We are all familiar with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, they were not the largest nuclear detonations carried out by the US military. March 1 was the 70th anniversary of a nuclear weapons test in the Marshall Islands, codenamed Castle Bravo. Occurring at Bikini atoll, it was the first in a long series of thermonuclear tests dubbed Operation Castle.

The March 1 explosion released the equivalent of 15 megatons of TNT, one thousand times the strength of the Nagasaki bomb. In fact, that was far more powerful than the military authorities expected. That test was not an isolated event; between 1946 and 1958, the United States carried out a total of 67 nuclear weapons tests in the Marshall Islands, the polluting effects of which are still being felt today.

The series of nuclear tests were done without the consent of the Marshallese indigenous people. The resultant radioactive fallout from these weapons tests, the full details of which were never disclosed to the Marshallese, produced higher than normal rates of cancers among the population for generations.

The long term environmental contamination was ignored by the American authorities. Until today, the US government has not acknowledged its responsibility for the pollution and adverse health impacts in the Marshall Islands from its nuclear testing.

If the indigenous people were evacuated – such as those from Enewetak and Bikini atolls – they were returned to polluted lands, and the US authorities engaged in a prolonged coverup. Marshallese people who have lived through these tests, and their descendants, have explained that it is not a case of if they will develop cancer, but when and what type, eg thyroid cancer. To add insult to injury, the United States, without consulting the Marshallese, shipped 130 tonnes of irradiated soil from its testing sites in Nevada, mainland US, to the Marshall Islands.

The Runit dome, a concrete structure built to contain the radioactive waste, is starting to crack and leak. With rising sea levels due to human-induced climate change, it is only a matter of time before another ecological disaster occurs in the Marshall Islands.

Atoms for peace disguises the predatory aims of nuclear armed powers

While the Marshall Islands were being pulverised by nuclear explosions, the American president Dwight Eisenhower gave a speech to the United Nations in December 1953. Named Atoms for Peace, Eisenhower elaborated his vision for the distribution of nuclear technology for peaceful purposes among cooperative nations.

Purportedly concerned at the prospect of atomic warfare, Eisenhower made the proliferation of nuclear technology contingent on a collective commitment to peace by participating nations. Eisenhower’s speech to the United Nations general assembly was more about public relations, responding to increasing calls for greater scrutiny about the uses of nuclear power.

As news of the horrific effects of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings spread, revealing the scale of human suffering and environmental destruction, Eisenhower decided to recast the atom as a largely peaceful, benign entity. What did that achieve? Disguising the atomic aspirations of the US as mainly peaceful countered the perception of the US military-industrial complex as a greedy, blood-stained imperial power.

The peaceful use of nuclear technology was emphasised to obfuscate the military uses of that technology. We all know that radioisotopes are used in medical technology, for instance. Nuclear methods are used in agriculture and food security, detecting and preventing transboundary and zoonotic transmission of diseases. None of this can obscure the true purpose of nuclear power – military applications.

When former Australian prime minister Scott Morrison brought a lump of coal into parliament, taunting his opponents by stating ‘see, it cannot hurt you’, he was not merely making a juvenile attack. He was denying the reality of fossil fuel driven climate change. Upholding the peaceful atom as a harmless object serves the equivalent dishonest purpose – obfuscating the catastrophic harm of nuclear detonation.

Eisenhower, Truman, and their colleagues, should have listened to Albert Einstein in the immediate postwar world. Much has been made of the fact that Einstein, along with his fellow physicists, signed a letter to FDR in 1939 urging the American president to build atomic weapons first, beating Nazi Germany to the punch.

On the strength of that advice, so we are told, the Manhattan project was born. Nazi Germany’s efforts to build a nuclear reactor were modest, and their proximity to constructing an atomic bomb wildly exaggerated. Be that as it may, Einstein, along with his colleague Leo Szilard, campaigned strongly for disarmament and international supervision of nuclear technology. Einstein’s efforts to achieve nuclear disarmament have been ignored in the post-Cold War world.

Einstein advocated international laws to govern the dissemination of nuclear technology. Pushing for worldwide disarmament, he and his co-thinkers were isolated from the corridors of power in Washington and London. Chairing an emergency committee of atomic scientists in 1946, he warned of the threat of nuclear catastrophe. He provided more than enough anti-nuclear advice for Truman and Eisenhower.

In the ultimate irony, the CIA and US national security authorities launched a PR campaign for nuclear power in Japan. In the 1950s, the United States wanted to cultivate Japanese public opinion favourable to nuclear power – and by 1957, Japan had its first nuclear reactor, built with American assistance. Japanese antinuclear sentiment has remained strong nevertheless.

Russia’s threat to deploy its nuclear arsenal to attack Ukraine obviously heightens anxiety about a nuclear conflagration. To assign responsibility for nuclear anxieties exclusively to Moscow’s actions is hypocritical in the extreme. The US – along with Britain – have done everything in their power to initiate and exacerbate the nuclear weapons crisis.