During the visit of president Obama to the atomic memorial site in Hiroshima there was widespread curiosity as to what he would say. Would he offer an apology?
Apologies after
all are a modern form of politics that comes for free. Bill Clinton for
instance apologised for forcibly opening Haiti to American rice which threw
local farmers out of business and drove them to Port-au-Prince as jobseekers.
In the Netherlands we apologise for slavery, maybe also for the colonial
‘police actions’ in Indonesia, and so on. Nothing changes and yet you appear in
a most favourable light.
In the Dutch media
Obama already got credit for a dignified but otherwise meaningless visit. The
media repeated the mantra that the bombing saved millions of lives because no
invasion of the Japanese mainland was necessary.
Thus we get back
to square one. The ‘millions’ were maybe important for the American Army top
brass, although the Japanese, who were ready to surrender, were only
negotiating over whether the Emperor could stay on.
There was an at
least equally important second ground for the nuclear bombardment, viz., to
intimidate the Soviet Union. Secretary of States James Byrnes said literally
that this weapon in the American arsenal would make the Russians a lot more
manageable in Europe.
In addition it is
often forgotten that a second bomb was thrown, which according to the Dutch
member of the Japanese War Crimes tribunal, B.V.A. Röling, was not even
mentioned in the Japanese war cabinet.
For the consortium
that had produced the (plutonium) bomb did not want that only the uranium bomb
thrown on Hiroshima would be the only option on the post-war wish list of the
Air Force, and that sealed the fate of Nagasaki. An lo and behold, the first
order for atomic bombs was for 300 plutonium bombs.
Finally historians
have also debated the racially motivated hatred of Japan which especially
strong in the American South. There industry in the 1930s had also suffered
from Japanese textile competition, and the new US leadership after Roosevelt’s
death, so Harry Truman, Byrnes, and others, were southerners.
Should hundreds of
thousands of civilians die in a nuclear inferno for any one or more of these
reasons?
There is of course
an even more important ground why Obama has not apologised for the atomic
bombardment of August 1945. And that is that such an apology would mean that on
reflection, the use of nuclear weapons would be recognised as a crime.
And once you do
that, can you then announce huge investments in new nuclear weapons, as the
Americans are now doing?.
The
Non-Proliferation Treaty not only prescribes that countries taking the path of
nuclear energy, open their installation to inspection to prevent that new
nuclear military powers join the club. It also determines that the existing
nuclear powers take steps to dismantle their arsenals.
Yet the Obama
administration in 2014 announced it would invest 1 trillion dollars in a
programme to upgrade its atomic forces.
Have people then
forgotten that in the Reagan years, there was a study showing that a conflict
with atomic weapons would result in a ‘nuclear winter’ that would exterminate
life on earth?
Here I think the
concept of Mike Davis, ‘nuclear imperialism’ plays out. It refers to the
ultimate ‘insurance’ offered by nuclear superiority and which makes at possible
to take military risks at lower levels, in the knowledge that the other party
will not dare to respond in an equally risky manner.
In 2005 the
authoritative journal, Foreign Affairs, published an article that argued that
the US were on the way to absolute nuclear superiority. Neither Russia nor
China would be able to respond in kind following an American surprise
attack.
Hence the
importance, according to the authors, of missile defence. Not to eliminate an
integral swarm of intercontinental missiles fired by the opponent, which would
be impossible. But for the few remaining missiles still launched after a
debilitating first strike, missile defence would be vital.
Last month the
American missile defence installation in Rumania, which is part of a system in
which the Dutch navy too is involved, has gone live.
In Moscow the
conclusion is slowly becoming inescapable that the troop reinforcements on
Russia’s borders are part of a policy of staged escalation which at the highest
level can be decided by the US with a destructive nuclear strike.
That is why Obama
allowed pictures to be taken of himself with Japanese survivors, but made no
statement which might be interpreted as a rejection of nuclear weapons.
The capitalist
West is stuck in the deepest crisis since the 1930s and is frantically
exploring a way out. War as a result is coming closer that ever and we should
mobilise against it without delay.
Kees van der Pijl
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