Coalition for Peace Action Considers Nuclear Risks

Commander Robert Green, who served 20 years in the British Navy piloting nuclear armed aircraft, was the featured speaker at the Coalition for Peace Action (CFPA) Membership Renewal Party Wednesday evening at the Trinity Church in Princeton. 

Commander Green resigned in 1982 over Prime Minister Thatcher’s decision to upgrade Britain’s nuclear submarine fleet.  He is the author of four books on nuclear weapons issues, and autographed copies of his most recent, Security Without Nuclear Deterrence, were on sale at this event.

Dr. M.V. Ramana, a Princeton University physicist who coordinated Commander Green's talk earlier in the day at Princeton University's Program on Science and Global Security, wrote this short summary of Commander Green's talk:

Starting off with an account of how he joined the British Navy and was charged, over the course of his career, with the responsibility of using nuclear weapons in the event of war, Commander Robert Green spoke about how he realized that nuclear deterrence was based on unfounded beliefs and could fail.

It has resulted in a situation where the US and Russia have over 2,000 warheads ready for launch within half an hour. A regional nuclear war involving use of just 100 warheads, each with an explosive power of the US bomb detonated over Hiroshima, on cities in India and Pakistan found that, in addition to millions of immediate casualties, smoke from fires could block enough sunlight to cause widespread famine.

Green highlighted the potential role that Britain could play in nuclear disarmament because in that country a coalition government has taken power at a crucial moment for the future of British and global nuclear policy. The deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, leads the Liberal Democrats, whose election manifesto included opposition to both nuclear energy and replacing the Trident nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarine force with a similar system.

Green pointed out that there was a parallel between the possession of nuclear weapons and slavery, and suggested that as with the abolition of slavery, a new world role awaits the British.