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.