TOKYO, Aug 6 (Reuters) - Japan on Sunday marked the 78th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing on Hiroshima, where its mayor urged the abolition of nuclear weapons and called the Group of Seven leaders’ notion of nuclear deterrence a “folly”.
You know what’s a “folly”? Not recognizing your war crimes.
Yeah, what I know about Japan makes me think this is self-pity thinly disguised as humanitarianism.
Like, I agree that they shouldn’t have been bombed, but I also think Hirohito and friends should have gotten the same treatment as top Nazis. Somehow I don’t think these guys would like that position. Without reading this I bet they haven’t really proposed an alternative to nuclear deterrence either.
It’s something typical of the West.
Not really, we know and often discuss the bad shit we’ve done. The racists and bigots among us never want to talk about it though, so maybe that’s who you’re thinking of.
By and large, I would say this is not true. Ask any random folks who Pinochet and the Chicago Boys were, or ask about MKULTRA or COINTELPRO, or Operation Cóndor, and the best you’re likely to get is a blank stare.
I think a most of the more terrible things the US has done is known by highly educated folks who were given the opportunities to learn them on specialized education tracks, but not by most folks on average, which really sucks =/
Shit, you can’t even get a huge percentage of Americans to acknowledge crimes Republicans straight up admit to, nevermind asking them to acknowledge past crimes.
Oh, OK, let’s not go bringing up warcrimes on the anniversary that we unmade a city to prove a point.
Ww2 is over, let’s try to move past it, we can bring all this shit up when someone tries to start ww3.
Isn’t nuclear deterrence preventing the use of nukes, tho? 🤔 I mean, it does this by having nukes around to launch because the threat is “you launch yours, we launch ours and everybody dies. Do you wanna die? No? Then don’t launch a nuke.” But it seems to be effective. No one outside of Japan when nukes first came out has ever been nuked by another country.
The only way we will ever remove nuclear weapons will be when we remove the threat from invasive and terrorist actions of other countries. We need an international force that is set up just to protect the status quo of borders around the world. With that we also need an answer to terrorism from foreign states. As soon as you make it impossible for an invasion to take place then you can guarantee that some states will head straight to terrorist acts for intimidation. Until all countries sign up to this, we must keep the deterrent.
Imagine how could be saved if we removed the need to spend on defence. Currently we spend $2.2t across the world on killing each other. It is a shocking waste.
How have nuclear weapons helped us against invasive and terrorist actions?
Has it somehow stopped conflicts between major powers (NATO, Russia, China)? No more than would be expected from countries that don’t really order each other and aren’t pursuing aggressive territorial expansion that threaten each other.
Has it ended all wars? Obviously not, given that Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Ukraine all happened.
Has a nuclear deterrent made nations more peaceful? No, but globalization has.
A nuclear deterrent exists solely to discourage other nuclear-bearing countries from trying to cripple you. The only steady-state for this is that everyone who is under threat by a nuclear-bearing country will eventually develop nuclear weapons.
In recent history: the Americans because of the Nazis, the Soviets because of the Americans, the British because of the Soviets, the French because of the Soviets (and, to some degree, the British), the Chinese because of the Americans AND the Soviets (they really got unlucky here), the Israelis because of literally everyone (extra unlucky), the Indians because of the Chinese, the Pakistanis is because of the Indians, and the North Koreans because of the Americans. And of course, today Iran is trying to build up a nuclear arsenal to combat Israel’s nuclear arsenal.
All your policy will do is incentivize everyone to develop nuclear weapons.
I really do not understand your comments? I am in favour of removing nuclear weapons. I also understand why we cannot without a unilateral understanding among all nations.
What is very obvious is that if we do not move in that direction, then some clown will learn how to make them, and then we will have a nuclear war.
Why does the removal of nuclear weapons predicate itself on countries agreeing on borders? As it stands, countries develop nuclear weapons solely because they’re afraid that nuclear weapons will be used against them (or, you’re North Korea and the West has already expended their entire sanctions repertoire to go after human rights violations and now has no recourse against nuclear weapons development).
Countries may fight over borders, but the involvement of nuclear weapons turns what should be a localized dispute into a global one with world-ending consequences.
Or you know they could just stop trying to grab more land. At the end of the day that is the solution we all want.
Protecting the territorial sovereignty of countries internationally would have prevented Iraq and Afghanistan. It would stop Israeli efforts in the West Bank. It would block the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict. It would block the skirmishes between India and China as well as India and Pakistan. It would have blocked NATO intervention into the Yugoslav crisises until international consensus could be reached. Borders are constantly in a state of flux and the international community almost never reaches full consensus.
Borders are not immutable objects, particularly for ethnically-unified countries. For Yugoslavia, the borders were carved into ethnic groups. For Ukraine, the borders are being carved into Russian and Ukrainian areas. For Israel, the borders are constantly being expanded for one particular ethnic group. As long as there are ethnic boundaries, there will be conflict between them. That’s what makes us human. We are not a single entity; we have hundreds of distinct and unique cultures and languages and foods.
Terrorism is the product of the West financing such groups in proxy wars.
Pretty stupid generalisation. Terrorism comes from many areas including governments. Putin’s attack on citizens in the UK was state terrorism against his own people.
Yes, Western governments that fund terrorist groups in “enemies of the State” that later turn against the US and the US “needs” to go an invade those countries to “liberate” the region.
The whole world does that. This is not just a problem that lies with one country.
You mean… The US and Russia?
Not even China does this.
The whole world does that.
Says one of the few countries actually doing it to justify they illegal shit.
Did you read the comment? It looks like you did not. I am in favour of removing all armies across the world. Please do not make explosive statements without taking the time to understand the conversation.
the West isn’t the only one who does this bud
You are right, they’re only the biggest and more illustrious example of such behaviour.
Except the west does not try to take over that country and hold onto it as a colony. They have grew out of that era. Every country that has been invaded, has been in response to another action, and in every occasion they have handed the country back to the people it belongs to. How they have handed it back leaves a lot to criticise. But you cannot say it was done with malice. Russia is guilty of extending its borders into other countries for no other reason than conquest.
Hawai’i, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, northern Mexico which is now Texas, all of this without taking into account that the US is itself a settler state that massacred all its indigenous population and that literally inspired Nazi Germany. I haven’t even mentioned territories which are still colonies to this day by Europe by the way.
Hawaii is a state in its own right. Under that delusion you have 49 other instances. They elected to join the USA in 1959.
Samoa was colonised in 1899, no one argues that things were done in the past. Samoa has been self governing since 1967. It has the capacity to hold a referendum to move away from being an “unincorporated territory”.
Northern Mariana Islands elected closer ties to the US because Guam did not want them through a referendum.
Texas has been part of the US since the civil war ended. Half of the world has changed since then.
I agree indigenous tribes should have rights, but how that is applied is always going to be contentious because of the generations that have past. It is not like you can tell the majority of a nation to go live somewhere else is it? As for the tribes concerned, they were kicking the crap out of each other before the Spanish arrived. How far do you go back to say who owns the rights to that land?
You really should research before buying into the crap people spout online.
Hawaii is a state in its own right. Under that delusion you have 49 other instances. They elected to join the USA in 1959.
Nice how you fail to mention any actual context:
Hawaii was illegally annexed in 1898, then -against the native’s resistence- controlled by an US appointed government in 1900.
The the US shipped in more soldiers, especially when Hawaii’s importance as a naval base in the pacific increased after ww1.
When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor the US had 500000 people stationed there… about the same amount as living natives at that point. But just to be sure, they dissolved the local government and declared martial law for nearly a decade.
And after all this and with more and more US citizens immigrating to Hawaii on top of the massive amount of soldiers stationed there and finally making Hawaii natives a minority in their own country the US started a referendum to join the US.
Sure, that’s not fishy bullshit at all.
