OPENING ADDRESS

By Linus Pauling

at the first meeting of the Conference Against the Spread of Nuclear Weapons, Norwegian Nobel Institute, Oslo, 5:30 P.M. Tuesday 2 May 1961

This meeting is being held as the result of a decision that my wife and I made just four months ago.

At the turn of the new year we had decided that it was necessary for our own peace of mind to continue to take whatever action we, as individual human beings, could take toward the achievement of permanent and true peace in the world. Our experience three years ago with the petition to the United Nations and all nations urging that an international agreement be made to stop the testing of all nuclear weapons indicated to us that petitions have value. Accordingly we wrote and circulated a second petition, an Appeal to Stop the Spread of Nuclear Weapons.

In the course of writing this Appeal it became evident to us that there were many questions about peace and disarmament to which we did not know the answers. Our experience in attending some of the Pugwash Conferences had revealed to us the value of conferences of this sort, in which scientists and other informed people from many countries meet to study and analyze some aspects of the present great world problem, and we decided to issue a call to such a conference in which a study might be made of this great problem with special reference to the question of the significance of the possible spread in future months and years of stockpiles of nuclear weapons to nations or groups of nations not now in possession of these weapons.

With the sponsorship of twenty four distinguished men and women of thirteen nations, we extended invitations to scientists and other people with special knowledge about and interest in this great problem. We are happy that you have accepted the invitation and have come here to take part in this study during the next few days.

We are grateful especially to the Norwegian Nobel Committee for giving its permission to us to hold the Conference in this beautiful Norwegian Nobel Institute. This Institute, devoted to peace, is, of course, the best place in the world for a meeting to be held in which a profound study is made of methods of achieving peace in the world. We are pleased and honored to have here as observers Director Gunnar Jahn, Director August Schou, Professor Torkel Opsahl, and others among our Norwegian friends who are devoted to the struggle toward the goal of peace.

For over a decade it has been evident that the development of nuclear weapons has made it possible for man to destroy civilization. For years scientists have been unanimous in the opinion that a full-scale nuclear war would be by far the greatest catastrophe that the world had ever experienced. It has been generally recognized that there is no possibility of defense against nuclear weapons that could not be overcome by increasing the scale of the attack, that there is no way of arranging international agreements that would reliably achieve the end of limiting war between the great powers to the use of conventional weapons or of kiloton nuclear bombs of the Hiroshima-Nagasaki size, that even if all nuclear weapons were to be destroyed the knowledge about them would remain in existence, permitting them to be rebuilt if war were to break out. Over and over again the leaders of nations, scientists, students of international relations, and others have said that the great stockpiles of nuclear weapons must not be used and that the only rational future for the world is a future in which war is forever abandoned and disputes between nations are resolved by recourse to international law, so as to do the greatest possible justice to all nations and all people.

Yet, despite the increased insight and understanding of the nature of the great world problem that have developed during recent years, despite the initiation of the negotiations in Geneva for a bomb-test agreement, despite the increasing danger of world destruction as the stockpiles of nuclear weapons become larger and more numerous, the rate of progress toward the goal of peace, disarmament, and world cooperation is terrifyingly small.

We have come together here in Oslo to study this problem, to make some effort to obtain a clearer understanding of it, such as to permit us to make some suggestions about how peace in the world can be achieved. Our ideas may now be somewhat different, and in different ways incomplete; we may hope that by the end of the week these different ideas will have been amalgamated into a resultant of far greater worth than its individual components.

While we may hope that our contribution will be a significant one, it need not be a great one to justify our labors. Let me use the figure $40,000 as the approximate cost of this Conference. This is one three-millionth of the cost of the world's armaments for one year. If our Conference should shorten the time that we must wait for disarmament by ten seconds, it will have paid for itself.

Or we may attack the problem in a different way: What is the worth of one human being? The sum $40,000 is surely not an overestimate. It is less than the amount that a man might earn during his life, or even half his life, in many parts of the world. It is less than the cost to society of caring, during the whole of his life, for a grossly defective infant, such as might be born in greatly increased numbers all over the world after a nuclear war. A nuclear war might well have 500,000,000 or even 1,000,000,000 victims -- human beings who are killed or incapacitated, congenitally defective infants who are caused to be born. Hence, if our Conference decreases the probability of nuclear war by even one 5-millionth or one ten-millionth of one percent. it will have paid for itself.

Some Questions

Let me now mention some questions that will, I hope, be discussed during the next few days.

What Is the Present Situation

First, what is the present situation? How great is the present danger of catastrophic war?

We know that bombs of 20 megatons each exist in the world. I have usually equated one such bomb to 25,000 sq. km. of area -- this is the area of great radioactive contamination in case of a ground burst, the area that would be largely incinerated in case of a burst at 50 km. altitude (H. Brown and J. Real). Hence 300 20-megaton bombs would largely destroy the U.S., 300 would largely destroy the populated areas of the world.

I have estimated that the U.S. now has fissionable material enough for 125,000 bombs. I do not know how many are megaton bombs, but the 2000 bombers of the SAC, able to carry 40 megatons each, would have a complement of 80,000 megatons, and with rockets, too, with megaton warheads, the U.S. stockpile might be 100,000 megatons or more. If I have interpreted a press report correctly, Dr. Inglis has estimated 125,000 megatons. For the world (the three nuclear powers), the total may be 250,000 megatons, far more than necessary to accomplish world-wide destruction and death.

Who can say how great the present danger to the world is, how great is the chance of the destruction of civilization? There is no doubt that nations and human beings have never before been in such great danger.

What Should Our Goal Be?

To the question, What should our goal be?, I think that the only answer compatible with reason and morality is that it must be general and complete disarmament down to the level needed for police powers and the prevention of unlawful acts.

The great nuclear powers have all announced that the achievement of this goal is their national policy. Premier Khrushchev nearly two years ago advocated a plan of total and universal disarmament, to be achieved in a period of four years. Prime Minister McMillan stated that complete and general disarmament must be the avowed goal of all nations. On 27 October 1960 Ambassador James J. Wadsworth of the United States told the Political Committee of the General Assembly of the United Nations that the United States believed that total world disarmament could be achieved within five or six years with good faith and a real sense of urgency on both sides. He said that "we want — earnestly, deeply, and sincerely — general and complete disarmament under effective international control. We are not backing off from that one inch. ... We want to begin progress toward our goal now, to take those measures that can be taken now, while at the same time we are trying, concurrently, to solve the problems that lie ahead in reaching the goal of general and complete disarmament."

These are fine words — but how disappointing have been the actions! Can it be that, as Walter Millis has said in his essay "A World Without War", these commitments are made not with any intention that they be accepted, but rather as another weapon in the power struggle — not an avenue toward the abolition of war, but as an aid in the preparation for war in which either the East or the West might "prevail", whatever may be the meaning of this possible outcome of nuclear war? Even though I remember Aristotle's statement that a moral man cannot, because of the immorality, the complete selfishness of nations, serve as a diplomat, nevertheless I cannot believe that Ambassador Wadsworth, Prime Minister McMillan, Premier Khrushchev could be guilty of such a monstrous violation of the confidence and hope of their three billion fellow human beings. I believe that the failure of the great nations to have made much progress toward the goal of general and complete disarmament has been caused by world circumstances so gravely serious and so different in nature from those of the past that our national leaders have been unable to cope with them and at the same time move toward disarmament. These circumstances are connected with the problem of the liberation of oppressed peoples. The U.S. and the U.S.S.R., while sympathetic to people living under dictatorial and oppressive governments, have shown fear of the spread of communism or capitalism as their dominant emotion. This fear has caused them to some extent to lend their aid in ways such as to intensify the internal strife in countries torn by civil war and to increase the amount of suffering of the people in these countries. We may hope that these great nations will soon begin to cooperate in decreasing, rather than increasing, the amount of suffering now involved in overthrowing an oppressive government.

Can there be any rational goal other than general and complete disarmament? Is it reasonable to plan to attempt to survive the catastrophe of megaton war? Is it sensible or even possible to entertain the idea of making international agreements to abolish megaton weapons and to fight "limited" wars with only conventional or kiloton weapons? Would the world be safe under a permanent "balance of terror", reached by international agreement about "arms control" rather than disarmament — two great arrays of rockets, with megaton warheads, ever poised ready to achieve the destruction of their allotted halves of the world, the death of their allotted hundreds of millions of human beings?

I do not think that any one of these alternatives to general and complete disarmament constitutes a rational goal for the world, but it is part of our task here in Oslo to study them and to reach a considered conclusion about them.

What Will Take the Place of War?

If, as it must do to escape destruction, the world achieves the goal of general and complete disarmament and the abolition of war, what will take the place of war? Can a world system in which war has no part be set up that will be viable, that will not lead to chaos, but will in the long run serve the ends of freedom and justice? I believe that it can be, and I think that this is one of the questions that we should discuss in this Conference.

I think that public opinion, world opinion, can in large part take the place of war. In the history of the last few years there are several striking examples of the growing power of public opinion. The nature of power and the nature of war have changed as a result of the astounding increase in the means of communication, such that within a few hours after a significant or ominous event most of the people of the world are made aware of it and within a day or two they are able to express their opinions, often in such a way as to be determinative. The most recent example is the revolt of the generals in Algiers ten days ago. Within two days after the generals had used the parachutists to seize power in Algiers there were public demonstrations by ten million people in the cities of France (Monday 24 April 1961). This expression of the will of the people brought the revolt to an end.

As Walter Millis has pointed out, we cannot expect, no matter how greatly we wish it, that the achievement of disarmament and the ending of wars between nations would for some decades mean the elimination of violence in the form of internal revolutions, of insurrectionary or guerrilla wars. These civil wars often involve great savagery, cruelty, and suffering, which, however, might be decreased somewhat if great weapons, bombers, tanks, possibly even machine guns could be eliminated from the world. In a world in which the nations are disarmed and in which world law continues to develop and public opinion continues to increase in its power to determine the future, we may hope that the pressures exerted both by the governments of other nations and by public opinion will serve more and more effectively to diminish the savagery and violence of these internal conflicts and ultimately to replace violent revolution by non-violent revolution. Moreover, as pointed out by Millis, guerrilla wars depend for their success in large part on the will of the people, their outcomes represent "a closer approach to the goals of freedom and justice than do the outcomes of the great international wars, and their results often show a stability which the results of the great wars do not."

Millis concludes that if the West, the Russians, and the Chinese could come together in a really serious study and discussion of how a totally disarmed world could be expected to operate, we could hope for a solution of the great global problem; that in his opinion, which is mine, also, "a warless world seems to be viable; its attainment, while immeasurably difficult, does not seem to be impossible, given a continuation of the educative, organizational, unifying social forces already at large in a confused world."

How Can Peace and Disarmament be Achieved?

I have been and I continue to be a strong advocate of international agreements, with the best possible systems of controls and inspection, as the principal method of achieving permanent peace and general and complete disarmament.

During the last two and one-half years we have been able to see how difficult it is to formulate a single agreement in this field, the bomb-test agreement. Only three nations have taken part in these negotiations in Geneva, and the agreement, although it involves many technical complications relative to inspection, will constitute only a small part of the great body of agreement that will lead to permanent peace and disarmament; nevertheless the negotiators have found their task to be one of great difficulty.

It is most important that this agreement be completed without delay and that it be signed by all nations of the world. It must then be followed by other agreements leading to permanent peace and general disarmament, such as to increase the safety of all nations and all people.

I fear that the spread of nuclear weapons to other nations or groups of nations would not only increase the danger of outbreak of nuclear war but would also increase the difficulty of achieving the goal of peace and disarmament. I hope that in this Conference we can form a sound opinion of how great the deleterious effect of such a spread of nuclear weapons would be and can formulate a strong and significant statement about the need of preventing this spread.

The argument that in order to achieve peace and disarmament the great nations must first increase their military might is grossly fallacious. The transfer of nuclear weapons to the NATO nations and the nations of the Warsaw Pact would surely increase the danger of war and make the task of achieving disarmament far more difficult, perhaps impossible. Instead of arming themselves with nuclear weapons, would it not be far wiser for West Germany, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Poland ultimately to become a disarmed neutral zone somewhat as suggested by Rapacki? The task of formulating agreements to this end would not be an easy one; but it would probably be impossible after nuclear weapons had spread to these nations.

During the crucial next few years, when the disarmament agreements are being formulated, is it not the moral duty of the great nations now possessing nuclear weapons to refrain from transferring them to other nations or groups of nations, and the moral duty of nations now not possessing these weapons to refrain from acquiring or developing them? By preventing the spread of nuclear weapons the nations can make the achievement of peace and disarmament possible; by not preventing it they might make world destruction certain.

Independent Actions Toward Peace

Can we not call on the nations of the world to take actions that will increase the safety and well-being of the whole world, not only by joint action through carefully formulated agreements but also by wise independent initiative? I believe that it is essential that the great nations act in both of these ways. Nations take many independent actions now. These independent actions sometimes involve an increase in armaments, but also sometimes a decrease, or a refraining from the acceleration of the arms race.

I believe that there are important actions involving steps toward disarmament that could be taken by the U.S., the U.S.S.R., Great Britain, and other nations with no decrease of national security, but rather with an increase in the security of the nation taking the independent step and also of all other nations. I believe that the people of the whole world want peace and disarmament, liberation from the threatening doom of nuclear destruction, so much that public opinion would provide very strong support and approval of a great step toward disarmament taken by one of the great nations, and that this action would have to be followed by similar action by other nations, and would accelerate the process of the formulation of international agreements.

And finally, I ask that we consider the significance of morality. Are we not justified in believing that the time has now come when national leaders in considering policy will remember that power is significant only when it can be used, and that the immorality of using nuclear weapons would be so great as to prevent any nation from using them? I think that we are justified in this belief. I am confident that man has enough rationality to keep him from destroying himself, and enough sense and feeling of moral responsibility to enable the world to move now into a new era, the era of peace and reason and world cooperation. My wife and I hope that this Conference will help to some degree in the effort to achieve this goal.

FIRST DRAFT OF STATEMENT

We, 35 physical and biological scientists and 37 social scientists and other scholars from 13 countries, have met for five days in the Nobel Institute in Oslo to discuss the increased danger of nuclear war and world destruction that would result from the spread of nuclear weapons to further nations or groups of nations.

There is an imminent possibility of acquisition of nuclear weapons by West Germany and East Germany, China, Sweden, and other nations. We are convinced that the arming of either West Germany or East Germany with nuclear weapons would be followed by the similar arming of the other and also of additional nations and would lead almost inevitably to war.

We are equally opposed to the transfer of these weapons to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or the Warsaw Pact Group.

We urge instead that negotiations be immediately initiated to accomplish the formation of a zone free forever of nuclear arms and essentially demilitarized. This zone, comprising West Germany, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, would serve as a model for further similar zones, which might include the Scandinavian and other European countries, China and Japan in the Pacific area, the Israeli-Arab area, and the Southeast Asia, with each action constituting a significant increase in the safety of the world and a significant step toward peace.

The present nuclear stockpiles have explosive energy many thousands of times that used in the whole of the Second World War. These bombs used in war might kill a large part of the world's people. There is no rational and safe policy for the world except that of achieving general and complete world disarmament with suitable control and inspection.

Soon the speed of nuclear weapons will spread to many nations, increasing the probability of devastating war and making disarmament more and more difficult to achieve. There we strongly urge that the nations of the world vigorously promote disarmament and take actions that will lead to total and universal disarmament. This is the goal that has been explicitly announced as the national policy of the great nuclear powers and of all other nations in the United Nations.

We oppose the carrying out of any further tests of nuclear weapons by any nation. We urge that the drafting of the test-ban treaty be immediately completed, by making reasonable compromises about the few questions that have not yet been settled.

President Kennedy and Secretary Khrushchev have on many occasions declared that their countries will not be the first to use nuclear weapons. We urge that President Kennedy and Secretary Khrushchev now exchange formal pledges to this effect. We urge that similar pledges be offered by the leaders of others nations possessing nuclear arms. We regard such pledges as of salient value in reducing the tension surrounding the discussion of difficult political issues, and as a method of discouraging the extension of nuclear arms.

We further note and express our unanimous approval of the recent statement of the Council of the Federation of American Scientists:

We recommend similar expressions from organizations of scientist in all countries with nuclear stockpiles.