Three Strikes -- Nuclear Nonproliferation Is Out

Over 70,000 people died on August 9, 1945 in Nagasaki, Japan. The bomb went off at 11:02 a.m. The people of Japan mourn those who were lost, through memorial ceremonies. The ceremony that took place in Nagasaki on Sunday was replete with a message from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon: "I wholeheartedly join you in sounding a global rallying cry: No more Nagasakis. No more Hiroshimas."

On August 9, 1945, the American B-29 bomber, Bock's Car left Tinian carrying Fat Man, a plutonium implosion-type bomb. The primary target was the Kokura Arsenal, but upon reaching the target, they found that it was covered by a heavy ground haze and smoke, pilot Charles Sweeney turned to the secondary target of the Mitsubishi Torpedo Plant at Nagasaki.


Today Nagasaki has double the population it had in 1945. The two cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are the only places in the world to have suffered the horrible ordeal of being crushed by atomic bombs, their citizens incinerated, others affected by radiation poisoning The destruction of the city of Nagasaki was near-total; 70 percent of it was destroyed. There are 8,500 survivors living with "atomic bomb syndrome" still living today in both cities.

The magic number seems to be 70; it was 70 years ago that the bombs were dropped, ostensibly to stop Japan from continuing its war against America. It has been 70 years since the nuclear age brought fear of total, uncompromising destruction to the world. A world where science gave us inventions for good and for bad. Nuclear power has since been harnessed to produce civil-use energy.
And after the rush to acquire nuclear weapons, there was a cautionary slow-down.

No rational mind could conceive of nuclear incineration as a potential war machine that might be useful under any circumstances in the wake of the circumstances that led to its actual use and the resulting catastrophe. Efforts to restrict and contain the threat of nuclear warfare through arms control negotiations and non-proliferation treaties spoke to the humanity of human nature trumping the evil that humankind is capable of.

Now, so many years later, we're back to where we started. Although 190 countries have signed on to the Non-Proliferation Treaty requiring them to forswear the development of nuclear weapons, there are those countries that have chosen to bypass the formality of declaring themselves disinterested in achieving ownership of the world's deadliest weapon. One nation whose people uniquely experienced genocide opted to develop and hold atomic weapons in permanent abeyance.

India and Pakistan and North Korea have developed their own nuclear weapons; the former two in a state of perpetual cold comfort in a cauldron of mutual hatred; the latter as a presumed deterrent to interference in its affairs. In all instances an uneasy acceptance due to an inability to interdict what had already resulted, has taken place. Nations with volatile ideological roots and a propensity to violence and paranoia in possession of nuclear devices make for an uneasy world

And then there is the final capitulation to the aspiration of an emotionally fragile, vehemently paranoid Islamist state's board game of pretense to adhere to international standards of decency and humanity, one for which civilizing norms appear as anathema, but which will attain nuclear weapons because it insists it will, and there is no power on Earth to stop it. The powers indeed might have, but chose not to in their aggregate surrender to cupidity and stupidity.

There is the example of Libya surrendering its nuclear program, after witnessing American power destroying the empire that Saddam Hussein, threatening possession of nuclear design, brought the wrath of the righteous West upon Iraq. South Africa chose of its own volition to surrender its nuclear program. And Ukraine was persuaded by its nemesis to surrender its Soviet-era nuclear weapons for a guarantee of territorial integrity. There were no consequences for a total abrogation of that guarantee.

North Korea suffered no consequences for its evasion of United Nations sanctions, and nor did Russia. And now the world at large is anxious to reap financial benefit from doing business with the world's third-largest oil reserves and its population hungry for release from the lean times of sanctioned punishment. On behalf of the entire world order, Russia, the United States, China, France, Britain and Germany consented to Iran's nuclearization.

The fallout of that decision is yet to be seen, but can be imagined, with a huge shudder of anticipation of all that can go wrong, and possibly will. Nuclear non-proliferation does not rest in peace, but it has been put to rest. Now the world knows of a certainty how elusive the condition of peace can be.