Americans seek reduction in world nuclear arsenal

A new US poll highlights the unpopularity of nuclear weapons among Americans, including aspirations to reduce US and Russian nuclear arsenals.

A new Gallup poll released on Monday shows that 56 percent of Americans would favor a law that would reduce US and Russian nuclear arsenals, while 38 percent said they would vote against such a law.

The poll added that Democrats are most likely to support the measure, while Republicans are split down the middle in their views.

US President Barack Obama’s recent State of the Union Address highlighted a plan for further nuclear reductions in US and Russian nuclear weapons, beyond those agreed to in the 2011 New START treaty.

This is while the US, along with Russia, possesses the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons in the world and persistently seeks to upgrade existing supplies and develop newer ones.

According to UN figures, the US, which is the only country that has ever used atomic bombs against human beings, has conducted at least 1,030 nuclear tests since 1945.

“It is depressing that the United States cannot understand how atomic bomb survivors feel, despite our repeated protests,” said Secretary General of the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Survivors Council Hirotami Yamada, adding that further nuclear tests are “proof that the United States could use nuclear weapons anytime. Such a country is not qualified to be a world leader.”

Hiroshima was devastated on August 6, 1945 after the US B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on the city, killing an estimated 140,000 people instantly or gradually from radiation sickness and cancers. Three days later, another atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, killing more than 70,000.