The Role of Nuclear Weapons: Japan, the U.S., and “Sole Purpose”

By Masa Takubo

On September 22, a day before President Barack Obama met with Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama in New York, 13 nongovernmental U.S. security experts released an open letter calling on the two leaders “to support a U.S. policy declaring that the only purpose of nuclear weapons is to deter, and if necessary respond to, the use of nuclear weapons by other countries.”[1]

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