The Japanese gather in Hiroshima on August 6 every year; and three days later, in Nagasaki to mark the days the US dropped atomic bombs on the two cities, killing 220,000 civilians and destroying the lives of hundreds of thousands others. This year's commemorative event for the chilling mass murder at Hiroshima included two unlikely participants: US Ambassador John Roos and a representative of US' self-described 'junior partner', British Deputy Ambassador David Fitton.
All these years, the US has remained unapologetic. In fact, the official line has been to justify the ultimate act of state barbarism on the grounds that it helped shorten the war and save the lives of American soldiers. Historical evidence though suggests the Japanese were on the verge of surrender before the bombs were dropped. But the American military/industrial complex had spent a lot of time and money on the 'Manhattan Project' to make the toys that would wreak death and destruction on a scale no one could have ever imagined. They had to be used to satisfy American establishment's destructive impulse and to display its unrivalled ability to wipe out an entire city in one go.
That there was absolutely no justification for such wanton destruction was to be corroborated later by President Dwight Eisenhower in his book "Mandate for Change". In it, he writes about a meeting he had, as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe, at his German headquarters, with Harry Truman's war secretary, Henry Stimson, where he was to learn of the plan to use the bomb. According to Eisenhower, what he heard gave him a feeling of depression, "and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated, and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary; and secondly, because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of face."
Considering his feeling of depression at hearing, the War Secretary give him the news of releasing an atomic bomb on Japan, it is reasonable to assume that when he became president himself, Eisenhower might have wanted to say sorry. But neither he nor any of his successors were to apologise, because they could ill afford to step on the toes of a powerful military-industrial complex.
But this year was different. The presence of the US ambassador in Hiroshima was a way of saying sorry, which many not exactly be an apology, but something akin to it. The reason, of course, was not moral but a practical one. Notably, an important policy initiative President Obama announced at last year's EU-American summit in Prague was about ridding the world of nuclear weapons. Indeed, that was the declared objective of the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) the US had signed along with four original nuclear weapons states and 182 other nations. Among other things, the treaty required of the signatories "to further the goal of achieving nuclear disarmament" and to make "good faith efforts to attain that goal."
For nearly four decades, the US led the world in the other direction, starting a nuclear arms race in flagrant violation of the NPT and other international treaties to develop new tactical as well as strategic nuclear weapons, undertaking even an abortive 'star wars programme' aimed at deploying nuclear weapons in space.
Obama now says he wants to see a nuclear-free world. He told the Prague summit, "I state clearly and with conviction America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons. This goal will not be reached quickly - perhaps not in my life time... but now we too must ignore the voices who tell us that the world cannot change."
The truth is the world has already changed a lot since the advent of the nuclear age, and needs the nuclear scene to change towards a global zero. The Cold War that had led the two superpowers of the years gone by to amass nuclear weapons to maintain what they called balance of terror has long since ended. Between them the US and the erstwhile Soviet Union possessed nearly 70,000 warheads. The US and the Soviet Union's successor state, the Russian Republic, still own 23000 warheads - enough to destroy the world many, many times over. But these are too expensive to maintain and of little practical value. Russia is not interested in challenging America's expansionist adventures except in its immediate neighbourhood or what it regards its backyard.
There are even more compelling factors that seem to have pushed the US to think of working towards the goal of global zero. One is the unstoppable spread of nuclear arms race. Iran wants a weapons programme because Israel has it. Because of them some other Middle Eastern countries are also entertaining nuclear ambitions.
Pakistan makes no secret of its nuclear programme being India-centric. India set out on that path because it harboured regional hegemonic ambitions that have since grown to match its increasing potential to become a major world power. Its upgradation efforts have been eliciting a certain level of response from Islamabad.
Secondly, history's mightiest military and economic power faces humiliating defeat in the two long wars it has been waging against two small countries, Afghanistan and Iraq. Its formidable arsenal of nuclear weapons has been of no use. If the US claims are to be believed, the unmanned Predator drone has served it well. Based on its experience, it would be interested in developing new non-nuclear weapons systems - after all, defence industry thrives on weapons, becoming obsolete and requiring replacement with ever new technologies of causing death and destruction.
Thirdly, there is a real danger of nuclear technology falling into the hands of organisations/individuals, who claim they have scores to settle with certain states. Acquisition of nuclear technology and fissile materials may be difficult but not outside the realm of possibility. These, in fact, are available on the black market. Our own Dr A Q Khan is said to have acquired nuclear technology from Western sources through clandenstine means. The collapse of the Soviet Union set a lot of materials and scientists on the loose.
An International Atomic Energy Agency report says there have been at least 25 cases where nuclear explosive materials have either been lost or stolen. A former CIA officer, Valerie Plame Wilson, who spent years trying to smash the nuclear black-market, argues that it is possible for terrorist to smuggle undetected highly enriched uranium - a hundred points of which could fit in a shoebox - into a targeted city and detonate it on site. This is a pretty scary scenario.
These are all good enough reasons for Obama to take the initiative towards a nuclear-free world, and help explain also why it is not being resisted by the empire's warriors.
The presence of American ambassador and his sidekick at this year's commemorative ceremony for the victims of American atomic bomb, therefore, it seems, was meant less as a gesture of remorse and more to lend strength to the idea of a nuclear-free world. Whatever the motive, all civilised people cannot but support the idea.
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