Suggestions for discussions
You can participate in this effort by sharing your concern that the risk of relying on nuclear weapons needs to be studied and better understood. Bringing up such a weighty topic may seem daunting at first, so this section contains some suggestions to make it easier – as does our suggested email.
Emphasize the positive: If we talk only about nuclear catastrophe, we will depress people, whereas we need to energize them. When giving talks on this subject, I often start out by telling the audience I've got good news and bad news. The bad news is that our current approach to nuclear weapons is almost surely headed for disaster. The good news is that we're going to have to change that approach, and most people are not really happy with Mutually Assured Destruction. Defusing the nuclear threat has another major benefit in that it will require a significant reduction in the level of violence around the world. The previous section of this primer offers additional positive views.
Emphasize our ability to change: Prof. Carol Dweck of Stanford's Psychology Department has studied how different people respond when confronted with a challenge that exceeds their current abilities. Some people take on the challenge even though that might mean failing, while others shy away. What differentiates the two groups is their view of ability. Those who rise to the challenge tend to see ability as a variable that can be increased by study and hard work, while those who refuse the challenge tend to see ability as innate and therefore immutable. When confronted with a task that exceeds their perceived ability, people in the latter group tend to refuse the challenge out of fear of failure, while people in the former group often relish the chance to improve their abilities.
Dweck also found ways to increase the probability that people will rise to a challenge. In one study, change was effected by having the participants read one of two articles made to look like they were taken from Psychology Today. The content of both was similar, concerning geniuses like Einstein and Mozart. But one version concluded that people are just born that way, while the other emphasized the difficulty Einstein had faced in school and that hard work had been necessary for him to overcome that barrier. Participants given the latter version were more likely to accept a challenging problem even if initial testing showed them to believe that ability was innate and immutable.
While Dweck's research has focused on an individual's abilities, the same ideas would seem applicable to a person's view of humanity as a whole, and a conversation I had with her supported that view. If someone doesn't believe the human race is capable of radical change, then bringing up your concern with the nuclear threat will tend to fall on deaf ears. But such people are more likely to be receptive if we emphasize the tremendous capacity that human beings have for change. See section 4 of this primer for examples.
Stanford's alumni magazine has an article with more information on Dweck's work and her well received books are available at most bookstores. Her most recent book is Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.
Don't argue: If other people are uninterested or believe that our approach to nuclear weapons is fine as is, it's OK to drop the subject. In fact, it's usually preferable. Our goal is not to argue with those who are comfortable with the nuclear status quo, but to find those willing to question conventional wisdom.
To be successful in changing conventional wisdom, we clearly have to reach 1% of the population before we succeed in reaching a majority. At this stage of the process, where we are well below 1% adoption, our success rate will be much lower than at later stages when it takes less courage to consider this radically new idea. So don't be discouraged. If you share your concern with enough people, it only takes a small fraction agreeing for us to grow extremely rapidly.
Be of goodwill: Ill will, judgment and blame produce much of the danger in the world. If we judge those who disagree with us, we mirror the problem, not the solution. Conversely, if we can be of goodwill toward those who disagree with us, we will be much more effective advocates for change. When someone says something that sounds outlandish to me, I try to remember how differently (and outlandishly!) I once saw this issue. Conventional wisdom can cloud the thinking of well-intentioned, intelligent people.
Become convinced – and therefore convincing: Changing conventional wisdom isn't easy. To be effective, you need to be comfortable in your conviction that a reexamination of our nuclear weapons strategy is urgently needed. Reading the material on this web site provides a foundation, but greater understanding results if you can develop a group of like-minded people with whom to discuss it.
Have Faith: In the current environment, envisioning a world in which nuclear weapons no longer pose a significant risk is difficult and, in some ways, requires a leap of faith. Fortunately, there is evidence to support that vision: In 1800 it took a leap of faith to envision a world in which slavery no longer existed, and an even greater leap to imagine the enfranchisement of women. But both of those changes came to pass.
Other events that, before they occurred, would have been described as "requiring a miracle" also have come to be. Before Gorbachev, no one – myself included – would have dared predict someone like him coming to power through the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. If anyone had proposed it, a likely response might have been "when pigs fly." In fact, soon after the Berlin Wall came down, a friend told me that instead of saying "when Hell freezes over" or "when pigs fly", he used to say, "Yeah, that will happen when the Berlin Wall comes down." He then told me that he now had to go back and examine a large number of seemingly impossible changes that he previously had ruled out with that phrase. The seemingly impossible can happen!
You Don't Need to Have All the Answers: When I worked on related issues in the 80's, people often asked me how a world so different from the one we had could ever come to be. Looking at past major changes and how impossible their actual evolution would have been seen prior to their occurring, I usually answered, "If I had a crystal ball and could tell you how it will happen, I wouldn't dare. You'd probably lock me in the loony bin." While the goals I worked on then were not achieved, the Cold War did end, creating a world that was previously unimaginable. If I had had that crystal ball and told people how that change would occur, they probably would have committed me. A priori, I too would have said it was inconceivable that a man would be appointed Chairman of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union who would then encourage free debate, lift censorship, and not shed blood to preserve the Union. So not only do you not need to have all the answers, no one can have all the answers. They must be discovered along the way. What's important is to take the first step on that voyage of discovery – calling for risk analyses of nuclear deterrence.
Keep it apolitical: At first glance this effort might seem more aligned with the Democratic Party than the Republican. That is not the case. Until the current conventional wisdom concerning nuclear weapons changes, neither party can espouse policies that would truly deal with the nuclear reality. As examples:
President Clinton's 1999 National Security Strategy stated "Our nuclear deterrent posture is one example of how U.S. military capabilities are used effectively to deter aggression ... Nuclear weapons serve as a guarantee of our security commitments to allies and a disincentive to those who would contemplate developing or otherwise acquiring their own nuclear weapons ... The United States will continue to maintain a robust triad of strategic nuclear forces sufficient to deter any potential adversaries." [Kunsman 2001, page 68].
In Jimmy Carter and SALT II: The Path to Frustration, Matthew Oyos writes, "Ironically, Carter also sanctioned nuclear war-fighting measures to maintain deterrence. In 1980, he signed Presidential Directive 59, which codified a "countervailing" strategy to fight a nuclear war below the level of an all-out exchange. In addition, the Carter administration recommended a modest civil defense program to limit casualties in case deterrence failed. These actions ... enhanced American capabilities to fight a nuclear war, a stance far from the position of minimum deterrence that Carter endorsed when he first took office." [Oyos 1996] Carter also initiated the "Euromissiles" program for which Reagan later took so much flak. And, in a 1998 interview, President Carter's National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski related a shocking story:
According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the mujahideen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan on 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention. ... The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire. [full text in the original French; full text in English translation]
That covert effort trained many of the terrorists we are now fighting worldwide, and our being untruthful about when the aid started increased Russia's mistrust of us, adding more lubricant to the slippery slope that leads to nuclear war.
Because the country is roughly evenly split politically, keeping our effort apolitical has the added advantage that it allows us to reach a larger audience. It also makes it harder for people to pigeon-hole us, forcing them to think more deeply.
Give a talk: One way to reach a larger number of people is to give a talk to a civic or church group. Even if you don't think of yourself as a public speaker, you may find that the stakes here are high enough to get you over that barrier. Being a speaker doesn't have to be difficult. Just being yourself is the most congenial way for people to hear what you have to say.
I've given literally thousands of lectures as a professor and well over a hundred talks on this subject, yet I often find myself stymied on how to put together a new talk. When that happens, I try to remember something I learned from my wife. When I come to her for help on a talk, she invariably asks me, "What do you want to tell them?" I'd then start "I want to tell them that ..."
Telling my wife what I wanted to tell the audience got me out of my speech-making persona, back into my human form, and the talk usually just flowed naturally. When I was done, she'd say, "Well, why don't you tell them that?" And I had my talk! I strongly recommend that exercise to anyone else having difficulties figuring out how to put together a talk: What do you want to tell them?
Exceed the minimal commitment to ensure and speed up the process: If everyone involved brings up the issue with one person a week and one in ten joins the effort, as explained elsewhere on this site, it will take about three years to saturate society and change conventional wisdom. If initially you can exceed that minimal commitment and reach three people a week that would do two things. First, it would provide insurance in case our initial success rate is less than "one in ten." We will be experimenting with this web site to increase the success rate, but in the beginning it is likely that we will not meet that goal, and having three times as many contacts per week would allow even a "one in thirty" success rate to work just as fast as "one in ten" with the minimal commitment.
Second, if we achieve our target of "one in ten," reaching three people per week cuts the time to change conventional wisdom to as little as a year. When I first did the calculation that led to that conclusion, I thought I had made a mistake so I double and triple checked my numbers. As amazing as that might sound, it is right. My disbelief was tempered when I remembered that even faster growth rates have been achieved: A recent Stanford course using Facebook "reached 16 million people in 10 weeks, using no money." [Fogg, slide 22] And, yes, I am talking to the people involved in that course about how to improve our process!
Keep the first step in mind: The critical first step in defusing the nuclear threat is not to elect a new leader, pass a new law, approve a new arms control agreement, or even reduce the number of nuclear weapons. Rather, it is to change the conventional wisdom that says it is more risky to question our nuclear strategy than to rely on it.
Remember that, in 1840, when conventional wisdom saw abolition of slavery as a fool's errand, the anti-slavery presidential candidate garnered only 0.3% of the vote. Twenty years later – after society's thinking about slavery had changed – Abraham Lincoln won. Today all political candidates are anti-slavery. The correctness of that position is so well cemented in our national consciousness that abolishing or re-establishing slavery is a non-issue.
In the same way, once society recognizes the unacceptable risk inherent in our current policy, all political candidates will have to support policies consistent with the reality of nuclear weapons. In the current environment, none can. Today, with respect to nuclear weapons, we are where the nation was in 1840 with respect to slavery: Any politician who proposed rational nuclear weapons policies would be unelectable. The first, key step is to correct society's mistaken beliefs concerning nuclear weapons. Then, concrete changes will follow naturally.