Hiroshima146;s cry: No nukes anywhere

Although the nuclear issue continues to dominate global diplomacy, the imperative of disarmament has taken a backseat. This has happened because Washington has distorted the meaning of non-proliferation to connote only horizontal non-proliferation, with no obligation on major nuclear powers to rapidly carry out vertical de-proliferation

One can be angry with America8217;s ruling establishment for many reasons. But there8217;s one good thing about it: unlike in countries ruled by autocracies, a good deal of classified information in the United States flows into the public domain after a passage of time. Of course, some of that information is of the kind that further angers people around the world.

Thus, on August 1 we had this news that 8216;8216;President Nixon, in his first year in office and eager to end an unpopular war that killed tens of thousands of US troops, considered using nuclear weapons against the North Vietnamese, recently declassified documents show8217;8217;. It revealed that, by mid-1969, Nixon and his national security adviser Henry Kissinger who ironically was honoured with a Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 had developed contingency military plans 8216;8216;to use nuclear weapons against Communist-controlled North Vietnam, which was fighting to reunite with the democratic South8217;8217;.

What business America had to go to distant Vietnam to wage a murderous war against that innocent country is a question that none in the American establishment Kissinger included has explained with any degree of justification so far. Besides killing 15 lakh Vietnamese and maiming countless others, the mighty American army, which ultimately suffered a humiliating defeat, also lost 58,000 of its own men, all of whose names are engraved in a sombre memorial in Washington DC. And now comes the revelation that the Nixon regime even contemplated nuking the Vietnamese. Anger, intense anger, is what I felt as I read the news. Not to be angered by this kind of news is to be less than human.

Coincidentally, the revelation came in a week that recalls to our minds, each year, a day when America actually used a nuclear weapon. The world commemorates the 61st anniversary of Hiroshima today8212;and of Nagasaki on August 9. The two ill-fated Japanese cities paid a huge price for the American government8217;s itch to use its newly acquired atomic weapons. The death toll in Hiroshima: 2,42,437. That in Nagasaki: 1,37,339. Thus, the nuclear age was born with a grim reminder that nuclear weapons are not meant to be used at all. And what is not to be used ought not to be produced at all. Yet, not heeding the call of Hiroshima, mankind has in the past six decades produced enough nuclear weaponry to end all human life and destroy our planetary home many times over.

The nuclear arms race which began with the onset of the Cold War between the United States and the erstwhile Soviet Union has continued even after the end of the Cold War. The logic of deterrence has induced several other nations, India included, to arm themselves with nuclear weapons. The logic is indeed valid and justifiable to some extent. Speaking about our own country, the thought process behind what several Congress governments had planned, and what the government of Atal Behari Vajpayee executed in May 1998, was simple: India could not have remained unconcerned about challenges to her national security from two nuclear powers in her immediate neighbourhood8212;one open and the other clandestine.

But the moot question is: how can the same logic cease to be valid and justifiable if other sovereign nations reckon nuclear weapons to be necessary for their own national defence? Iran and South Korea are already defiantly pursuing their plans to become nuclear weapon states. In Japan too, a growing number of people want their country to end its dependence on America8217;s strategic cover by developing its own nuclear deterrence. However, if this trend continues, what will its effect be on the collective security of the international community? Will endless nuclear proliferation make the world more safe or less? The answer is obvious.

The only way to end this dilemma is by effecting universal, non-discriminatory nuclear disarmament in a timebound manner. This indeed is Hiroshima Day8217;s central message. Sadly, the big powers8212;America in particular8212;aren8217;t listening. It is paradoxical that although the nuclear issue continues to dominate the agenda of global diplomacy, the imperative of global nuclear disarmament has taken a backseat. This has happened because Washington has deliberately distorted and perverted the meaning of nuclear non-proliferation to connote only horizontal non-proliferation, with no obligation on major nuclear powers to rapidly carry out vertical de-proliferation of their own huge stockpiles.

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This combination of hypocrisy and hegemonistic ambitions cannot guarantee peace and stability in the world in the 21st century. In fact, it has given rise to a potential nuclear menace of an altogether new kind. Consider, for example, a scenario in which non-state combatants like the Al Qaeda are able to add nuclear capability to their technology of terror. It doesn8217;t seem far-fetched, if we recall reports about illicit import and export of nuclear technology, of the kind that Dr A Q Khan, the father of Pakistan8217;s 8216;8216;Islamic bomb8217;8217;, was involved in before his arrest.

If we want to save the world from a repeat of Hiroshima, there is only one way to move forward: governments and civil society organisations that are committed to peace must strengthen their voice a thousand-fold for the elimination of all nuclear weapons belonging to all nuclear-armed nations in the shortest possible timeframe. This naturally means that those who have more nukes must disarm more and disarm first. Of course, all must disarm ultimately, without any exception.

Let me sign off my thoughts on Hiroshima Day with this inspiring quotation from General Omar Nelson Bradley, a celebrated US army commander during World War II. 8216;8216;We live in an age of nuclear giants and ethical infants, in a world that has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. We have solved the mystery of the atom and forgotten the lessons of the Sermon on the Mount. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about dying than we know about living.8217;8217; How different these words sound from the ones in the news item about Nixon8217;s plans to nuke Vietnam!