SENATE MEMORIAL 113

53rd legislature - STATE OF NEW MEXICO - second session, 2018

INTRODUCED BY

Mimi Stewart

 

 

 

 

 

A MEMORIAL

REQUESTING THE NEW MEXICO CONGRESSIONAL DELEGATION TO ENACT LEGISLATION TO CREATE A SYSTEM OF CHECKS AND BALANCES IN DECISIONS TO USE NUCLEAR WEAPONS EXCEPTING IN RETALIATION TO AN ATTACK ON THE UNITED STATES OR ITS ALLIES.

 

     WHEREAS, Article 1, Section 8 of the United States constitution authorizes congress "to declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water"; and

     WHEREAS, Article 2, Section 2 of the United States constitution establishes the president as the "Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States"; and

     WHEREAS, the constitutional division of authority envisioned that in most, if not all, cases, congress would decide when and where the United States would engage in armed conflict and the president would decide how to prosecute that decision; and

     WHEREAS, with the establishment of permanent armed forces with detachments increasingly spread across the world, the practical ability to decide when and where the United States would enter into armed conflict shifted to the president; and

     WHEREAS, on July 16, 1945, the nature and consequences of using the most powerful of weapons of armed conflict changed as the United States conducted the first successful test of a nuclear weapon; and

     WHEREAS, after the test, the leader of the United States' nuclear weapons development program, J. Robert Oppenheimer, characterized the scope of this change by saying, "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds"; and

     WHEREAS, on August 6, 1945, the first use of a nuclear weapon on Hiroshima, Japan, is estimated to have resulted in the deaths of between ninety thousand and one hundred sixty-six thousand people; and

     WHEREAS, the increasing destructiveness of available nuclear weaponry was publicly recognized by United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower on December 8, 1953 in a speech to the United Nations in which he confirmed that the then-current atomic weapons were more than twenty-five times as powerful as the bomb that had destroyed Hiroshima and that hydrogen bombs were even more powerful by orders of magnitude; and

     WHEREAS, President Eisenhower declared that "the United States pledges before you — and therefore before the world — its determination to help solve the fearful atomic dilemma..."; and

     WHEREAS, On July 29, 1957, the United States ratified the establishment of the international atomic energy agency as a part of its commitment to the containment of nuclear weaponry; and

     WHEREAS, with the United States as a leading sponsor, on June 12, 1968, the United Nations general assembly proposed the treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons to establish international commitment to avert the danger of nuclear war; and

     WHEREAS, on March 5, 1970, the treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons came into effect upon ratification by the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and forty other countries; and

     WHEREAS, one hundred ninety-one countries are now signatories to the treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons; and

     WHEREAS, the United States has established a "sole authority" methodology wherein the authority to use, or refrain from using, nuclear weapons resides in one person — the president; and

     WHEREAS, a report by the union of concerned scientists indicates that use of the sole authority model adopted by the United States is prevalent within the eight other countries that are known, or believed, to have nuclear weapons; and

     WHEREAS, the safety of the sole authority model for the use of nuclear weapons is suspect, as it is continuously dependent on the infallibility of just one individual human to avoid a mistaken or unjustifiable use of nuclear weapons; and

     WHEREAS, because most nuclear states have used the promise of immediate nuclear retaliation as a deterrent to attack, a single mistaken use of a nuclear weapon could result in millions of fatalities and injuries as well as catastrophic environmental and economic damage;

     NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE SENATE OF THE STATE OF NEW MEXICO that the United States should once again take a leading role in preventing the inadvertent, mistaken or unjustifiable use of nuclear weapons; and

     BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the New Mexico congressional delegation be requested to work to enact legislation that would establish a system of checks and balances on the authority to use nuclear weapons; provided that the president would retain sole authority for the use of nuclear weapons in retaliation to an attack upon the United States or its allies; and

     BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that copies of this memorial be transmitted to the members of the New Mexico congressional delegation.

- 5 -