Diplomacy re-sows former battlefields

Barack Obama today becomes the first sitting president of the United States to visit Hiroshima, the first of two Japanese cities levelled in 1945 by nuclear weapons dropped on them by American bomber planes.

The atomic destruction of Hiroshima, and Nagasaki three days later, remain the only uses of nuclear weapons, and yet the threat of further use has never gone away.

Obama’s swing through two countries against which the US has waged war – first Vietnam and now Japan – offers a chance to contemplate shifts in international relations, the triumph of diplomacy over armed conflict, and the futility of war itself.

Cementing trade with Vietnam and Japan through friendly relations is at the core of the outgoing president’s eastern tour. Japan is rapidly regaining lost economic momentum and fast-rising Vietnam has emerged as the West’s key trading partner in Southeast Asia.

It is natural that Obama should visit Hiroshima, given what the city represents in a world where the noble concept of nuclear disarmament has never found traction and in fact atomic weapons have proliferated. It is more by luck than by care or conscience that there has been no use of nuclear arms since the end of World War II.

It is also understandable that Obama has ruled out apologising to the people of Japan for the nuclear attacks. He is instead expected to acknowledge a “special responsibility” on the part of the US as the only nation ever to have used an atomic weapon. As much as the Japanese and people around the world remain horrified that such force could be hurled against civilian populations, the international community is all too cognisant of Japanese aggression and atrocities committed during that same war.

The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed perhaps a quarter million civilians, a slaughter justified ever since as a necessary means of avoiding an even bloodier invasion of Japan. The consensus among historians is that the attacks did force Tokyo to surrender, although their necessity remains in dispute. 

Civilians made up most of the casualties in the Vietnam War too, although the estimates vary widely – anywhere from 1.1 million to 3.2 million in the period when the US military was engaged there, between 1954 and 1975. Pinned down in a guerrilla conflict, the Americans resorted to using highly destructive napalm bombs and the defoliant Agent Orange, and it’s not hard today finding citizens who still bear the scars.

State leaders start wars and their people pay the price. It has always been thus. And armies have always attacked civilians in the effort to achieve victory more quickly. After the horror, the tendency is to forget, if not forgive, and relinquish the manipulations and atrocities to history so that life can move on. 

Countries around the world honour their fallen soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice, even if the cause they fought for has come to seem pointless. We should equally be remembering the futility of the causes. We should consider that, however noble the intent at the beginning of a conflict, thousands upon thousands of lives were subsequently lost, predominantly the lives of non-combatants, including children.

In the 70 years since the Second World War ended, conflict has been ceaseless and the notion of peace now seems like a naïve fantasy. The planet bristles with nuclear warheads. We are warned that rogue states and terrorists are gaining atomic capability. Increasing tensions between the US and China could yet trigger war, and there’s a chance, remote to be sure, that nuclear weapons could come into play – the folly of “limited use” forever being bandied about. 

Provocative acts by one state against another demonstrate ignorance of history and disdain for life. If we cannot quite forgive the past, we should at the very least not be forgetful of its lessons.