Twenty-seven national organizations issued a joint statement Tuesday decrying the recent negative salvoes between President Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin and urging the Biden administration to “stop participating in such reckless rhetorical exchanges.”
Groups signing the statement included Demand Progress, Just Foreign Policy, Our Revolution, Progressive Democrats of America, RootsAction.org, the Union of Concerned Scientists, Veterans for Peace, Win Without War, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and World Beyond War.
Pia Gallegos, chair of the RootsAction board, said: “With vast nuclear arsenals on hair-trigger alert, Washington and Moscow have unimaginable power to destroy human life. President Biden has a profound duty to decrease the chances of a global nuclear holocaust. We must insist on a consistently diplomatic approach. Instead of engaging in holier-than-thou rhetoric, Biden should be constructively engaging with Russia as a partner to safeguard human survival.”
The joint statement:
“As national organizations that advocate for diplomacy, arms control, disarmament and peace, we are deeply alarmed by the recent negative exchanges between leaders of the two countries with more than 90 percent of the world’s nuclear warheads in their arsenals. As Americans, we urge the Biden administration to stop participating in such reckless rhetorical exchanges and to instead vigorously pursue nuclear-arms negotiations with the Russian government. The need for constructive bilateral talks to address the clear and present dangers of the nuclear arms race has never been more apparent. With great urgency, we call upon President Biden to make good on his stated commitment that ‘diplomacy is back at the center of our foreign policy.'”
JOE GERSON, jgerson80@gmail.com
Gerson is executive director of the Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Common Security, one of the groups issuing the joint statement. His books include Empire and the Bomb: How the U.S. Uses Nuclear Weapons to Dominate the World and With Hiroshima Eyes: Atomic War, Nuclear Extortion and Moral Imagination.
The other signers are: Action Corps, American Committee for U.S.-Russia Accord, Backbone Campaign, Blue America, Center for Citizen Initiatives, Environmentalists Against War, Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, Historians for Peace and Democracy, Justice Democrats, Muslim Delegates and Allies Coalition, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, NuclearBan.US, Other98, People for Bernie, U.S. Palestinian Community Network and Yemen Relief and Reconstruction Foundation.
