The first ten days of August each year are a time to remind ourselves about the effects of nuclear weapons.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 80 years on
nuclear weapons
The nuclear challenge today and tomorrow
On 6 and 9 August this year, we will mark the 80th anniversaries of the two occasions on which nuclear weapons have ever been used in war – the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.* Humanity has perpetrated and experienced a great deal of harm in the past eight decades but nuclear weapons have not been used again. Despite today’s widespread and intensifying perception of nuclear risk, the nuclear taboo survives.
That does not mean the nuclear problem has been solved, of course. It is “an encouraging fact”, as the Nobel Peace Prize Committee put it when giving the 2024 award to the movement of Japanese nuclear survivors (the hibakusha), Nihon Hidankyo. But not more than that. And honouring the hibakusha in this way was also intended as a wake-up call to those many people who until recently regarded nucleapons as yesterday’s problem.
Continue reading1945: 6 August, Hiroshima; 9 August, Nagasaki
Seventy nine years ago, twice and never since then, nuclear weapons were used in war. One bomb on Hiroshima, one bomb on Nagasaki. Blast, fire and radiation killed between 90,000 and 166,000 people in Hiroshima and from 60,000 to 80,000 in Nagasaki. Those are the estimated figures for deaths by the end of 1945; there have been additional deaths since as a result of radiation-caused cancers.
The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki serves as reminder of what US President and wartime commander Dwight D Eisenhower called “that awful thing” can do. It reminds us that hostile rhetoric and throwaway remarks about using nuclear weapons are inhumanly irresponsible.
NB: Eisenhower, like almost all the most senior US military commanders of the time, believed using the nuclear bombs on Japan was unnecessary and ineffective; it was not the atomic bombing that persuaded Japan to surrender, they concluded, but the Soviet offensive in Manchuria.
The worries of a peace researcher
“How easy is it to talk about peace and disarmament today when the world is busy rearming?”
That’s the question that Dagens Nyheter, Sweden’s biggest selling daily paper, asked itself, its readers and me in a recent article. About me, it said, “SIPRI’s director says he is a born optimist, but when DN meets him, he describes the world in black and dark grey.”
And yet at the end, the reporter, Ewa Stenberg, managed to find some light amid the dark.
Continue readingNew START: Putin suspends Russian participation
On 21 February, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Russia would suspend its participation in New START, the last remaining nuclear arms control treaty between the world’s two nuclear superpowers: Russia and the United States.
This is a disappointing, unimaginative but unsurprising step from which nobody benefits.
And from which we all may lose. Including Russia.
Continue reading2022: the pear-shaped year
I hope my levity does not make it seem as if I am dismissing the human reality of the horrors we have witnessed in 2022 or downplaying the seriousness of the events and their implications. But it is the way I express my assessment of the year in a brief interview filmed and disseminated as part of SIPRI’s Peace Points series.
It has been a year of war, crisis, the impact of climate change, growing hunger in poorer countries, and increased cost of living everywhere – rich and poor countries alike. And it came on the back of three years of pandemic for most of the world and a fourth year for China.
There is no point in sugaring the pill. The upshot is that this has been a bad year for peace and security . The only way we can figure out how to deal with all of that is to face it head-on with eyes open. Here’s the film.
The bright spot is that more people are paying attention. That’s the starting point for something better.
Nagasaki: the 77th anniversary
Nagasaki was destroyed on 9 August 1945. It was three days after the Little Boy bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Made of uranium and nicknamed Little Boy, it killed at least 80,000 people with its immediate effects of blast, fire and radioactivity. The bomb dropped on Nagasaki was named Fatman, was made of plutonium and killed some 40,000 people immediately.
Many analysts and commentators believe that, today, the risk of nuclear war is greater than it has ever been, even at the height of the Cold War. Quantifying and comparing risk is a complex business and comparisons are hard to make between different eras involving different protagonists. But nobody can deny that as long as nuclear weapons are used, there is a risk that one or more will again be used. And today’s toxic international politics make clear that the risk is significant.
In January this year, however, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council – China, France, Russia, the UK and the USA, all nuclear weapon states – jointly agreed that nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought. The statement deliberately reflected what Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan, leaders of the USSR and USA, said in 1985.
Nagasaki, 9 August 1945, and Hiroshima three days earlier remain compelling reminders of why they were so right.
Continue readingHiroshima: the 77th anniversay
On 6 August 1945, a US Air Force bomber dropped a bomb known as “LIttle Boy” on the Japanese city of Hiroshima and destroyed it. This week, states party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) started a 4-week meeting in New York to review the Treaty, 52 years after it entered into force. The NPT is both an arms control and a disarmament treaty. Today, arms control is weak, disarmament seems far off, war rages in Ukraine and crisis builds over Taiwan. It is time to remember just how destructive Little Boy was. Retrospectively, it is clear the first nuclear weapon used in war was well-named for what happened to Hiroshima is the least of what we can expect if a nuclear war were to start today.
Continue readingNuclear war is unwinnable and must never be fought
On 3 January, the leaders of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (China, France, Russia, the UK and the USA, the P5) jointly stated that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. So say we all, I hope. But what does it mean for the P5 to say this, and to say it now?
Continue readingThe arms control agendas of 2021: some reflections
The extension of the US-Russian New START agreement on strategic nuclear weapons was achieved through the exchange of two sets of diplomatic notes between the respective governments, on 26 January and 3 February. The process was super-straightforward. Both President Putin of Russia and Joe Biden while US President-elect made clear they would each favour extension. The day after inauguration President Biden officially confirmed the position. A few days later, it was done. This was the lowest of low-hanging fruit. Good to have gotten it out of the way (and stupid that the previous administration let it go down to the wire) but now the real work starts.
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