2023 World Conference against A and H Bombs
International Meeting – Session 2Joseph Gerson
President, Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Common Security
U.S.A.

Friends,
After the disruptions of the worst of the Covid pandemic, it is a delight andprivilege to rejoin the World Conference. Given the increasingly dangerous great
power confrontations and accelerating nuclear arms races, as well as the unique
opportunity that the TPNW affords us, our collaborations are more important thanever. I also want to appreciate Gensuikyo’s welcoming my grandson Mateo. I wanted
to introduce him to the spirit of the Japanese peace and nuclear weapons abolition
movement and to Hiroshima’s legacies and lessons.
As a U.S. American, I was shocked and angered by Ambassador Emanuel’smachinations in engineering the sister park arrangement between Hiroshima andPearl Harbor and by Mayor Matsui’s craven acceptance of the scheme. The agreement
obscures the scale of my country’s massive A-bomb war crimes. The Japanese attack
on Pearl Harbor was certainly a dastardly war crime launched to reinforce JapaneseAsia-Pacific imperialism. It claimed just over 2,000 lives, most of them military.
Contrast that with the A-bombings that indiscriminately claimed almost 200,000
innocent civilian lives – and many more over time – in what was the imperial U.S.Soviet Cold War competition that had already begun.
The A-bombings did not cause Japan’s surrender. Japan was alreadyfunctionally defeated. U.S. naval and air force leaders advised Truman that Japan’s
unconditional surrender could be achieved with a blockade. Truman’s inner mostcircle rejected this because they sought an immediate end to the war to limit Soviet
influence in Manchuria, northern China, Korea, and possibly even Japan. It was
Moscow’s August 9 declaration of war, not the A-bombs, which led Hirohito to orderthe surrender. The sister-park agreement reinforces the U.S.-Japanese military1alliance and is a truth bending blasphemy that contributes to the myth that the Abombings were a just response to the attack on Pearl Harbor. Like May’s G-7
declaration which endorsed the dangerous doctrine of nuclear deterrence, the sisterpark agreement is a setback in the pursuit of a nuclear weapons-free world.
We meet in a challenging time. Following in the U.S. tradition of preparing
and threatening to initiate nuclear war during international crises and wars, Putin,
Medvedev, and other Russians have been rattling their nuclear sabers. The weapons
are unlikely to be launched unless Ukraine unexpectedly threatens Russian control ofCrimea, which has functionally been Russian since 1853, longer than Okinawa hasbeen Japanese. To maintain nuclear pressure, Putin is deploying nuclear weapons toBelarus to offset Moscow’s deteriorating conventional miliary capacity. Among thesources of concern is whether these nuclear weapons will be securely under anyone’s
control in Belarus. Senior Russian analysts have been clear that for years to come
Russia’s conventional inferiority will increase its reliance on its nuclear arsenal.
Elsewhere, the U.S., Japan, and their allies are increasing their alreadymassive levels of military spending. This means sacrificing spending for humanneeds, including for climate resilience. In the U.S. this includes funding replacementsof its entire nuclear arsenal and its triad of delivery systems. It also pays for missile
defense systems which can function as shields to reinforce nuclear first-strike swords.
Biden is deploying new B-61-12 nuclear warheads to bases in six European nations,and U.S. nuclear powered and nuclear armed submarines are returning to South
Korea. Also, here in Northeast Asia all six parties to the region’s tensions havefunctional first strike doctrines, including Japan’s ostensibly conventional
preemptive strike capacity reinforced by the purchase of U.S. cruise missiles. IndianPakistani tensions continue apace, with Pakistan again on the brink of becoming afailed state.
After Bush II and Trump attacked the foundations of the world’s arms control
architecture by withdrawing from the ABM and INF treaties, Moscow has put the last
nails in the arms control coffin by suspending its participation in the New START andOpen Skies Treaties. Refusing to be intimidated by the ongoing U.S. and NATO pivots
to Asia and the Pacific, China has increased the size of its nuclear arsenal and ispreparing the way to achieve nuclear parity with Washington and Moscow. And then2

there are the French, British, and Israeli nuclear arsenals and Iran’s nuclear program
which threatens regional nuclear proliferation..
All of this takes place in the context of Biden’s National Security Strategy
which states that: “the post-Cold War era is definitely over, and competition isunderway between the major powers to shape what comes next.” Fiona Hill, theformer US diplomat who warned against inviting Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO,put it another way: The Ukraine War, she said, marks “ the passing of Pax America
apparent to everyone”. Not everyone. Many in Washington and most of the generalpublic have failed to recognize this reality. The belief that “America is theindispensable nation” still guides U.S. policy makers, fueling self-defeating policies
and provocative and dangerous actions including seeking to strategically defeat
Russia in Ukraine and sending warships through the Taiwan Strait.
The U.S. is not alone in refusing to adjust to the multipolar disorder in life
affirming ways. Putin seeks to rule in the tradition of Peter the Great. China seeks toestablish its East Asian hegemony in the tradition of the Monroe Doctrine. And theCold War never ended on the Korean peninsula. If we are to prevent escalation tonuclear cataclysm, we must address what former Australian Prime Minister Kevin
Rudd named “the avoidable war.” Intensifying U.S.-China military confrontations
and their economic, technological, and diplomatic competition are a replay of theThucydides Trap, the inevitable tensions between rising and declining powers that
too often climaxed in catastrophic wars.
The contest for Asia-Pacific hegemony is related to the outcome of the Ukraine
War. Given Russian-Chinese strategic interdependence, as well as Chinese
dependence on U.S. technology and the U.S. and European markets, China has muchto lose as well as to gain midst the Ukraine War. With its economic and diplomatic
support for Russia, China’s leadership seeks to ensure that Washington and NATOwill continue to face a Russian great power in Europe in order to limit the threatening
miliary buildup by the U.S., its Asian and Pacific allies, and NATO. But, Beijing’s
Ukraine peace plan, its warnings against Russian use of nuclear weapons, its Global
Security Initiative, and its facilitation of the Iran-Saudi agreement demonstrate that
China’s partnership with Moscow is not “unlimited.”3

With its dispatches of warships to the Taiwan Strait, its sorties of nuclear
capable bombers across South Korea, its reinforced military alliances, its expanding
military presence across the Asia-Pacific, and its undermining of the One China
doctrine, the Biden Administration seeks to reinforce the four generation old Bretton
Woods/NATO systems and threats to the misnamed “rules based” order. Yes,
Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, China’s menacing naval forces in Philippine andVietnamese waters, and Beijing ’s rejection of the International Court of Arbitration’sSouth China/West Philippine Sea sovereignty decision are gross violations of the “therules based order.”But they are not the only ones. Keep in mind the AUKUS challenge to the NPT,
Biden’s dispatch of cluster munitions to Ukraine, Trump’s, and Bush II’s assault on
the arms control disorder, U.S. invasions of Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, Reagan’srejection the International Court of Justice, and Washington’s support for Israeli
apartheid.
Biden’s Security Strategy gives the “China threat” pride of place in this“decisive decade.” China is seen as “the only competitor with both the intent toreshape the international order and increasingly the economic, diplomatic, military
and technological power to do it.” The Strategy names Chinese miliary
modernization as the “pacing threat” that drives U.S. military planning, operations,and spending. Biden’s cohort understand that the U.S. can no longer enforce U.S.
hegemony unilaterally. Thus, the priority given to integrating their allies’ military,economic and technological power to resist China’s challenge. They encouraged
Japan to double its military spending, consolidated the QUAD and AUKUS alliances,pressed Tokyo, and Seoul to build a tripartite alliance. Marcos has reembraced theU.S. military alliance. And NATO’s new strategic concept names containing China asan Alliance priority.
China hasn’t stood still. It has reportedly doubled the size of its nuclear arsenal
and may be aiming for nuclear parity with the U.S. Its navy is larger than the 7th fleet
and is the leading edge of its effort to enforce its imperial nine-dash line. Beijing has
repeatedly sent its warplanes across the median line in the Taiwan Strait. And its
space and cyber weapons pose challenges to those of the U.S.
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Taiwan is the most dangerous potential flash point of this geopolitical stew.
Leading Washington analysts agree that, except in the case of an unexpected miliary
accident or incident, Beijing has no intention of invading Taiwan in the near term.
But bi-partisan madness is driving the U.S. Congress toward confrontation. There areother potential triggers for a catastrophic regional war involving the U.S., Japan, andChina: militarized Japanese Chinese competition for the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands,competition for control over the resources and sea lanes of the South China/WestPhilippine Sea, and unanticipated accidents or miscalculations.
As I prepared this talk I thought about how my grandson, as well as all of you,would hear the repeated references to the existential dangers of war, nuclear war, andthe climate emergency. As I close, I want to point to sources of hope. One of myfavorite poets, Leonard Cohen, wrote that “there are cracks in everything/that’s how
the light gets in.”We, the movements to stop the killing in Ukraine, those who are pressing
Common Security diplomacy instead of militarism across Asia and the Pacific, people
working to stanch and reverse the climate emergency, for democracy and above all tocreate a nuclear weapons-free world are all cracks in the war and nuclear systems.
I want to stress the importance of continuing to teach about the lessons ofHiroshima and Nagasaki and celebrating the extraordinary courage of Hibakusha –Japanese and others - who have provided humanity with the gift of their searing
testimonies that eviscerate the illogic of “security” based on nuclear deterrence.
It is painful to witness the passing of Hibakusha, people like Watanabe Chieko,
Yamaguchi Senji, and Taniguchi Sumiteru, who have lit our ways. In addition torekindling their heart rending testimonies during these commemorations, we must
keep their voices, vision, and courage alive in other gatherings, in literature, films,
webinars and more to echo their warnings and hopes long into the future.
Reflecting on the linkage between Hibakusha and the TPNW, AustrianAmbassador Kmentt came to mind. He became the godfather of the TPNW afterbeing profoundly moved by the Hibakusha testimonies that he heard here in
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They obviously fueled his organizing of the Third
Humanitarian Consequences conference, his roles in negotiation of the TPNW, andpromoting it. When Reiner Braun and I spoke to him a few months ago about the5

coming States Parties meeting, with urgency, patience, and his usual humility,
Ambassador Kmentt celebrated the G-20 statement on the inadmissibility of the useof nuclear weapons, achieved by the intervention of TPNW states. He focused onbuilding the TPNW’s transformative bridge to a nuclear weapons free world,
expecting more governments - possibly Brazil and Indonesia - ratifying the Treaty intime for November’s Second Meeting of States Parties in New York. That Meeting, hetold us, will focus on implementing the Action Plan adopted in Viena, progress
toward creating a nuclear weapons victims trust fund, verification processes, andwinning universal adoption of the Treaty. There will also be a focus on how to dealwith Treaty skeptics, especially nuclear umbrella states like Japan, and a new TPNW
declaration that rejects nuclear threats, and which reinforces the nuclear taboo.
There is the classical debate about whether there is sound when a tree falls in aforest, and no one is there to hear itt. Our responsibility, as we work to ensure
Mateo’s and so many others’ futures, is to make sure that there will be sound andpowerful reverberations when the Second States Parties Meeting is held next winter.
Representatives of more than 20 organizations, including ICAN, Peace Action,CPDCS, Gensuikyo and others, have been meeting to plan and coordinate ouractivities in November. We look forward to hosting our Japanese and other partners
as we join to build pressure on the nuclear powers and the umbrella states for thenuclear weapons-free world we need and deserve. I hope to see many of you there as
we deepen the cracks and raise a nuclear weapons abolition din to shake the world!

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