Preventing another Hiroshima
SPECIAL FEATURE, 6 Aug 2012
Rebecca Johnson, Int’l Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons – TRANSCEND Media Service
6 August 2012
Sixty-seven years ago, on August 6, the first uranium bomb was exploded above Hiroshima with the force of 15 thousand tons of TNT. Tens of thousands were killed by the blast and fireball that engulfed the city, and a similar number died of radiation sickness and injuries in the days and months that followed; in total 140,000 dead by 1945’s end. Three days later, Nagasaki was shattered by a plutonium bomb. This was the same design that the United States had tested in the New Mexico desert three weeks earlier, causing the Manhattan Project’s lead scientist Robert Oppenheimer to reflect that he had become a “destroyer of worlds”. Over the next 40 years, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (US, Soviet Union, Britain, France and China) amassed some 70,000 nuclear weapons with a combined explosive force of 15 million tons.
October this year will mark 50 years since the Cuban Missile Crisis, when Presidents Kennedy and Krushchev managed – by luck as much as judgment – to pull back from the brink of nuclear war. There were several more near misses caused by miscalculation and sabre-rattling, before civil society around the world created pressure that started a cascade of nuclear arms reductions and brought the Cold War to an end. Explaining why he reached out to US President Reagan to discuss nuclear disarmament in 1986-7, President Gorbachev has highlighted both the influence of the peace movement and the “nuclear winter” studies by US and Soviet scientists, which demonstrated that a Soviet-American nuclear war would cause planet-wide freezing and environmental devastation that could extinguish life on earth.
Twenty years after the Berlin Wall was pulled down, most people prefer to ignore the awful fact that thousands of nuclear weapons still endanger all life on Earth. Reading the media you might think the main problems are Iran’s nuclear programme and the risk of nuclear terrorism. Iran doesn’t actually have any nuclear weapons and Ayatollah Khamenei recently said they were “haraam” – religiously forbidden under Islam. Nonetheless, Iran’s accelerating uranium enrichment and related nuclear and missile activities warrant concern, not least because near neighbours Pakistan, India and Israel do have nuclear weapons, and an Iranian nuclear weapons capability would change the Middle East, whether or not Tehran chose to weaponise.
Between them Israel, Pakistan and India could have 300-400 nuclear weapons, adding to almost 19,000 still held by the five nuclear-armed states recognised by the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). These arsenals – and the doctrines and operations attached to their deployment – are the threats we should worry most about. All-out nuclear war may be less likely now, but recent studies demonstrate that a regional nuclear war would cause global famine, jeopardising over a billion people.
The new “nuclear winter” studies update the 1980s research , examining the use of 100 Hiroshima-sized nuclear weapons on urban centres in India and Pakistan. This limited regional scenario (0.04 percent of the explosive power in today’s arsenals) recognises the fallibility of deterrence and that suspicious neighbours could reproduce the risk factors that led to the Cuban Missile Crisis, including miscalculation, miscommunication, military escalation and, potentially, rogue commanders. Growing cyberwarfare capacities in many countries add an extra dimension of volatile danger to an explosive mix.
Millions of tons of sooty smoke would be propelled by the nuclear explosions into the upper atmosphere. Skies would darken, temperatures across the planet would fall by an average of 1.25 deg.C. , and rainfall would be disrupted. In addition to widespread radioactive contamination, these climate effects would persist for a decade, with devastating consequences for agriculture and the health and life cycles of many species. In addition to the tens of millions that would die from the direct effects of nuclear detonations on South Asia’s major cities, over one billion people around the world would be put at risk of death by starvation. Infectious epidemics and further conflict would exact an additional toll.
The Red Cross has determined that if nuclear weapons were used today, any attempts at responding or coping with the humanitarian needs of survivors would be utterly overwhelmed. These new climate and health studies demonstrate that a limited, regional nuclear war would have global health and humanitarian consequences on a scale never seen before, regardless of whether people live in a “nuclear-weapons-free zone”, such as cover Africa, Latin America, the Pacific and Central and South-East Asia.
As we remember the devastation wrought by two relatively small nuclear bombs in August 1945, we cannot afford to be complacent. Proliferation and nuclear threats will continue as long as some countries value and hold on to these most inhumane weapons of mass destruction. A treaty banning nuclear weapons is urgent, necessary and achievable, and negotiations on such a treaty should begin. Now.
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Dr Rebecca Johnson is vice-chair the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.
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What Dr. Rebecca Johnson argues in the above essay is true. “Truth, the whole truth, nothing but truth.” The same or similar arguments have been made for the last sixty-seven years since the first atomic bomb brought an unprecedented scale of tragedy to the humanity. (The tragedy is not only about the victims of the nuclear weapon. The use of the nuclear weapon itself constitutes an indispensable part of the same untold tragedy.)
But there is another tragedy which is, even sixty-seven years after Hiroshima, the human society is still facing the risk of the nuclear war. Therefore, peace-loving people like Dr. Johnson have continued appealing the horrors of the nuclear war for far more than half a century.
The perspective of the implementation of CTBT, for example, is as if it is hidden in the clouds in the far distance. Not to mention, the abandonment of all nuclear arsenals on this planet is still in the phase of a dream of pacifists.
In fact, some people argue that they taught a lesson to Hiroshima (and Nagasaki). Lesson of what? A “lesson of democracy.” To teach a lesson of democracy, you think that it is all right to kill tens of thousands of innocent civilians? What kind of lesson is it? If it is a lesson of democracy, “Democratic” People’s Republic of Korea, for example, is also preparing for giving a “lesson of democracy” to you. How about Iran? Does the Iranian government intend to teach a “lesson of democracy” to Israel? Can democracy be taught through the use of nuclear weapons? No. The nuclear weapon cannot teach democracy! The nuclear weapon teaches only this lesson: a “lesson to abolish all nuclear weapons in the world.”
As you see, things are not so easy. It is no wonder, therefore, that nuclear weapons have been promoted to this day. The Cold War was over but the age of nuclear weapons is not over. Regardless of all those pieces of pessimistic evidence, let’s still believe in the wisdom of the humanity. The human is a homo ”sapience.” One day — even though the “one day” is still in a far distant day — humans on this planet will achieve a nuclear-free peaceful society. Till then, people like Dr. Johnson and many others need to repeat the same or similar appeals. Thank you, Dr. Johnson and many other peace-loving people, for working for the global peace!
South Africa unilaterally dismantled and abolished its nuclear arsenal – and the AU is nuclear weapons free. It is possible, there is a precedent. But like any structural system it requires both political will and also democratic pressure from grass-roots up.
Thank you, Arne, for pointing out the essential fact.
Western and some Asian countries are well-advanced in terms of economy and nuclear weapon technology. The AU member countries are well-advanced in terms of the nuclear-free practice. Which side is more peace-oriented?
Peace be you, all the humanity.