Polly Toynbee is right to point out that while nuclear war has been pushed down the “league table of fear”, most recently by concerns about the climate crisis, the nuclear threat itself remains “as great or greater” and should be the subject of much more urgent debate (I changed my mind on banning the bomb, but the threat of nuclear war is growing – and so is complacency, 7 August). All the more surprising, then, that she overlooks some of the more promising steps towards nuclear disarmament.
In particular, momentum is building behind the UN treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons, which came into force in 2021 and is now supported by nearly half the countries in the world. The treaty was the focus of much of the debate in Hiroshima, where I attended the 80th anniversary commemorations, and it deserves to be much better known.
How disappointing, then, that the UK government is not only failing to support it but is actively trying to suppress information about the impact of nuclear war as one of just three countries to vote against the creation of a UN scientific panel on its effects. Instead, it’s choosing to accept a recommendation from the recent strategic defence review to run a PR campaign to convince people of the “necessity” of a growing nuclear arsenal.
If we are to have any success in challenging this, we need to promote a public education campaign that sets out the existential threat posed by nuclear weapons, the flaws in so-called deterrence theory and measures that could immediately reduce risk – taking weapons off hair-trigger alert, for example, and joining China in a “no first use” policy.
Recent polling from More in Common suggests that young people believe nuclear conflict is the greatest threat to Britain. We owe it to them not to give up.
Caroline Lucas
Vice-president, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament; former Green party MP
• I normally agree with Polly Toynbee, and was also on the Aldermaston marches as a child, but she is misguided in believing that a joint European nuclear capability would make us safer from Russian aggression. If Russian tanks were to roll into Poland, does she envisage Europe threatening to take out Moscow? If so, I hope that it would be an empty threat and hence useless; if a real threat, we are on the road to Armageddon.
Maybe it would deter a nuclear attack or threat, but is such a situation conceivable? After all, Vladimir Putin could launch a nuclear attack on Ukraine, which has no nuclear umbrella. The more places that have such weapons, the more the risk of misjudged situations. In practice, the nuclear option is useless, unsafe and costly, as well as immoral.
Gerry Weston
Willesden Green, London
• The dangerous myth that the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima ended the Pacific war is perpetuated in all the coverage of its 80th anniversary. When I attended an intensive summer course with my students, organised by Hiroshima City University in 2005, we discussed the evidence against this contention. Subsequently, Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, in his book Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan, laid out the overwhelming evidence that it was the Soviet entry into the war that finally forced the surrender. Nuclear weapons kill people and may destroy the planet – they do not end war.
Michael Newman
Emeritus professor, London Metropolitan University
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