Messages from Hiroshima

The significance of US president's Japan visit

It is probable that President Barack Obama will not tender an apology for the atomic bombs the US dropped on Japan in August 1945 when he visits Hiroshima on May 27. Nor is his host, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe - no great apologist himself going by his lukewarm statements on Japanese wartime atrocities against China and North Korea - likely to insist on one. But a presidential apology or lack of it is scarcely the point of this historic visit. Mr Obama's decision to be the first sitting US president to visit the site of the first of two bombs, which killed upwards of 80,000 people, maimed thousands more, and created lethal lasting after-effects, is loaded with multiple messages and symbolism.

The stage was set in 2010, a year after Mr Obama came to power, when a US ambassador attended the annual commemoration at Hiroshima for the first time. A presidential visit, even one towards the end of his term, would round off Mr Obama's principal foreign policy agenda to lower the threat of nuclear war. The rapprochement with Iran, after some 36 years of hostilities, marks one significant step in that direction, but a new agreement with Russia that limited the number of strategic nuclear warheads and a summit that pulled bomb-grade nuclear fuel out of Ukraine and Chile are among other notable achievements.

But Mr Obama is well aware that his initiatives are far from perfect and the global impulse for nuclear disarmament is weak, at best. The threat of nuclear war and an escalating arms race remains high, perhaps one reason he has committed $1 billion to modernise America's nuclear stockpile over three decades. For one, the nuclear disarmament deal with Iran has activated a new set of hostilities in West Asia, attracting the ire of long-time US allies Saudi Arabia and Israel, both nuclear powers. For another, the deployment of cheap, easily accessible "dirty bomb" technology in the sectarian wars in the region and in Europe remains a menacing prospect, especially when ISIS has demonstrated a limitless capacity for violence. North Korea under its maverick leader and tacit Chinese patronage appears headed in unpredictable directions, too. Against this backdrop, a high-profile US presidential visit to the only country to have experienced a nuclear attack, with the world media focusing on its well-curated park and museum portraying horrific images of the victims of the bombs, sends a potent message about the destructive powers of modern nuclear weapons.

The symbolism of this visit, which will cover a G7 Summit in Japan, also combines a hard-headed appreciation of realpolitik. For instance, it serves to underscore the fact that Japan remains a major ally under the security pact it signed with the US in 1951 and strengthened by that island-nation's membership of the US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership. This sends a robust signal to China, which has been flexing its muscles in a region traditionally considered part of the US sphere of influence since World War II. China's expansive interpretation of maritime borders to claim territory in Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam - significantly, Mr Obama's trip will also cover the latter - has been a source of growing concern. The US response to China's claim on the Senkaku Islands, a dispute that resurfaced in 2012, has been robust. The US Senate approved an amendment to the 1951 treaty to include the defence of the islands within its scope and B-52 bombers were sent over the no-fly zone declared by China. A reiteration of strong US-Japan ties could, thus, lower the war threat perceptions in the region. All in all, Mr Obama's decision to visit Hiroshima would go a long way towards entitling him to the Nobel Peace Prize he prematurely won in 2009.