Nuclear politics on the Pacific Rim

Abstract

The year 1995 is a time of 50th anniversaries: the end of World War II and the Holocaust; the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the end of a devastating Asian war and the defeat of Japan; a divided Korea; the start of a global nuclear arms race and cold war between the United States and Soviet Union; and the start of a peace movement, initiated by Manhattan Project scientists, to abolish nuclear weapons. In this year of remembrance, replete with memorial ceremonies, museum exhibitions, and editorials, we encounter the barbarity human beings have committed in the name of nation‐states in this century. We also confront the central legacy of the past five decades: the continued existence of nuclear weapons and the rapidly changing nuclear politics of the post‐cold war era.