It was 70 years ago that the first of two atomic bombs was dropped on Japan. In seconds 70,000 people were incinerated or were to die of burns and radiation poisoning. The Japanese government was transfixed by the horror of the destruction but it did not seek peace. Three days later, a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki and another 70,000 people were obliterated. The Second World War was brought to a ghastly end. The arguments over the rights and wrongs of the bombings continue. Japan was losing the fight which it had begun almost four years earlier with its attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor. Winkled out of conquered islands by US ground forces and on the retreat before Allied troops in Burma, the next phase of the war would have been the invasion of the Japanese mainland. The attackers and the defenders would have lost thousands, probably tens of thousands of lives each and the death toll among civilians would almost certainly have been considerable. The two devastating nuclear blasts avoided this. And they also avoided something else. In the 70 years since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the world has never seen another nuclear device exploded in anger. The sheer awfulness of the consequences has prevented their use. And as the destructive power of nuclear warheads increased, along with the speed and sophistication with which they could be delivered, it was ironic that the world was actually made a safer place. The most frighteningly powerful weapon system ever developed actually acted as a deterrent to its own use. The possession of atomic weapons has spread from the original nuclear powers, the United States, Britain, France and the Soviet Union. China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and covertly with American assistance, Israel, have since joined the “nuclear club”. Iran, if it is to be believed, has abandoned its membership application. In the past there is no doubt that while nations with nuclear arms respected their mutually destructive abilities, they were content to use their position to project their power onto other countries. The United States came close to a third nuclear bombing in 1951 against the then non-nuclear China. When US-led ground forces were being driven back in the Korean War thanks to the entry of Chinese ground troops into the battle, General Douglas MacArthur called for nuclear attacks. Thankfully, he was ignored. In the final analysis, governments with access to nuclear weapons have preferred to lose a battle rather than trigger a nuclear war in which everyone would lose. Unfortunately, such ultimate sanity cannot be expected of terrorists, most especially the demented death cult that is Daesh (the self-proclaimed IS). The idea that these fanatics could get hold of a nuclear device, however primitive, and detonate it among those who oppose them, is appalling. And there should be no doubt that such a plan has been considered by these lunatics. Until they and their blasphemous and evil ambitions have been destroyed, the risk of them deploying some sort of nuclear device is real. Seventy years of deterrence secured by the lives of the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would come to an end. It can only be hoped that Daesh leaders who happily deploy their duped foot soldiers in suicide attacks, themselves care too much about the pleasures of money and power to try going nuclear and losing everything.
