*** NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION ***

 

 

 physics today is a publication of the American Institute of Physics, of which the American Physical Society is a member, of which this writer is a member.  Its July 2010 issue featured an article “Working toward a world without  nuclear weapons” by Sidney Drell, emeritus professsor of physics and emeritus director of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford University, etc.   In response, I submitted a Letter to the Editor averring that Drell’s program would fail because it is, as has been all preceding similar measures, fatally flawed with the same fatal flaw.  On 9/24/10 the Letters Editor responded, “Dear Dr. Seadler… We have completed our review of your letter submission dated 7/21/10 and shown below, along with amendments you sent soon thereafter, and we have decided not to publish it.” At one level that  was pathetic, but in the larger perspecive it is tragic.  Therefore, my letter is provided here for wider edification of the urgent, critical and rarely seen material comressed into it. “Where there is no vision the people perish.” — Proverbs, Old Testament.  And the vision must be alloyed with guts. ~ SES

CONTINUING FATAL FLAW IN ARMS CONTROL In order to achieve effective arms control, as your July issue Feature Article “Working toward a world without nuclear weapons” does, it is vital to understand why that new effort is doomed. First, consider its myriad antecedents, those peace, security, non-armament, arms reduction, and arms control instruments that included: the Covenant of the League of Nations (1919), the League Commission on Armies Draft Treaty (1925), the Pact of Locarno (1925), the Washington Naval Conference (1927), the Geneva and London Conference Agreement (1927, 1930), the Geneva Protocol (1928), the Kellog-Briand Pact (1928), the Charter of the United Nations and its Statute of the International Court of Justice (1945), the Antarctic Treaty (1961), the Limited Test Ban Treaty (1963), the Outer Space Treaty (1967), the Non-Proliferation Treaty (1970), the Treaty for the Prohibition on Nuclear Weapons in Latin America (1971), the ‘Accidents Measures’ Agreement (1971), the Seabed Arms Control Treaty (1972), the Biological Weapons Convention (1972), the ABM Treaty (1972, the SALT I Interim Agreement (1972), the ABM Protocol (1973), the Threshold Test Ban and Protocol (1973), the Prevention of Nuclear War Agreement (1973), the ABM Protocol (1974), the Treaty and Protocol on Underground Peaceful Nuclear Explosions (1976), the Environmental Modification Ban (1977), and so on and on and on, while incurring Four World Wars and numerous Holocausts, arriving now at the Era of Catastrophic Terrorism by both nation states and transnational groups using Weapons of Mass Death and Destruction. Whereas nuclear weapons can kill millions, biological weapons can kill billions. All of those efforts and now the Drell Enterprise suffer from the same critical flaw. To see what that is and how to remedy it in arms control I commend readers to my Statement on the SALT II Treaty in Hearings Before The Committee On Foreign Relations, United States Senate, Ninety-Sixth Congress, Part 4, September 1979, USGPO, pp  504-509.  Developments in this domain have advanced greatly since then.  An introduction is provided by website MELOS: WAGING WARRE AND PEACE in the SIXTH DOMAIN, at melos.us .   Stephen Edward Seadler The full text of the SALT II Treaty Hearings is available at www.archive.org/stream/saltiitreatyhear04unit/saltiitreatyhear04unit_djvu.txt  Goto the end and page up to page 504 to reach the Seadler Statement.   ___________________________________________________________   Note:  Space and material below here are flukes of the copying from email, and cannot be deleted.  Ignore.   When printing simply specify a few number of pages, say, two.                                                                                                                                                                   Stephen Edward Seadler                             ses146@columbia.edu   All of those efforts and now the Drell Enterprise suffer from the same critical flaw. To see what that is and how to remedy it in arms control I commend readers to my Statement on the SALT II Treaty in Hearings Before The Committee On Foreign Relations, United States Senate, Ninety-Sixth Congress, Part 4, September 1979, USGPO, 1979, pp 504-509. Developments in this domain have advanced greatly since then. An introduction is provided by website MELOS: WAGING WARRE AND PEACE in the SIXTH DOMAIN, at melos.us