Writes: James N. Kariuki

Obama, nuclear weapons and the race factor — Given the history of nuclear weapons relative to the non-white world, and noting the ongoing ‘loose talk about nukes’ in the US regarding Iran, it is fitting that Barack Obama should aspire to eliminate all nuclear weapons, American and otherwise. Perhaps, he owes it most to his ancestral Diaspora.

In early August 1945, the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. The indiscriminate damage of life and property was immeasurable. It was a massive collective punishment, a classic case of the power of modern civilisation without its mercy.

Ever since, the world has been haunted by two questions. Was the use of nuclear devices necessary? Would the US have used nuclear weapons against white Germany? Critics remain deeply divided.

President Harry Truman’s sympathisers however, support his logic that the bombs were vital to shortening the war in the Pacific and saving American lives.

Doubters insist that by mid-1945, Japan was virtually a crippled enemy. Nazi Germany had already surrendered in May 1945.

Combined bombardment

How much longer could Japan have endured under the combined ‘conventional’ bombardment of the Allies and, possibly, Russia?

In short, the American use of atomic weapons was unnecessary, prompted and made easier by the fact that the victims were non-white. Indeed innuendoes abound that America used the Japanese as guinea pigs to demonstrate the ravaging power of its new, barbarous weapon.

Twenty years later, the same US was bogged down in the protracted Vietnam War, and language of nuclear weapons resurfaced in American politics. The 1964 Republican presidential contender, Barry Goldwater, openly recommended using low-yield nuclear weapons for defoliation of Vietnamese woodlands.

Goldwater’s ‘nuclear reckless talk’ ultimately cost him the presidency. But in the hunt for it, he had arrogated to himself the right to entertain nuclear language that could have resulted in annihilation of a Southeast Asian nation.

Again, the collective victims would have been non-whites — men, women and children alike.

Castro’s autobiography

In a 2007 autobiography, Fidel Castro: My Life, the Cuban icon narrates the story that for Angola’s freedom, Cuban and Angolan troops fought against an apartheid army and government that had eight Hiroshima/Nagasaki-size atomic bombs secretly “provided by the US through … Israel.” Were those weapons developed during the South African-Israeli nuclear collaboration or were they US-made? In either case, the targets were black people.

As SA approached freedom, the West became increasingly nervous over the prospects of blacks inheriting a nuclear state.

Accordingly, Nelson Mandela and his associates were vigorously coaxed into dismantling the bombs and signing the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Racist SA could be nuclear; democratic one could not.

Given the history of nuclear weapons relative to the non-white world, and noting the ongoing ‘loose talk about nukes’ in the US regarding Iran, it is fitting that Barack Obama should aspire to eliminate all nuclear weapons, American and otherwise. Perhaps, he owes it most to his ancestral Diaspora.