Oppenheimer, la película de Christopher Nolan, se ha convertido en uno de los grandes éxitos cinematográficos del momento, una buena opción para las tardes de verano. La película es larga y exhaustiva si vamos con la expectativa de conocer una historia más, sin mayores pretensiones que evadirnos de la rutina cotidiana. En cambio, nos parecerá que no sobra ni el más mínimo detalle, e incluso se nos hará corta, si nos interesa en detalle la vida de este físico, considerado el padre de la bomba atómica; el contexto y circunstancias históricas y las consecuencias y repercusiones de su trabajo. A través del proceso de descrédito mediante juicio sumarísimo, amañado y sin pruebas, al que se vio sometido Oppenheimer, y que desembocó en su exilio académico, por su libertad de expresión contra el poder establecido y sus simpatías con el partido comunista, se puede constatar una vez más cómo se comportan incluso los colegas más próximos ante este tipo de situaciones: reminiscencias del experimento de Milgram.… Seguir leyendo »
A February poll found that 71 percent of South Koreans wanted their country to have nuclear weapons. Another in May found 70.2 percent supported indigenous nuclearization, with 63.6 percent in support even if that violated the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The drivers, unsurprisingly, are North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and China’s growing belligerence. These factors impact the Japanese nuclearization debate too, though interest there is noticeably lower. The United States has long opposed South Korean/Japanese counter-nuclearization. But in the light of the Ukraine war, Washington should not hegemonically dictate the outcome of its allies’ WMD debates.
NATO anxiety over possible Russian WMDs in the Ukraine war illustrates potential limits on U.S.… Seguir leyendo »
El 6 de agosto de 1945 Akihiro Takahashi, un estudiante de 14 años, se encontraba en el patio de su colegio en Hiroshima cuando, de repente, se vio envuelto por una luz cegadora y un ruido infernal que lo dejaron inconsciente. Al recobrar los sentidos, se dio cuenta de que había sido arrojado contra un muro a varios metros de distancia: fue por la fuerza de la bomba atómica lanzada contra su ciudad. Sobrevivió solamente gracias a que su escuela estaba a casi dos kilómetros del epicentro.
Aturdido, y cubierto de quemaduras, Akihiro se dirigió al río en busca de agua fría para calmar sus heridas.… Seguir leyendo »
President Trump is visiting Tokyo on Monday at a time of renewed national security debates within Japan. North Korea’s recent missile launches and nuclear tests have again prompted discussion in Tokyo on Japan’s policy against becoming a nuclear state.
Although Japan has long had the technical ability to develop nuclear weapons — its “nuclear hedge” — it has refrained from doing so. Japan instead remains firmly committed to its 1967 Three Non-Nuclear Principles of not developing, not possessing and not introducing nuclear weapons.
This is not the first time that Japan has reexamined those principles. Similar debates transpired after China’s hydrogen bomb test in 1967, the Soviet Union’s deployment of medium-range nuclear missiles in Siberia during the 1980s and North Korea’s first nuclear test in 2006.… Seguir leyendo »
The whole world confronts an unprecedented, grave and imminent threat from North Korea. On Sept. 3, the regime carried out a reprehensible nuclear test. Late last week, it launched a ballistic missile over my country, Japan, only two weeks after a similar missile launch. By repeatedly testing missiles — in violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions — Pyongyang has shown its reach now extends to the United States and Europe.
North Korea’s actions are an outright challenge to the international community. On Sept. 11, the United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution on a new round of strict sanctions that restrict member states from selling oil to the North, ban North Korean textile exports and ban member states from authorizing North Koreans to work abroad.… Seguir leyendo »
Pyongyang’s recent missile launch over Hokkaido and its underground nuclear test have laid bare Japan’s Achilles’ heel: Our country’s national security policy is still woefully ill equipped for this mounting danger. The new sanctions adopted by the United Nations Security Council on Monday will hardly limit Japan’s exposure.
North Korea’s latest provocations pose an unprecedented threat. Even during the Korean War in the early 1950s, Japan, as a rear support base for United States forces, was somewhat insulated; today, it is in the same theater as South Korea, also on the front lines. Any American military strike against North Korea would likely trigger retaliatory measures against Japan.… Seguir leyendo »
Corea del Sur avanza en sus planes que lo convertirán en el anfitrión de un sistema avanzado de defensa antimisiles – conocido como “Terminal High Altitude Area Defense”, o THAAD – que implementará en colaboración con el ejército de Estados Unidos. La decisión del presidente surcoreano Park Geun-hye ha suscitado controversia; y, China y Rusia se oponen a la misma, y a su vez algunos comentaristas predicen el comienzo de una “Nueva Guerra Fría”.
Sin embargo, China y Rusia deberían agradecer la llegada del THAAD, porque alivia la necesidad que tiene Corea del Sur o Japón de buscar otras opciones de defensa, que podrían incluir el desarrollo de armas nucleares.… Seguir leyendo »
President Obama laid a wreath at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial on Friday. It was a historic visit, the first of a sitting U.S. president to either Hiroshima or Nagasaki since the end of the Pacific War in 1945.
In both Japan and the United States, an emotional controversy had simmered over whether Obama would — or should — apologize for the atomic bombings. For many Americans, his presence alone in Hiroshima symbolized an unwarranted and offensive apology for those unprecedented attacks.
But the atonement debate was beside the point, yet another way for Americans to avert their gaze from the suffering of the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.… Seguir leyendo »
On May 27, Barack Obama will become the first sitting American president to visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, the site of the world's first atomic bombing. Though highly photogenic, the visit will otherwise be one that avoids acknowledging the true historical meaning of the place.
Like his official predecessors (Secretary of State John Kerry visited the Peace Memorial in early April, as did two American ambassadors before him), Obama will not address the key issues surrounding the attack. “He [Obama] will not revisit the decision to use the atomic bomb,” Benjamin Rhodes, deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, stated well ahead of time.… Seguir leyendo »
There have been countless articles, protests and commemorations in recent days on the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But why is there so much focus on these events?
This may seem an odd question to ask, especially at the time of their 70th anniversaries, but it is not as flippant as it sounds. True, at least 200,000 people died – an appalling waste of human life and the source of countless personal and family tragedies. But such horrors were anything but unique at that time – the bombing of Hiroshima took place in the context of a war in which, on a reasonable estimate, some 60m people were killed.… Seguir leyendo »
On Aug. 9, 1945, the United States dropped a nuclear bomb on Nagasaki, situated on a long, narrow bay on Japan’s southernmost main island, Kyushu.
From the beginning, this attack was different than the atomic bombing of Hiroshima three days earlier, yet the experiences of the two cities have been fused in memory, to the point that we use the term “the bomb” to refer to both events. The result has been to consign Nagasaki to the edge of oblivion.
Many Americans believe their government’s official narrative: that the two bombs, dropped in close succession, led to Japan’s surrender. But it is now well known that the surrender was prompted at least as much by the Soviet Union’s decision to join the Allies in the war against Japan.… Seguir leyendo »
I grew up under the watchful eyes of three Russian icons that survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. They belonged to my father’s parents, refugees from the Russian Revolution who were quietly eating breakfast with two of their three children when the Enola Gay flew over their city on Aug. 6, 1945, and dropped the bomb that turned most of it to dust.
Miraculously, my father’s family escaped unscathed. To everyone’s surprise, so did the icons. Today they hang on my mother’s dining room wall in Reno, Nevada, priceless symbols not only of the Russian Orthodox faith but of the impact of the 20th century’s upheaval and violence on the lives of one family.… Seguir leyendo »
The Futenma Marine Corps Air Station on Okinawa, one of the largest United States military bases in East Asia, is in the center of a crowded city. The American and Japanese governments acknowledge the dangers of this situation, and they agreed nearly 15 years ago that the base should be moved; however, no move has yet been made.
In 2009 a new prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, tantalized Okinawans with the prospect of moving the despised base off the island, but he was recently forced to resign, in part because of his failure to keep that promise. Mr. Hatoyama’s successor, Naoto Kan, has made it clear that he intends to respect the United States-Japan security treaty — a position that, while not directly related to the issue of dialing down the United States military presence in Japan, may indicate which way the wind is blowing.… Seguir leyendo »
When I first went to Hiroshima in 1967, the shadow on the steps was still there. It was an almost perfect impression of a human being at ease: legs splayed, back bent, one hand by her side as she sat waiting for a bank to open. At a quarter past eight on the morning of August 6, 1945, she and her silhouette were burned into the granite. I stared at the shadow for an hour or more, then walked down to the river and met a man called Yukio, whose chest was still etched with the pattern of the shirt he was wearing when the atomic bomb was dropped.… Seguir leyendo »
Los siervos. ¿Qué será de los siervos? De nosotros, ya lo sabemos. Somos hombres inciertos, seguros durante algunos instantes, pero normalmente perplejos, mejor dicho, indecisos, listos para contradecirnos, para enredarnos miserablemente en ese mismo pensamiento que apenas ayer parecía darnos seguridad. Una duda nos persigue: ¿será de verdad así? No, no, ha sido una confusión. E inmediatamente después: ¿y si en cambio fuera verdad?… Seguir leyendo »
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