US increasing nuclear capabilities in defiance of NPT: Pundit
Press TV has interviewed Mike Gravel, a former US senator from San Francisco, and Bob Ayers, a former US intelligence officer from Somerset, the UK, to discuss the issue of a world without nuclear weapons, 70 years after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima by the United States.
Gravel thinks all nations which have nuclear weapons are in violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), despite the fact that the Article 5 of the treaty urges signatory countries to reduce their atomic weapons. He adds that the United States violates the NPT by increasing its nuclear capabilities instead of reducing them.
The US used atomic bombs against Hiroshima and Nagasaki in a bid to force Japan to surrender unconditionally at the end of the World War II, but the fact is that the Japanese were ready to relinquish hostility and end the war, the former US senator says.
Gravel says, “The whole nuclear race is madness,” adding that world countries can pave the way for the United Nations to play a more effective deterrent role in order to prevent wars between nations.
Pointing to the only regime in the Middle East that possesses atomic bombs, he argues that Israel probably has 200 nuclear bombs, but the US chooses to overlook the fact, adding that Washington is claiming Iran is a destabilizing power in the Mideast, but in fact, Israel has already destabilized the region.
For his part, Ayers believes nation-states try to attain nuclear weapons as long as they perceive their existence is in danger; thus they want to repel threats by resorting to nuclear deterrence.
The NPT is a “lovely piece of paper,” but the United State cannot afford to abandon its nuclear weapons, because it seems irrational to the Americans to ban atomic bombs as long as other nations have such weapons, he notes.
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