The destructive potential of nuclear weapons makes states “responsible” and helps stave off a Third World War; the process of triggering the bomb is controlled; proliferation must be avoided, but our nuclear arsenal must be modernized. If we are to dispel the myths surrounding nuclear weapons, a debate is needed.
Japan and the Korean peninsula share a troubled history, and the already tense relationships of these areas have been deteriorating over the past few years. Floriano Filho maps out these tensions as well as their symptoms—which include an arms race—while bringing light to their historical roots.
In February 2016, South Korea decided to close the inter-Korean Kaesong Industrial Complex in protest against North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile tests. Previously, it had not framed denuclearisation as a prerequisite for collaboration between the two Koreas – a change of course that may prove ill advised.
A great historian of the English working class, a major intellectual figure in debates surrounding Marxism in the years 1960-1970, and an anti-nuclear activist who initiated an environmentalist critique of capitalism—such were the many faces of Edward Palmer Thompson, whose work deeply permeates the different social sciences to this day.
Kenzaburō Ōe, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, is a controversial figure in Japan. And rightly so, for there are a great many contradictions in both his fictional and theoretical work. He is a fierce opponent of nuclear weapons and nuclear energy, and yet continues to celebrate the heroism of the soldier who finds glory through sacrifice.
Paul Jobin, who has been monitoring workers at the Fukushima nuclear plant, provides an analysis of the Japanese government’s denial of the health implications for these workers and, more broadly, the long-term effects of the disaster. This censorship is, however, being challenged by the social mobilization that has followed, particularly on the Internet.
According to the American historian Michael Bess, political ecology in France does not have the dark-green hue of ‘deep ecology’, but instead is a light-green colour that combines organic produce and technological modernity. Is this not, however, rather too optimistic a picture of a country that is struggling to implement a real policy for sustainable development?
Israel’s nuclear policy is the nation’s last taboo. Avner Cohen’s book explains that the country’s posture of nuclear opacity is incompatible with the values of a liberal democracy and that it undermines the norm of public accountability and oversight. However, in the name of its special relationship with Israel, the US turns a blind eye to Israel’s nuclear program.
