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For Unilateral Nuclear Disarmament

Minute of Mickleton (N.J.) Monthly Meeting, Religious Society of Friends

Approved, 27 September 1998

Whether or not one agrees with the purposes and policies involved, there is no question that the United States has led the world into the Nuclear Age. Americans have shown great ingenuity, strength, and commitment in conceiving, creating, and controlling our nuclear arsenal.

Now, we need to lead the world out of the Nuclear Age.

The United States has been the first of many nations to see the allure of nuclear weapons: an inexpensive yet overwhelming weapon that would let us reduce our conventional military forces, give strength to our voice in international politics, and end the prospect of war. Each of these promises has been proven false, yet other nations continue to be tempted and the United States, in our pride, lectures against the allure with our words but confirms the allure with our actions, as we cling to the maintenance and development of our nuclear arsenal. With their weapons tests in early 1998, Pakistan and India have shown us that our actions speak more loudly than our words. We need to change our actions.

Amid the possibilities of nuclear winter and mutually assured destruction, we learned that the greatest triumph a nation can achieve with nuclear weapons is never to use them. However, we learned that after 1945, when we felt it necessary and justified to use the atomic bomb twice. It is all too possible that a nation that now undertakes the tremendous expense to build nuclear weapons will deny the wisdom never to use them. Instead, we need to learn, and to teach the world, a new lesson: the greatest triumph a nation with nuclear weapons can achieve is to become a nation without nuclear weapons.

For decades, the nuclear political situation could be described as two superpowers-the United States and the Soviet Union-with loaded guns held to each other's heads. In such a situation, it appeared suicidal for one side to abruptly lower its gun. Yet, one did. It is now time for us to take the next step and unload our gun.

We have seen time and again, as Congress deliberates various disarmament treaties, that these issues can be complicated, with lawmakers cautioning us to hedge against risks, to protect our alternatives, to seek assurances from others first. However, we needed no such cautions to launch the Manhattan Project and, thanks to the demise of the Soviet Union, we truly need no such cautions now to undo the Manhattan Project.

Now it is time for the United States to use the same ingenuity, strength, and commitment that led the world into the Nuclear Age, to lead the world out. Let us not only live up to our commitments in treaties already confirmed, let us not only make the same commitments that we ask of other nations in treaties pending confirmation, but let us do what we know we must do, one way or another, sooner or later.

We of Mickleton Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends call upon the President and Congress of the United States to begin nuclear disarmament now, on our own, as example to the world. We call upon the United States to show by its actions that nuclear weapons are no longer needed, if they ever were needed, for a nation to stand righteously in its people's interests and in the community of nations. Without nuclear weapons, America can stand, as we have ever truly stood, in the strength of its principles and the virtues of its people.