Nepal, Aug. 7 -- Even with warnings that the West Asia and Ukraine conflicts could escalate into a nuclear weapons exchange, this year's Hiroshima Peace Declaration did not begin with words of remembrance alone.

They warned of the failure of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The catastrophes of 5 and 8 August 1945 are not memories sealed off in the past -- they are directly connected to a present in which nuclear weapons are once again invoked as a means of projecting state power and coercing adversaries.

Hiroshima mayor Kazumi Matsui described a world in which distrust breeds retaliation, and retaliation is used to justify further violence. Such cycles, he warned, could ultimately result in "another Hiroshima or Nagasaki". ...