FCNL Executive Secretary’s Statement on the New START Treaty

Aug 11, 2010

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August 11, 2010

The Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) strongly endorses the New START treaty and urges the U.S. Senate to ratify it expeditiously.

We at FCNL seek to live our lives in tune with a governed universe and at one with the force of truth and the power of love. The roots of our religious practice run deep into our Judeo-Christian tradition and, today, these roots find nourishment from the variety of religious experiences of the many peoples of the world with whom we live and work.

Our religious experience convinces us that it is not God’s will for us to threaten each other with weapons of mass destruction. We unite with the 1955 statement of the Meeting for Sufferings of London Yearly Meeting (of Friends), “To rely on the possession of nuclear weapons as a deterrent is faithless; to use them is a sin.” Instead of relying on nuclear weapons, we seek a world free of war and the threat of war. We believe that peace is possible through peaceful means.

Although the New START treaty, like its predecessor START, falls far short of FCNL’s goal of complete and general nuclear disarmament and although we see the treaty not as a disarmament but rather as an arms control measure, we support it. The New START treaty, if ratified by the Senate, will resume U.S. and Russian inspections and verification of deployed strategic nuclear weapons and will further limit their numbers from 2,200 down to 1,550 on each side.

As important as reducing the number of deployed strategic weapons, the resumption of inspections and verification will, we believe, help to reduce the perception of threat between the U.S. and Russia and will increase confidence on both sides that peace is normal and can be maintained and built upon. Threat reduction and confidence building between God’s children in the U.S. and Russia may help to prevent a new nuclear arms race. What could please God more?

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FCNL is a nonpartisan Quaker lobby in the public interest. FCNL speaks for its General Committee and like-minded members of the Religious Society of Friends. While it does not presume to speak for all Friends in the United States, twenty six of thirty three yearly meetings and eight national organizations of the Religious Society of Friends choose to affiliate with FCNL.

For more information contact:

Joe Volk, Executive Secretary, FCNL, at 202-547-6000