FCNL Letter to Senate: Ratify START Treaty Now

Dec 16, 2010

December 16, 2010

SUBJECT: Ratify New START treaty now

Dear Senator:

The Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) strongly endorses the New START treaty. We urge you to support and vote to ratify it before the 111th Congress adjourns.

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 truth is that nuclear weapons threaten rather than secure us. The roots of our Quaker religious practice run deep into our Abrahamic traditions, 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. We believe it is God’s will that we free the people of our world from the threats of nuclear annihilation and of nuclear terrorism. We should exercise our power to do that now.

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.” We note that former Secretaries of State and of Defense, general officers in the military, and retired Presidents have called for ratification now of the New START treaty.

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 – whose arsenals account for 95 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons -- may help to prevent a worldwide new nuclear arms race.

Please speak out on the Senate floor for the New START treaty and vote to ratify it.

Thank you,

Joe Volk, Executive Secretary

PDF Version