{"id":73404,"date":"2025-08-13T01:38:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-12T16:38:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/aug\/12\/dont-believe-the-hype-about-nuclear-weapons"},"modified":"2025-08-13T01:38:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-12T16:38:12","slug":"dont-believe-the-hype-about-nuclear-weapons-letters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=73404","title":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t believe the hype about nuclear weapons | Letters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We must continue to challenge claims that nuclear weapons are a \u2018necessity\u2019, says <strong>Caroline Lucas<\/strong>, while <strong>Gerry Weston<\/strong> says they don\u2019t protect us from Russian aggression and <strong>Michael Newman<\/strong> says they didn\u2019t end the second world war<\/p>\n<p>Polly Toynbee is right to point out that while nuclear war has been pushed down the \u201cleague table of fear\u201d, most recently by concerns about the climate crisis, the nuclear&nbsp;threat itself remains \u201cas great or greater\u201d and should be the subject of much more urgent debate (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2025\/aug\/07\/banning-the-bomb-nuclear-war-weapons-disarm\">I changed my mind on banning the bomb, but the threat of nuclear war is growing \u2013 and so is complacency, 7 August<\/a>). All the more surprising, then, that she overlooks some of the more promising steps towards nuclear disarmament.<\/p>\n<p>In particular, momentum is building behind the UN treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons, which came into force in 2021 and is now supported by nearly half the countries in the world. The treaty was the focus of much of the debate in Hiroshima, where I attended the 80th anniversary commemorations, and it deserves to be much better known.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/aug\/12\/dont-believe-the-hype-about-nuclear-weapons\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We must continue to challenge claims that nuclear weapons are a \u2018necessity\u2019, says Caroline Lucas, while Gerry Weston says they don\u2019t protect us from Russian aggression and Michael Newman says they didn\u2019t end the second world warPolly Toynbee is right t&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":327,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,997,88,441,4,220,52,84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-defence-policy","category-japan","category-nuclear-weapons","category-politics","category-second-world-war","category-uk-news","category-united-nations"],"aioseo_notices":[],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/327"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=73404"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73405,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73404\/revisions\/73405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=73404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=73404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=73404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}