Nuclear Weapons, US Imperialism, and the Fight for Just and Lasting Peace

An ILPS Primer on the Anti-Imperialist Stance Regarding Nuclear Weapons

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Introductory overview of primer points

Since the end of World War 2, the world’s people have lived under the threat of nuclear war and the possible decimation of most life on earth. The US, the only state to have ever used nuclear weapons in an act of war, kickstarted the development of ever-more powerful nuclear weapons and used its status as a nuclear power to expand its control and influence over the world through imperialist aggression. Whether they proliferated from US allies looking to join in the spoils of US imperialism or from states looking to deter the US and defend their sovereignty, nuclear weapons exist in the world because the US gave birth to them, and they will remain in the world for as long as US imperialism itself exists. A broad and determined mass movement must struggle to end the US’s nuclear-armed aggression as a necessary first step before full abolition of nuclear weapons can occur. This call is in line with the right of nations and peoples to self defense and liberation from imperialism.

This primer answers key questions related to nuclear weapons, US imperialism, and the fight for just and lasting peace.

What is the history of nuclear weapons?

The US developed the first nuclear weapons through the secretive Manhattan Project and dropped them on the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan on August 6 and 9, 1945. This act killed over 200,000 people, completely destroyed the cities the bombs were dropped on, and left a crippling legacy of cancer and other radiation sickness for generations of families to live with. In addition, the US’s production and testing of nuclear weapons would go on to poison and displace thousands of people involved in or living near uranium mining, waste dumping, and testing sites.

Threatened with intervention by the US following World War 2, the Soviet Union tested its first nuclear weapon in 1949, ending the US’s short-lived monopoly on the most powerful weapons in the world. The US responded by building thermonuclear hydrogen bombs, testing the first one in 1952. The UK tested its first nuclear weapon this same year, having had its own research program while collaborating with the US on the Manhattan Project. The fourth country to develop nuclear weapons was France who tested its first in 1960. Scientists from the Zionist entity of “Israel” were present at France’s nuclear test and collaborated with France’s nuclear program for years, leading to what is believed to be “Israel’s” first nuclear weapons in 1966, although the Zionists have never officially declared their own arsenal.

With three Western imperialists now armed with nuclear weapons, the Soviet Union shared nuclear technology with China who tested their first weapon in 1964, thus expanding the deterrent to the US-led nuclear arsenal. The US, however, kept expanding and developing its own stockpile which prompted others to do the same in the shadow of US wars of aggression erupting around the world. Nuclear weapons would get further out of the US’s control after India tested its first nuclear weapons in 1974, having been given nuclear technology by the US and Canada in the 1950s. Fearing their regional rival, Pakistan began working on a nuclear weapon based on smuggled research from Europe and is believed to have developed its first weapon in 1986, testing them publicly in 1998. The fascist apartheid regime of South Africa produced nuclear weapons in the 1980s, having been provided with nuclear research by the US since the 1950s, but dismantled them when it became clear that the regime was close to collapse. The Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea, after years of direct threats of invasion by the US that bombed nearly every building in its territory to the ground during the Korean War, conducted its first public test of nuclear weapons in 2006.

The US built around 70,000 nuclear warheads during the Cold War alone, more than any other state. It also had nuclear weapons stationed in South Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan, Japan, Canada, and Greece at different times during this period. The testing of US, UK, French, and Russian nuclear weapons was conducted in the US, Marshall Islands, French Polynesia, Kiribati, Johnson Atoll, Australia, Algeria, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Russia’s Nowaja Semlja, and other places. These tests decimated working class and indigenous communities, including entire nations in the Pacific, with many cases of cancer and other radiation-related diseases being rampant as the US and other governments did not inform many of the people who lived near the sites of the danger, reflecting the colonial mentality of the US and other imperialist countries that developed nuclear weapons in this way.

Despite many multilateral treaties passed to try and stop the growth of nuclear weapons, such as the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty, 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, multiple versions of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), and 2021 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, the US has either not signed, has found loopholes around, or simply ignored these and continued its aggression and provocative threats of “nuclear readiness” against its rivals. The US has also threatened its rival countries that were suspected, sometimes baselessly accused, of developing nuclear weapons such as Libya, Iraq, Iran, and others.

What is the current extent of nuclear weapons today?

There are believed to be close to 4,000 active nuclear weapons in the world today, with the total number including reserve stockpiles numbering over 12,000 as of the beginning of 2025. Belgium, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, and Türkiye all host land-based nuclear weapons of the US, while South Korea, Australia, Japan, states with the NATO alliance, and other countries are believed to host US nuclear aircraft or submarines.

According to data from the Federation of American Scientists, the (believed) number of nuclear arsenals of countries are approximately:

• 5,177 for the US
• 5,459 for Russia
• 600 for China
• 290 for France
• 225 for the UK
• 180 for India
• 170 for Pakistan
• 90 for the Zionist entity of “Israel”
• 50 for the DPRK

Opening in nuclear weapons reached a combined $1 billion in 2024. The US alone is currently spending $1.7 trillion to undertake a 30-year program of “nuclear modernization” that includes developing new warheads (in violation of the NPT which it is a signatory to), production of new plutonium pits, upgrading or replacing bombers, missiles, and submarines, and building new facilities for weapons production and maintenance.

What does the presence of nuclear weapons put at risk?

A single nuclear weapon’s power can vary from one kiloton to over 50,000 kilotons. This puts the full power of the world’s combined nuclear weapons at billions of kilotons, enough to destroy planet earth many times over. Given the large number of nuclear weapons currently in existence, it is difficult to know the extent of destruction and loss of human lives, but it is likely that with enough nuclear weapons detonated at once there would be enough fallout to block out the sun and begin the process of mass die-offs of plant and animal species. This is what is often referred to as “nuclear winter”.

Even without a single nuclear weapon ever being used in an act of war, their existence harms many peoples and communities along their supply chains. Uranium miners are subject to harmful radiation and are often recruited from rural working class and peasant communities with few other options for livelihood. Exposure to these mines and the waste from many enrichment and manufacturing sites also reaches the wider communities living near these areas.

The possession of nuclear weapons also gives the states that hold them immense power through the threat they pose to other states that do not hold nuclear arsenals of their own. Under threat of being targeted by nuclear weapons, many less powerful states have had to concede to unequal economic and political agreements, and even face direct military invasion. The US has used its position as imperialist superpower and leader of the nuclear arms race to run roughshod over international law since 1945. The deterrence of the Soviet Union and other non-NATO nuclear states has kept the US from using its arsenal offensively again, given the threat of so-called “mutually assured destruction” of two or more states launching all of their weapons against each other in an inherently futile domino effect and devastating domino effect. Yet, it has not stopped the US from invading many non-nuclear states with the assurance that it won’t have to face the existential threat of a nuclear strike to hold it back. The presence of nuclear weapons in its arsenal makes the US all the more provocative and aggressive, putting the whole world’s people at risk.

Why is US imperialism the root cause of the world’s nuclear arsenals?

The US brought nuclear weapons into the world and unleashed them in one of the greatest acts of terrorism against a people in history through the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After this, the US immediately began research into even more destructive forms of nuclear weapons. Instead of working with the Soviet Union in 1949 as an equal partner to mutually dismantle their nuclear weapons together, the US doubled down on its production with the stated purpose of surpassing its rival and remaining the nuclear monopoly of the world. This is what started the nuclear arms race that could have been avoided had the US acted differently, instead of its profit-hungry ruling class following the logic of imperialism.

The US asserts a double standard when it comes to nuclear weapons in the world. On the one hand, it has led the way in nuclear production by helping to arm its NATO allies and openly fascist apartheid regimes like “Israel” and South Africa while placing its nuclear arsenal all over the world. On the other hand, the US condemns its rivals for holding onto their own nuclear arsenals, like China, Russia, and the DPRK, subjecting them to crippling economic sanctions and trying to frame them as “terrorist states” even though they have never actually used their nuclear weapons like the US has.

The multilateral institutions supposedly meant to stop the expansion of nuclear weapons and maintain the safe production of nuclear energy have not stopped the US from committing nuclear terrorism. The US government lied when it said that Iraq held nuclear weapons so that it could justify invading and occupying it to control the country’s oil reserves in 2003. Shortly after this act, the US began threatening Iran with invasion over its civilian nuclear energy program. Despite Iran complying with the UN’s International Agency for Atomic Energy (IAEA), it was later revealed that the IAEA broke its mandate and secretly passed information on Iran’s nuclear program to “Israel”, who used it to target and assassinate Iranian scientists. This revelation confirmed as well that the IAEA knew of the formally undeclared Zionist nuclear arsenal and allowed “Israel” to keep it a secret in violation of the international law that it itself was supposed to regulate. This would culminate in the 2025 Zionist and then US bombing of Iran to attempt to destroy its nuclear facilities. Iran is a signatory to the NPT and does not hold a single nuclear weapon. “Israel” is not a signatory to the NPT while the US has never ratified it, and both countries hold nuclear arsenals. This proves that the multilateral system overseen by UN and international treaties to supposedly regulate the world’s nuclear arsenals is skewed greatly in favor of US imperialism.

Why does ILPS not use the slogan, “abolish all nuclear weapons now”?

Given the logic of imperialism and the presence of nuclear weapons within the hands of the most powerful imperialists today, it is outside of their logic for rival imperialists to willingly give up their arsenals at once as this would willingly give up their position of power over the world’s economy and people that they defend through force. Instead, the call to “abolish all nuclear weapons now” would target the less powerful nuclear states like the DPRK whose possession of nuclear weapons protects it from the provocative actions and threats of US imperialism.

Any state holding nuclear weapons targeted by the US in this way has no reason to give up its nuclear weapons given the actions of US imperialism since 1945. The US maintains over 800 military bases and nearly 14,000 other military facilities overseas and has a larger military than the next 10 states that follow it. It has directly invaded or provoked wars in well over 100 countries to expand the economic and political interests of its ruling class. Despite the economic sanctions it wages against Russia, China, and the DPRK, they have never been directly invaded by the US since their achievement of nuclear weapons given the fear of the US of being targeted in self-defense.

Instead, the ILPS calls for the US to be disarmed of its nuclear weapons so that the historic nuclear threat it has posed to the world’s people and many states is no longer the leading factor of the nuclear arms race. The League calls on the people to build broad alliances and wage militant struggle to end US imperialism, the number one nuclear terrorist in the world, as a step towards ending the imperialist system as a whole and therefore the logic that gives birth to the existential threat to humanity that nuclear weapons are. This can be done by building a broad, international, and anti-imperialist united front that respects the right of nations and peoples to self-defense and is committed to the fight for just and lasting peace.

What is meant by the self defense of nations and peoples?

Under the global system of imperialism, a number of inherent conflicts emerge between different forces that cannot be resolved as long as imperialism itself exists. These contradictions are between the working class and the monopoly capitalist bourgeoisie within imperialist countries, between the colonized and semi-colonized nations and imperialism, between independent nations asserting their self-defense and imperialist states attempting intervention, and between the imperialists themselves.

All oppressed peoples have the right to liberate themselves from the grips of imperialism and to build any state structure of their choice to defend their liberated people and develop based on their own self-determination. Given that any state attempting to assert genuine independence becomes a target of imperialist states seeking to get their hands on the resources, markets, and territory of them, the defense of their sovereignty becomes a front in the fight against imperialism. These states therefore are friends of the exploited classes and oppressed peoples fighting for their own national and social liberation against imperialism and their self-defense is, as a matter of principle, in the interest of the anti-imperialist united front. This principle is informs the League’s position on nuclear weapons and the fight against US imperialism.

What is meant by just and lasting peace?

Genuine peace is not merely the momentary absence of conflict. Nor is it the absence of open war in the shadow of imperialist exploitation and suffering of the masses of the world’s people. Violence is inherent at every stage of imperialism. The League’s position on peace is that it must be long-lasting, and therefore the material conditions that lead to war must be uprooted and fundamentally changed within society. It must also be paired with social, economic, and political justice, social equity, and solidarity amongst peoples, including the recognition of the right to self-determination, economic, and food sovereignty, and self-defense of nations and oppressed peoples from reactionary aggression and violence.

Just and lasting peace will only be achieved in a world without imperialism. Imperialism is at the root of the presence of nuclear weapons and the lack of peace, and therefore calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons before the defeat of the imperialist system will not lead to genuine peace or the end of nuclear weapons. The people of the world must therefore unite in a broad, international, anti-imperialist united front and wage all forms of struggle against the imperialist system, with US imperialism as the prime target, and fight for a bright socialist future for humanity and the planet so that just and lasting peace can truly be built and maintained.