WHAT’S TO STOP NUCLEAR WEAPONS FROM BEING USED IN A FUTURE WORLD WAR?

Because of “mutually assured destruction,” nuclear deterrence has prevailed despite major powers hoarding weapons With tensions over Taiwan, the war in Ukraine, and Trump's return, the risk of a world war looms larger The official reason for dropping the bomb on Japan was to end WWII and save lives, but historians argue it was also a weapons test and a warning to Stalin

- By Gamini Akmeemana

There has been much speculation ever since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 that a third world war would break out. The involvement of regional powers such as Iran after the Israeli invasion of Gaza added more fuel to this speculation.

Despite dire predictions, no third world war has started yet. But there is a haunting spectre that looms over such a possibility — the use of nuclear weapons.

It’s two nuclear bombs which ended World War II. They were made in the United States, the only nuclear-armed country in the world at the time (though some historians claim that Hitler’s Germany was close), and they were dropped on the predominantly civilian cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.

Since then, though the world was perilously close to a war between the US and the former-USSR several times till the latter ceased to exist in 1991, no nuclear weapons have been used, though both superpowers maintained huge nuclear arsenals. The world today has nine declared nuclear armed states. But the use of nuclear bombs in war has been widely thought of as unthinkable.

If we think on a broader scale beyond Ukraine and Gaza, and think of Yemen, civil war in South Sudan, and even of Taiwan as a flashpoint for a war that can directly involve the US, Russia, the EU and China, Iran and perhaps India, Pakistan and even the Philippines and Japan), we can ask two questions — is another world war inevitable? And, If it starts, would nuclear weapons be used?