Consistent Life Blog

A Catastrophe Decades in the Making: The Russian Invasion of Ukraine

Posted on March 1, 2022 By Rachel MacNair

by John Whitehead

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a monstrous injustice. Russia’s blatant aggression of 2022 recalls such similar infamous episodes as the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, repression of a rebellion in Hungary in 1956, and annexation of the Baltic states in 1940.

How many people have been killed since the invasion began on February 24th is unknown; as of this writing, there are hundreds of Ukrainian civilian deaths, including children. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled Ukraine. Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, has warned that “The humanitarian consequences on civilian populations will be devastating . . . countless lives will be torn apart.” Perhaps most worrying, Russian President Vladimir Putin has apparently placed Russian nuclear forces on heightened alert. How this conflict will end is anyone’s guess, but more people will die before it does.

The primary responsibility and guilt for this invasion lies with the Russian government, especially Putin. Putin’s decision to order this invasion of another country is wholly without justification.

While the Russian invasion may be unjustified, it was not unpredictable. That events would come to this could have been foreseen, even before the build-up of Russian troops close to Ukraine began in fall 2021. This invasion is the end result of a long sequence of events stretching back over 20 years.

Putin and other Russian policymakers bear the primary responsibility for this war, but they do not bear it alone. Other people, including policymakers in the United States, helped bring events to this point. This outbreak of war in Europe is an occasion to remember how events got to this point and to consider what to do next.

NATO Expansion and the Seeds of Conflict

While Putin no doubt has multiple motives for invading Ukraine, a significant motive is the desire to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO. Putin has repeatedly expressed his view that Ukrainian NATO membership would pose a threat to Russia. If Ukraine becomes part of NATO, the country could become a gateway for a future western invasion of Russia or a base for US nuclear missiles capable of reaching Moscow quickly.

Fear of a NATO threat to Russia was a major theme, along with other grievances, in Putin’s speech of February 21, in which he said that “Ukraine’s accession to NATO and the subsequent deployment of NATO facilities” would mean “the level of military threats to Russia will increase dramatically, several times over. And I would like to emphasise [sic] at this point that the risk of a sudden strike at our country will multiply… Ukraine will serve as an advanced bridgehead for such a strike.”

Such fears of future threats are not a moral justification for invading another country. Nevertheless, such fears are the kind of realpolitik security concerns one might expect a nation’s leaders to have. In the western hemisphere, the United States’ policies toward Cuba, for example, provide a parallel to Russian policy.

A prudent US and NATO policy would have anticipated Russian security concerns and avoided provoking a military intervention such as the one currently unfolding in Ukraine. However, prudence has been sadly lacking in this area since the 1990s.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and its satellite regimes in Eastern Europe, NATO expanded to include nations that had previously been in the Soviet sphere of influence and even former Soviet republics. The Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland joined NATO in 1999; followed by Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in 2004.

Many prominent US policymakers warned about how Russia would react to NATO expansion. William Perry, who was secretary of defense when the expansion was being pursued, commented in 1997 that the Russian reaction “ranges between being unhappy to being very unhappy…This is not just one or two or a few officials expressing a view, this is a very widely and very deeply held view in Russia.” Years later, Perry reflected that in the post-Cold War period, the Russians “were beginning to get used to the idea that [NATO] could be a friend rather than an enemy…but they were very uncomfortable about having [NATO] right up on their border and they made a strong appeal for us not to go ahead with that.”

William Burns, who was serving in the US embassy in Moscow in the 1990s (and is currently CIA director), cautioned at the time that “Hostility to early NATO expansion…is almost universally felt across the domestic political spectrum [in Russia].”

George F. Kennan, a US diplomat who had played an important role in making US Cold War policy, said of NATO expansion: “I think it is the beginning of a new cold war. I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake . . . Of course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia.”

In 2008, when George W. Bush’s administration was pursuing NATO membership for Ukraine, Burns, who by now had served as US ambassador to Russia, offered a new warning:

Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin) . . . In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.

Burns also prophetically wrote that the pursuit of Ukrainian NATO membership would “create fertile soil for Russian meddling in Crimea and eastern Ukraine.”

In 2014, when Russia was fulfilling Burns’ prophecy by annexing Ukraine’s Crimea region, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger wrote that “if Ukraine is to survive and thrive, it must not be either [Russia or the West’s] outpost against the other — it should function as a bridge between them.” He also flatly stated “Ukraine should not join NATO.” Former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski similarly commented that Ukraine could have “no participation in any military alliance viewed by Moscow as directed at itself.” During the Cold War, both Kissinger and Brzezinski were associated with hawkish US policies, yet they did not advocate Ukrainian NATO membership.

Fear of NATO is not necessarily the only reason Russia has now invaded Ukraine. (Nor, for that matter, is NATO expansion the only reason the Russians might understandably be suspicious of the United States and its allies.) The prospect of NATO including Ukraine has played a role in creating the current crisis, though, as demonstrated by the Russians’ repeated emphasis on this point during the lead-up to the invasion.

Granted, Russian actions over the past few months made preventing Ukrainian membership in NATO far more politically complicated. The United States and other NATO countries would understandably refuse to make such a major concession in the face of apparent military threats. A concession would be rewarding aggression. (For my part, I argued against such a concession earlier in this crisis.) In retrospect, however, maybe an unyielding stance was not the correct one to take. Compromise in the face of a threatened invasion would have been bad, yet failure to compromise may have led to the far worse outcome we are seeing today.

What Next?

Avoiding any escalation in the war is imperative. If another nation gets directly involved in the war, the violence might only worsen; if the United States or NATO gets directly involved, then World War III becomes a possibility. US President Joseph Biden’s repeated statements that American troops will not intervene in the Ukraine-Russia war are encouraging. The United States and other nations should remain committed to non-intervention.

While not as perilous as direct involvement, the United States or other nations continuing to send weapons or military equipment to Ukraine could be very dangerous. More weapons could mean longer and bloodier fighting and greater loss of life. Rather than send more weapons to Ukraine, the community of nations should make every effort to keep additional weapons out of Russia’s hands.

Economic sanctions on Putin and other Russian elites are a reasonable response. Also, the Ukrainians should seriously consider using nonviolent methods of resistance to defend their independence. Compared to violent resistance, such methods are more likely to succeed in at least limiting Russian rule over the country and are far less likely to provoke extreme violent repression.

Giving refugees from the fighting a safe haven and getting humanitarian aid to those affected by the war is essential. Please consider giving to Catholic Relief Services, Mennonite Central Committee, and other groups working to help people in Ukraine.

Above all, diplomatic efforts are needed to bring about a cease-fire. The actions of peace-minded Russians who have protested the war in spite of state repression are encouraging. Let’s hope their voices and those of others opposed to war prevail.

Russian anti-war protester in 2014

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For our posts on similar topics, see:

Not Your Pawns: A CLE Examination of the Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Seeing War’s Victims: The New York Times Investigation of Civilian Casualties in Iraq and Syria

Using Empathy during a New Cold War

Would Nonviolence Work on the Nazis?

Wars Cause Abortion

war policy

Achieving Diplomatic Breakthroughs in the Past and Future: The “Opening to China” After 50 Years

Posted on February 15, 2022 By Rachel MacNair

by John Whitehead

China and the United States began a new era in their relationship 50 years ago this month. US President Richard Nixon’s arrival in Beijing, on February 21, 1972, and his subsequent meetings with Chinese leaders Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai marked a resumption of relations between the two countries after decades of hostile silence. Since those dramatic meetings, China and the United States have had a sometimes friendly, sometimes very tense relationship.

With the relationship between these two powerful countries turning increasingly tense in recent years, this anniversary seems an appropriate time for reflection. How did the resumption of relations – sometimes called the “opening to China” – happen? How might China and the United States avoid confrontation and the risk of war in the future?

Seeking a Renewed Relationship

The 1949 Chinese revolution, in which the Communists overthrew the Nationalist regime, led to a break in US-China relations. The United States preferred to support the Nationalists, now exiled to Taiwan. The Korean War, which brought Chinese and American troops into direct conflict with each other, only deepened the nation’s enmity. During the 1950s and 1960s, China and the United States had next to no diplomatic relations with each other, no direct trade or travel, and little direct knowledge of one another.

American diplomats suspected of sympathies with Communist China were driven out of government or otherwise sidelined: one leading China specialist ended up as ambassador to Iceland. Meanwhile, China remained relatively isolated, having relations with only about 40 countries. That isolation deepened in the late 1960s during the internal upheaval of China’s Cultural Revolution. The Cultural Revolution led to considerable hostility toward foreigners, including foreign diplomats in China, and a scaling back of China’s diplomatic presence abroad.

Despite their differences, China and the United States shared a common enemy in the Soviet Union. Although the Chinese had initially been allied with their fellow Communists in Moscow, Chinese-Soviet relations gradually deteriorated to a state of near-war. In 1969, Chinese and Soviet troops along the two countries’ shared border began openly fighting with each other. A Soviet nuclear attack on China seemed possible. The Soviets’ long-time Cold War adversary, the United States, took note.

Advisers to Mao, the Communist Party Chairman, and Zhou, the Premier, suggested the time had come for an opening to the United States. Chen Yi, a former foreign minister, wrote that “The last thing the U.S. imperialists are willing to see is a victory by the Soviet revisionists in a Sino-Soviet war” and that China could use “the contradiction between the United States and the Soviet Union in a strategic sense and to pursue a breakthrough” (quoted in Margaret MacMillan, Nixon and Mao: The Week That Changed the World, pp. 143-144).

Some powerful Americans were also interested in a breakthrough with China. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee held hearings on pursuing a new China policy. In the late 1960s, Nixon wrote that “we simply cannot afford to leave China forever outside the family of nations.” Nixon’s rival, the Democratic politician Hubert Humphrey, called for lifting the trade embargo on China and “the building of bridges to the people of mainland China” (quoted in James Mann, About Face: A History of America’s Curious Relationship with China, from Nixon to Clinton, pp. 16, 18) Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield wrote letters to Zhou asking for permission to visit China. In 1968, the State Department tried to revive talks between the American and Chinese ambassadors to Poland.

Relations between China and the United States gradually thawed. The United States reduced its naval activity close to China’s coast, eased and eventually lifted restrictions on travel and trade between the countries, and exchanged messages with China through Pakistan. An unusual olive branch came from the Chinese in April 1971, when the Chinese government invited an American table tennis team to visit China.

The historic invitation came about partly through happenstance. The Americans were participating in a competition in Tokyo along with a Chinese team. The Chinese were impressed by the American players’ friendliness. When American player Glenn Cowan hitched a ride to the tournament hall on the Chinese team’s bus, Chinese player Zhuang Zedong presented Cowan with a gift of a silk scarf. (Cowan later reciprocated with a gift of a red-white-and-blue shirt bearing the peace symbol and the Beatles-inspired slogan “Let It Be.”)

Zhuang Zedong and Glenn Cowan

Back in Beijing, Mao decided to invite the American team to China, commenting “Zhuang Zedong not only plays good Ping-Pong but knows how to conduct diplomacy as well” (MacMillan, Nixon and Mao, p. 178). In China, the regime rolled out the red carpet for the American athletes, who became, to great international media attention, the first American delegation to visit the country since 1949.

An invitation at a more official level came a few weeks later. The Chinese suggested Nixon or an envoy could come to Beijing for talks. The Nixon administration enthusiastically accepted the offer. US National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger made two trips in China in 1971 (one secret, one public) to prepare for Nixon’s visit the following year.

The presidential trip to China lasted a week. It included visits to Beijing, Hangzhou, and Shanghai and talks among officials on various topics, including the Soviet Union. Nixon and Mao also had one conversation, which was limited to generalities but symbolically significant: the top leaders of two powerful and previously hostile nations were sitting down together to talk.

The trip ultimately produced a joint China-US statement, known as the Shanghai Communique. While expressing numerous disagreements between the two nations, the Communique also included the important statements that international conflicts should be resolved “without resorting to the use or threat of force” and that both nations “wish to reduce the danger of international military conflict.” A few years later, China and the United States established formal diplomatic relations.

Seeking Coexistence Today

Fifty years after Nixon’s trip to China, much has changed in the American-Chinese relationship. With the Soviet Union’s collapse and the Cold War’s end, the two countries stopped being de facto allies in that struggle. Economic ties between the two countries have grown dramatically, with the value of US-China trade rising from roughly $4 billion in 1979 to more than $600 billion by 2017. China is today the United States’ third largest trade partner. China’s economy has undergone an extraordinary transformation, from having in 1980 a GDP, as measured by the amount of goods and services a consumer can buy within their own country, that was equivalent to 10 percent of the United States’, to having in 2014 a GDP equivalent to 101 percent of the United States’.

Perhaps the most significant change is the increased hostility of recent years between China and the United States. President Biden has the United States’ “most serious competitor.” Possible Chinese efforts to build more or more advanced nuclear weapons may increase tensions with the United States. Will US-China relations become only more hostile, with war becoming a possibility? Or can relations be improved, as they were 50 years ago?

The United States and China might be able to maintain a peaceful coexistence but, like the diplomatic opening of the early 1970s, realizing this goal will require considerable effort. As political scientist Graham Allison aptly put it, American-Chinese coexistence is “a chronic condition that will have to be managed over a generation … Managing this relationship without war will demand sustained attention, week by week, at the highest level in both countries.”

Beyond requiring effort, managing the US-China relationship can’t and shouldn’t rely on a common enemy, as in the 1970s. Today the United States is more likely to be the target of a common alliance between China and Russia than an ally of either one against the other. In any case, such an adversarial approach hardly promotes peace. That was the earlier approach’s great flaw.

Both countries must avoid falling into an arms race or a pattern of escalating aggressive actions. The United States should resist the temptation to further expand its own nuclear build-up in response to expansions in China’s nuclear arsenal. The recent declaration by several nuclear powers, including the United States and China, that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought is encouraging. The United States should consider following up on the declaration by pledging never to use nuclear weapons first – a pledge that would align US policy with China’s. To echo the Committee for a SANE US-China Policy, both countries should also carefully coordinate and reduce their military activities in high-tension areas such as the South China Sea, to avoid potential clashes.

Outside government circles, continued travel, cultural exchanges, and other contact between Chinese and Americans can promote understanding between the nations. We should remember the example of “ping-pong diplomacy.”

Maintaining peaceful US-China coexistence will not be easy. The two nations made a diplomatic breakthrough in the past, though, and might yet do so again.

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For other similar posts by John Whitehead, see: 

A Cold War Comes Home? Anti-Asian Racism in Light of US-China Hostility

“Remember Pearl Harbor—Keep ‘Em Dying”: War and Racism in the Pacific

No Combat Experience, No Opinion: Parallels in Pro-bombing and Pro-choice Rhetoric

Climate Change and the Consistent Life Ethic: An Opportunity to Connect Issues

The Wages of War, Part 1: How Abortion Came to Japan

Hard Questions about the Response to Terrorism: Looking Back on September 11^th

war policy

Not Your Pawns: A CLE Examination of the Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Posted on January 25, 2022 By Rachel MacNair

Sonja Morin

by Sonja Morin

“But if you remember nothing else, please remember this: Chess is just a game. Real people aren’t pieces, and you can’t assign more value to some of them than to others. Not to me, not to anyone. People are not a thing that you can sacrifice. The lesson is that anyone who looks on the world as if it was a game of chess deserves to lose.” (Harold Finch, from the TV series Person of Interest)

This quote came to mind as I reexamined the recent news of Russia’s building military pressure on Ukraine. It was especially striking when I read the following from Alexander Lukashevich, Russia’s representative: “Russia is a peace-loving country. But we do not need peace at any cost. The need to obtain these legally formalized security guarantees for us is unconditional.” Even the most brief study into what led us into this position makes it clear that the cause is the use of human lives as mere pawns to forward violent and power-hungry plans. It should be cause for us to demand our international leaders adhere to principles that will recognize those caught up in the threats as humans, not objects for use.

Russia has continued to escalate its military presence against Ukraine. Not only have they positioned troops and weaponry on the Russia-Ukraine border, but they most recently conducted military exercises with short-range ballistic missile crews within the western part of Russia. The Putin-led government has been working to keep former Soviet satellite states from joining NATO (an international partnership formed to counteract Soviet actions during the Cold War). In other words, Russia is attempting to retaliate to prevent Ukraine from allying itself with countries such as the United States, Great Britain, Canada, and other Western powers who have had difficult relations with Russia in the past.

These fraught alliances were created out of war. The Soviet Union assumed rule in countries that were left devastated after World War II, especially those that had been taken over previously by the Nazi Third Reich. NATO was created in reaction to this multi-country conglomerate. Decades dragged on as the United States and the Soviet Union waited for the other to strike. And what finally led this Cold War to its end? Military spending: the two international giants tried outspending each other in weapons development until the Soviet economy finally collapsed.

Now we are in the same conflict as we were in during past decades. War has only begotten more war.

In all these conflicts, there was no prioritization of the people whose lives would effectively turn into pawns of the state. At best, the people on the ground were an afterthought for those in power—and it took considerable efforts by antiwar activists to make the powerful pay even that much attention. While the pro-war arguments have been presented as being in the best interests of security and peace, they have accomplished neither. Human lives continue to be used as pawns to provoke military action.

If we are to undo this cycle of fear-mongering chaos, we must not resort to the violence that started it in the first place. The first priority must be the protection of all those who are currently living in Ukraine. Countries and non-affiliated organizations should seek out solutions that will prioritize the safety of those who are in danger. We have the insight, knowledge, and technology to accomplish it; all that is missing is the resolve among leaders to do so. They must be reminded of their duty to stand up for the defenseless, and come to the aid of those in need.

The second priority must be peaceful negotiations through appropriate channels. It’s clear that the militarization of the US-Russia tensions has accomplished absolutely nothing for either country. The threats are not only unproductive but dehumanizing to the people who would be most affected by war. Countries must work together – be it between their staff, or through alliances such as the United Nations – to stop the escalating military action. Ukraine must be recognized as its own nation, and must be free from the fear of attack. We’ve already lived through one fruitless century of weapons against weapons, poised to strike at a moment’s notice. At all costs, we must avoid another one.

The roots and results of this conflict are drenched in violence. We must thoroughly wash ourselves of the dehumanization that led us here, and move forward in a way that protects and promotes peace for all people.

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See more of our posts on war policy:

Wars Cause Abortion

Making the Case for Peace to Conservatives

Would Nonviolence Work on the Nazis?

The Darkest Hour: “Glorifying” War?

The Civil War Conundrum, 150 Years Later

Seeing War’s Victims: The New York Times Investigation of Civilian Casualties in Iraq and Syria

war policy

Seeing War’s Victims: The New York Times Investigation of Civilian Casualties in Iraq and Syria

Posted on January 11, 2022 By Rachel MacNair

by John Whitehead

The New York Times recently published the results of an in-depth investigation into American bombing and its consequences. The Times articles, which came out in late December 2021, focused on the American bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria against ISIS. Drawing on internal Defense Department documents and extensive interviews, including with those affected by the bombings, the investigation concludes that “the air war has been marked by deeply flawed intelligence, rushed and often imprecise targeting.” While the US military officially claims that the air war against ISIS has killed 1,417 civilians, the Times’ findings point to higher numbers.

Records of Killing

The Defense Department documents analyzed by the Times were “credibility assessments”: a report on bombing incidents (apparently carried out mainly by missile-armed drones) in which civilians were allegedly harmed. Experts within the military assess the information on these incidents to determine if the reports are credible. Incidents are generally judged non-credible if the evidence is vague or insufficient or if no record exists of an airstrike at that time in that place.

The Times obtained, through Freedom of Information Act requests and lawsuits, 1,311 credibility assessments related to US bombing in Syria and Iraq between September 2014 and January 2018 (these documents are apparently only part of a much larger number of assessments). Of the assessments analyzed by the Times, only 216 deemed the reports of civilian harm “credible.”

While the credibility assessments alone don’t provide an adequate record of the air war’s toll, Times’ analysis of the 216 “credible” incidents contains notable findings. Civilians were killed and injured variously because they were misidentified as enemy fighters; they weren’t detected in the vicinity of the air strike; air strikes were based on flawed intelligence; surveillance video failed to capture crucial information about the area; civilians entered the vicinity of the strike at the last moment, after a weapon had been launched; or striking certain targets, such as weapons caches, caused additional explosions.

Some incidents suggest that US military personnel carrying out the air strikes was interpreting on-the-ground evidence to fit what they were looking for, with terrible consequences. US operatives searching for an ISIS bomb-making center in a Syrian village identified a walled compound that was the hub of suspicious traffic as the desired target. “White bags” within the compound were identified as materials for making explosives. The US military then bombed multiple buildings on November 20, 2016.

A subsequent military investigation showed no traces of the alleged explosive ingredients and concluded the compound had probably been a center for making cotton, not bombs. American officials said two civilians may have been killed; other reports said nine civilians had been killed.

In another incident, US forces operating in Mosul, Iraq, were looking for a dark-colored, heavily armored car allegedly armed with a bomb. This led to the United States bombing a dark colored car on February 25, 2017. However, far from being a car bomb, the vehicle carried a family. Also, the personnel carrying out the air strike made the truly strange choice to bomb the car at a busy intersection. The credibility assessment concluded five civilians had been killed or injured; an independent Times investigation in the area concluded seven people had been killed.

In some cases, the surveillance conducted prior to an air strike to determine the presence of civilians was very limited, sometimes consisting of only a few seconds of video footage. Lack of sufficient surveillance drones to survey areas was a problem.

Further, the Times investigation found US military procedures for investigating alleged civilian casualties, holding those responsible accountable, and learning lessons were lacking. The military unit that carried out an airstrike often ended up investigating the strike. Of the 1,311 credibility assessments, in only one assessment did investigators visit the strike’s site and in only two did they interview people present during the strike. Only a quarter of the documented cases reviewed by the Times included recommendations for further action. Fewer than a dozen condolence payments have been made to those affected by the bombing.

Death on the Ground

Given the inadequacies of the US military’s self-investigation, the Times carried out its own investigations of US airstrikes. Between late 2016 and June 2021, Times investigators visited, in Iraq and Syria, the sites of 60 incidents in which the US military deemed reports of civilian casualties credible and the site of 36 “non-credible” or as-yet-unassessed incidents.

Sources outside US military assessments unsurprisingly point to more civilian casualties than acknowledged by military sources. In many cases, the Times found civilian casualties to be almost double the military estimates. The Times reporting also found more children being killed or injured than in the military documents.

One dramatic incident was the bombing of the Syrian village of Tokhar. The US military bombed, on July 19, 2016, what they thought were ISIS forces located in an area without civilians. The bombing supposedly killed 85 ISIS fighters. A subsequent investigation, prompted by reports of civilian deaths, concluded that between 7 and 24 civilians “intermixed with the fighters” might have been killed.

When the Times interviewed Tokhar residents in 2018, their account of the incident was that large numbers of villagers had sought shelter from fighting between ISIS and anti-ISIS forces in four homes. Those homes were then bombed. No ISIS fighters were known to be in the area. From the interviews and other sources, the Times concluded that more than 120 people had been killed. The United States never made any condolence payments to those affected by the incident.

Precise numbers aside, every death in war is tragic and devastating to the loved ones of those killed. Ali Younes Muhammad Sultan lost his daughter, Sawsan, along with other members of his extended family in a 2016 US bombing in Mosul that killed 21 people. He described finding Sawsan’s remains in the aftermath of the air strike:

If it weren’t for her clothes, I wouldn’t have even known it was her…She was just pieces of meat. I recognized her only because she was wearing the purple dress that I bought for her a few days before. It’s indescribable. I can’t put it into words…We’re still in denial and disbelief. To this day, we cannot believe what happened. That day changed everything for us.

The victims of war all too often die and suffer unnoticed by the larger world. The Times investigation draws attention to their suffering and reminds us powerfully of war’s horrifying results.

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For similar posts from John Whitehead, see: 

Lethal from the Start: Uranium Mining’s Danger to the Most Vulnerable

“The Affairs of a Handful of Natives”: Nuclear Testing and Racism

Nuclear Disarmament as a Social Justice Issue 

A Global Effort to Protect Life: The UN Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapons

The Wages of War, Part 1: How Abortion Came to Japan

Wages of War, Part 2: How Forced Sterilization Came to Japan 

Wasting Money on Instruments of Death: Nuclear Weapons in the 2022 Budget

war policy