Donald Trump’s remarks on resuming nuclear testing have highlighted the risks. Proliferation must not be considered inevitable
When Eisaku Satō, a former prime minister of Japan, received the Nobel peace prize in 1974 after committing his country to not making nuclear bombs, owning them or allowing them on its territory, he assured the audience: “I have no doubt that this policy will be pursued by all future governments.”
Yet last week, Sanae Takaichi, Japan’s new prime minister, declined to say whether the country that understands the cost of nuclear war better than any other would stand by its commitment – reflecting the bleak broader outlook. Eighty years after the US dropped Little Boy on Hiroshima, incinerating tens of thousands of people, and almost 40 after Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan seriously discussed nuclear abolition in Reykjavik, the spectre looms once more. Last month, Donald Trump ordered the US military to match other countries’ nuclear weapons testing.