WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — She was commenting on the release on Tuesday of the Strategic Air Command Atomic Weapons Requirements Study for 1959 that documented US Air Force plans to target the "population" of enemy cities in case of war with the Soviet Union.
"Little has changed since the end of the Cold War," Caldicott said, noting that superpower nuclear arsenals remain vastly excessive of any possible military requirements.
Caldicott was founding president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, the co-winner of the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize. The Smithsonian Institution has named her one of the most influential women of the 20th century.
Caldicott emphasized that the dangers of nuclear war from accident or miscalculation continue to be very real.
"The slightest misinterpretation, computer malfunction or high international anxiety could trigger what we all fear most, the end of human civilization," she stated.
Global tensions are running at an alarming level "because for the first time since the Cold War ended Russia and the United States are confronting each other militarily in the Ukraine and Syria, practicing belligerent nuclear war drills," Caldicott pointed out.
She further noted the public may be surprised to read the declassified material released this week, particularly the extent of overkill included in the 1959 war plans.
"One bomb of course would be sufficient to annihilate all the other targets plus vaporize and kill almost all the inhabitants of each city. Mind you this was the 1959 target list," Caldicott explained.
The Pentagon’s Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP), introduced in 1960, included 16,000 nuclear facilities in the Soviet Union at a time when there were only 240 major cities in the northern hemisphere, Caldicott recalled.
"Once while being briefed [Vice President Dick] Cheney began squirming uncomfortably in his chair as he watched Moscow targeted with 200 hydrogen bombs turn slowly into a solid red mass covered over and over again with ludicrous targets."
Dropping 1,000 nuclear weapons on 100 cities, Caldicott added, "would induce nuclear winter, a short ice age and the end of most life in earth."
Caldicott particularly blamed former US President Bill Clinton for not trying to negotiate an end to nuclear weapons with then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin right after the Cold War ended.
"If, in fact, there is a nuclear war, I would lay it directly at the feet of Clinton because when he was elected, we, the peace movement in the 1980s and early 90s had mobilized 80 percent of Americans to oppose nuclear weapons. We handed him an American consensus on a silver plate."
Caldicott, an Australian physician, has been one of the world’s leading anti-nuclear activists for more than 40 years. She is the author of many books including "The New Nuclear Danger: George W. Bush’s Military Industrial Complex."
