Confronting the Imperialist Nuclear Weapons Regime

Speech was delivered by Resist US-Led War at the International League of Peoples Struggle event, "Remembering the Bombings, Fighting US Imperialist Aggression" commemorating the 80th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 10, 2025.

We gather today to confront one of the gravest threats to humanity: the imperialist nuclear weapons regime, led by the United States. For over 80 years, the U.S. has driven the production, proliferation, and escalation of these weapons of mass destruction, not for defense, but for domination. From the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to today’s reckless modernization programs, the U.S. has fueled a global arms race while communities worldwide suffer the consequences.

The current flashpoints of nuclear tension reflect a broader U.S. military strategy and its desperate fight to remain the sole hegemonic power in an increasingly multipolar world. Today, multiple imperialist powers compete for spheres of influence and resources, yet the U.S. continues to escalate conflicts to maintain its dominance.

In Eastern Europe, NATO expansion and U.S. proxy wars heighten tensions with Russia. In the Middle East, the U.S.-Israel-Gulf-Turkish alliance threatens Iran with regime change and nuclear blackmail. In the Asia-Pacific, the U.S. has woven an iron web of military alliances: AUKUS, JAKUS, JAPHUS, and the Quad, to encircle China and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). In every case, the U.S. demonizes its rivals as dictatorships or terrorists while dragging millions into wars they never chose and do not want.

Yet this aggression only fuels resistance. Across the globe, people are uniting against U.S. nuclear threats, exposing the system’s victims, its profiteers, and the growing movement to dismantle it.


The U.S. as the Driver of Nuclear Proliferation

The U.S. did not merely create nuclear weapons, it normalized their use as tools of terror. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 were cold-blooded experiments in mass murder. The U.S. deliberately targeted these cities relatively untouched by previous bombings to test its new weapon’s destructive power on civilians. This remains one of history’s most barbaric war crimes, demonstrating U.S. imperialism’s willingness to slaughter innocents for dominance.

Since then, the U.S. has driven nuclear proliferation in three key ways:

1. Arming its allies: Through NATO’s "nuclear sharing" program, the U.S. stations bombs across Europe while ignoring Israel’s illegal nuclear arsenal, developed with French assistance. The U.S. also armed apartheid South Africa, which sought to expand fascist settler colonialism with nuclear weapons before its defeat.
2. Forcing adversaries to react: Countries like North Korea develop nuclear programs in the face of aggressive US nuclear exercises off their shores and independent countries like Iran are targeted by U.S. aggression: strikes to civilian nuclear facilities, sanctions, invasions, psychological warfare, and regime-change operations. The U.S. demands a nuclear monopoly while threatening any nation that resists.
3. Sabotaging treaties: From abandoning the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to dissolving the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty to undermining the Iran nuclear deal, the U.S. systematically destroys arms control agreements while accusing others of "provocation."

From Cradle to Grave: The Human Cost

Behind every nuclear warhead lies a supply chain drenched in blood and exploitation from which corporations are profiting in billions. 

Indigenous lands are ripped open for uranium, leaving behind radioactive waste. Uranium miners, and those along transfer routes from mines to military facilities, disproportionately Indigenous and poor, face radiation poisoning and early deaths. It includes workers in bomb plants, like Pantex in Texas, risk their lives assembling weapons of mass destruction. From Trinity to the Marshall Islands, the U.S. detonated 67 nuclear bombs in the Pacific alone, treating entire communities with the dystopian lie that it was "for the good of mankind". In the Pacific, babies are born with deformities from nuclear fallout. Communities where nuclear weapons were tested from New Zealand to Algeria to Nevada and New Mexico, endure cancer clusters, poisoned water, who are treated as sacrifice zones for nuclear programs of the imperialists. In Iraq, generations suffer from uranium-tipped weapons and depleted uranium in their soil, water and residential areas.  Workers and "clean up" veterans sent to "decontaminate" test sites are abandoned with crippling illnesses. This environmental racism a deliberate targeting of marginalized people for imperialist greed is not a strategy for "deterrence" to avoid harm, while people are already being harmed by the existence and production of these weapons. 

The ultimate crime? A single nuclear detonation today would kill millions, trigger global famine, and condemn survivors to slow radiation deaths. Yet the U.S. rebuilds its arsenal instead of dismantling it.


Modernization and Escalation: The U.S. Triad

The U.S. is not just keeping nuclear weapons, it is making them more deadly. The U.S. plans to spend $2 trillion on so-called nuclear "modernization", The US is expanding ever leg of its nuclear triad, with new land-based missiles, stealth bombers, and nuclear armed submarines. New warheads like the B61-12 and W87-1 are designed for "usable" nuclear war with smaller, "smarter" bombs meant to make nuclear war seem "winnable." The U.S. refuses to adopt "No First Use," reserving the right to nuke anyone, anytime. The nuclear posture of the US is not for defense, it is a policy of annihilation.

This modernization is a blank check for war profiteers. Corporations like Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon rake in billions from Pentagon contracts. Lockheed Martin builds Trident II nuclear missiles and F-35 stealth bombers raking in $67 billion in revenue (2023) and spending $15+ million annually lobbying Congress. Northrop Grumman leads the $100 billion Sentinel ICBM program. Builds the B-21 Raider nuclear bomber. $39 billion in revenue (2023). Raytheon (RTX) produces nuclear warhead guidance systems profiting $74 billion in revenue (2023). These corporations do not care about peace they care about stock prices. They lobby for endless war while our schools crumble, people starve, and the planet burns.


How We Fight Back

The anti-nuclear movement of the 1980s emerged during the Cold War. Today’s struggle must be anti-imperialist, linked with global liberation movements from Kenya’s Gen-Z protests to the people’s war in the Philippines, from Palestine’s resistance to the global solidarity movement demanding a free Palestine from the river to the sea.
Throughout history, people have taken courageous actions: waging divestment campaigns from institutions, taking disruptive direct action: blockading bases, occupying nuclear labs and targeting the manufacturers, and building international solidarity and mass mobilizations against nuclear threats. The UN has passed a treaty that makes nuclear weapons illegal, but the primary country threatening the world with its nuclear weapons, and the only country ever to deploy them in an act of war, the United States, boycotts the treaty.

Our demand is clear: End the imperialist war machine. Redirect billions from death to life. From Hiroshima survivors to Navajo uranium miners, from Marshallese activists to the Palestinian resistance, there will always be a people’s struggle against U.S. military terror. We say No to nuclear terror. No to U.S. imperialism. Another world is possible and we will fight for it.