Another kind of Nuclear Security Summit: The Marshall Islands vs. the Nuclear-Armed States

09.04.2016 - The Hague, The Netherlands - Pressenza Budapest

A 21 kiloton underwater nuclear weapons effects test, known as Operation CROSSROADS (Event Baker), conducted at Bikini Atoll (1946). (Image by U.S. Army Photographic Signal Corps)

By Jacqueline Cabasso

The recent Nuclear Security Summit hosted by President Obama in Washington, DC generated a goodly amount of hype, including some well-deserved criticism of its narrow focus on securing civilian highly enriched uranium (HEU) and other modest, voluntary steps aimed at preventing terrorists from acquiring weapons-useable nuclear and radiological materials. The Summit was silent on the huge stocks of HEU and plutonium in military programs and the more than 15,000 existing nuclear weapons possessed by States, including the Summit’s host – the only country that has used nuclear weapons in war.

Another kind of nuclear security summit took place last month in The Hague, as the tiny Pacific nation of the Marshall Islands took on three nuclear-armed giants before the highest court in the world. Hubris and hypocrisy on one side, courage and vision on the other were on global display.

In April 2014, the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) initiated proceedings in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against all nine nuclear-armed nations, the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea, contending that each of them is in breach of its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and/or customary international law to end the nuclear arms race and to engage in negotiations on nuclear disarmament.

Darlene Keju, Anti-nuclear Activist and Marshall Islander

“We are testing these bombs for the good of mankind and to end all wars.” So spoke a U.S. Navy officer in 1946 – the year after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the end of World War II – to explain to the people of the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean why the U.S. was about to embark on a series of tests of nuclear bombs there. The same year, a U.S. Navy press release included this statement: “The natives are delighted, enthusiastic about the atomic bomb, which has already brought them prosperity and a new promising future.”

Darlene Keju would strongly disagree. Between 1946 and 1958, a total of 67 bombs were tested in the Marshalls – atomic bombs like the ones used in Japan, and the much more powerful hydrogen or thermonuclear bombs. Islanders were exposed to high levels of radioactive fallout, resulting in a wide range of devastating health problems, including radiation sickness, cancers, and severe birth defects. Many were evacuated to ostensibly safer islands; many have never been able to return, their home islands were so contaminated.

Darlene was born in 1951 on the island of Ebeye and raised on her mother’s island, Wotje. Due to a veil of secrecy and untruths that surrounded the bomb tests and their effects on living beings and the environment, she was in her late twenties before she began to learn the full story. But in the following years, until she herself died of breast cancer in 1996, she galvanized anti-nuclear sentiment in the Marshalls, documented the experiences of many who were affected, and traveled widely to speak to large audiences and let the world know what had been going on.

Missile Test

Black.
The night is black.
No moon, no stars.

We protest
a missile launch, testing
a land-based intercontinental ballistic missile

capable of carrying
a nuclear-armed warhead to the far corners
of our sad globe.

Shortly after midnight
we walk onto the roadway of the military base
in protest.

The young airmen are polite
as they handcuff us, search us and put us
carefully into vans.

When the missile is later launched
we don’t see its fiery tail – the 15 of us
under arrest that night.

We cannot see it streak away
under the cover of darkness
in the black of night, in the ocean fog.

A half-hour after launch
the missile thuds into the surprised ocean
in the Marshall Islands.

Black.
The night is black.
No moon, no stars.

David Krieger, March 2012

WHAT THE NUCLEAR ZERO LAWSUITS SEEK TO ACCOMPLISH

On April 24, 2014, just over a year ago, the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) brought lawsuits against the nine nuclear-armed countries in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and separately against the United States in US Federal District Court. The RMI argues that the five nuclear-armed parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which are the US, Russia, UK, France and China, are not meeting their obligations under Article VI of the treaty to negotiate in good faith for complete nuclear disarmament. The RMI further argues that the other four nuclear-armed countries not parties to the NPT, which are Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea, have the same obligations under customary international law.

In the ICJ, cases go forward only against countries that accept the compulsory jurisdiction of the court, unless they consent to jurisdiction. Since only the UK, India and Pakistan accept the compulsory jurisdiction of the court, cases are limited to these three countries. The US, Russia, France, China, Israel and North Korean were invited to have their cases heard at the ICJ. China declined and the other countries did not respond.

Return of the Golden Rule

The Golden Rule in San Diego for the Veterans For Peace annual convention
Photo by Ellen Davidson

Veterans for Peace (and friends) have resurrected and restored the historic Golden Rule.  This 30-foot ketch and its crew ignited a movement to stop atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons in 1958 when they attempted to sail into the Marshall Islands nuclear testing zone.

"Nuclear weapons are still with us and the threat of nuclear war is very real," said the Golden Rule's current captain David Robson, a Veterans For Peace member from Baltimore, Maryland.  "We are dismayed that the U.S. government plans to invest One Trillion Dollars into upgrading its nuclear arsenal, instead of reducing and eliminating nuclear weapons, as called for in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty."