While the world cannot return to a pre-nuclear weapons age, it can evolve into a post-nuclear one. For this to happen, global security and nuclear disarmament must be reimagined.

The current number of nuclear weapons in the world is less than at its peak, but today’s nuclear arsenals are more powerful and sophisticated, making them more destructive by magnitudes. The invasion of Ukraine and conflict over Taiwan have made nuclear war more likely than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis, as they involve the three dominant nuclear powers: Russia, China and the United States.  A ‘grand vision’ policy is urgently needed to move beyond MAD (mutual assured destruction), an unstable deterrence strategy equivalent to a death wish.

A revolution in global public health, financed with money saved in non-proliferation/disarmament agreements, is an ideal grand strategy to finally end the threat of nuclear annihilation. Collaborative medical research administered by a chartered organization will encourage nuclear armed countries to ‘beat swords into plough shares’. With every disarmament agreement, as funds are moved from weapons research and maintenance to life saving health initiatives, a shift in consciousness from war to peace will occur.

According to the United States Congressional Budget Office, the projected 10-year spend (2021-2030) allotted for the nation’s nuclear forces is $634 billion. While Russia and China’s budget figures for the same period are not readily available, they are likely equally as large. Just 15% of the US budget alone would be a massive investment in global health, at $95 billion.  The 2022-23 budget for the WHO was $6.72 billion.

All governments share quality healthcare as a domestic policy goal, encompassing numerous priorities: quality medicines and other therapies; universal access to healthcare; disease prevention; mitigating poverty related illness; creating modern healthcare infrastructure; environmental health concerns (clean water, good air quality, agriculture).  The enormous fossil fuel requirements of military planes, ships and other vehicles with low fuel efficiency are perhaps the greatest contributors to climate change, a source of many adverse health conditions.

Cost sharing mechanisms are critical to the plan’s success, requiring participants to disclose the value of  nuclear weapons that a treaty prohibits in order to determine each country’s contributions to medical research. If the precise cost is not disclosed, a possible alternative is to create a ‘reasonable range’ value for that weapon. Ideally, each country will understand that the value of outcomes, in terms of potential lives saved and threat reduction, minimizes the need for financial precision. 

This plan holds immense potential for creating a peaceful partnership between today’s largest nuclear powers that is sorely needed in our fraught age of nuclear peril. The alternative is the continuation of an increasingly deadly game of chicken that can only lead to Armageddon. At some point not too far off, we will have missed the opportunity to avoid it.

I am signing this petition because I fear that there is an increasing risk of a nuclear war, and I believe that humanity can and must once and for all eliminate this risk for the sake of its survival. I urge you to champion Turning Nuclear Missiles Into Medicines.