Global Appeal to Nine Nuclear Governments

“This is the greatest moral crisis of our time: governments are prepared to unleash a nuclear war which would end civilization as we know it and could kill over seven billion people.” —Daniel Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers whistleblower, and endorser of this appeal.

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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 nuclear weapons in a limited or on 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The United States in fact has withdrawn from a number of rather well-known and useful nuclear arms control treaties and accords for dubious reasons and illogical explanations.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 in 2020:

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.