Sixty years on after the first atomic bomb dropped

Sixty years on after the first atomic bomb dropped

J. Soedjati Djiwandono, Jakarta

Year in and year out since the atomic bomb was dropped on
Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945 and three day later on Nagasaki,
memorials have been held in the two cities in the presence of an
increasingly smaller number of the survivors of the tragedy to
bear witness to the unimaginable horror of the destructive
effects of the atomic explosions. The message could not have been
more obvious: No more!

However, the failure of the NPT review conference at the end
of May after almost four weeks of deliberations gave the world a
message in no uncertain terms: Nuclear disarmament is getting
further away.

Sixty years do not seem long enough, or perhaps the other way
round, far too long to maintain the memory of the horror of the
atomic, or now nuclear bomb.

Indeed, one would have thought that after the end of the Cold
War, there would be no more need for nuclear weapons. After all,
the end of the Cold War was not due to the success of the
strategic (nuclear) balance between the two superpowers in the
bipolar Cold War.

In the words of my late colleague Gerald Segal of the London-
based IISS, the end of the Cold War, marked by the collapse of
the Soviet empire, did not prove the successful working of the
strategic balance. It simply proved, rather, that it had not
failed.

I tend to believe that the collapse of the Soviet empire that
led to the end of the Cold War was the systemic, thus inherent
weakness of the communist system laid bare, which led to its
demise through Mikhael Gorbachev's idea of Glasnost and
Prestroika more than the role of such great figures as the late
President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II. Hence, the U.S.
remains the only "superpower" in the world, if in a somewhat
distorted sense of the original term.

That has led to the image of the U.S. as the only superpower,
with its nuclear arsenal intact compared to the Soviet Union
whose nuclear arsenal is now spread among several states besides
Russia after its breakup. This made it possible for the U.S. to
take a unilateral action, thus abandoning multilateralism by its
invasion of Iraq.

Indeed, rather than rendering the possession of nuclear
weapons insignificant, in the current developments, the
possession of nuclear weapons has tended to become a symbol of
power and prestige. This helps explain the behavior of Iran and
North Korea as "recalcitrant boys" whose threat of nuclear weapon
development seems to have been used as a form of blackmail
targeted at the West in their efforts to obtain aid for the
development of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

It is reminiscent of a policy of nonalignment in the past Cold
War by such countries as Indonesia under Sukarno as a form of
blackmail of both sides to settle conflicts in their own favor.

Such a line of thought, however, is not to speak in favor of
the development of a new strategic (nuclear) balance, for a
strategic balance would not serve anyone's security' interests.
Indeed, while for centuries, even before the advent of nuclear
weapons, relations among nations, or international politics, had
been characterized by some kind of a balance of power for the
maintenance of international peace, with the maintenance and
continuous development of nuclear weapons, a strategic nuclear
balance would never secure international peace.

With the development of nuclear weapons, a strategic balance
would tend to become a "balance of terror", which would create,
just as in the Cold War, a new threat to the whole world. This
would be the threat and danger of the possible outbreak of an
inadvertent war because of the possibility of misreading of
signals, despite the continued technological advancement. Such a
"balance of terror" would not be a guarantee of security for
anyone.

Therefore, the world should continue to remember and listen to
the call of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for the ultimate, complete
renunciation and elimination of nuclear weapons for the survival
of the earth and human civilization. The NPT is a good start. The
point is that both the non-nuclear signatories and the nuclear-
power states should strictly abide by their commitment.

Indeed, the present challenge to the security of the world is
more complex. While we are facing the problem of nuclear
disarmament, we are facing also a new dimension in security. This
is terrorism. And a combination of both, which is the possibility
of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists, tactical
or otherwise, is a challenge the world has yet to seek common
efforts to overcome.

The writer, a Ph.D graduate from London School of Economics,
was an academic member of the UN Secretary General's Advisory
Board on Disarmament Matters, 1999-2000, and a consultant to the
preparation for the UN Review Conference of NPT, 2000.