THE nuclear atrocities committed on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9 1945 took place not by accident but by intent, as the most reactionary forces in the world, led by the US, pursued their goals of domination of the Western Pacific in the post-war world.

An estimated 140,000 died in Hiroshima, half of them on the day the bomb was detonated. Thousands more were horrifically injured. The US government and military knew very well what they had done, yet three days later, in cold blood, unleashed nuclear devastation also on the people of Nagasaki.

Whatever the subsequent excuses, the aggressor’s prime motivation was clear — to prevent the USSR from gaining a foothold in Japan and greater influence in the region after its planned entry to the war in the Far East on August 8.

For the US, death and destruction were insignificant in their rush to remove an already exhausted and “finished” Japan within hours and days rather than weeks.

Imperialist indifference in its pursuit of hegemony over the world’s vital resources, supply routes, labour and markets, has manifested itself time and again down to the present time.

Seventy-nine years after the nuclear bombings and 75 years after the formation of Nato, imperialism’s military arm, the alliance represents the greatest threat to the majority of people on Earth and indeed to the future of the planet itself.

Its recent Washington Summit Declaration (July 10 2024) makes frightening reading. Russia is defined as the alliance’s number one adversary, in a world it divides between enemies, including also “world terrorism,” China, Iran, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and allies such as Australia, New Zealand, Japan and India.

The “global and interconnected” threats to the interests of the world order the alliance represents will be countered on land, sea and air, in the deep oceans and in space and cyberspace and, chillingly, nuclear capability is defined as the cornerstone of alliance security.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) (June 2024), the world’s nine nuclear countries are upping their nuclear capabilities. Weapons, primed and ready for firing, are already deployed across the world, the vast majority by the US and Russia.

According to SIPRI, Israel is believed to be modernising its nuclear arsenal and upgrading its plutonium production reactor at Dimona.

Britain has raised the limit on its nuclear warhead storage and the military base at Lakenheath in Suffolk is being prepared once again to hold stockpiles of US nuclear weapons, B61-12 thermonuclear tactical bombs, to be flown by the US F-35A Lightening II aircraft already stationed there, putting the people of Britain on the dangerous front line of any future US-Russia conflict.

SIPRI director, Dan Smith recently warned that we are now in one of the most dangerous periods in human history: “The abyss is beckoning, and it is time for the great powers to step back and reflect, preferably together.” It is with this in mind that we should view the escalating conflicts of 2024.

The situation in the Middle East is deteriorating by the hour. Britain’s Foreign Office is advising against all travel in a contiguous swathe of the region from Lebanon through Syria, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan and reiterating that British citizens must leave Lebanon immediately, while they still can.

The threat of all-out war hangs over the peoples of the region, as does the stark truth that, far from trying to avoid it, fundamentalist regimes, hard right governments and their warmongering Western backers are invested in ensuring escalation, even to the point of regional conflagration.

At the same time, Israel’s genocide in Gaza continues unabated past its 300th day, with the economic, political and military backing of the US, Britain and the EU, without which it could not continue.

The number known to have been killed is now 40,000, the majority women and children, with an unknown number missing beneath the rubble and countless thousands injured, displaced and starving.

In Ukraine, the same imperialist allies are determined to continue the war indefinitely. To that end, sophisticated air defence systems, planes, missiles and other weaponry are being poured in.

Meanwhile, Russia threatens the use of tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield and, in May 2024, undertook preparatory exercises close up to the Ukrainian border. Both sides make impossible demands of the other as a prerequisite to the opening of peace negotiations.

Major conflicts continue in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and war is being waged in some 50 other countries, most rarely reported in the mass media. Many relate to the high-profit resource grab to supply the fossil fuels-to-electric-power conversion across the developed world.

It is no surprise, therefore, that the Doomsday Clock’s minute hand was moved in January 2023 to the closest it has ever been to midnight since the symbol was introduced in 1947 — just 90 seconds from cataclysmic destruction, due to the escalating nuclear threat. It has not been reversed.

In Britain, the new Labour government is committed, as all governments since World War II have been, to the country’s special relationship with the US, to playing a lead part in Nato, to spending ever more on “defence” and giving priority to the arms industry in the planned economic revival. Shareholders of the military-industrial sector are gleeful, while fund-starved public infrastructure and services collapse.

The world does not have to be this way, and our task is urgent if we, together with peace-loving people across the world are to prevent catastrophe. The wars being waged could end tomorrow and peace negotiations begin if the US, Britain and their Nato/EU allies withdrew their economic, political and military support.

But the ruling classes will never agree on their own volition. The stakes are too high. Millions and ever more millions of people everywhere have to keep up the pressure — keep marching, agitating, and educating for peace throughout the labour and peace movements and in our communities and opposing Britain’s warmongering foreign policy every step of the way.

A third world war, fought with nuclear, biological and chemical weapons is a very real and ever-present possibility. Einstein is reputed to have said: “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” We must not let it happen. Hiroshima no more. Peace now.

Liz Payne is convener of the British Peace Assembly.