The Atomic Bomb
Danger Awaits
Surely one of the most disruptive of inventions is the atomic bomb. The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 ushered in a new era, one characterized by the ability to wipe humans from the planet.
It is not just the bombing of the two Japanese cities, as horrible as that was, but it is the existence of the bomb itself. It changes everything. [This is not the place to discuss the question as to whether the bomb actually ended World War II by inducing the Japanese Emperor to end the war by surrendering, but we should note that the controversy exists, and that there are credible claims that it did not. By the time the bombs were dropped, Japan was already a defeated nation, some experts say.]
It is the existence of the bomb itself that has changed the world. In the United States, the president has the sole authority to drop the bomb. Whenever he (or perhaps she, at some point) travels away from fixed command centers, such as the White House Situation Room or the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, he (or she) is accompanied by a military aide, a commissioned officer in the U.S. military who is responsible for keeping a briefcase informally known as the “nuclear football,” officially known as the Presidential Emergency Satchel, readily accessible at all times. This contains the instructions the president must follow to authorize the use of the bomb. It obviously gives the president awesome power.
For many years, it was felt that the awesome power of the bomb was a barrier to its use. We should note that it has not been used since 1945, giving some credence to the notion. [There were, however, several close calls: Harry Truman did not rule out its use when questioned by a reporter during the Korean War, and the Cuban Missile Crisis almost led to its use.]
Now comes a report from the World Politics Review that gives us the sobering information that: “Russia and Belarus held joint nuclear drills earlier this week, raising alarms as Vladimir Putin continues to issue thinly veiled threats of nuclear strikes against Ukraine.” The United States and Russia are once again rattling their nuclear sabers, and the treaties restricting their nuclear arsenals, the two largest, have expired. As the report points out, the taboo cannot be taken for granted.
There is only one safe path - the path to eliminate the nuclear weapon altogether, from every place where it now exists (and it exists in a troubling number of places).
In April of 1998, John Holdren, a leading physicist who served President Barack Obama as assistant for science and technology, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and co-chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, published a book Ending War: The Force of Reason, in which was a chapter Getting to Zero, subtitles “Is Pursuing a Nuclear-Weapons World too Difficult? Too Dangerous? Too Distracting?”
His answer, in a detailed treatise that I know few will read, though it will be very rewarding to those who do, is a definite no. Holdren very carefully lays out a plan showing it is entirely possible to rid the world of the development of that which Harry Truman said in his diary of July 25, 1945, that it was “the most terrible thing ever discovered.” [This from the man who oversaw the bomb’s only use.]
From 1952 to 1963 the Ban the Bomb movement in Great Britain was very powerful, with tens of thousands marching from the London Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston, Berkshire, to Trafalgar Square. On May 12, 1957, a women’s protest demonstration filled the square. However, that movement now lies quiescent, in Britain and elsewhere.
It is time to bring that movement back. The stakes could not be higher.
Thanks for reading this. Show your friends.
My best, alan
I think we know the grim calculus from recent history. Those who 'won' the world wars profited. It's clear I think that the bets are still being made that the next war will be a nuclear 'decapitation' and the argument goes it will be won more cleanly. There is another way of course. A world based on structures and concepts of development and mutual help. Since China promotes this approach how much more difficult it is for the US to adopt it.