Viewpoint: Will Obama hold good on his rhetoric of nuclear disarmament?

I was recently interviewed by BBC Wales in an interview by Roy Jenkins; the other speakers were Nigel Biggar, Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at Oxford University and the Reverend Guto Prys Ap Gwynfor, chairperson of Cymdeithas Y Cymod or The Fellowship of Conciliation in Wales and last but not least, Bruce Kent the vice-president of CND. In the interview, I spoke about the fact that the hibakusha, as the survivors of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki are known are finally being heard - their stories of extreme suffering and witness were in fact all over the news in the last two weeks and many can still be viewed and accessed on the BBC website. As a foreign researcher on Hiroshima, I can only observe that it is high time this coverage has been granted them, since this is their last chance.

Foreign Minister of Japan, Fumio Kishida, himself from Hiroshima, sees it as a priority to hand down the legacy of the hibakusha to the next generation.

Ban Ki-Moon has heeded this call, setting up concerted efforts to record hibakusha stories. These world leaders are simply echoing writers from the past. Writer and moral thinker Mary McCarthy called Hiroshima a "hole in human history", while others have commented that the use of an atomic weapon put the Allies in 1945 on a level with Nazi atrocities. Martin Luther King, as early as 1959, wrote: "What would be the value of having established social justice if we were merely free to face destruction in atomic war?". It was James Baldwin, Nobel Laureate for Literature who pointed out the parallels between the struggle for civil rights and the struggle for nuclear abolition. "The two fights are the same," he said, "the confrontation of both dilemmas requires inner courage."

US President Barack Obama followed in the footsteps of Martin Luther King, making an appeal for nuclear abolition in 2009 following on from his Berlin speech in front of the Brandenburg gate in 2008, "Peace with justice means pursuing the security of a world without nuclear weapons." To quote him in his follow-up speech in Prague, 2009: "Rules must be binding, words must mean something." This speech was followed up by yet another speech in Europe in September 2013 when he urged Russia to "move beyond the Cold War" and begin a push for reducing the nuclear weapons arsenal, and eventually eliminate them. "As long as nuclear weapons exist we are not safe he stated." He called for a reduction of nuclear arsenals as well as for treaties to control the production of atomic weapons as well as to reduce deployed nuclear weapons. He urged Russia to drop its Cold War postures after his third anti-nuclear speech delivered in Europe. The US and British statement to the ICAN (International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons) conference held in Vienna, 8-9 December last year, read: "We know that we have not done enough."

What is it that inspires Obama to wax lyrical on disarmament abroad, whilst at home it seems, he seems unable to control military posturing? In 2010, the US and Russia agreed a proposal for the New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) deal between Moscow and Washington which set a limit on nuclear stockpiles of 1,550 warheads for each side by 2018, a deal which now looks as though it was written on water.

I attended the Non Proliferation Treaty Party Review Conference in New York in April, where it was very clear that the US, Russia and NATO were rearming to make nuclear weapons smarter and more efficient, fewer, but even more deadly.. IALANA, the International Associaton of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms as well as the Federation of American Scientists gave us facts of what was known about nuclear arsenals around the world. Russia is very deeply into modernization and new programmes do not imply modernization but in fact an entirely new system of nuclear weapons is in place. China is now upgrading its cruise missile systems, although the extent is not well known. Meanwhile India and Pakistan who do not participate in the NPT are increasing their nuclear arsenals and delivery systems.

The US and its allies in NATO are also renewing nuclear arsenals, Turkey already delivered more than 37 planes whilst there are more than 8000 F-35 jets and missiles being made: there is a missile defence shield currently constructed through NATO: it is about to be completed in 7-8 years. 'We need to maintain (the nuclear arsenals indefinitely) ... the nuclear weapons' states have no plan to get rid of the nuclear weapons "only the civil society in the nuclear weapons states is prepared to ban nuclear weapons."

We have 16,300 weapons in the world today especially if we count the retired warheads in the US and Russia: 90 per cent of all nuclear weapons are constructed for use in battlefield. Remilitarization means that planes are made for delivery of these weapons. When the facts are seen in broad daylight like this, it is difficult to say who is more of a culprit in terms of remilitarization -- Russia or the US who, it seems are now adversaries once again. The theatre of war is the Ukraine, which bravely gave up its nuclear deterrent in the peaceful period following the cold war. So, it seems promises on both sides are being reneged on, just as the conflict in the Ukraine is seen as the result of aggression on both sides, with NATO meddling on the border with Russia, and Russia's incursion into the Ukraine. In fact incursions into Sovereign States in Europe have in the last 200 years, led to war.

What we need now is real peace leadership, not wishful thinking and that leadership can only come from a country that deploys the language of peace and is prepared to put it into action, being prepared to sacrifice losses in terms of national pride and rhetoric for the sake of the greater good of humanity.

Obama has not only a personal, but also family history of campaigning for social justice which runs through his veins. It has inspired his development as both a human being as well as a leader. Obama's astonishing rise to the US Presidency as a mixed-race American with one African parent, is certainly one of the great stories of the early 21st century and in his autobiography 'Dreams of My Father', a key turning point in his value system is when he discovers the meaning of empathy, when his mother says of any bullying behaviour: "How do you think that would make you feel?"

Obama speaks specifically of his opposition to the Iraq war and the use of torture in Guantanamo. Perhaps he too, could be moved by speaking to the hibakusha. There is one anecdote, which says that, when, during a visit to Japan in 2009, he said to the head of the gensuikyo, hibakusha alliance, that he would like to visit Hiroshima. I can only imagine this was due to his empathy with the survivors.

This year's extensive BBC coverage on Hiroshima aired the frustration and anger of survivors at both the remilitarization of Japan (under the US aegis) as well as their anger over the way their suffering has been silenced within the global language of atrocities. Bo Jacobs, a professor at Hiroshima City University interviewed on Peter Allen's Radio 5 Lives show, put it well: "in Japan, Hiroshima is about the people who were lost, in the States it is the story of this amazing technology of human achievement."

Setsuko Thurlow, an active peace campaigner who is determined to see nuclear weapons abolished in her lifetime explained to Radio 5 Live listeners some of the story of discrimination which Hiroshima survivors have encountered: "They had real trouble in this country because of their radiation sickness, they were avoided because looked ugly, they should not marry. It was devastating: people found out that those in the city who were exposed to radiation produced deformed babies. They also looked ugly and they didn't work very hard because they felt lethargic; they were considered to be dangerous people and the city authorities kept them from employment and rents."

I was inspired to start my research at the Open University by a visit to Hiroshima where a couple revealed that it was normal in Hiroshima was for hibakusha to die in silence.

It is a story that the BBC presenters themselves were visibly moved by. Reporter Rupert Wingfield-Hayes stated that the lack of real education about Hiroshima extends to the US, that although Japan has been vilified for not discussing its past, the US (including its allies) have also not undergone enough soul-searching on this issue. The youth who were interviewed on radio and on television were the ones who were most shocked by their own lack of education. Jamal Maddox from Princeton University said that he had been "taught this narrative that this great scientific instrument was developed, there was a flash and the war ended," whereas "the suffering is being relived every day".

As Peter Allen summed up: "I have felt a lot of empathy.... it was a day just like today, blue sky, young boys your age facing a society which had been obliterated, until to you speak to the people who have been through and what they have been through... it puts it into perspective."

Professor Richard Falk, now a professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University wrote: "The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were viewed as contributions to the ending of a popular and just war. Therefore they have never been appraised in the necessary way as atrocities. They have never been understood as they certainly would have been understood had Hiroshima and Nagasaki been located in an Allied territory. Somehow we have got to create that awareness so that Hiroshima is understood to have been on the same level of depravity and in many ways far more dangerous to us as a species and as a civilisation than was even Auschwitz."

In fact, until people know the truth about the crime against humanity which is Hiroshima, there will be no true empathy for the survivors and they will continue to be used as political pawns, as China did last year, saying that Japan was claiming special status as a victim of the US - whilst of course China claims special status as a victim of both the West and Japan.

Meanwhile President Obama has kept the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to him for his Nobel prize winning speech in Prague, something that Nobel Peace Laureate Jody Williams has called into question, as there are no signs of hard work for nuclear non-proliferation. It was campaigns such as Jody Williams' campaign to ban landmines and the later campaign to ban cluster bombs which has inspired ICAN, the international campaign to ban nuclear weapons consisting of over 400 NGOs. I have now attended two of their conferences, and at both, it is the South African speakers who I am most impressed by.

The singer Nosizwe Baqwa from South Africa cited Mandela's vision in seeing the possibility within an impossible system of apartheid inspired us to work for nuclear abolition: "dare to expect more, dare to end another truly unjust, unfair system, abolition of war," she said.

Nuclear weapons divide the world, literally, all nuclear armed states are on the north side of the equator; the intransigence of nuclear armed countries in believing in a policy of deterrence, keeps the world effectively, still at war, with the 'Sword of Damocles' as Bertrand Russell stated still dangling over our head. Costa Rica has called for real democracy on nuclear issues, as more than 100 nations have now stated that they support a ban.

"Please stay who you are" (or were before you were elected), "don't disappoint us," said Obama's supporters during his first Presidential campaign according to his autobiography The Audacity of Hope.

I feel Obama has just over one year to hold good on his rhetoric of nuclear disarmament and to complete the good work he has started in the Iran deal. Perhaps he could do worse that listen to the words of Pope Francis when he comes to visit him: "in a war one always loses; the only way to win a war is not to wage it," he wrote a letter in support of the ICAN 2014 Vienna conference on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons. Pope Francis also warned that the conflict over the Ukraine could see us starting to what he called "world war three".

Next January will see the anniversary of the first UN General Assembly which was held in Westminster Hall, the first international meeting to unanimously adopt a resolution to ban nuclear weapons, and next July 9th is the anniversary of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, which, as mentioned above, first referred to nuclear weapons as the sword of Damocles and inaugurated the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. It reads "Remember your humanity and forget the rest." In fact, more and more civilians are being dragged into uniform, on every side, Pope Francis will have a lot to talk to Obama about.

Links:

White House - Remarks by President Barack Obama in Prague as Delivered - www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-barack-obama-prague-delivered

BBC 5 August 2015 - Hiroshima atomic bomb survivor speaks out - www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-33774840