Catherine Rowett MEP’s comments come in the week of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Peace Days.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki Peace Days are held on 6th and 9th August to commemorate the dates when in 1945 two atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing up to a quarter of a million people. Since then the dates 6th and 9th August have come to remind the world of the terrible destruction that nuclear weapons can wreak.
Commenting on the commemorations, Green Party MEP, Catherine Rowett, said:
“Humanity has been disfigured by the atrocity that is nuclear warfare. It’s correct that they are called “weapons of mass destruction.”
She continued by reiterating her view that Britain should lead the world by abandoning its nuclear deterrent:
“The need for Britain to get rid of its nuclear weapons cannot be overstated. Since Hiroshima, and Nagasaki three days later, no one has used a nuclear bomb. But the absurd arms race between Russia and the USA showed the massive stockpiling of nuclear weapons did not make the world a safer place and instead only increased tensions. The lesson of the Cold War and its end is that dialogue is the way forward, not only dangerous reliance on destructive force.”
In 1987 a landmark treaty was signed by US and Russian leaders Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. It led to the elimination of 2,692 medium and intermediate land-based missiles. While it did not lead to a complete nuclear disarming, it was a treaty that partially ended the arms race that lasted throughout much of the Cold War.
Last year, on October 20th 2018, Donald Trump announced that he was withdrawing the USA from this treaty. The USA formally withdrew on 2nd August 2019.
Catherine Rowett MEP concluded by saying:
“The Cold War was a period of perennial threat of escalation and disaster. However, the USA and Russia look set to restart the Cold War and enter a new arms race and I am deeply worried about what that means to all our futures.”