by Joseph Gerson
Over many years, I have had the extraordinary privilege of working with Japanese atomic and hydrogen bomb survivors. These are people who have endured and transformed the worst imaginable physical and emotional traumas into the most influential force for nuclear weapons abolition. Their fundamental call is that “human beings and nuclear weapons cannot coexist.” Their courage, their call, and their steadfast advocacy of nuclear weapons abolition earned them the Nobel Peace Prize last December. In awarding the Hibakusha the Nobel Prize, the Nobel Committee sent the world a powerful message. The world is closer to catastrophic nuclear war than it has ever been, and we must act now for nuclear weapons abolition.
Even as we celebrate the Hibakusha’s courage and achievements, we face an increasingly dangerous world. As Antonio Gramsci wrote, “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”: among them Trump, Putin, and Netanyahu. The dangers of the disorienting tectonic changes marked by the reaction of the West to the rise of China and the Global South is compounded by the need to warn that humanity is 89 seconds to midnight asthe Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Doomsday Clock, did to warn of the nuclear danger.
Trump’s counterrevolutionary Big Brutal Bill includes an additional $150 billion for the military. The new trillion-dollar military budget includes roughly $30 billion for new nuclear warheads and the delivery systems to end all life as we know it. NATO nations have been forced to increase – in some cases double – their military spending. As the NATO Secretary General stated, this is being done so that the US can reduce its European commitments in order to continue building up its forces in Japan and across the Indo-Pacific in its campaign to contain and limit China. The Indo-Pacific alliances are reminiscent of those that preceded World War I. Incidents, accidents, and miscalculations in the South and East China Seas and elsewhere could trigger escalation – even nuclear war. Taiwan remains the hinge of US Indo-Pacific imperial power and lies at the vortex of US/Japan vs. China ambitions and confrontations. The truth is that Taiwan cannot be militarily defended, and a military conflict there is the most likely trigger for a nuclear war. Following the U.S. and NATO illegal wars on Serbia, Afghanistan, and Iraq, Putin and Trump have flagrantly undermined the U.N. Charter system with their wars in Ukraine and Iran as well as US complicity in Israel’s Gaza genocide. Trump’s bombing of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure dangerously crossed an essential red line, and is more likely to spur nuclear weapons proliferation than prevent it.
At home, Trump’s white supremacist rule aims to end constitutional democracy. In communities across the US, masked Gestapo-like ICE (Immigration, Customs Enforcement) police kidnap our immigrant neighbors and ship them to brutal prisons in other countries. In the tradition of other dictators, our universities, press and science are under attack. Our president is illegally inflicting punishing tariffs on our allies. And the urgent need to address the existential dangers of climate change is being abandoned. The era of Pax Americana is truly over.
But the situation in the US is not entirely bleak. People have not rolled over and played dead. Instead democratic values, culture, and commitments to human rights have asserted themselves as millions of people have come out into the streets to say No Kings, stop ICE’s terrorism, and fund healthcare and education, not warfare. On June 14, while Trump celebrated his birthday with an expensive and poorly attended military parade, over five million people turned out across the country to march against the Trump agenda. Trump is being challenged in the courts. Mobilization is under way to oust the dictatorial MAGA forces in the 2026 congressional elections. And across the country people are re-dedicating themselves to the struggle for a nuclear weapons-free world as they commemorate this 80th anniversary. But the immediate threat of nuclear disaster remains, which is why the Nobel Peace Prize Committee chose to honor Nihon Hidankyo with their award. It was a powerful warning to the world.
Over 12,000 nuclear weapons remain in the nine nuclear weapons states’ arsenals, 93% of them are in the US and Russian arsenals. The average strategic, or hydrogen, bomb is 20 times more powerful than the Hiroshima A-bomb. Those first A-Bombs killed 210,000 people almost immediately. Hundreds of thousands more died later from radiation diseases. We now know that a nuclear exchange of 50-100 nuclear weapons would almost immediately kill millions of people, and their smoke and fires would create global cooling in the northern hemisphere, leading to crop failures and the deaths of an estimated two billion people. In order to make the most of this 80th anniversary, we need to understand, address, expose, and disarm the imperial and deterrence logics that drive today’s multi trillion-dollar nuclear arms races.
Daniel Ellsberg, the principal author of Presidents Kennedy’s and Johnson’s nuclear warfighting doctrines, testified that the US repeatedly threatened to initiate nuclear war during wars and international crises. Presidents, he said, used them in the same way that an armed robber uses a gun when pointing it at its victim’s head. Whether or not the trigger is pulled, the gun has been used. US presidents have done this at least 30 times, most frequently to reinforce its Middle East and Asia-Pacific hegemony. Each of the other nine nuclear weapons states has also prepared and threatened to initiate nuclear war at least once.
The ideological foundation for nuclear annihilation preparations is deterrence theory, which works until it doesn’t. Numerous US military officials have stated that deterrence has never been US policy. Years ago, when the Bush-Cheney administration was developing its Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations, its initial draft let the cat out of the bag. It stated that “The focus of US deterrence efforts is…to influence adversaries to withhold actions intended to harm US’ national interests.” That is not limited to preventing nuclear attacks against the US but also includes control of our oil under their sand or to prevent powers from intervening to protect those Washington is determined to attack. This is precisely what Putin has done in Ukraine.
There will be a major Review Conference next year of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), one of the seminal treaties of the 20th century. In the 1960s, Washington and Moscow recognized that the science creating nuclear weapons was no longer beyond the reach of many countries. They feared that as many as forty countries could develop nuclear weapons by the end of that century; The Treaty they negotiated with the vast majority of the world’s nations rests on its three pillars: Nonnuclear weapons states forswore becoming nuclear powers, but have the right to develop and use nuclear power for peaceful purposes. And Article VI obligates the initial five nuclear powers to engage in good faith negotiations for the complete elimination of nuclear weapons. They have resisted this obligationfor more than 50 years.
Counter-productively, Trump’s and Netanyahu’s war on Iran undermines the NPT and may hasten Tehran deciding to become a nuclear weapons state. This would trigger nuclear weapons proliferation across the Middle East. Diplomacy, not war, was and remains the way to respond. Iran did sign the NPT, but following Trump’s attack on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure its parliament voted to cease cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a step just short of withdrawing from the Treaty. That said, we also need to acknowledge that Israel, as well as three other nuclear powers, still refuses to sign the Treaty and lives outside its obligations.
Even as Trump and Netanyahu threaten possible future attacks if Iran resuscitates its nuclear program, their attacks are already spurring nuclear weapons proliferation. Knowledge about how to build a nuclear weapon was not eliminated. Building from the lessons of Ukraine and Libya which were invaded after they surrendered their nuclear weapons programs, there is now greater incentive for Iran and other nations to adopt the lesson that their sovereignty and independence require retaliatory nuclear arsenals, as was the case in North Korea. Such are the consequences of brutal and ignorant fools leading powerful governments. Add to that the majority of South Koreans who favor their government possessing nuclear weapons growing from fears of being left to confront North Korea on their own, and here in Japan where the SDF has long asserted that the constitution gives them the right to possess nuclear weapons.
Currently some members of Congress are pressing the Back from the Brink Campaign. It calls for nuclear weapons abolition, halting the two trillion spending for the new nuclear arsenal, a no-first-strike policy and more. State legislation is pending in support of the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).
As we mark the 80th anniversary of the A-bombings, people are organizing commemorations across the US. In Boston there will be speeches from members of Congress and abolitionists from around the world, publication of a signature advertisement in the Boston Globe, a giant video screen, organizational tables, ice cream and music. In New York the Manhattan Project for Nuclear-Free World, Veterans For Peace NYC Chapter 34, and Peace Action New York State, with support from the Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Common Security, initiated a sign-on statement in which we join in expressing our profound regrets and apologies for our nation’s atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We ask that supporters the world over join us in these activities.
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Joseph Gerson is a member of the MAPA board, author of Empire and the Bomb, and was a member of Nihon Hidankyo’s Nobel Peace Prize delegation.
