Thank you for inviting me to return to this year’s Bikini Day events. In December I had the extraordinary privilege of joining Nihon Hidankyo’s Nobel Peace Prize delegation. I remain indebted to and inspired by the courage, commitment, and steadfastness of Hibakusha. It was thrilling to be with them as they received the Prize’s remarkable recognition and platform.
Sadly, some of Hidankyo’s most courageous founders did not live to savor that fruit of their sacrifices and commitments. This underlines the importance of making the 80th anniversary as powerful and as far reaching as we can.
Tragically the dangers of nuclear war are greater than ever. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists just sent a “stark signal” by moving the Doomsday Clock’s hands closer than ever to annihilation – 89 seconds to midnight. They cited the war in Ukraine, the U.S.-Chinese competition, and the Middle East given Gaza and Iran . And in Oslo, Tanaka-san warned of the dangers of the world’s 12,000 nuclear warheads, “modernization” of the nuclear powers’ arsenals, and the absence of arms control or disarmament diplomacy by the nuclear weapons states. He also warned about possible proliferation, especially here in Northeast Asia and Iran.
THE TRUMP/MUSK COUP
Days after Trump’s November election victory, a senior Russian diplomat asked how great a historical transformation it signaled. Was it the equivalent of the Civil War, Reconstruction, or the New Deal? The journalist Jamille Bouie answered that Trump and his cronies are “waging war on the American system of government.” Billionaires captured Washington to increase their fortunes, and turn the clock back on 70 years of civil and human rights gains. We are now in a “constitutional crisis” with Trump and his acolytes signaling that they will not respect court orders that overrule their illegal actions.
The New Yorker magazine illustrates our reality. It pictures Musk, the world’s richest plutocrat placing his hand on the Bible as Trump took the oath of office. Musk and Vance also seek to overturn the German and British governments. Trump has a clown cabinet of incompetent extremists who are firing thousands of government workers to ensure loyalty to the would-be dictator. With incompetents in the most senior positions, I am reminded of French President De Gaulle who humiliated a cabinet member saying: “I chose the most stupid man because I thought he would be the most loyal.”
It’s a fascist counter-revolution. And by pardoning or commuting sentences of insurrectionists who stormed the U.S. Capital four years ago, Trump is giving license to 21st century Brownshirts to enforce his will.
There is push back, but loyalty rules in the Republican controlled Congress and Democrats remain divided and lack a sense of urgency. The separation of powers and checks and balances that are essential to U.S. constitutional government are being eviscerated. All but perhaps one of the traditional institutional guardrails have fallen. Ironically, a possible constraint is Wall Street. Billionaires don’t like their fortunes jeopardized. When Trump threatened comprehensive 25% tariffs against Mexico and Canada, whose economies are integrated with that of the U.S., the Wall Street Journal editorialized that it would be “the dumbest trade war in history.” Trump folded, and now we have more limited steel and aluminum tariffs..
TRUMP’S SOVEREIGNIST FOREIGN POLICIES
The world recoiled when Trump threatened to seize Greenland, the Panama Canal, annex Canada, pledged to complete the Palestinian Nakba, and assume control over the Gaza Strip.
The New York Times placed Trump’s foreign policies in the tradition of the early sovereigntist movement which sought not only formal sovereignty, but “the traditional forms of rule to which its white, native-born [and I would add Christian] leaders were accustomed…they understood international cooperation as a threat to their personal sovereignty as well as that of their nations.” Sovereigntists played leading roles in the 1930s’ fascist “America First” movement and opposed creation of the UN, and the International Court as infringements on U.S. sovereignty. They supported racist Rhodesia as a “brave little country” and defended South African apartheid. Trump’s Project 2025 proclaims that “International organizations and agreements that erode our Constitution, rule of law or popular sovereignty…should be abandoned.”
The conservative journalist Bret Stephens described Sovereigntism as a means for “ a country doing what it wants to do… however cruel or dangerous, so long as it doesn’t impinge on us.” It means that “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”
There is a laughable wild card, Trump hopes to win the Nobel Peace Prize. In his imagination it could come by negotiating grand transactional bargains in the Middle East at the expense of Palestinians, with Putin to end the Ukraine War and erect a new European security architecture, or by deals with Kim Jung-un and Teheran.
Trump 2.0 seems committed to the lattice-like network of Indo-Pacific military alliances: the trilateral alliance with Japan and South Korea, AUKUS, the Quad and tripartite alliance with the Philippines, all of which are designed to contain China. Making commitments explicit, Prime Minister Ishiba was the second foreign leader invited to the White House. To avoid offending his majesty, the fawning Ishiba declined to affirm respect for the rule of law so that he could announce AMPO’s “Golden Era.” Earlier, Secretary of State Rubio met with QUAD foreign ministers, And Defense Secretary Hegseth affirmed that AMPO applies to the disputed Senkakus/Diaoyu islands, and reaffirmed the military alliance with South Korea,
Mike Waltz, Trump’s National Security Advisor is a China hawk, as are Secretary of State Rubio, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Elbridge Colby (the grandson of former CIA Director William Colby.) Waltz said that China’s military buildup was comparable to Nazi Germany’s in the 1930s. He envisions a Tibet, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan domino effect leaving Beijing with 80% of the world’s computer chips and more than half of the world’s GDP. Before they were in power for a month, they were sending US warships through the Taiwan Strait.
China hawks are committed to increasing U.S. military spending. Among their ambitions are moving an aircraft carrier from the Atlantic to the Pacific, moving the entire Marine Corps, minus administrative forces, to the Pacific. They want a 355 ship fleet with more stealthy nuclear armed Virginia and Colombia class nuclear armed submarines. Congress, they insist, should fund all 350 new strategic bombers.
But to fuIly implement the pivot to Asia, Trump, Vance and Hegseth used the Munich Security Conference to profoundly upset the 80 year-old Euro-Atlantic disorder. Relations with Russia are being restored with Ukraine and Europe being transformed into mere geopolitical pawns. In Saudi Arabia, senior U.S. and Russian officials met in the absence of their European and Ukrainian peers, to create a two pronged diplomatic process. One will focus on U.S. Russian relations and the other on Ukraine’s future. Fears about that we may be seeing a 21st century version of the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement that led to the division of Poland between the dynamics, and having offered continued military support for Ukraine in exchange for 50% of its profits from rare earth minerals essential needed for the technological and industrial competition Trump has yet to totally abandon Ukraine.
As we saw with Trump’s terrifying tariff threat against Colombia, and those against Mexico and Canada, his preferred method of domination is economic blackmail. He has competing forces within his administration. China hawks press Trump to decouple the U.S. economy from China’s while Elon Musk, who produces nearly a million Tesla EVs a year in China, isn’t eager to jeopardize his investments. This and China’s near monopoly on rare earth minerals may explain Trump’s climb down from his 25% tariff increase against China.
TRUMP & NUCLEAR WEAPONS
Trump ran as the peace candidate. Memory can be inconvenient. Recall his four years of war in Afghanistan and Robert O’Brien’s reported that Trump’s fire and fury threats against North Korea brought us closer to nuclear war than almost anyone knew. Trump launched this presidency by bombing ISIS targets in Syria.
In recent discussions among senior US, Russian, and European diplomats and analysts about how to restore strategic stability and resume arms control negotiations, they found agreements in what to expect from Trump 2.0.
- Trump’s first and second priorities are to make his family wealthier, not foreign and military policies. On day one, he and Melania issued inaugural bitcoins with the money going straight into their pockets. That allows for money laundering and plutocrats and foreign interests buying influence. .
- Trump is ambivalent about nuclear weapons. He has expressed the desire to resume arms control talks, was critical of building new nuclear weapons, and said he hopes to cut military spending in half. How committed to any of these he was time will tell.
- The administration’s nuclear posture review will take at least a year to be developed, about the time that the New START Treaty expires.
- Despite the anticipated $100 billion military spending increase, there are financial and industrial limits to possible increases in the U.S. nuclear arsenal and delivery systems.
- China’s nuclear policies, not Russia’s, will have the greatest impact on U.S. nuclear planning. There is belief in Washington that China is moving from No First Use to minimum deterrence.
- The Pentagon doesn’t believe that increasing the number of nuclear weapons will augment U.S. military power. But expect deployments of new submarine launched ballistic missiles, a second earth penetrator nuclear warhead, and a warhead for non-ballistic reentry vehicles.
- When the Ukraine War ends, Trump and Putin could agree not to increase the number of their deployed nuclear weapons.
- With the expiration of New START, anticipate both the U.S. and Russia will increase their deployed nuclear arsenals by uploading more stockpiled nuclear weapons onto missiles.
- There is little evidence that renewed nuclear weapons testing will be a Trump/Hegseth priority. Investments to reduce the lead time to resume testing with advanced measurement capabilities from three years to six months. are possible. But Trump could detonate a nuclear warhead in Nevada to send a terrorizing message to the world. This would lead other nuclear powers to resume testing their warheads.
The NY Times also reports that Trump has embraced the fantasy of an impenetrable missile defense shield. President Reagan’s Star Wars vision won’t die. Certainly an arms race escalation!
Turning to Northeast Asia, Trump recognized the DPRK as a nuclear weapons state. He had already encouraged South Korea and Japan to develop nuclear weapons. And if he moves forward with transactional negotiations with Pyongyang, it will fuel conservative ROK and Japanese pressures to become nuclear weapons states. More, in South Korea there is fear that if Yoon is convicted, with the far right that is growing and building momentum, it could lead to a military coup. There is also concern that if the Democratic Party comes to power in Seoul it could weaken the alliance and thus encourage pro nuclear forces there.
RESISTANCE AND SURVIVAL
Jorgen Frydnes, who chairs the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, began the Peace Prize ceremony by invoking the Russell-Einstein Manifesto’s appeal: If we are to survive, we must “remember our humanity and forget the rest.”
As dangerous as the situation in the U.S. is, there may be possibilities to reduce the nuclear danger: Trump’s Nobel Peace Prize ambitions, his ambivalence regarding nuclear weapons, and his signaling openness to arms control negations with Moscow and Teheran. There are no guarantees about these, but we must be vigilant and as appropriate opportunistic. Recall the persistent international anti-nuclear actions and Gorbachev’s inspired diplomacy that led to President Reagan’s reverse course, the end of the Cold War, and significant reductions in the nuclear powers’ omnicidal arsenals.
Please take pride that December’s Peace Prize ceremony inspired events across U.S. with most stressing the importance of August’s 80th A-bombings anniversary. Our Back from the Brink campaign is supported by 43 members of Congress and by many communities. It calls for negotiation of a verifiable agreement to eliminate nuclear weapons, renunciation of first-use policies, ending the president’s sole authority to launch nuclear weapons, taking U.S. nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert, and to cancel the plan to replace the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal. It will remain the centerpiece of our campaigning.
There are other initiatives. We are pressing adoption of no first use legislation, opposing the $200 billion upgraded “Sentinel” missiles, and doing what we can to prevent the integration of AI capabilities with Command and Control systems.
We have also learned that several Congressional nuclear weapons opponents will join August’s 80th anniversary events in Hiroshima. We are exploring ways to maximize the impacts of their participation.
Finally, when I was a child, my mother admonished me saying “No one promised you a bowl of cherries.” We face hard times. But, inspired by the steadfastness of the Hibakusha and others engaged in peace and justice movements, we will be steadfast and we shall overcome!