Japan rejects nuclear ban treaty; survivors to keep pushing

The US would of dropped many more times, even on Tokyo, if Japan did not crawl on it knees

Hmmm, the legacy of the IJA still lives among some it seems. Hirohito had to go into hiding to deliver the surrender address on radio as the IJA was actively trying to arrest him to prevent him from surrendering to the Allies.

I might add that Japan had an advanced nuclear program at the close of WWII and there are some accounts suggesting Japan even detonated a workable prototype nuclear weapon, either in Korea or perhaps off the Kurile Islands.

The only country that experienced the calamities of nuclear weapons and do not want to sign the nuclear ban treaty? Is it under pressure from other nations not to?

The US would of dropped many more times, even on Tokyo, if Japan did not crawl on it knees

The technology is known and that Genie can't be stuffed back into the bottle, ever. What can be done is to work to reduce the numbers of weapons year after year and to apply pressure, economic and political for any new countries creating nuclear weapons AND for existing countries who don't reduce their total counts in verifiable ways year after year.

The total elimination of nuclear weapons is a pipe dream. It is too easy to cheat and hide a small number of weapons without being detected. Large scale reductions are possible but not elimination.

Consider a situation where a treaty demanded nations completely eliminate their nuclear weapons. Most comply honestly but one decides to hide a few. Once the others have disarmed that one cheater can hold the rest hostage since they now possess the last nuclear weapons on earth. It is that scenario that makes complete nuclear disarmament impossible. It will never happen.

At best, the world has a rough idea how many such warheads each nuclear power has and has the technical means to know if a nation is hiding a large number of warheads somewhere. The idea is a small number of warheads is easily hidden but a large number is not so easy to hide as they require lots of security and a maintenance infrastructure that is detectable by satellite. If a treaty is signed to limit each power to, say, 100 or 200 warheads, it is possible to count the number of warheads that are demilitarized and have a degree of confidence about the number of warheads left. Now, if a nation has 100 warheads and a cheater was able to hide 20 more somewhere undetected that still isn't enough to blackmail the others. But if every nation but one honestly disarms, the one cheater has a few stashed away, something that is very possible to do, andthat nation decides to leverage those weapons for its benefit, everyone under the gun. No existing nuclear power is logically willing to take that risk.

Smith

Your wrong.

This has nothing to do with the Olympics and everything to do with Japan security and safety.

Your talking about it like Nuclear Weapons was never used. It was 1945 on Japan, twice!

-Japan already crippled by Article 9 renouncing War. We already signed something much better.

-Japan already doesn't have ballistic missiles, long range weapons, behind in space, behind in cybersecurity.

-Japan doesn't have the nuke even after China got it, even after North Korea got it and threaten Japan with Nuclear destruction.

I would argue, the REST OF THE WORLD SHOULD JOIN JAPAN AND SIGN ARTICLE 9 BE PACIFIST.

HYPOCRITES with Nukes, ever increasing military budgets complaining about Japan. Priceless!!

smithinjapan

Bingo!

I would apply the same reasoning to most governments beyond the local level ... (or large scale corporate, educational, religious, media, etc. institutions) ... and many institutions and organizations at the local level as well. Even street gangs are usually led by bullies.

So what's China, Russia and North Korea's excuse or rationale for not signing the treaty and why aren't they denounced the way Japan and the U.S. are denounced for not signing the treaty?

People, including the atomic bomb survivors, forgets there was a time when nuclear weapons didn't exist. That was before 1945. Was pre-1945 world a "Peaceful World" where wars were unthinkable?

As politically impalpable as it is, nuclear weapons have actually promoted "world peace" by making major world wars unthinkable and forcing nations capable of waging wars to instead settle disputes through negotiations and dialog. Going back to conventional weapons will encourage preemptive strikes and world wars to be "thinkable" once again. Think about it.

Just like the victims of the Tohoku disasters, the government sure loves to use these people to get something (they've actually used both the atomic bombings AND the Tohoku disasters, and now Corona to get and push the Olympics, as one example), or the abductees plight, but when it comes to actually listening to and/or helping them... the government doesn't care one wit.

Japan is in a tough situation.

The technology is known and that Genie can't be stuffed back into the bottle, ever. What can be done is to work to reduce the numbers of weapons year after year and to apply pressure, economic and political for any new countries creating nuclear weapons AND for existing countries who don't reduce their total counts in verifiable ways year after year.

I like to think that the US follows every treaty to the letter.

We know that Russia does not, when it comes to both nuclear and biological weapons. We have no way to know what China does, but based on their claims around currency manipulation and the Cyber attack agreement signed by Xi and Obama which was violated the following day against my servers, that makes me think that the Chinese govt believes it only matters if they will be caught.

What Ossan said. Realism trumps idealism in the current geopolitical high stakes card game. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

This is taking puppetry just too far!

Come on Japanese politicians! Grow a pair!

The Atomic bombings are memorialized by not just Japan but the entire world because of their significance the first (and hopefully last) use of nuclear weapons in war. The Atomic bombings are arguably war crimes in their own right and the civilians were indeed "victims" as are civilians in any war in any country. Nobody is attempting to "absolve" the actions of the Imperial Japanese Military in WWII, a concept exclusive to chronic J-haters. Today Japan is allied with it's former WWII adversaries against the fascist Chinese threat of the 21st century. And being under the US Nuclear Umbrella, as are other Pacific allies like Australia and South Korea, Japan obviously can not denounce the only thing that protects it from the nuclear weapons of it's 3 very close neighbors, North Korea, China and Russia. This is not hypocrisy, it is common sense.

And this shows the hypocrisy of the Japanese government; they'll use Hiroshima and Nagasaki to play the victim card to absolve themselves from their war crimes but won't support anything that steps in the direction of a nuke free world.