COUNTERPLAN/NUCLEAR ABOLITION

ADVANTAGE: NUCLEAR WEAPONS DESTROY OPEN, DEMOCRATIC SOCIETIES

SECRECY FUELED BY NUCLEAR WEAPONS THREATENS DEMOCRACY

The real danger of secrecy is that it undermines democracy. Citizens in democracies cannot make intelligent choices about their societies if they are lacking the requisite information. Just as we have accepted that informed consent is necessary in a medical context regarding our bodies, we must apply the same principle to decisions of the body politic.8 If citizens are not informed of government decisions because they are taking place behind a wall of secrecy, then citizens have lost control of their political process and, therefore, of their future.

NUCLEAR WEAPONS REGIME SPREADS ANTI-DEMOCRATIC CLOUD OF SECRECY AND MILITARIZES EVERYDAY LIFE

A nuclear weapons regime is by its very nature secretive and elitist, and thus profoundly anti-democratic. It further promotes and deepens the ugly militarisation of everyday life and thinking that is already taking place in India. The ideology of nuclearism which is currently being touted as nuclear nationalism is inseparable from the promotion of an ideology of masculinist aggressiveness.

NUCLEARIZATION CREATES A CLIMATE OF SECRECY AND EXPERT CONTROL WHICH PREVENTS PUBLIC INVOLVEMENT

Kumkum Sangari, Neeraj Malik, Sheba Chhachhi, Tanika Sarkar , Movement in India for Nuclear Disarmament, 2001, Why Women Must Reject Nuclearisation

All of these are intensified with nuclearisation which is, in addition, far more committed to secrecy and notions of expertise, and is controlled by a tiny bureaucratic and scientific elite. Secrecy and lack of information in fact assists in creating media hypes that can project a false consensus around the issue. And public ignorance in turn is one of the keystones of this so-called consensus. For example, few people are aware that the costs that have been acknowledged are only the tip of the iceberg. The massive cost of maintaining and upgrading nuclear weapons remains hidden.