Men of the U.S. 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment dropped from C-47 Skytrains behind a smokescreen into Nazdab. (Photo:'X')
During World War II, offering the excuse of attempting to bring the conflict to an end, the Americans dropped atom bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima (August 6, 1945) and Nagasaki (August 9, 1945), killing tens of thousands in the initial explosions, while many more later succumbed to radiation poisoning.
The very first and only use of nuclear weapons on humanity served its intended purpose for, on August 10, 1945 the Japanese forces agreed to accept the Allied surrender terms that had been dictated in the Potsdam Declaration.
Those also served to show humanity what a scourge military use of a nuclear weapon can be, but at the same time gave the proponents a pretext for creating individual nuclear arsenal, thereby setting off a nuclear race, on the ground of erecting 'deterrents'.
Under the aegis of the United Nations, Britain, China, France, Russia and the US, the earliest recognized nuclear powers, had signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the objective of which had been to push rival nations to cut down on their nuclear arsenal, stop further nuclear testing and stop more nations from joining the 'nuclear club'.
The NPT has been an abject failure, given that new nations, overtly or covertly, have been acquiring nuclear weapons, including North Korea, Iran, India, Pakistan, etc.
This has been mirrored in the repeated lack of success of the five-yearly UN conferences on the NPT, the next of which is scheduled for 2026.
Amid deep division between nuclear haves and have-nots, the NPT review conference failed to adopt a final document the last two times, in clear demonstration of the reality that the myth of nuclear deterrent continues to dominate no matter how serious an existential threat nuclear proliferation might be.
One must appreciate that all nuclear weapons empowered nations have hostile neighbours in their sight - while the US, Russia and China have one another at the global level, North Korea has the South, Iran has Israel and so on. As for India and Pakistan, at this precise moment, these two nuclear empowered neighbours who have never seen eye to eye are at daggers drawn on cross-border terrorism.
Seen in such a context, Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya's call for "dialogue and collaboration" to advance nuclear disarmament at the preparatory committee meeting for the 2026 review conference on the NPT seems to be rather futile.
His assertion that "The cry that the tragedies of nuclear weapons must never be repeated and the call for achieving a 'world without nuclear weapons' are now louder than ever," appear to be more in response to widespread criticism that the Japanese government has not done more to combat this existential threat to humanity.