Day: August 12, 2025

David Borris is CAPA’s Board President and co-facilitates its Foreign Policy Working Group.

Good morning – Thank you all so much for coming out on this quite warm midday to mourn and commemorate the only use of nuclear weapons in combat in the history of the world. The effects of those two bombings, on Aug 6 and Aug 9, 80 years ago were so singularly horrific that the world’s conscience has not afforded the space for another use of these diabolical weapons since. UNTIL NOW.

Certainly, over the years there have been dangerous scenarios: The Korean War, The Cuban Missile Crisis, the 1973 Arab Israeli War – to name a few. But in each of these instances, those who controlled the mechanisms of the end of civilization prevailed over chaos through communication, careful diplomacy, and sane rational thinking. Over the past 80 years, we have been lulled into a false sense of security believing that such clear communication, careful diplomacy and sane, rational thinking will always come to the fore and save mankind from its worst instincts.

I am here today to say loud and clear that this is nothing more than magical thinking—and anyone who chooses to ignore the dire warning signs are either closing their eyes to a situation they do not wish to acknowledge, or they are blissfully, nay, foolishly, unaware of the gathering storm.

For a moment, let’s take a short trip through recent history—we’ll begin a mere 62 years ago, on June 10, 1963, on the campus of American University – when then President John F. Kennedy delivered what has become known as the “Peace Speech” – at the height of the cold war. The rhetoric was powerful- but more important, the actions that followed were inspiring. The United States would unilaterally stop all nuclear testing and pledge not to resume if no other nation did so. And the limited test ban treaty was signed less than 60 days later- and is largely credited as being the first step toward a global nonproliferation treaty – which became a reality in 1968 – and found full force of int’l law in 1970.

Moving from 1963 to 1970 – when the NPT came into force – it represented a grand bargain – the non-nuclear weapons nations would agree to NOT develop these weapons of horrific mass destruction, and the then 5 nuclear armed states in turn – under Article VI of the treaty would agree “to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament”.

While the rest of the world largely held up their end of the bargain – with the fervent hope that the nuclear weapons owning states would hold up their end—we failed – and largely failed humanity. To be clear, we continued the empty rhetorical service to the safety and security of a world without nuclear weapons- but tragically, we did nothing more.

Continuing on our historical journey- we jump ahead to Prague- April, 2009- where newly elected President Barack Obamas promised- “ So today, I state clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons” – Such great hope — Alas- a short two years later, in 2010 – that same president signed into law a full and complete nuclear modernization program – committing $1.5 trillion over 30 years to a complete overhaul of our entire nuclear weapons architecture. This boondoggle has ensured that the US would NOT and WILL NOT lead on the disarmament obligations all signatories to the treaty claimed to undertake under Article VI.

Finally, in one more attempt to position the US as the keeper of the Nuclear Disarmament flame, in 2020, then candidate Joe Biden spoke repeatedly on the campaign trail stating that the sole purpose of our nuclear arsenal will be deterrence –and deterrence only – with the clear understanding that the US would adopt, in effect, a no first use policy – which he promptly never spoke of again after being sworn in to office.

And now we come full circle to this moment. Martin Luther King recognized more than 60 years ago that “Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power “. Indeed, with the massive growth of scientific knowledge and lightning fast global communication systems – it is no longer possible to keep nuclear weapons technology and the accompanying scientific knowledge bottled up to be dispensed only to whosoever “we see fit to possess it”. That ship has sailed – and so we have become, in Kings words “a nation of guided missiles and misguided men”.

And we have very little left to bargain with – save our rapidly vanishing moral authority. And with the current administration fixation on demanding that the industrialized nations of the world arm themselves to the teeth – with US made weapons and weapons systems- we now face the very real nightmare of at least a dozen , and possibly more , nuclear arme nations in the very near future.

In the last year of his life, I heard Daniel Ellsberg say on more than one occasion, “the possibility of a nuclear detonation, by design, miscalculation or accident is not 0%, it’s not even close to 0% .” And we know that the universal laws of physics and mathematics tell us that anything that is not a mathematical impossibility is a mathematical inevitability.

Our 80 history of nuclear weapons possession is replete with example after example of misunderstandings, accidents, and cold war fear where we just barely escaped a major exchange of thermonuclear weapons. And now we increase the opportunities for misjudgment by magnitudes with a new nuclear arms race with China. Adding to that risk are more nations- Iran, South Korea, Japan and Saudi Arabia exploring the development of their own arsenals – all nations, with whom we have had limited history of arms control treaties or negotiations.

By a stroke of luck, or the right person being in position to exercise proper judgment in the moment, or by cooler heads at the top restraining their initial instinct—we have avoided the apocalypse.

But that should not, and cannot, be counted on to last forever. I took my degree from the University of Nevada, in Las Vegas. And I took a lot of courses in mathematics of casino games. I must tell you; I know a little about winning streaks. They don’t last forever. It is a mathematical impossibility.

We have been the beneficiaries of a fantastically long winning streak with respect to nuclear weapons. It won’t last forever. If we continue to add bullets to the chamber of the revolver we hold to our heads and to the heads of the world population in this lunatic game of nuclear Russian Roulette, our luck will run out – and we won’t get a second chance to get this right.

In the opening of the 2003 movie “The Fog of War”, former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara says “The conventional wisdom in warfare is “ don’t make the same mistake twice, learn from your mistakes. But there will be no learning period with nuclear weapons – you make one mistake you’re going to destroy nations””. And now we know about nuclear winter – that we will destroy more than just the belligerent participants – we’ll functionally obliterate human civilization across the planet. And we won’t get a second chance….

In this historic moment, it is incumbent on The United States, as the leading possessor of nuclear weapons to summon both the moral authority and the political will – to stand before the world and say “Mea Culpa” Mea Culpa’.

We are now morally required to finally act under our obligation to the Grand Bargain that was and is the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. We must commit to no longer preach temperance from a barstool. If we are asking South Korea, Japan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and other non-nuclear weapons states to hold off on developing their own nuclear arsenals- then we must be prepared to lead by example.

If we are unable to do so- we will fall victim to – as Martin Luther King reminded us in New York City – one year to the day before his tragic assassination, and one year before the Nonproliferation treaty entered into force, “ If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.”

Il close by paraphrasing the 1rst century sage Hillel the Elder – “If not us – who? If not now – when? “Let us hope that our children, and our children’s children, will live to see the answer to that ancient philosophical question.

Should they not – it will need to be answered a thousand years or more from now – by the few thousand descendants of the unfortunate survivors of the inevitable nuclear holocaust as they continue to rebuild the shattered fragments of global society.

Sean Reynolds works with CAPA’s Foreign Policy Working Group and facilitates Chicago’s No Iran War Coalition.

In his final year, we told my dad we were fighting his cancer so he could have that heart attack instead. He made his chemo sessions because he knew it was serious: he wasn’t immortal. His dignity and agency mattered to us whether he was immortal or not. 

To disarm of nuclear weapons, we have to survive nuclear weapons until negotiations become conceivable again. We have to awaken the leaders, and in many cases the voters, of both parties to the fact that nuclear weapons are real.  I’m privileged to carry forward my dad’s memory and I’m here to do so because he didn’t die in a nuclear war. Once the war has happened and there is no-one to remember how we worked for each other, it will all still matter, and might have bought us some time.
 
When we discuss the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we face some pitfalls:

• we are apt to focus on the undeniable racism on all sides of that war, as though greed weren’t as evil as hate, as though the fear of losing our empire, with all the wealth you see around you today in Evanston, weren’t an equally effective lure to our worst crimes.
• we are apt to forget that modern thermonuclear weapons are a thousand times more powerful than the bombs of 1945, each one containing a Hiroshima-style atom bomb as a mere blasting cap: if it hardly matters whether we kill our millions from greed or hate, then each nuclear missile is the Holocaust in a can, a Holocaust we’ve prepared to commit. 
• we forget that the lofted smoke from just a few nuke-incinerated cities (as if a nuke exchange with just a few cities were possible) promises nuclear winter, a starvation omnicide for all of humanity as deliberate as the starvation genocide we today impose on Gaza, with the difference that this will be every conceivable genocide, at once.  It’s the surpassing horror of our age that Western leaders of all parties so readily gamble with every conceivable genocide, at once, chasing simultaneous escalations in East Asia, West Asia, and Eastern Europe for fear the Global South might finally catch up.

If disarmament requires negotiation then we need some skepticism about the narratives that our two political parties and their captive media spin about what the other side thinks in conflicts starting with but hardly limited to the grim American political divide which must at all costs be bridged before we’ve the slightest hope of compelling a U.S. imperial elite gone mad on war to forgo its ultimate crime. 

For the past four years our White House seemingly tried to cancel Russia by boycotting any communication with a nuclear-armed Kremlin, while its successor has reportedly rebuffed Russian overtures to renew START, our last remaining nuclear treaty.  The recent Iran negotiations were, our leaders now openly brag, a mere feint to facilitate decapitation strikes that may finally have forced Iran to overcome muslim religious objections to the obscenity that is nuclear war and seek the bomb as its sole logical response to our empire’s implacable savagery.  Our military blockade against Chinese trade seems just a few years away.

How is disarmament possible when our vision of peace is besieging every part of the world, including half of our own country, that dares to try not being us?  When every war we orchestrate, like our war cynically wood-chippering a puppet Ukraine, we rebrand as a sacrament of peace?  Even our leaders will terrifyingly soon realize that our sole remaining strength against eclipsing rivals is our nuclear arsenal, and when they do, how will we make them accept the loss of our empire, meaning all the wealth you here see around you, without a final nuclear gamble? How fast can we shed the comforts that lock that destiny in?

Things are very serious. Complete nuclear disarmament – in a few centuries, a few decades, a few years or months – is not just possible, but inevitable, because we’re going to launch them all, and have none left. Even if miraculously, magnificently, we negotiate these weapons away, the science to rebuild them is with us and the environment’s countdown to geopolitical collapse is inescapable as gravity.  Our species faces what my dad faced, because nuclear war is a thing to delay but not to prevent.  The century, the decade, the month we delay it by is that much extra time and agency for billions of precious lives and a partial atonement for our role as the world’s nuke-armed slayers. At the very least it’s time in which prepare our neighbors – no trifle – to meet the end with repentant grief instead of panic incomprehension. 

Grieving an end we can delay but not prevent is a requirement of of treating life seriously.  Delaying the nuclear war means grieving, then relinquishing, all the wealth we have around us today but can’t keep rivals from taking short of global sucide. It means letting our empire and our petrodollar go without further pressuring our wayward president into an omnicidal nuclear tantrum over the defeat.  It requires actively ending the atrocity in Gaza that has made world populations so ready to burn if that means finally watching us burn too.  It means letting BRICS win.  

There is a fate worse than dying in a nuclear war, and I’ll tell you what it is: it’s killing in one. It’s clutching too hard onto comfortable, imperial lives which never required just one starvation genocide, but always every possible one, at once.  Our species can stunnedly observe us warming up for the crime to end all crimes. But when I went to Iran I promised my new friends that as they were my friends, I would try not to kill them.  Please undermine our empire today to help me keep that promise over the weeks, months, and – if we’re very very good – the years ahead, perhaps enough time to even rid the world of these hell weapons for a little while.   

Neal Resnikoff is a long-time Chicago peace activist and spoke on behalf of the Chicago Antiwar Coalition.

The U.S. government is continuing its imperialist war against Russia. It is doing so with the President heavily using the power of that position, as other presidents before him have done.

The U.S. government is continuing to use Ukraine as its proxy and NATO as a conduit for arms to fight the Russian military self-defense forces, Trump has ordered U.S. nuclear submarines off the coast of Russia.

The U.S. government also has continued its policy of being willing to use nuclear weapons it has in bases in Europe and elsewhere on a first-strike basis.

The Russian government, realizing the current threats, has now declared it is removing its self- imposed restraint on deploying mid-range missiles.

The situation is extremely dangerous, with increased threat of nuclear war, but there has not been big attention and debate about this.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government is complicit in the horrendous genocidal massacre of over 60,000 Palestinians so far.

This all comes in the wake 80 years ago today of the U.S. government atomic bombing of Nagasaki in Japan. The atomic bombing of Hiroshima was August 6, 1945.

These were U.S. government war crimes that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians and injured hundreds of thousands more.

Since then the U.S. capitalist ruling class, using Democrats and Republicans, has illegally and unjustly killed millions more in other countries around the world, using other kinds of weapons, though including depleted uranium weapons.

The U.S. government actions have all been to suppress opposition or to beat back competition for raw materials, labor power, and markets from other countries. The aim is to ensure maximum profits for the big U.S. banks and big corporations. These ruthless acts of U.S. imperialism are usually covered over by some noble sounding justifications.

Noble sounding justification was true in in the U.S. government atomic bomb massacres in1945, and there is still promotion of the U.S. government lie that this was a move to save the lives of American troops by bringing a quick end to the war against Japan. For example, Trump said on June 25 at the NATO Summit that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki “ended that war.” President Obama said in a speech in Hiroshima in 2016 that “World War Two reached its end with Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”

These are lies that have been exposed as lies. For example, General Curtis LeMay said two weeks after the end of war, “The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war. The war would have ended in two weeks without the atomic bomb.” Admiral William Leahy, who was President Truman’s Chief of Staff said “The use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender.”

U.S. Secretary of State James Byrne said at the time: “If we could end the war before the Red Army got to Manchuria and then Japan, we could dominate the situation in Japan and probably Manchuria.” Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson also exposed the aim of the atomic bombing: “It [the atom bomb] was the master card … over the Russians.

The atomic bombing happened after it was already clear to the U.S. government that the Japanese government was ready to surrender in World War II. This was known because the U.S. had broken the Japanese codes, and the Japanese were negotiating surrender with the Soviet Union.

The dropping of the atomic bombs had the pernicious aim of trying to frighten others in Asia and open the door for U.S. imperialism to dominate Asia and the world.

We have the responsibility to take out the lessons of this ruthless killing to as many people as we can, because today the U.S. government is still massacring people, directly and indirectly—such as through the war in Ukraine that the U.S. instigated by provoking Russia into military action. And it is threatening nuclear war against Russia, and others.

The U.S. has been provoking China by interfering in Taiwan, long part of China, with arms sales, training of military personnel, adding U.S. naval presence in the area, and encouraging steps within Taiwan toward independence from China. China has been opposing this with various statements and exercises preparing for a possible military invasion of Taiwan. President Biden declared the U.S. government would defend Taiwan militarily if China invaded, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio reaffirmed that U.S. government policy remains one of opposition to forced changes in Taiwan’s status.

The U.S. government is still the world’s greatest perpetrator of nuclear proliferation, and threatening its use.

The solution to the rampages of U.S. imperialism is the complete dismantling of the U.S. imperialist war machine and its nuclear terror apparatus.

How about if we take up these slogans:

No More Hiroshimas and Nagasakis!

No to the Use of Force to Settle Conflicts between Nations!

Dismantle NATO!

All Out to Organize an Anti-War Government!

Jack Lawlor is a member of CAPA’s Foreign Policy Working Group and the Chicago Chapter of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship

Within a few months after the atomic bomb attacks against Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 31 year old war correspondent John Hersey went to Hiroshima, interviewed survivors, and wrote a series of stunning articles for The New Yorker we know today as his book, Hiroshima. The book does not treat this first use of atomic weapons as an abstraction; instead, it personalizes the nature of the resulting individual suffering to six survivors caused by the attack in ways left unexplored in the recent movie, “Oppenheimer”. For many years, the book Hiroshima became mandatory summer reading on some high school summer book lists. The book moved me as a high school freshman to question my complete pro-American bias and inquire about how to protect humanity and the earth.

The commemoration of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic attacks is more relevant than ever, because we have not learned all that we can from them. President Putin of Russia has been frequently threatening to use tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine, a step which would lead to horrible consequences. He is already using hypersonic weaponry against Ukraine, another unprecedented escalation.
What can we as citizens do to protect ourselves, our descendants, the earth? We need to join hands together and make international discussion of this issue much more of a top priority.

I wish we could see an arc of progress in efforts to regulate nuclear arms. But the arc is going in the wrong direction:

1
For all practical purposes, there are no longer effective arms control treaties in effect between the US and Russia. They have expired or are expiring. The New START Treaty expires in five months, on February 25, 2026. Russia has suspended its participation but has not withdrawn from the treaty, which successfully achieved verifiable large reductions in the number of US and Russian nuclear weapons to about 3,000 each. If New START is not renewed, and if China is not involved, the US may feel compelled to exceed the New START limits due to China’s nuclear weapons buildup. Also, both the US and Russia have walked away from the 1987 INF Treaty, which sought to eliminate intermediate- range nuclear missiles.

2
There are now at least nine countries with nuclear weapons, stockpiling 13,000 of them.

3
There have been UN resolutions pledging member countries to forego first use of nuclear weapons. This is an admirable effort, but its legal effectiveness is questionable and the nine nations who possess nuclear weapons either haven’t signed or privately feel free to violate the treaty. The 1990 treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons (the “NPT”) has limited the number of states possessing nuclear weapons, but this success may end soon if Iran and other countries proceed vigorously to obtain a bomb in the wake of the recent Israeli/US attack on Iran and in the wake of concerns about the reliability of America’s nuclear umbrella.

4
US peace and justice groups have been pushing hard for the US to forego first use of nuclear weapons, but the legislative resolutions stall in a toxically divided Congress pre-occupied with elections and culture wars.

5
Peace groups’ efforts have tried to regulate the US president’s authority to authorize a nuclear attack. Apart from verifying that the order to launch comes from the President, US protocols do not require discussion or review of the order to attack by any other US official. This is dangerous if autocratic or unstable individuals occupy the Oval Office. Senator Tim Kaine’s recent effort to regulate the President’s authority was recently defeated in a 53-47 vote.

6
As you can glean, a new nuclear arms race may begin imminently. The cost to refurbish the US Sentinel land-based missile system ALONE has escalated to 140.9 billion dollars. Plus, President Trump has just announced his interest in a new Golden Dome system akin to President Reagan’s Star Wars defense system, likely triggering a costly Anti-Ballistic Missile arms race.

What can we do?

I suggest that we don’t assume that the US public is very familiar with any of this, and begin a dialogue that uses plain language to demonstrate the need to avoid future Hiroshimas and Nagasakis. People can be encouraged to:

a.
learn more about the situation, using resources such as Nuclear Disarmament and Arms Control magazine;

b.
let’s work together to support pending House Resolution 317, the so-called “Back from
the Brink Resolution”, which calls for the US, Russia, China, and all other nuclear-armed states to (1) reduce their arsenals, (2) renounce first use of nuclear weapons and hair-trigger alert postures, (3) maintain a test ban, and (4) renew the New START Treaty; and

c.
above all, join with other people in your community through groups such as Chicago Area Peace Action. You’ll learn a lot from others and they will appreciate your insights and talents. Seasoned groups know how to work with elected officials and their staff members, elevating the effectiveness of your efforts enormously.

Let’s ponder all this with the curiosity of a young John Hersey and work together to prevent other Hiroshimas and Nagasakis.