Table Of ContentA World Free
from Nuclear Weapons
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A World Free
from Nuclear Weapons
The Vatican Conference on Disarmament
Drew Christiansen, SJ, and Carole Sargent, Editors
Georgetown University Press Washington, DC
© 2020 Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development. All rights reserved. No part of
this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photoc opying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher.
The publisher is not responsible for third- party websites or their content. URL links were
active at time of publication.
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Christiansen, Drew, editor. | Sargent, Carole, editor.
Title: A World Free from Nuclear Weapons : The Vatican Conference on Disarmament /
Drew Christiansen, SJ, and Carole Sargent, editors
Identifiers: LCCN 2019041784 (print) | LCCN 2019041785 (ebook) | ISBN 9781626168039
(hardcover) | ISBN 9781626168046 (paperback) | ISBN 9781626168053 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Nuclear disarmament—Congresses. | Disarmament—Congresses. |
Peace—Congresses. | Security, International—Congresses.
Classification: LCC JZ5675 .W67 2020 (print) | LCC JZ5675 (ebook) |
DDC 327.1/747—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019041784
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019041785
Ó This book is printed on acid- free paper meeting the requirements of the American National
Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.
21 20 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 First printing
Printed in the United States of America.
Cover design by Jim Keller.
Interior design by BookComp, Inc.
Contents
Foreword ix
Cardinal Peter K. A. Turkson
Introduction: Toward a Positive Peace xiii
Drew Christiansen, SJ
Part I: Setting the Agenda
1 Address by His Holiness Pope Francis 3
2 Address by Cardinal Pietro Parolin 6
Part II: Witnesses
3 Surviving the Atomic Bomb 13
Masako Wada
4 Hiroshima’s Heritage and the Role of Companies in City
Reconstruction: How This Experience Shaped Today’s Values 16
Bruno L. Müller
Part III: Laureates
5 Letter from Nobel Peace Prize Laureates to His Holiness Pope
Francis on the Occasion of the International Conference 21
Mohamed ElBaradei, Mairead Corrigan- Maguire, Adolfo Pérez
Esquivel, Jody Williams, and Muhammad Yunus
6 Nuclear Weapons: Confronting Armageddon 23
Mohamed ElBaradei
7 For the Disarmament of Injustice 29
Adolfo Pérez Esquivel
8 Will Human Beings Survive Another Century? 38
Muhammad Yunus
9 What the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
Can Offer for the Future Work of Nongovernmental Organizations 42
Beatrice Fihn
10 Nukes, Land Mines, and Killer Robots 44
Jody Williams
v
vi Contents
11 The Peace Process in Northern Ireland 50
Mairead Corrigan- Maguire
Part IV: Diplomats
12 The UN Conference to Negotiate a Legally Binding Instrument
to Ban Nuclear Weapons: A Debate 55
Rose Gottemoeller, Thomas Hajnoczi, and Jorge Lomónaco
13 Beyond Nuclear Deterrence: Transforming the
US- Russian Equation 62
Alexei Georgevich Arbatov
14 International Diplomacy and International Security Issues 66
Izumi Nakamitsu
15 The Role of International Diplomacy and International
Organizations 72
Thomas Stelzer
Part V: International Civil Society
16 The Humanitarian Initiative as a Condition for the Ban on
Nuclear Weapons 81
François Bugnion
17 The Role of Civil Society 85
Susi Snyder
18 Reconciliation and Disarmament 89
Marie- Noëlle Koyara
19 The Risks of Nuclear War Today 97
Paolo Cotta- Ramusino
20 Dealing with Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East 101
Emily Landau
21 Nuclear Proliferation in the Middle East: Resolving the Deadlock 104
Ayman Khalil
Part VI: More Religious Voices
22 We Must Do No Less 109
Monsignor Robert W. McElroy
23 Transforming the Human Spirit 113
Hiromasa Ikeda
Contents vii
24 Migrations and Wars 117
Monica Attias
25 The Social and Moral Responsibilities of Knowledge Workers 120
Drew Christiansen, SJ
26 Preliminary Conclusions 135
Stephen Colecchi
Part VII: Closing
27 Salutations 141
Cardinal Peter K. A. Turkson
Afterword: The Holy See and Nuclear Disarmament—Achievements
and Challenges 144
Archbishop Silvano M. Tomasi
Contributors 149
Index 153
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Foreword
Cardinal Peter K. A. Turkson
Between the winter of 2016 and the spring of 2017, many members and consultors of
the former Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace recommended holding a high-l evel
seminar and study session on the issue of disarmament. In hindsight the proposal
proved to be a very prescient and discerning reading of the “signs of the times.”
We live in a moment of human history when the fear of a potential nuclear
catastrophe has intensified to a point rarely experienced before. The global dimen-
sion of this catastrophe reminds us of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Weapons of
mass destruction are increasingly being refined for local application and use. New,
sophisticated weapons are finding their way into the hands of volatile states and non-
state actors. It is increasingly becoming difficult to justify, and to convince people,
why some states qualify to own weapons of mass destruction and others do not. The
wisdom of Robert Cecil’s admonition, “Nations must disarm or perish,” inscribed
on the portal of the “disarmament room” at the United Nations in Geneva, goes
unheeded.1 Neither have the admonitions of the bishops of the United States—that
nuclear armament is never an appropriate policy that constructs a long- term basis
for peace, and that the threat of war cannot be reduced with the possession of arma-
ments—made any impact on national and international defense policies. Indeed,
global efforts to stop the threat of a nuclear holocaust do not seem capable of lead-
ing the world to and along new global pathways of peace.
This growing fragilization of international security and the frantic recourse
to stockpiling arms also has a very high economic cost. In his “Chance for Peace”
address—delivered shortly after the death of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin— former
president of the United States Dwight Eisenhower, a five-s tar general of World
War II, presented an alarming analysis of military spending:
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies,
in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who
are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone.
It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes
of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick
school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a
town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50
miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million
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