Apr 07 2009
Obama Envisions World Free of Nuclear Weapons
President Barack Obama in a speech on Sunday, envisioned a “world without nuclear weapons,” committing the US to complete nuclear disarmament. In his speech, delivered in Prague, Obama promised to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and strengthen the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. His speech came only hours after a report that North Korea launched a “multi-stage rocket” many fear could be capable of delivering a nuclear warhead. A day earlier Obama met with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev to discuss a new bi-lateral treaty on reducing the two countries’ arsenals. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, Russia and the United States together possess the majority of the world’s nuclear weapons, with nearly 10,000 warheads deployed between the two. Obama’s position was lauded by nuclear disarmament advocates around the world, including in Japan, the only country to have been struck with nuclear weapons. His position is a complete about-turn from the Bush administration, which had defied any attempt at nuclear disarmament. Even former President Clinton withheld the US’s right to respond with nuclear force to chemical, biological, and even conventional weapons.
GUEST: Susan Gordon, Director of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability
For more information, visit www.nuclearweaponsfree.org, www.ananuclear.org.
Watch the entire video of President Obama’s speech in Prague here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwYzAp7QV3U
One Response to “Obama Envisions World Free of Nuclear Weapons”
Until the world finds ways of providing for the future sustainability for our children or mankind in general, there will always be wars and nuclear weapons. In this respect we are just presently trying to fix the holes and where the major problems that zero oil/gas supplies and natural resources to support life will bring, are not being addressed. For in the next 10-years we shall see supplies and resources disrupted like never before and which will be the initial precipice before the main acute problems become fully apparent to all people. Indeed several natural elements in the earth’s crust are now also reaching extinction within the next few years, these are facts not fiction. So inevitably there will be future wars that will be resource based. Indeed the National Intelligence Council in Washington (the US’s most influential security institute and thereby the world) for the first time ever in late 2008 said that nuclear weapons would most probably be used to defend borders and resources.
What our politicians should be doing therefore like Obama, is addressing how we can continue with these acute shortages of basic resources when they fully kick in without the system falling into total anarchy. The picture is a bleak one I am afraid to say as I too have a 5-year old grandson and where even the security of food growth and supplies is governed total by oil through fertilizers et al. Indeed, it is estimated by leading energy experts that it only takes a decline in oil supplies of little more than 10-15% maximum to bring the whole of the world economy eventually to a grinding halt. In this respect it is the supply chain that is totally disrupted and where if one element within fails, the whole fails. A little known again fact but perfectly true. For without oil we suffer immeasurably in all ways and where world leaders have just got to get their minds behind alternatives fast. In this respect in 20-years time there simply will not be enough time to solve this overriding problem for humankind. The big question is, why aren’t our politicians seeing this gigantic problem for what it really is and where inevitably great disorder will ensue in all countries if they do not? Indeed most industrialised countries now are totally reliant upon imports of food, just like the UK which only manages to produce 58% of its total food needs presently. The West certainly will have eventually in the medium future, a very hard awakening to say the very least.
These and other reasons are why nuclear weapons will eventually be used and down to the complacency of politicians who presently have the time to do something about this huge and emerging global problem. Tomorrow as they say, will be too late. Unfortunately that is perfectly true now !
Dr David Hill
World Innovation Foundation Charity
Bern, Switzerland