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The timing of the USA's announcement that it is withdrawing from treaties limiting the nuclear arms race came just a few days before the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in 1945. The anniversary remains important because it serves as a reminder that nuclear weapons have been used and that they could be used again.
How are we to honour the commitment to peace of these Japanese and Maralinga survivors of nuclear conflagrations unleashed maliciously or negligently last century? We need to renew our commitment to painstaking negotiation of international treaties and agreements designed to ensure peace and security for all, insisting on the dignity and human rights of all.
Competing for attention with the Gallipoli landing centenary is this year’s 70th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. New evidence suggests that even a nuclear war involving a very small fraction of the world’s arsenals would result in the atmospheric accumulation of so much particulate matter from burning cities that there would be reduced sunlight, agricultural decline and famine affecting possibly two billion people.
It is a weakness of human nature that we forgive in our friends what we despise in our enemies. If Germany or Japan had achieved a nuclear weapon and launched it on an Allied city, our condemnation would be unrelenting.
The disasters in Japan early this year left scenes of destruction reminiscent of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Australian experiences of Japanese wartime cruelty have never been forgotten or forgiven. But the problems are not all on the Japanese side.
Many Australians still believe US President Harry Truman made the right decision in authorising the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Philosopher Michael Walzer calls it an act of terrorism designed 'to spread fear across a nation and force the surrender of its government'.
Continuing the work of the defunct Canberra Commission, Kevin Rudd's Nuclear Non-Proliferations and Disarmament Commission is re-inventing a wheel that never worked. Preventing freelance scientists from following their career wanderlust is the real challenge in any post-nuclear framework.