Editorial

摘要

This issue of Medicine, Conflict & Survival was completed in the week the United States formally withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, tensions in the long-disputed region of Kashmir once again reached dangerous levels, not least because both India and Pakistan possess nuclear weapons, and the 74th Hiroshima & Nagasaki commemorations took place. Even those in positions of great influence at the time had doubts about the destruction of these cities: 'It wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing' (Newsweek 1963) according to General Dwight Eisenhower speaking in 1963 but claiming this had always been his position. The unravelling of the INF Treaty, the latest step in the gradual unpicking of the post-World War 2 architecture for the prevention of nuclear war, should be a key time for governments to sign and ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Instead as John Loretz points out in his review of The 2017 nuclear ban treaty - a new path to nuclear disarmament, the nuclear weapons states are busy with 'multibillion dollar programmes to restock their nuclear arsenals with more dangerous and more useable weapons' (Loretz 2019), highlighting the urgency of the strategies suggested in this book.