How much longer must we wait?
 • "The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything except our thinking. Thus, we are drifting toward catastrophe beyond conception." Albert Einstein

Claudia Fonseca Sosa

HUMANITY could cease to exist in an instant. Just by pushing a button in error we would be exposed to a catastrophe worse than those of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II. Since then, the number of weapons has multiplied to a total of 25,000 in the hands of allied and antagonistic forces.

In his many articles, the leader of the Cuban Revolution Fidel Castro has affirmed that in a world with as much upheaval as ours, the explosion of just 100 of these missiles would provoke a nuclear winter, the consequences of which have been described by Professor Alan Robock at the University of Rutgers, New Jersey. "The use of nuclear weapons in the event of a total attack against an enemy would be a suicidal action due to anomalous cold and darkness caused by the smoke from the fires generated by the bomb." However, the real magnitude of this disaster could exceed the predictions of the scientist and his working group.

Former President Harry Truman, one of those principally responsible for the atom bomb attack on Japan in August of 1945, described in his dairy a nuclear test in the state of New Mexico the previous month:

"An experiment in the New Mexico desert was startling - to put it mildly. Thirteen pounds of the explosive caused the complete disintegration of a steel tower 60 feet high, created a crater 6 feet deep and 1,200 feet in diameter, knocked over a steel tower 1/2 mile away and knocked men down 10,000 yards away. The explosion was visible for more than 200 miles and audible for 40 miles and more."

The nuclear weapons currently existing in the world are far more powerful.

Hence Cuba gives the highest priority to the issue of nuclear disarmament. Fidel is convinced that the only countries interested in remaining "armed to the teeth" are those which wish to retain their monopolies, those which wish to keep their hands on oil from the Middle East and the natural resources of Latin America, Asia and Africa. (1960: Speech at the United Nations)

For this reason, imperialism and its allies have converted the military industry into the most prosperous and privileged within their economy, in detriment to human existence itself and placing the planet on the borders of extinction.

"War is not an act of God," stated Fidel. "War is a social disease engendered by exploitative societies and deployed in its maximum expression during the historical epoch of imperialist barbarity. War is made by men and thus men can avoid it (…) if hegemonisms cease, if insensibility, irresponsibility and deception cease." (1992, Rio Conference)

Along these same lines, Professor Leyde Rodríguez at the Cuban Foreign Relations Institute, affirms, "The threat of nuclear war and global climate change are the direct result of an exceptional and irrational means of capitalist production which, in the 20th century and to date, exacerbated an arms buildup which had its greatest boom in the context of a constantly more imposing U.S. Military-Industrial Complex post-1945, drawing into this suicidal logic its principal European allies, but also the Soviet Union (Russia), China, India, and other actors or lesser territorial dimension or international protagonism, located in Asia, the Middle East and Africa."

Even though there are international mechanisms such as the Non-Proliferation Treaty, certain countries like Israel, which developed nuclear weapons with the aid and cooperation of the United States without informing anyone or making itself accountable to anyone, have refused to sign it.

Other agreements such as the START, signed in Prague in April 2010 by the major nuclear powers, imply nothing more than illusions to this problem which threatens humanity.

Last week the 1st High Level meeting on Nuclear Disarmament took place in the UN General Assembly. The initiative, proposed by Cuba and positively welcomed by the Non-Aligned Movement, was approved last year by 165 votes in favor and none against, while the United States, Israel, France and the United Kingdom abstained.

The meeting was an opportunity for world leaders to address and take positive steps on an issue which must be a maximum priority for all, because solutions agreed upon multilaterally constitute the only viable means of guaranteeing international security.