Aug. 6 and 9 mark the 71st anniversary of the U.S. atomizations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Apart from being militarily unnecessary (see Dwight Eisenhower’s quote below) and morally impermissible (200,000 civilians were killed), the atomic bombings ended U.S.-Soviet wartime cooperation and ushered in a dangerous Cold War.
That war, believed on the verge of extinction in the early 1990s, was gradually given new life by the remaining superpower’s self-proclaimed right to the spoils of “victory”: global domination and disregard for international law and cooperation.
Many will grant that nuclear weapons are risky, but insist that the risk has been worth it.
Was it not the fear of nuclear weapons, we are told, that kept the “big peace” (no World War III) for four decades (well, there were a few skirmishes like Korea and Vietnam, and even one or two since)? But today we know much more about what really went on behind the nuclear veneer of safety and protection, and most experts share the opinions of U.S. leaders like Lee Butler (former head of the Strategic Air Command) and William Perry (former Secretary of Defense).
Gen. Butler says the world escaped nuclear holocaust by “some combination of skill, luck and divine intervention, and I suspect the latter in greatest proportion.”
(Eric Schlosser’s important bookCommand and Control reveals hundreds of accidents, including lost H-bombs, crashes of B-52s armed with H-bombs, fuel tank explosions of armed ICBMs and false warnings of being under nuclear attack allowing only a few minutes to disconfirm or “launch on warning.” And this also happened after the so-called end of the Cold War.)
Perry, in his book My Journey at the Nuclear Brink, reminds us that today, 25 years after what we thought was the end of the Cold War, the world still has 17,000 nuclear warheads (all but a 1,000 held by the U.S. and Russia) and, with the return of old hostilities, we face a similar danger of nuclear catastrophe – mainly by accident or nuclear terrorism.
Indeed, Perry says, all factors considered – including hostilities involving the “new” members of the nuke club (India, Pakistan, North Korea, Israel) – “the danger of nuclear catastrophe is greater than it was during the Cold War – and yet our public is blissfully unaware of the new nuclear dangers they face.”
The two major nuclear weapon states have 16,000 nukes; about 1,500 are on land-based missiles kept on hair-trigger alert – allowed only minutes to determine whether an instrument-reported attack is not an error, get the president’s “go-codes” and launch the retaliatory missiles.
The current practice of forcing such a time-restricted decision on whether to launch a nuclear Armageddon is homicidal lunacy.
President Obama rightly visited Hiroshima in May and graciously did reaffirm his commitment to work toward a nuclear-free world; it is, after all, a legal requirement under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, though he’s never said so. (One hopes his words were delivered and received with more credibility than Sen. Markey’s preacher “preaching abstinence from a bar stool.”)
Some were hoping that he would announce something definite that could immediately reduce the current nuclear danger. He did not. Nor did he acknowledge the growing danger so much as tout the (relatively little) arms control progress made since George H.W. Bush’s term.
But why is there no public outcry to address the problem or even acknowledge it?
It is, I think, largely due to the public’s lack of awareness, and this is partly media abetted, being as cozy as they are with the military-industrial complex.
After the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, the world became frightened and managed to initiate a little progress on nuclear arms control.
But by 1980, the Soviets had attained rough nuclear parity, only to be followed by a new U.S. push for nuclear superiority. Leaders on both sides, especially the U.S., talked openly of the need to prepare to “fight and win” a nuclear war.
This again terrified the world, and by the mid-1980s, the people (East and West), now aware of the common threat (an awareness reflected in the media), demanded, and got, genuine cooperation and agreements significantly reducing nuclear weapons.
But everybody took what was unimagined progress as “problem solved.” Since then the problem has been out of mind and we have ignored the need for the international cooperation that gave us such a hopeful start on the path to a nuclear-free world nearly a generation ago.
Shamefully, virtually nothing has been said about the problem by either party during this seemingly endless presidential campaign.
And little has been said in the mainstream media.
Yet the new U.S. strategic force “modernization” scheduled over the next 30 years makes a mockery of the claim to value law, love, life and world peace.
The huge size of our military spending (about $700 billion per year) and the plethora of “defense” bases outside our national borders – 700-plus in 73 countries – must give most of the world (and no small number of our own citizens, were it widely known) pause concerning the prospects of world peace, if not the continued existence of the human species itself.
But our U.S.-based strategic nukes aren’t the only ones that pose worries. So do our tactical nukes – the “little” ones that have the “humane” benefit of being less destructive and, therefore, more useable.
Yes, little ones like “Little Boy” dropped on Hiroshima.
The International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War published a study in 2014 on the effects of a “small” nuclear exchange (100 Hiroshima size bombs) between Pakistan and India. It estimates 2 billion deaths, most from starvation brought on by nuclear winter, i.e. atmospheric blocking of the sun’s heat disrupting agriculture for large sections of the planet.
Provocatively, the U.S. has placed 180 such nukes at six bases in five European countries, including Turkey – yup, the NATO ally nearly overtaken by a military coup in mid-July.
The tactical nuke connection was scarcely mentioned in the mainstream media.
Many citizens and groups around the world have urged President Obama to take new steps in his commitment to a nuclear-free world while there’s still time.
This 71st Hiroshima anniversary would be a fitting time for him to announce his refocus during these last few months of his presidency on the goal of nuclear abolition.
He could start now with a bona fide pledge to, one, de-alert our ICBMs; two, publicly embrace a U.S. “no first use” nuke policy (China has long had one, but is wavering; Russia had one, but dropped it when George W. Bush unilaterally dropped the anti-ballistic-missile treaty); and three, urge the Russians to do likewise.
He must also, of course, help raise public awareness of the nuclear peril and of his own admitted doubts about the wisdom of the provocative/destabilizing nature of much of the planned “modernization” program.
As Eisenhower warned on leaving office (way back in 1961, when most Republicans were relatively sane): “Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals.”
And, on this anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it’s also fitting to recall the supreme allied commander’s words of rebuke as we rethink our history and our need – no, our duty – to lead the way to a world without these hideous weapons:
“The Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.” (Dwight Eisenhower, Newsweek, Nov. 11, 1964).
(Ray Perkins Jr. of Concord is professor of philosophy, emeritus, at Plymouth State University and vice chairman of the Bertrand Russell Society board of directors.)