The human condition in the age of Hiroshima

It has been millions of years since the human race differentiated itself from the rest of the primates through its biological evolution, becoming the dominant animal species in the planet. However, since little over half a century ago it also became the only species capable of producing a biological cataclysm that could destroy not only the human race as we know it but also countless others.

The militaristic behavior of human societies has not changed during the last millenniums. Devastating wars have been a permanent aspect of social behavior. The means have progressively changed with the advance of military technology and organization; but the goals have always been the same. Social groups led by political leaders have tried or have proceeded to seize resources from other social groups also endowed with political leadership. Since little over half a century ago a qualitative leap in humanity’s destructive potential has taken place with the construction and use (in 1945) of nuclear weapons. At first only one country had the monopoly of nuclear military technology. But in the new situation a few years later, when there were two atomic powers, if either of them used only a fraction of its potential to impose itself over its adversaries, the direct destruction produced by the nuclear weapons plus the indirect destruction due to the consequent nuclear winter would quite probably imply the destruction of the human race.

Nuclear stockpiles have been rising ever since in quantity and quality, and more and more countries have (openly or disguisedly) joined the ‘nuclear club’, increasing the probability of an unexpected chain of negative events. Anyone analyzing the world events of the 30 years that preceded 1914 will recognize the aforementioned dynamics of events. Since the late nineteenth century the greed of strong countries’ governments in seizing the resources of weaker countries in order not to be left behind in the ferocious competition for global prevalence generated growing tensions between the main powers. And the alliances made gradually formed the two blocs that finally confronted each other in ‘total war’.

The militaristic and expansionist culture that prevailed in Germany and Japan unleashed the 2nd World War, even much more devastating than the first and only 21 years later. The underlying logic of struggling for global prevalence was still present. The last ‘episode’ of this war was the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, generating Japan’s immediate surrender. This episode marked the point of transition to the ‘atomic age’, loaded with risks for the human species.

Those responsible for the American decision justified Hiroshima with calculations of how many American lives the invasion of Japan would have cost if the latter did not surrender quickly. But these numbers hid more complex and sinister realities, barely suggested by statements such as Henry Stimson’s, Secretary of War, about them knowing that Japan ‘had gone so far as to make tentative proposals to the Soviet government, hoping to use the Russians as mediators in a negotiated peace.’ [[The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, published in the February 1947 issue of Harper’s Magazine.]] Stimson does not mention that since the conferences of Teheran and Yalta it was programmed that the Soviet offensive on Japan would begin three months after Germany’s surrender, i.e., on August 9th 1945. The U.S. anticipated that date with the two bombs but the surrender occurred on august 14th, when the Soviet invasion of Manchuria (until then occupied by Japan) was well advanced. It was not really the possible American casualties in a land invasion that speeded the bombings but the proximity of a massive Soviet attack, which would change the situation in defeated Japan. Hiroshima was therefore the first act of the Cold War. [[This interpretation of the motivation for Hiroshima was quite eloquently given by the 1948 Nobel Prize winner English physicist Patrick M. S. Blackett, that same year in his book Fear, War and the Bomb: Military and Political Consequences of Atomic Energy.]] It showed an overwhelming triumph of the U.S. not over Japan but over its new enemy (the USSR). It warned that it had the monopoly of a new weapon of colossal destructive power which gave it full control over Japan (thus avoiding the distribution that took place in Europe in accordance with the Yalta agreements).

If a great power (no more and no less ambitious than the rest) used massive nuclear destruction when it was not necessary for its defense, it is presumable that any power could use it in a context in which it felt seriously threatened, the sort of situations that have happened recurrently throughout history. During the extended Cold War there were several instances of grave danger of nuclear conflict, of which the ‘Cuban missile crisis’ in 1962 was the most serious.

Nonetheless, numerous international relations analysts still give importance to the fact that since Hiroshima there has not been a conflict in which atomic bombs were used. History shows that there have always been conflicts between large powers and that in those instances the rivals have used all their fire power. Claims for past territorial losses, real or fictitious, or the yearning to appropriate new territories or resources have generated wars between powers throughout history and nothing indicates that this will change in the future. In such processes mass manipulation has always been used to unleash warmonger hysteria and attacks on pacifists, and to generate the patriotic disposition to make great personal sacrifices.

Since the Soviet Union managed to generate its own nuclear arsenal, the idea of ‘mutually assured destruction’ (MAD) on behalf of two or more parties counting with nuclear weaponry adds a new ingredient to the dynamics of military conflicts. Many believe that MAD constitutes a fundamental dissuasive to large scale nuclear war: that none of the conflicting parties will use its nuclear potential if it knows the opponent can survive a first attack long enough to also destroy the one launching it. But the assumption of rationality between opponents that underlies this idea of MAD as a dissuasive contrasts with the irrationality that has driven military conflicts in the past.

The past 200 years of history show that large human groups have been willing to sacrifice their own lives following often messianic leaderships, which entails a rationality (or irrationality) very different from the one suggested by the cold analysis of military options. Large scale wars constitute processes of great complexity, where irrational components of the human action (particularly of leaders, but also of masses, manipulated by sophisticated propaganda mechanisms) play a transcendental role. [[It is relevant to remember such risky (and self-destructive) events as Napoleon’s (1812) and Hitler’s (1941) invasions of Russia. Hitler’s is doubly amazing since he was well aware of Napoleon’s fate and nevertheless succumbed to the same temptation. ]] Thus, it is not reasonable to trust the theoretical cost/benefit analyses or the war games of military bureaucrats.

The fact that in 65 years there has not been a single nuclear war only means that during that lapse the necessary circumstances did not occur, but they may indeed come up in the future. The world situation can change very rapidly. The governments of the most powerful countries state that they practice nuclear disarmament between themselves and promote non-proliferation in non-nuclear countries, but in fact they have never stopped modernizing their nuclear stockpiles and have contributed significantly to nuclear proliferation in countries they consider allies.

While they were allies, the Soviet Union transferred vital nuclear technology to China, including an experimental nuclear reactor, equipment for the processing of uranium and for a gaseous diffusion plant, as well as a cyclotron. The process stopped when the Chinese-Soviet schism began to develop in the early 1960’s but it was already sufficiently advanced for China to produce its first nuclear detonation in 1964.

Great Britain was intimately bound since its very beginning to the Manhattan Project, which produced the bombs that were launched in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It detonated its first independent atomic bomb in 1952 and, being a privileged U.S. ally, always had access to the results of American experimental detonations.

Great Britain, Canada and the United States helped India develop its first nuclear reactor. The nuclear lobby argued that nuclear weapons were needed to counteract nuclear weapons. The first Chinese nuclear detonation was in 1964, only two years after the border war between India and China, and it was a relevant incentive for India’s nuclear program, which achieved its first nuclear detonation in 1974.

In another conflict zone of the planet, both France and Great Britain (and later on the U.S.) helped Israel become a nuclear power. The most significant chapter took place in 1956, during the Suez Crisis, when Great Britain and France attacked Egypt from the Mediterranean and Israel from Sinai. Within the context of that alliance France was to provide Israel with a nuclear reactor. Under the threat of soviet intervention, the U.S. (still governed by an Eisenhower who was resistant to the pretensions of the military-industrial establishment) forced Great Britain, France and Israel to pull back from the invasion. But the reactor was transferred and France’s nuclear collaboration continued until 1966.

World powers exercise strong pressure on countries they consider enemies when these countries intend to move forward in the enrichment of uranium. However, experience shows in practice what can happen to a country that does not possess the nuclear dissuasive: Iraq, Libya and Syria are eloquent examples. How many governments must have accelerated secret nuclear projects after such lessons?

Recently Kenneth Waltz, a renowned theorist of international relations, scandalized by writing in Foreign Affairs that Iran should not be prevented from possessing nuclear weapons. His argument is that nuclear weapons have diminished the risks of nuclear war. This line of thought is amazing because it implies the acceptance that rationality will always prevail among current and future governments, thus placing trust in the resulting balance of nuclear terror.

A possible effect of nuclear proliferation in countries that so far lack such fearsome weapons of mass destruction is that public opinion in the powers that already have the possibility of destroying human life in the planet may perceive the danger with such intensity that they pressure their governments with sufficient strength. In this scenario, by increasing the probability that an unpredictable chain of events should unleash catastrophic wars, nuclear proliferation could, paradoxically, induce the great powers to determinately engage in universal nuclear disarmament. A verifiable nuclear disarmament of the major powers (USA, Russia, China and the European Union), would allow them to jointly put pressure on the rest of the world and dissuade it from following such a threatening course for the future of life in the planet.

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