I am usually a fan of Time magazine. Their stories are typically decent and usually display a sliver of wisdom and enlightenment. Then I read one of their stories today about nuclear weapons and the Nobel Peace Prize. As I mentioned in my last blog post, nuclear policy reading can be downright chilling simply because of the necessity of level-headed discourse. This story completely blind-sided me with its callous ignorance of fact, history and humanity.
Mr. Von Drehle does accurately point out that following World War Two, the number of people killed in conflicts across the world declined sharply. Industrialized warfare, most notably in the First and Second World Wars, produced unprecedented body counts even if you take out those killed in Stalin's purges or the Holocaust. The rise of nuclear weaponry and the bipolar world order of the Cold War created stability through fear.
Though I may disagree with those that characterize Cold War nuclear strategy through the over-simplistic notion of M.A.D. (Mutually Assured Destruction), the consequences of even a limited nuclear exchange between the Soviet Union and U.S. would have been nothing short of catastrophic. Plus, the assumptions that damage reports would easily distinguish a limited strike from an urban/industrial strike and that cooler heads would prevail in the midst of a nuclear war are specious, at best. Tens of millions would dead in less than a few hours and more would perish in the following months and years due to radiation exposure, starvation, and the violence that would be created by the collapse of society. Fear of a nuclear holocaust kept the safeties on and the silos sealed.
Imagine, for a moment, that U.S. and British efforts to halt Germany's nuclear program during World War Two had been unsuccessful. Would Hitler and Roosevelt have been able to stay their hands under an existing state of total war? Truman was obviously unable.
What message does one send by suggesting that nuclear weapons are a tool of peace? One legitimizes the repugnant attitudes and ideas of men like Douglas MacArthur and Curtis LeMay and gives credence to people like Commander Eugene Tatom who infamously said, "You could stand in the open at one end of the north-south runway at the Washington National Airport, with no more protection than the clothes you now have on, and have an atom bomb explode at the other end of the runway without serious injury to you."
I also find it immensely disrespectful to the 200,000+ people that died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 to suggest that nuclear weapons are tools of peace. Are the people who died in the years after 1945 due to cancers caused by atmospheric nuclear tests victims of peace?
In today's mono- trending towards multi-polar world, nuclear weapons are tools of instability. As inheritors of Cold War arsenals, the U.S. and Russia have and must continue to tirelessly strive to disarm and minimize proliferation. Regimes in Iran and North Korea are unsurprisingly interested in nuclear weapons. Iran is sandwiched by heavy concentrations of U.S. ground troops and has an ongoing rivalry with unofficial nuclear state, Israel. North Korea is still technically in a state of war with the U.S. If India and Pakistan were to go to war, what would stop them from using nuclear weapons to preserve their sovereignty.
Many (Mr. Von Drehle included) say that advocates of disarmament are naive to think that a nuclear-free world is possible. Indeed, getting countries like Israel, Pakistan and India to disarm will not come easy. However, I must ask why the U.S. still needs nuclear weapons. Russia is not our enemy anymore nor do they want to be. China's economic ties to the U.S. are too valuable to waste on nuclear rivalry. Were Iran or North Korea to acquire an adequate means of delivering a nuclear strike on the U.S. homeland or military assets, why would they risk the overthrow of their government via the massive conventional retaliation delivered by everyone that hates seeing nuclear weapons used (a.k.a. everyone)? If a terrorist group were to acquire a nuclear device and detonate it in London, Paris, Moscow, Beijing, or New York how could those respective nations respond in kind with their "deterrent"?
If, through some cruel twist of fate, a post-nuclear weapons America needed nuclear weapons again, we have all the pieces we need to build a new nuclear arsenal.
I would rather see President Obama undeservedly win the next 50 Nobel Peace Prizes than see Mr. Von Drehle's irresponsible viewpoint vindicated.
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5 comments:
Wonderfully written Dan. I have nothing more to add. I read an article on the NY Times a few days ago on just how more we spend on defense than education in the US (I can't remember the number though, but it's a lot).
Personally, I think it's telling just seeing where government money goes. Just what proportion goes to education, research, infrastructure? I wonder . . . and do all these combined pale in comparison to defense?
It is amazing that someone could so thoroughly blur the lines between achievements which cause peace and achievements which are peaceful. Results aside we cannot honor something that so directly undermines the value of human life and the simple right to existence. I have trouble believing that he was not simply looking for just such responses to sell more magazines.
This guy was probably a big fan of the Emperor's plan to use the Death Star (twice, I might add) to impose peace upon the galaxy.
Apologies for playing the comment Jesus to this thread's Lazarus.
Anyway, I agree with our sentiment but have a couple sort of theoretical things to add from class this semester.
One is that it's unlikely we're going to get all the other major powers to give up nuclear arms. The temptation, once everyone was disarmed, to quickly rebuild an arsenal and thereby gain an edge would be too great IMO. Two is that I think we are even less likely to get "vulnerable" states like Pakistan, Iran or N. Korea to give them up, since they lack the conventional forces to deter intervention by the major powers and they've seen enough recently and not-so-recently to fear intervention.
As to the author's argument. I agree that the idea of honoring nukes as instruments of peace is pretty despicable. And I think he's wrong in so far as war between the US and USSR was not likely avoided because of nuclear weapons. That is to say, I don't think the US or USSR ever had an incentive to initiate war with its counterpart, given that Russia was happy to have all of Eastern Europe as a buffer and the West wasn't about to just attack the (at least numerically) superior Russian conventional forces. Not to mention both sides were busy everywhere doing things besides launch WW3.
On the other hand though, I think you have to admit there is some balancing deterrent value present given that everyone knows nuclear weapons exist. The basic point that two countries might be deterred by mutual possession of nuclear is, in my view, not yet proven one way or another. If Pakistan and India avoid war for the next fifty years, I think we would have to agree, to a limited extent, with the theoretical argument this guy is making. In my mind the "best" possible world would be one in which every major power (say 7-10 countries) had a nuclear arsenal about the size of China's, because you would get these deterrent effects and hopefully keep the weapons only in the hands of strong states with heavily institutionalized processes governing their production, location and (god forbid) use.
It's ok, Jackson, Jesus was still a nice guy, even if he re-used old tricks.
A common cliche used with the nuclear weapons issue is that of Pandora's Box. Worldwide total disarmament is an impossibility. Instead we should focus on developing diplomatic ties between rivals and maintaining sensible deterrent forces. Perhaps most importantly, we need to ensure that everyone understands the true, barbarous nature of these weapons.
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