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Hiroshima:
Sixty Years On
2005
will be remembered as a watershed of the Nuclear Age. It
marks the 60th anniversary of the first test of an atomic
weapon on 16 July 1945. Just weeks later, Hiroshima and
Nagasaki were each destroyed with a single atomic bomb,
announcing to the world the onset of the Nuclear Age.
2005
also
commemorates the 50th anniversary of the death of the
great scientist Albert Einstein. Though he wrote to
President Roosevelt in 1939, urging him to explore the
possibility of an atomic weapon, and so steal a march on
Nazi Germany’s nuclear plans, Einstein later referred to
this letter as the greatest mistake of his life. Together
with many other scientists, he spent the rest of his life
working for the abolition of the very weapon that he had
helped to bring into the world.
2005
marks
the 50th anniversary of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto,
the last public document to which Einstein gave his
support. The document sounded a grave warning. A nuclear
war would obliterate many cities. More seriously, nuclear
war could put an end to humanity. Their solution was to
abolish war, a solution they understood to be both
incredibly difficult and absolutely necessary. The
Manifesto stated: "Here, then, is the problem which
we present to you, stark and dreadful and inescapable:
Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind
renounce war?" Fifty years later, we remain
confronted by this overriding problem.
2005
is
the 35th anniversary of the entry into force of
the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the agreement
that opened the possibility for an end to the spread of
nuclear weapons. In May of this year, the NPT Review
Conference, a five-yearly event, ended in complete
deadlock. Nuclear disarmament seems more remote than ever
before, and a nuclear strike more likely than at any time
since the early 1980s.
Two
groups of nations are holding the world to ransom: those
that have nuclear weapons and want to keep them, and those
that want to acquire them. To quote Jonathan Schell:
The
two groups of nations are in collision. The possessors
want to stop the proliferators,
and the proliferators want to defy them as well as ask
them to get rid of their own mountainous nuclear arsenals.
Especially
worrying is the new American military doctrine of
pre-emptive war, aimed at stopping proliferation by force.
This was the very reason the United States gave for its
invasion of Iraq. The US administration has made it clear
it is prepared to entertain the use of nuclear weapons to
prevent others from getting them.
The
possessors and the proliferators have one thing in common:
they both want nuclear weapons. They are both intent on
expanding their nuclear capacities and missions. Even as
they quarrel and threaten each other, they are cooperating
in nuclearising the globe.
The
end of the cold war was supposed to be the beginning of a
farewell to nuclear danger, but now, fifteen years later,
the nuclear threat is back with a vengeance. China, India,
Pakistan, North Korea and Britain are all increasing their
arsenals and/or their delivery systems. The United States
may have reduced the number of its nuclear weapons on
alert, but not the total number of these weapons. It is
now turning its nuclear guns away from its traditional
Cold War targets only to aim them at the countries of the
Third World.
The
United States and Russia built up such a vast nuclear
arsenal during the Cold War that they can string out their
dismantlement almost indefinitely without seriously
denting their joint capacity to finish off most of human
civilization. And, in the meantime, various groups and
individuals are busily trading nuclear materials and know
how. It may not be long before a crude nuclear device is
the hands of a non-state organisation.
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