.
Many high-ranking military and civilian officials,
politicians and experts are openly talking about the possibility of using
nuclear weapons in a first strike attack against any nation under many
pretexts with low-yield or high-yield nuclear charges.
The United States in fact has withdrawn from a number
of rather well-known and useful nuclear arms control treaties and accords
for dubious reasons and illogical explanations.
Nuclear arms delivery vehicles are becoming more
sophisticated, faster and more precise. They have been combined into a
dangerous combination of arms embracing strategic and tactical nuclear
weapons with missile defense assets and conventional capabilities, and with
a possibility to place strike weapons in space, including missile defense
systems and anti-satellite weapons.
Many military exercises that earlier have been
conducted with the use of conventional weapons, gradually are being
transformed into drills using mock nuclear weapons.
Nuclear arms experts calculate that during an initial
massive nuclear attack, at least 34 million people will immediately perish
and 57 million people will receive multiple injuries and wounds that will
cause horrible pain, suffering, radiation sickness and death. Additionally,
various kinds of infrastructure, flora and fauna, nuclear power plants,
water resources – including potable water and hydropower dams – will be
heavily damaged or destroyed completely by huge firestorms, vast nuclear
contamination, powerful explosions, and earthquakes.
But that is just the immediate impact. The nuclear
winter that would be created by even a limited nuclear war would threaten
all of humanity with starvation and other mortal threats.
We who have voluntarily signed this appeal urge you, as
the leaders of all nine nuclear nations, to take the following actions:
· First, as an initial step leading
to comprehensive and irreversible nuclear disarmament on a global scale, to
pledge not to use and denounce any kind of nuclear weapon use in a first
strike against any nation at any time.
· Second, to sign and ratify the
international Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons with the
subsequent commitment specified in the next item.
· Third, to commit to irreversibly
dismantling all nuclear weapons by no later than August 6, 2045 or earlier
– by all nine nuclear weapon states, in carefully calibrated stages and
through well-developed and mutually acceptable mechanisms of inspections, provided
that all nuclear-weapon states will follow this pattern simultaneously and
honestly.
SIGN YOUR NAME HERE.
World BEYOND War is a
global network of volunteers, chapters, and affiliated organizations
advocating for the abolition of the institution of war.
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