1. The war in Ukraine had already raised anxieties about the strength of the nuclear taboo, as has the potential escalation of the Israel-Hamas war.
The literal and symbolic absence of so many nuclear-armed states from the ceremony in Nagasaki only adds to that anxiety.
2. The Taboo against the use of nuclear weapon : That taboo emerged almost immediately after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed 79 years ago, with the scale of destruction and cost in human life creating instant consensus among military strategists that nuclear weapons can only ever serve as deterrents to their own use.
Whether or not nuclear weapons actually do have a deterrent effect is debatable, as Paul Poast wrote recently.
But the commemorations in Hiroshima and Nagasaki are meant to serve as a reminder of this popular consensus
“Japan’s fellow G7 members, as well as the EU, did not send their ambassadors to Nagasaki for this year’s ceremony marking the anniversary of the city’s atomic bombing by the U.S. at the end of World War II. The decision came after Nagasaki Mayor Shiro Suzuki did not invite Israel to attend the ceremony, which was held earlier today.
The annual ceremonies in Hiroshima, held three days ago, and Nagasaki are commemorations of the horrors unleashed by the U.S. bombings, which together killed more than 200,000 people. But they are also a symbolic reinforcement of the taboo against the use of nuclear weapons, to ensure that these bombings forever remain the only time nuclear weapons have been detonated in conflict.
So in some ways, the fact that this year’s ceremony did become politicized is concerning. Suzuki denied that Israel’s exclusion was a political decision, arguing instead that he didn’t want to risk what is meant to be a somber ceremony being interrupted by protests over the war in Gaza, although it’s worth noting that Israel was invited to the ceremony in Hiroshima without incident. Still, regardless of the reasoning, Western countries’ rebuke of that exclusion ensured that the ceremony would become a political talking point.
That, along with the exclusion of Russia—as well as its ally, Belarus—over its invasion of Ukraine and Moscow’s subsequent nuclear saber-rattling, raises the question of whether the nuclear consensus is still truly above politics. The war in Ukraine had already raised anxieties about the strength of the nuclear taboo, as has the potential escalation of the Israel-Hamas war. The literal and symbolic absence of so many nuclear-armed states from the ceremony in Nagasaki only adds to that anxiety.
The good news, though, as Charli Carpenter pointed out in a recent column, is that the nuclear taboo appears to still be holding, if not strengthening. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s repeated use of veiled nuclear threats has made the issue more salient, producing a backlash that has strengthened popular views against nuclear weapons. There is concurrently growing global activism not only to reduce the number of nuclear weapons deployed worldwide, but to eliminate them altogether.
Put simply, nuclear weapons are back in the spotlight, which can seem alarming but is also reinforcing the taboo against their use—and even their existence.
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