Preventing Nuclear War: The Medical and Humanitarian Case for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons by John Loretz & Marion Birch & Leo van Bergen

Author:John Loretz & Marion Birch & Leo van Bergen [Loretz, John & Birch, Marion & Bergen, Leo van]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780367456740
Google: TUy2zAEACAAJ
Goodreads: 49812116
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2020-03-17T00:00:00+00:00

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Nuclear disarmament: a Malaysian experience

Ronald McCoy

Introduction

Nuclear weapons are the most destructive, inhumane and indiscriminate weapons ever conceived. The detonation of a single nuclear weapon over a city could kill millions of people and leave behind a long-lasting residue of lethal radioactivity. The World Health Organisation has warned that nuclear weapons represent the greatest immediate threat to human health and welfare.

The nuclear age began with a bang on 6 August 1945 when a solitary United States bomber dropped a single ‘atomic bomb’ on the Japanese city of Hiroshima and destroyed it completely. Three days later, Nagasaki was destroyed in the same way. More than one hundred thousand civilians were killed.

At the time, Malaya (now Malaysia) had been under Japanese occupation since January 1942. The news of the bombings was unclear, as radios had long been confiscated and newspapers censored. It was generally assumed that an ‘atomic bomb’ was a new highly destructive bomb.

When I was a medical student four years later, I read John Hersey’s book, Hiroshima, and I began to comprehend the total destructiveness of nuclear weapons and the predictable nature of nuclear war. Any use of nuclear weapons would be contrary to the principles and rules of international humanitarian law applicable in armed conflict. Nuclear war would be nothing less than global self-extermination. Nuclear weapons had to be abolished.

Founded in 1946, the Preamble to the Charter of the newly formed United Nations aspired ‘to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.’(UN 1945). Its very first resolution, unanimously approved in early 1946, established a Commission on Atomic Energy for ‘the control of atomic energy to ensure its use only for peaceful purposes’ and ‘the elimination from national armaments of atomic weapons and all other major weapons adaptable to mass destruction.’(The Yearbook of the UN 1946–47, 1947).

Despite these auspicious beginnings, mutual distrust, ideological differences, competing foreign policies and continued interaction in Europe following World War II – particularly in Germany – meant the Cold War ensued. It triggered a nuclear arms race and the eventual proliferation of 60,000 nuclear warheads. The rationale rested on the theory of nuclear deterrence and mutual assured destruction. Global security unravelled and it became clear that a nuclear war, whether by accident, miscalculation or intent, would jeopardise planetary and human survival.

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