The Case For Abolishing Nuclear Weapons

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This will be a year of anniversaries linked to the end of World War II in 1945, with the most significant being the invention and first use of nuclear weapons. In fact, the development, testing, and use of nuclear weapons continue to shape our lives today, 80 years on.
After all, many people are still dealing with the damage from the Trinity nuclear test in New Mexico in July 1945, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki a few weeks later, and the more than 2,000 nuclear test detonations carried out since then. Today, the world lives in the shadow of the 12,121 nuclear weapons held by China, France, India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, the UK, and the US.
The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were immoral, unnecessary, and unethical. Under current international law, these indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks, which killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, including an estimated 38,000 children, would surely be considered a war crime.
Many of the hibakusha (as the Japanese survivors of the bombings are known) devoted their lives to campaigning for the abolition of nuclear weapons. By drawing on their personal experiences, they have raised global awareness of the devastation such weapons cause and helped establish the taboo against their use in conflict.
The majority of hibakusha alive today were young children at the time of the attacks, and continue to experience the effects in their old age. After Nihon Hidankyo, their grassroots organisation, was awarded the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize for campaigning against nuclear weapons, co-chair Shigemitsu Tanaka, who was four years old when Nagasaki was bombed, gave moving testimony about how his grandchild died three days after being born.
“Due to impact on the internal organs,” he said, “their lungs were not able to grow properly, there was an impact on their diaphragm as well (…) and when I held my grandchild, this baby, I knew that what we went through had been passed on, even to these future generations.”
Despite the claims of nuclear-armed states, it was the taboo the hibakusha helped to establish and sustain, not the flawed theory of nuclear deterrence, that has prevented the further use of these weapons.
In fact, deterrence doctrine increases the risk of nuclear war, as demonstrated by the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, which Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev triggered by placing nuclear missiles in Cuba to deter the US from using the missiles it had deployed in Turkey.
To be sure, the shock of the near-miss in Cuba led to the first arms-control treaties, including the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). But instead of rejecting deterrence, nuclear-armed countries have doubled down on it – a step widely seen as a cynical ploy to deflect attention from their failure to honour the commitment to disarm that they made when joining the NPT.
The continued emphasis on deterrence, rather than abolition of nuclear weapons, reflects a lack of political imagination and courage. Proponents of the doctrine argue that such arms, no matter how terrible, cannot be uninvented. But decisions can be made – and have been made – to control deadly technologies and end their use.
This includes chemical and biological weapons, as well as industrial chemicals that are harmful to human health and the environment. For example, the 1987 Montreal Protocol phased out chlorofluorocarbons to protect the ozone layer.
The nine nuclear-armed states and a few dozen of their allies are blocking progress on disarmament while at the same time claiming to support a nuclear-free future. Whereas the rest of the world – around 140 countries – supports the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which came into force in 2021 and has since been signed or ratified by half of all countries.
Instead of insisting that they must keep their weapons to deter potential adversaries, members of the nuclear club should listen to the survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks and their call for abolition. They know better than anyone the damage that nuclear weapons can inflict on people and the environment.
It is time for nuclear-armed states to accept that this existential threat has hung over the world for long enough. Rather than merely congratulating the hibakusha for their Nobel Peace Prize, they should honour these survivors – while they are still alive – by joining the TPNW and eliminating their nuclear arsenals before these weapons are used again in conflict. - FMT
Melissa Parke, a former Australian minister for international development, is executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017.
The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.

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