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There is worldwide reluctance to think about the self-destructive consequence of the use of nuclear weapons. Though understandable, this reluctance is dangerous and costly. It prevents public discourse and political engagement by citizens of the nuclear-weapons states concerning one of the most important issues of our time.
The lack of public attention in nuclear-weapons states to the self-destructiveness of nuclear weapons has allowed humankind to place itself in danger of annihilation, and to spend some $8 trillion over the course of the nuclear age doing so. Denial of the dangers or likelihood of nuclear-weapons use has created a dangerous mental block that must be overcome. We owe it to ourselves and to our posterity to break through this mental block and directly confront the dangers of annihiliaton, including self-annihilation, inherent in reliance on nuclear arsenals.
We reasoned that if the citizens in nuclear-weapons states understood that the use of a hundred or so nuclear weapons could turn the world into an unbearable place in which to live, they would take a less complacent view of maintaining nuclear arsenals. We believed that an awareness of the self-destructive consequences of the use of nuclear arsenals would lead to a general understanding that nuclear weapons are a source of insecurity rather than security. This understanding, we reasoned, would lead to a desire to rid the world of nuclear weapons as soon as possible.
We discovered, however, that virtually nothing was being published on the subject of the self-destructive consequences of the use of nuclear weapons. The fact that an issue as important as this one was not even being discussed in the mass media alerted us to the existence of widespread public denial regarding this issue. We also realized that the issue of nuclear arsenals and their use was not even entering into public debate during elections in the nuclear-weapons states. As we looked into this situation further, we found many other indications of public denial of the suicidal dangers of nuclear arsenals. We have listed some of these indications below.
- Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense under presidents Kennedy and Johnson, in his 1986 book Blundering into Disaster, said that the 25,000 tactical and strategic nuclear warheads the United States and Soviet Union each came to...