Welcome. My name is Joseph Gerson, and on behalf of the Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Common Security, Gensuikyo, and our many other cosponsoring organizations, I want to welcome both those of you who are here and those who have joined online for this afternoon’s brief but important conference: Tectonic Geopolitical Changes: Which Way To Peace and a Nuclear Weapon-Free World?
I would especially like to welcome the Japanese and Korean Hibakusha who have joined us. Your courage, perseverance and vision for a nuclear weapons-free world have been gifts to and a hope for humanity. Please stand up if you will.
I also want to appreciate the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, our gifted interpreters, and our partner organizations here in New York without whom this conference would not have been possible.
We need to express appreciation to the four Japanese nuclear weapons aboltion organizations who encouraged us to organize a conference to reaffirm the NPT’s Article VI promise and to deconstruct suicidal deterrence theory.
And as we begin, we would do well to remember that today marks the 40th Anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear calamity and to remember the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami fifteen years ago when we almost lost Tokyo and whose disastrous consequences continue to this day and into the future.
Aeschylus may have been the first person to warn that truth is the first casualty of war. From Washington to Moscow, and Paris to Pyongyang, not to mention Jerusalem, London, Beijing, New Delhi and Islamabad, those with state and billionaire power and the pulpits they control want us to believe that war is peace, that nuclear deterrence ensures security, that obscene amounts of military spending are more important than health care, housing and education, and that there are no alternatives to the world as it is and to its dangers.
Living as we do in a “time of monsters,” when “the old world” – the U.N. Charter, international law, and arms control agreements” – are disregarded and under assault, and the new world is struggling to be born, we meet amidst very deadly wars, continuing threats of first strike nuclear attacks, and growing dangers of nuclear weapons proliferation. How else to completely destroy a civilization except by nuclear attack? And what about demands for nuclear arsenals from Poland to Seoul and even in Japan where an overwhelming majority – three quarters – of its people favor the country’s three non-nuclear principles?
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists warns that we are 85 seconds to midnight, the closest ever to annihilation not only from the rising dangers of nuclear war, but also from the climate catastrophe, AI, cyber and other threats to truth, and to the infrastructures and values that support human survival. Take that in for a minute. 85 seconds to midnight.
Our discourse, friends, is polite and diplomatic. But some here have experienced wars, experienced and witnessed craven brutality and the murder of war. Many of us know Hibakusha and other victims of nuclear weapons testing and manufacture, or people living under the bombs in Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Ukraine and, yes, even in Russia. As we listen to today’s speeches, I want you to think about the human lives at stake, and Hibakusha’s existential truth that human beings and nuclear weapons cannot coexist. That’s how we won the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
In track II discussions and on the front page of the New York Times, we learn that the most likely outcome of the Iran War will be that Teheran will move as quickly as possible to become a nuclear weapons state. Both the Iran and Ukraine Wars are fueling calls for proliferation and for a French nuclear umbrella as a deterrent hedge against the unreliability and chaos of the United States.
And, speaking as a U.S. American, we have to wonder what a desperate and unhinged Donald Trump will do in the face of his inevitable defeats in Iran, in November’s mid-term elections, and in the face of rising disgust at his many corruptions.
If we are honest with ourselves and fully committed to human survival, we need to confront the reality that the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty has failed to live up to its promise and as a result is in serious jeopardy. Some senior Russian and U.S. arms control diplomats warn that, if we have the third failed RevCon in a row, this could be the last NPT Review Conference. Joseph Rotblat, the nuclear scientist, and Nobel Laureate warned that because no nation will long tolerate what it experiences as an unjust imbalance of power –humanity faces the stark choice. It can either eliminate the world’s nuclear arsenals or suffer their widespread proliferation and omnicidal nuclear wars that will follow.
Friends, here in the United States, we face the assaults on constitutional democracy, Trump’s ICE brown shirts kidnapping, imprisoning, and deporting our neighbors, assaults on human rights, truth, education science, housing, and health care, and so much more. As we have resisted and done our best to envision and to create a humane future, these have been many discussions about hope, where it lies, and if and how it can be created.
Over the past year, many of us in the U.S. have learned that we the people weare the source of hope. We have learned this from the massive No Kings protests, from the courage of students affirming Palestinian rights, from the overwhelming opposition to the Trump-Netanyahu wars, from comedians who have dared to say that the emperor has no clothes.
We can take strength from our past victories. As much as we may appreciate the contributions of statesmen and women, we need to remember that the NPT, 2010’s 13 steps, the TPNW, the test ban, SALT, START, and INF Treaties, and so many other disarmament and peace agreements were won on the foundations of the visions, commitments, difficult and at times boring, but always stubborn efforts of ordinary people like ourselves. That’s how we ended the Cold War, that’s how we have won civil and gender rights here in the U.S., and how Victor Orban’s tyranny came to an end last week. It is how we will defend Article VI and build a peaceful and just common security order.
On the subject of order, I should say that I have been informed that some of our Japanese participants, most of whom are on the second floor here, will be briefly excusing themselves from time to time during the conference to deal with UN credential issues. I trust that this can be done as discreetly as possible.
Then, to ground our conference in the deepest understandings of the unacceptable horrors of nuclear weapons and the urgency of totally eliminating them, let me introduce Jiro Hamasumi, who is among the youngest Hiroshima Hibakusha, perhaps we might say, the young hope of Nihon Hidankyo. Hamasumi-san’s life and work embody the organization’s mission: to ensure that the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are never repeated, and to use personal testimony to advocate for peace and disarmament.
He will share his personal history, but you should know that just over twenty years ago he helped establish the Inayukai, an association for atomic bomb survivors in Inagi City, Tokyo, and served as its chairman beginning in 2012. Hamasumi-san became Assistant General Secretary of Nihon Hidankyo, the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations, a nationwide organization representing survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki that was founded in 1966. As a leading figure in Hidankyo, Hamasumi-san has worked to promote nuclear disarmament, support survivors’ rights, and share personal testimonies to prevent future nuclear catastrophes I trust that you all know that after being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize many times, Nihon Hidankyo was finally awarded the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again. Truth to tell, given the debacle of 2025, we may long remember that with the award to Nihon Hidankyo, the Nobel Committee enhanced the sometimes-sullied reputation of the Nobel Peace Prize.
Hamasumi-san, Domo Arrigato. The floor is yours.