Atomic Bomb Is Probably One

Atomic Bomb is probably one of the most recognized weapons of mass destruction even after almost 80 years of its first deployment. It was in 1939 that Albert Einstein first warned American government of the potential threat of Germany's capability to develop weapons of mass destruction.

This warning was taken seriously and led to the development of the Manhattan Project. Over the course of the next six years, America worked relentlessly on the development of first uranium rich weapon of mass destruction that could easily wipe off the population of any middle sized town.

Atomic bomb had the potential to cause serious damage to its targeted area. It could result in tens of thousands of deaths while also causing harm to coming generations of the victim land as uranium would stay in the air for decades after the first attack. America had two convincing reasons to test the device:

a) it could show Germany that it had also worked on a powerful WMD

b) It could test the capability, capacity and long-term effects of the device

Atomic bomb was thus used for the very first time in Aug 1945 on a fateful Monday morning. As residents of Hiroshima in Japan were sleeping peacefully, they were brutally attacked by American forces through the use of a device Japanese had not yet heard of. It was incredibly sad and to this day, Japan mourns the attacks on its two cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in which it lost tens of hundreds of lives.

Much condemned by the world and the religious sectors, atomic bombings were however never truly considered a crime by American government. The war that America eventually won left indelible scars on the face of one nation and it is unfortunate that America never really regretted the unnecessary use of a nuclear weapon.

It was much later in 1996 that World Court took up the case of the use of nuclear weapons and declared their use illegal under The Hague and Geneva Convention. "In July 1996, the World court took a stand in its first formal opinion on the legality of nuclear weapons. Two years earlier, the United Nations had asked the Court for an advisory opinion. The General Assembly of the United Nations posed a single, yet profoundly basic, question for consideration. It the threat of use of nuclear weapons on any circumstances permitted under international law? For the first time, the world's pre-eminent judicial authority has considered the question of criminality vis-a-vis the use of a nuclear weapon, and, in doing so, it has come to the conclusion that the use of a nuclear weapon is 'unlawful'. It is also the Court's view that even the threat of the use of a nuclear weapon is illegal. Although there were differences concerning the implications of the right of self-defense provided by Article 51 of the U.N. Charter, ten of the fourteen judges hearing the case found the use of threat to use a nuclear weapon to be illegal on the basis of the existing canon of humanitarian law which governs the conduct of armed conflict. The judges based their opinion on more than a century of treatise and conventions that are collectively known as the 'Hague' and 'Geneva' laws." (p.565, Hiroshima's Shadows)