(The following article is from the August 1-31,  2010 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)

Based on an intervention by Darrell Rankin at the second North American Trilateral meeting of the World Peace Council, Mexico, the United States and Canada, in October 2009. It is published to mark the 65th anniversary of the atomic bombing by U.S. imperialism of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

U.S. imperialism is the largest proliferator of nuclear weapons, having aided and protected nearly all the states that have developed nuclear weapons since the Non-proliferation treaty was signed in 1969 - Israel, India and Pakistan.

     The United States has led, pushed and dominated the nuclear arms race from the start. It used two atomic bombs on Japan and targeted Russia, China, Iran and North Korea with multiple nuclear threats.

     The main purpose of U.S. imperialism's nuclear strategy throughout the Cold War was to preserve its domination of the non-socialist world and to threaten socialist countries. Britain, France and the NATO military alliance played a supporting role.

     The history of the World Peace Council, formed in 1949, roughly coincides with both the establishment of NATO the same year and the signing of the United Nations Charter in 1945. The United Nations Charter is humanity's main democratic achievement in international law, flowing directly from the defeat of fascism in the Second World War. The U.N. Charter cost fifty million lives, the price paid for imperialism's appeasement of fascism.

     Under the hegemony of the United States, NATO was formed as an alliance of empires such as the U.S. itself, Britain, Netherlands and France, each with possessions stretching around the globe. As such NATO violated the U.N. Charter's ban against global military alliances. Today, NATO's nuclear weapons and the alliance's first strike doctrine are the most dangerous threats facing all other members of the United Nations.

     U.S. imperialism's nuclear strategy is inherently divisive and racist, starting with the criminal use of atomic bombs against Japan. The U.S. has a long history of sparking nuclear tensions far from its shores, in Asia and the Middle East, half way around the globe.

     In our own hemisphere, the Caribbean and South America were declared nuclear weapons free in 1967, by the Treaty of Tlatelolco. The activation of the U.S. Fourth Naval Fleet in this zone is a crude violation of the treaty. Ports harbouring U.S. warships carrying nuclear weapons are sure to be targets of protests as a result. We are in solidarity with the peace movement in the Caribbean and South America to kick out the U.S. Fourth Fleet and to respect the nuclear weapons free zone. No harbours for U.S. warships!

     Nuclear disarmament and arms control treaties often reduced stockpiles of outdated and surplus weapons. The treaties gave hope. They signalled decreased tensions and realistic prospects for averting a new world war.

     Yet the treaties still preserved the sharpest spears, the newest and more deadly weapons. Regrettably, humanity still faces the prospect of weapons in space, new weapons from the sea, and ever more deadly conventional weapons.

     The reason these weapons are not the subject of disarmament talks is because imperialism wants them. Humanity will be in danger from these weapons until imperialism and its unjust world order are gone.

     Recently U.S. President Obama gave his support for the principle of abolishing nuclear weapons. This is a remarkable statement considering U.S. imperialism's recent history. Why is President Obama making such a statement now?

     It is not just President Obama making these statements. Some of the most reactionary hawks in the United States like Henry Kissinger are declaring they support nuclear disarmament and abolition. Kissinger argues we have reached a tipping point because nuclear weapons could fall into the "wrong hands."

     This is a dubious argument considering that the U.S. nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union posed a far greater and real danger than proliferation. It does not answer why some prominent elements of U.S. imperialist circles are starting to raise the prospect of nuclear disarmament at this time.

     The vast, hegemonic size of the U.S. military and its development of new so-called conventional weapons that rival nuclear weapons for their destructive power are insufficient reasons for this new development.

     Another and more reasonable explanation for President Obama's support for disarmament comes from the fact that imperialism is experiencing multiple crises that it cannot hope to resolve without first trying to reassure the world's peoples that it can fix the problems.

     Put another way, the imperialist beast is wounded from its many crises and wants to make overtures to the world's peoples. At the same time, it doesn't want to lose all its claws or teeth. It just wants to have people believe and hope that it is no longer carnivorous.

     That is the power of hope, because a wounded beast generally likes to escape the spotlight of public scrutiny for a while, retreat to its cave, lick its wounds and pounce on some prey when it feels a bit better and hungrier. We are all in favour of beasts losing claws and teeth.

     It is actually a good problem when the two main nuclear weapons states - the United States and Russia - pledge to abolish these weapons. The key question is, can we trust them and what can we do to make that happen?

     For an answer, it is useful to look at the record of détente in the 1970s, when the U.S. displayed a hopeful nuclear policy towards the Soviet Union. The greatest historical gains in nuclear disarmament and arms control were made during détente, including the strategic arms reduction talks (START) and the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) treaty.

     The crises in the 1970s were not as serious as today. Environment problems were not prominent. The imperialist countries were in shock from losing their colonies in Asia and Africa. The U.S. was losing in Vietnam. There was the dirty float of the U.S. dollar in 1969, the 1973 recession, the rise of OPEC as an anti-imperialist oil cartel, and the growth of the crushing debt burden in the former colonies.

     Naturally, imperialism at that time wanted the world to stop, to freeze, for there to be no further setbacks. It needed time to gather its strength and launch a ferocious counter-attack, as it did in the last years of the Carter administration, under Margaret Thatcher in Britain, and with the push for free trade integration with the U.S. in the final years of the Trudeau government.

     The answer by the world's peoples at that time was to continue the struggle, to win the war in Vietnam, to liberate the colonies from Portugal, to continue building the anti-imperialist peace movement, to rise against the deployment of U.S. Pershing and cruise missiles in Europe.

     It is clear that today the world's peace forces must continue to mobilize and to unite with all the global forces seeking solutions to the great problems confronting humanity today. None of these problems can be solved by war. The struggle for peace and progress must continue until victory. Our demands must be combined, our efforts must be united.

     (In our next issue we will publish the second part of Darrell Rankin's commentary, examining the prospects for today's struggles for disarmament.)