Global Green USA calls for major nuclear weapons reductions

Washington, DC. August 6, 2009. Global Green USA joined with a dozen other NGOs in drafting a letter to President Barack Obama on August 4, 2009 urging him to reduce nuclear weapons far below today's levels. 

In quoting President Obama's speech earlier this year in Prague in which he declared that the U.S. will "reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our national security policy," the NGO letter asked Obama "to ensure that your administration's Nuclear Posture Review fully reflects your intentions."  The 13 NGOs laid out four basic principles: (1) that nuclear weapons be used solely for deterrence; (2) that nuclear weapons be prohibited from rapid launch in response to nuclear attack; (3) that a total of 500-1,000 nuclear warheads, including both strategic and tactical and deployed and non-deployed weapons, be sufficient today; and (4) that the U.S. not develop or produce new nuclear weapons designs with new military capabilities. 

Dr. Paul Walker, Director of GGUSA's Security and Sustainability Program, added that "the Nuclear Posture Review or NPR, currently being drafted by the Defense Department, needs to follow President Obama's lead in de-legitimizing nuclear weapons as war-fighting tools and in lighting the way towards a world free of nuclear weapons.  The current bilateral START negotiations are beginning this process, but we need to acknowledge that a far lower level of nuclear weapons and eventually abolition, as pointed out by President Obama, is the real target."

View the Letter