Articles 
PEOPLE FOR NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT
HUMAN SURVIVAL PROJECT
NUCLEAR THREATS ARE INADMISSIBLE
(institutional affiliations for identification purposes only)
Attn:
Vladimir Putin
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov
Security Council Chair Dmitry Medvedev
Nikolai Patrushev
cc
President Donald Trump and advisers
US Congress
Australian parliamentary committees
UN General Assembly
(by email)
NGOs and media
Dear President Putin, adviser Patrushev, Lavrov, and Medvedev:
I write concerning your most recent threats to vaporise the UK and parts of Europe, both the below made 5 days ago, and more recent ones.
[https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/2086660/russia-threatens-uk-nuclear-war ]
The express (url above) reports your influential adviser, Nikolai Patrushev, once head of the FSB, and still highly influential in the Kremlin, as saying:
“As for Westerners who like to talk about the need to move from a cold war to a hot war with Russia, I would like to remind them that our strategic nuclear forces at sea are continuously conducting combat patrols, ready to strike designated targets.“With their powerful weaponry, submarines are capable of cooling any hot head.”
While this is on the surface directed against those who advocate a 'hot war' against Russia, it is hardly likely to 'cool any hot head', and much more likely to have the opposite effect to that intended. Just as Russia is likely to refuse to be intimidated by threats from the 'west' (whatever the 'west' may be), so, increasingly, the 'west' is unlikely to be intimidated by statements such as these. Alarmed, yes, but more likely to react with counter-threats of its own. To date, explicit nuclear threats have not been made. Statements such as those quoted are however, likely to be interpreted themselves as threats, again achieving exactly the opposite to what is intended, and achieving escalation rather than 'cooling heads'.
Exactly the same considerations apply to the more recent statements of Vladimir Solovyov [https://radaronline.com/p/donald-trump-vladimir-putin-russia-nuclear-threat-losing-patience-ukraine-war/] in response to Donald Trump's threats of tariffs.
Frankly, it is becoming more and more problematic to even pinpoint accurately how many threats or statements that might all too easily be interpreted as nuclear threats, have been made in any given week by your administration.
Thus far, publicly at least, no equivalent threats have been made in response. True, one general has talked about Kaliningrad in the context of a wider conflict, but our aim should be to ensure that no such conflict ever takes place, and that differences between the so-called 'west' and Russia are resolved peacefully.
It is in addition, imperative that the conflict between Russia and Ukraine be resolved without further fighting, and that hostilities cease forthwith and unconditionally and without preconditions.
You are reminded that a series of high – level meetings in Delhi, Bali, and if memory serves me, Capri, have all reaffirmed that 'the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons is inadmissible'.
Russia was represented at each of the meetings where this was affirmed, and has signed on to the statements in which this wording was included. And these words in addition, reaffirm the 1996 advisory opinion of the ICJ.
I assume you all understand that a large-scale nuclear exchange will be a planetary catastrophe. The most recent simulations of the effects of nuclear war confirm that a NATO-Russia conflict that goes nuclear will produce temperatures below those of the last ice-age over most of the world, and that most humans will perish. In the aftermath of such a nuclear exchange there will not only be no more US and NATO, but also no Russia and no China. The wealthy or the wise will maybe survive in doomsday bunkers in the Falklands, Tasmania, Patagonia, New Zealand or the south sandwich islands.
If such an outcome, a doomsday wind that blows no good for anyone whatsoever, is to be avoided, then an avoidance of statements that are or that might be seen as, nuclear threats, and an absolute avoidance of steps that might lead to any kind of escalation or spread of a conflict that has already taken too many lives – is of the highest importance.
It would produce hope for the whole world if, instead of parsing the latest statement to see if the bloodcurdling language does or does not really contain nuclear threats – which already makes almost any aggressive sounding statement into a nuclear threat – the worlds breath could be held while truly meaningful negotiations are held both with NATO, with Europe, and with the EXISTING Ukrainian administration, on a permanent peace.
Because peace, not further escalation and above all not nuclear conflict is what the world, and NATO, and Russia, must aim for.
(Institutional affiliations for identification purposes only)
John Hallam
Nuclear Disarmament Campaigner
People for Nuclear Disarmament
Human Survival Project
Co-Convenor, Abolition 2000 Nuclear Risk Reduction Working Group
Member, No First Use Global Steering Committee
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