I appreciated Oge Young’s excellent and informative My Turn, “Arm with Peace” (Monitor, 4/25). My daughter, Alicia, a 2013 Concord High graduate, is the policy and research director at the international campaign to abolish nuclear weapons (ICAN) in Geneva. ICAN received the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for its work spearheading the passage of the UN Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. It continues to work with its international partners and UN delegations to flesh out the treaty and add signatories. The treaty outlaws nuclear weapons, as chemical weapons, land mines, and custom nations have been outlawed, and their use violates international norms.
There is never a justification to use nuclear weapons, the ultimate, indiscriminate, killing machine. Can you imagine what it would be like not to live under the threat that exists because so many nations have nuclear weapons that are hundreds of times more powerful than the bomb we dropped on Hiroshima? Do we want to give Vladimir Putin the benefit of the doubt when he threatens to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine? That war has been unexpectedly costly for him. Why wouldn’t we think that he would use a nuclear missile to try to end the war and send a message to the world? This threat is a wake up call to all nations to dismantle their nuclear weapons, and stop spending billions on these weapons of mass extermination.
Sheila Zakre
Concord