The White House made a long-awaited announcement this morning that President Obama will indeed visit Hiroshima after the G7 conference in Japan at the end of this month. Obama had been signaling his desire to make such a move essentially since he came into office. Visiting Hiroshima at the end of his presidency perfectly complements his 2009 Prague speech. The problem is not in the visit — it’s been 70 years, after all — nor in the fear of an apology, for even Obama would not dare cross that line (what he says in his heart when he’s there, however, is up to him). Rather, it will be in his increasingly unrealistic call for “global zero,” a world without nuclear weapons. The past eight years have seen an intensification in nuclear-weapons proliferation, development, and modernization, not the opposite. Over at Forbes, I have a piece explaining what Obama should be doing: rallying the liberal world to defend global order, so that we never have to witness another Hiroshima because democracies did not take seriously enough their responsibility to protect the peace.

The symbolism of the visit obviously will be enormously powerful. Obama will be standing next to Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, who has shown himself one of the few global leaders willing openly and directly to talk about the threats to global stability. Japan faces an increasingly erratic North Korea, one that gets closer to a functional nuclear capability every day (ironic, considering the president’s desire to talk about abolishing nuclear weapons), and a China that is rapidly militarizing the South China Sea and continues to pressure Japan’s East China Sea islands. Tokyo understands the fragility of peace, as do Israelis, Syrian civilians, and Ukrainians. What President Obama has failed to do, is to take advantage of those world leaders willing to stand up for the post-World War II rules-based order. They may not be able to contribute aircraft carriers and special operations forces, but can be powerful moral partners, and can provide other types of support to liberal forces around the world. Obama should call on those nations to stand with the United States in pursuing a realistic strategy to counter aggression and opportunism, so that the horrors of World War II or its like never again destroy so much of the world.