Sent by People for Nuclear Disarmament and the Human Survival Project To Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Foreign Minister Penny Wong, Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles, the Parliamentary Committees on Foreign Affairs and Defence and DFAT.

Dear Prime Minister Albanese, Foreign Minister Penny Wong, and Defence Minister Richard Marles, Hopefully, this letter will be read, if not by yourselves then at least by your policy advisers.

This letter has been postponed over and over, as the global security situation deteriorates.

However, recent developments (notably the war between Iran and Israel and developments in the Ukraine/Russia war), and the growing consensus amongst nuclear policy experts that nuclear war, either accidental or (God forbid) deliberate or semi-deliberate, is now more likely to happen than at any other time with the possible exception of a few days around the peak of the Cuban Missile Crisis, a few days during NATO’s Able Archer exercise at the end of 1983, and approximately half an hour during Colonel Stan Petrov’s 26 September 1983 watch in the Serpukhov-15 command centre.

In all of these incidents, nuclear war was a small miscalculation away. However, at no time during the Cold War were explicit threats made by either side that nearby countries might be reduced to ashes, or vapourised. Yet such threats have become commonplace over the last three to four years, at first still hints, and finally fully-fledged nuclear blackmail. The threats made by Russia have received massive coverage, especially in certain newspapers.  Those made by Donald Trump to both Putin and Xi Jinping prior to his winning the US election have only recently come to light.

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists Doomsday Clock was recently advanced by exactly a second, from 90 seconds to midnight (midnight being a civilisation-ending event sequence) to 89 seconds to midnight, with a grim editorial pointing out that as the seconds tick down each second is worth more. The threats associated with the Ukraine War were/are a major factor in the clock moving closer to midnight.

The point here is that the world as a whole is closer to the brink for longer, than it has ever been. The situation is indeed perilous.

Australia’s greatest security risk is in fact, that we may be targeted in a global nuclear exchange in which we are merely a passive participant and in whose outcome we may or may not have an interest. Taiwan may be potentially important to us, but is it worth the loss of a number of our largest cities?

The issue of the likelihood of global thermonuclear war does not play a part in daily political debate, and rarely figures even in the proceedings of the subcommittee on foreign affairs and defence, though submarines and AUKUS do. Yet nuclear subs even if they arrived yesterday (they won’t),  and even if they were the solution to some other security problems (they are not), are completely irrelevant to the avoidance of global thermonuclear war.

Yet there is simply nothing that is, or possibly could be, more important, and more relevant to our real security needs than the continuance of what we call “civilisation”.

Because this is what is at stake.

A nuclear ’exchange’ between the US/NATO and Russia (and likely China) would:

-Bring about the instantaneous disappearance of the internet, satellite communication, the global banking system including virtual currencies, and power grids, and take the world in milliseconds, back to the 18th century.

-Within approximately 90 minutes, turn most cities in the US, Canada,  Europe, China and Japan, and including major Australian cities, Northwest Cape, the B-52 base near Darwin, and Pine Gap into firestorms which would burn for roughly the next month till nothing was left. This would create a “prompt” bodycount of billions worldwide, comprising maybe half of all humans and up to 25% of all Australians.

Emergency preparedness for nuclear war recieves zero attention in Australia, though it has much in common with bushfire preparedness. At a time when nuclear experts say we are closer to the apocalypse then we have ever been, its not apparent that any government thinking about the matter is taking place. There is no discussion about it in Parliament at all.

-The smoke from said burning cities would then rise into the upper stratosphere, dimming the sun and creating, for a number of decades, temperatures lower than those of the last Ice Age. Of those who had been spared the immediate holocaust, a large portion would starve to death in the ensuing nuclear winter.

Most humans will perish, and what we call “civilisation” will be finished. It will at least be several hundreds of years before the world “recovers”.

Australia

(a) has an obvious stake in the continuance of what we call or miscall “civilisation” with all its many faults and glitches.

(b) Australia has more ability than most non-nuclear states to influence the outcome and lead the world AWAY from disaster.

Before we are able to exert a leadership role in nuclear disarmament, however, we have to acknowledge to ourselves that such a role is profoundly in Australia’s own best interest. The greatest threat to Australia’s national security is the possibility of global thermonuclear war. (and this has been the case since about 1960). And the closer we are to catastrophe — the less secure and the more unstable the international situation is — the more imperative is action that attempts to remedy the situation.

I state this simply because it seems that there are those who perversely argue that the less secure the international order is, the less Australia should “rock the boat”. This is contrary to commonsense, and downright dangerous, if not actually suicidal. We are on the Titanic, and we are arguing that lifeboats should not even be launched because it might destabilise the vessel!

This is bluntly, lunatic.

There is both a need for Australia and other ‘middle power’ countries, from NZ to Canada, as well as most European countries, to act to

-De-escalate the conflict in Ukraine

-De-escalate potential conflict between China and Taiwan

-Avoid conflict between NATO/US and Russia, especially over Ukraine

-Resume the process of “building down” nuclear arsenals worldwide

-Take steps to reduce risks of existing conflicts going nuclear and escalating to a civilisation-ending event sequence.

There are no rational, real-world–based arguments for us to sit on our hands and do precisely nothing, yet this or almost this, seems to be what we have done so far. Other governments of similar or smaller countries (ranging from Brazil to SA to NZ to Austria) have managed to take worthy initiatives at various UN forums ranging from UNGA First Committee to NPT conferences. Australia so far does nothing.

Australia could:

-Play a part in mediating conflict between much bigger powers, such as the US (to whom we are allied), China (our largest trading partner) and Russia. One possibility might be a low-key facilitation of ongoing disarmament dialogue between those three. It could be hosted in Canberra over Queensland grown coffee, or Australian wine, but the process should take place not between heads of state (who mostly do not understand the issues involved) but their policy “wonks”, and diplomats, who have a better understanding.

-The Labor Party, in what seems an eternity ago, adopted a policy suggesting Australia could join the TPNW, a UN initiative that has had its origin in Australian-grown NGOs. While Australia has graduated from voting “no” on UN resolutions to “abstain” and has attended TPNW meetings as an observer, it really should fulfil the policy of the ALP (and the aspirations of most Australians) by joining, ratifying, and urging other governments  to join and ratify, the TPNW. The Albanese Government has been massively lobbied by ICAN on this issue, and this author has penned countless letters in support of it. The government should have at least some moral courage, and do it.

-At various times, DFAT has seemed to be concerned over strategic stability (which is to be understood as not having a nuclear war), and in favour of measures for nuclear risk reduction. There is a wide menu of possible risk reduction measures, ranging from No First Use of nuclear weapons, to de-alerting, to improved or merely resumed, military to military communications to avert potentially civilisation-terminating miscalculations. There is a global campaign to promote No First Use, whose steering committee the author is on.

Australia should throw its not inconsiderable diplomatic weight behind No First Use and any other measures that might make nuclear war by madness, miscalculation, misinformation, malware, or malice, impossible or less likely.

There is no rational case for Australia to take no action to diminish the risk of global thermonuclear war, and to take such action is profoundly in Australia’s real national security interest.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.