By Jeanne Trubek
Many of us have been concerned about nuclear weapons for a long time. Reading Annie Jacobson’s 2024 book, Nuclear War: A Scenario, changed “concerned” to “terrified” and recent events upped it to “panicked”. At each stage we wonder, “is there anything we can do?” Timmon Wallis’s book answers that with a solid “YES. The subtitle could be “a manual on how to build an effective world-wide movement to abolish all nuclear weapons.”
I’m sure he would say that the book is not step-by-step instructions guaranteed to lead to success; it is not a YouTube video on how to change the oil in your car or abolish nuclear weapons while you’re at it, but he outlines steps to move us in the right direction. Many of the steps have roots in the 1980s Nuclear Weapons Freeze movement which did indeed lead to Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev beginning to negotiate about arms control. By the early 1990s, the United States and the Soviet Union had ceased the testing, development, and deployment of nuclear weapons and had reduced their nuclear arsenals. The Freeze Movement in the United States was based on local grass-roots organizing.
We have a great opportunity to do that again today by working for the adoption of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). This treaty bans everything to do with nuclear weapons in the countries that join it, including banning the financing of creating nuclear weapons in any way. Each year there are several resolutions introduced in the U.N. general assembly calling for all countries to adopt the TPNW. This is a recommendation and is non-binding. However getting more and more countries to vote for the recommendation helps to build, unify, strengthen the anti-nuclear war movement. And it shows the military industries that most of the world wants to rid itself of nuclear weapons.
Wallis divides the book into manageable steps. At the beginning of each chapter he gives a checklist of how to accomplish that step. For example, Chapter 4 begins with the checklist
- Vote for the UN Resolution
- Sign the TPNW
- Ratify the TPNW
- Implement Laws
And so on…
For each step on the checklist, he explains it, gives an example where it has been achieved (except at the very end, when he’s in new territory), gives an example where it could be achieved in a reasonable amount of time: “Next Up”, and gives a challenge example: “The Prize” with steps that could lead to achievement. Each time, as he carefully lays out the steps to achievement, I felt “Yes, we can do that here.”
The book shows us a world-wide movement to abolish nuclear weapons (unfortunately not including the 9 countries with nuclear weapons) and shows us how world-unity to put pressure on the governments and industries that promote nuclear weapons can be pressured to stop, using media pressure and economic pressure. He reminds us how world-wide disapproval and boycott movements led to the abolition of Apartheid in South Africa (and could also have that effect in Palestine).
Part III concerns the United States and the local movements to create Nuclear Free Zones. In his introduction to this section he tells us that for the companies that develop, manufacture and maintain nuclear weapons, there must be pressure from within the United States. So far the mayors or other leader of 53 large cities and 176 smaller cities and towns have joined “Mayors for Peace”. To join, the Mayor or municipal leaders must sign “I hereby express my city/municipality’s support for the abolition of nuclear weapons and desire to join Mayors for Peace.”
Chapter 18 concerns Massachusetts, where at this point 21 cities and towns have passed resolutions focused on eliminating nuclear weapons world-wide to reduce the risks to their citizens. Cambridge has already passed a resolution calling for the city pension fund to divest from nuclear weapons. However this was never implemented and Wallis sees the next step to be to get a new ordinance passed that will ban city contracts with nuclear weapons companies. In Massachusetts “The Prize” is Boston.
Wallis shows vividly how many, many people, each taking a small step, working together, can result in enough pressure for companies to give up producing weapons of mass destruction. Although often the job we’ve taken on seems overwhelming, Wallis’s organized and clear exposition makes it seem within our capabilities. As I came to the end of the book, the United States bombed Iran and I thought, Oh, no. We’re too late!” But I notice that I am still alive today, and say. “Maybe we should have done this 10 years ago but since we did not, let’s get going!”
Nuclear Abolition, A Scenario; Timmon Wallis, Indispensable Press, Northampton, MA