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75 Years On, How Will The Nuclear Age End?

IN THIS ISSUE: 75 Years On, How Will The Nuclear Age End?, Hiroshima 75th Anniversary: Preserving Survivors’ Message of Peace, Beyond the Ruins of Hiroshima, Nuclear Weapons: Arms-Control Efforts Need China, Saudi Arabia, With China’s Help, Expands Its Nuclear Program, How The DOD Plans To Meet Its Ambitious Hypersonic Missile Test Schedule

Published on August 6, 2020

75 Years On, How Will The Nuclear Age End? 

George Perkovich | War on the Rocks

Seventy-five years ago, U.S. nuclear weapons devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For individual human beings, 75 years signals nearness to the end of life. But for the nuclear age, does this anniversary mark the beginning, the middle, or the end? There are two dramatic ways in which the nuclear age could end: annihilation or disarmament. If one ending is undesirable and the other unachievable, leaders should prolong life with nuclear weapons by making their use much less likely and reducing their destructiveness in case they are used. Clearer adherence to the law of armed conflict and greater understanding of the climatic effects of nuclear war would serve both purposes.

Hiroshima 75th Anniversary: Preserving Survivors’ Message of Peace

Ben Dooley and Hisako Ueno| New York Times

The hibakusha, as the survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are known in Japan, have achieved a powerful feat of alchemy, transforming their nightmarish memories of the blasts and their aftermath into a visceral force for promoting a world free of nuclear arms. Each year for over half a century, many of them have gathered in the early hours of Aug. 6 at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park to mourn the city’s destruction by the American military during World War II, and to serve as a living testament to the abiding dangers of the bomb.

Beyond the Ruins of Hiroshima

Jacques Hymans | London Review of Books

Seventy-five years ago, on 6 August 1945, an American warplane destroyed the city of Hiroshima with a single atomic bomb. Over the following five months, 140,000 people died. The surviving 210,000 came to be known in Japanese as hibakusha, ‘bombed people’. A second atomic bomb destroyed the city of Nagasaki on 9 August, leaving 73,000 dead and 200,000 hibakusha.

Nuclear Weapons: Arms-Control Efforts Need China

Nobumasa Akiyama | Nature

It is 75 years since the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945, killing around 200,000 people. Since then, humanity has had to coexist with the massive destructive power of nuclear weapons. Although such weapons have not been used in wars since, they define the international order. Nuclear deterrence and pacts to restrict arms between the United States and Russia have assured decades of precarious peace. Meanwhile, the United Nations’ adoption of the first-ever Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) in 2017 buoyed hopes of a world free of these catastrophic arms.

Saudi Arabia, With China’s Help, Expands Its Nuclear Program

Warren P. Strobel, Michael R. Gordon and Felicia Schwartz | Wall Street Journal

Saudi Arabia has constructed with Chinese help a facility for extracting uranium yellowcake from uranium ore, an advance in the oil-rich kingdom’s drive to master nuclear technology, according to Western officials with knowledge of the site. The facility, which hasn’t been publicly disclosed, is in a sparsely populated area in Saudi Arabia’s northwest and has raised concern among U.S. and allied officials that the kingdom’s nascent nuclear program is moving ahead and that Riyadh is keeping open the option of developing nuclear weapons.

How The DOD Plans To Meet Its Ambitious Hypersonic Missile Test Schedule

Jen Judson | Defense News

The Army — in conjunction with the Navy — is planning to conduct three flight tests of its hypersonic glide body in 2021, an ambitious schedule to initially field the weapon in fiscal 2023, according to Lt. Gen. Neil Thurgood, who oversees the Army’s rapid development of hypersonics, directed energy and space capabilities. In March, the Army and Navy had a successful first flight test of its Common-Hypersonic Glide Body, which was launched and flew at hypersonic speed to a designated impact point.

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