Launching 'Hiroshima Watch 2025'

Remarks to Member Hiroshima Roundtable, Online Press Conference, 18 November 2025

The Hiroshima Prefecture, Governor Yuzaki and Professor Fujiwara are to be warmly commended on the publication of this second edition of Hiroshima Watch. Drawing on the discussions of international experts at our annual Hiroshima Roundtable, it is designed to draw the attention of the world’s policy makers, and those who influence them, to the reality that the risks of a new nuclear holocaust are again now shockingly real.

Hiroshima Watch is just the latest in a long line of admirable initiatives by the Governor and Prefecture in recent years designed to remind the world of the horrors of nuclear weapons – to get both policymakers and publics not just to vaguely nod their heads but to really understand:

• that these are the most indiscriminately inhumane weapons ever devised
• that any significant exchange of nuclear weapons would not just be catastrophic for the millions immediately killed and injured, but threaten the existence of life on this planet as we know it, and
• that complacency is not an option: the risk of their use, either deliberately or accidentally, as a result of human or system error or miscalculation, is growing with each passing year - as the security environment in our region and the wider world, grows ever more fragile and volatile.

The immediate aim of Hiroshima Watch is to draw the world’s attention to the most alarming recent developments when it comes to nuclear arms control, and to describe, succinctly, the necessary policy responses. And our messages in this 80th anniversary year are stark:

• Nuclear arms control has never been more necessary, but never more difficult to achieve. In all three of its dimensions – risk reduction, non-proliferation and outright elimination – the current outlook ranges from desolate to hopeless.
• The important arms control agreements of the past are dead (like the ABM and INF treaties), dying (like New START) or on life support (like the CTBT and NPT).
• And the recent behaviour of the actors that matter most – the United States, Russia and China – has fed concerns that things can only get worse.

The US is showing extraordinary indifference to international treaty and customary law, and to long established international norms, most recently, and alarmingly, by threatening to resume nuclear testing. With the Trump administration’s disposition to treat long-established allies and partners as encumbrances rather than assets, and failure to convince them that the US really would be there for them in the event of a military crisis, there is renewed fear of the global non-proliferation dam bursting, with the culprits this time not being confined to familiar Middle East suspects:

• More and more countries seem willing to be seduced by the psychological comfort of having some nuclear weapons of their own – ignoring the reality that the benefits of nuclear deterrence in this day and age are overwhelmingly illusory, while the risks associated with the continued possession of nuclear weapons by any state are horribly real.

Russia not only continues to flagrantly violate the UN Charter in Ukraine, but has openly challenged the force of the longstanding normative taboo against any aggressive first use of nuclear weapons, and has joined the US in threatening to resume nuclear testing.

And China has clearly now abandoned its longstanding minimal deterrence posture, engaging in a dramatic expansion of its nuclear arsenal and showing no interest in participating in any arms limitation talks.

Our policy messages in response these and other recent developments are clearly set out:

• Excessive reliance on nuclear deterrence, and extended nuclear deterrence, is hugely dangerous: far better to focus on effective conventional forces
• The most immediately effective nuclear risk reduction measure would be universal embrace by all the nuclear armed states of a credible doctrinal commitment to No First Use
• There is an urgent necessity to restart serious nuclear arms limitation negotiations, with the most immediate priority being the preservation of the New START treaty limits on strategic nuclear weapon deployments, and
• A resumption of nuclear weapons testing must be resisted at all costs.

When Hiroshima speaks, the world listens. Because of the horror that befell its people on that terrible morning, 80 years ago, when the hands of that famous wrist-watch froze at 8.15. And because Hiroshima is a symbol not only of despair, but of hope – hope for a safer and saner nuclear-free world.

That’s why we are publishing Hiroshima Watch, and we must all hope, and believe, that it will make a difference.