Flipping the Nuclear Coin
By Montag | Related entries in History, Ideas, The World, War
Today is the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki. While the death toll is not exactly known, 74,000 deaths were commemorated by Nagasaki city officials on this anniversary. There are arguments to be made both in favor of and against this use of nuclear force presented in this Wikipedia article about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. From the quotes in the Wikipedia article contradicting the decision, we can see that military leaders of the time Eisenhower and MacArthur believed that the bombings were “completely unnecessary.”
What was the purpose? To send a message to the rest of the world? We know that the Russians got the message very clearly, as it can be said that the use of the A-bomb on Japan marked the beginning of the nuclear arms race and cold war. Today we still feel the reverberations of those explosions as we struggle to deal with the former Soviet Union’s unsecured nukes, concerns of nuclear terrorism, the proliferation of weapons in states such as Pakistan and North Korea, and the unknown ambitions of states such as Iran. What can the US do to lead the world away from the precipice of nuclear disaster?
Perhaps we should disarm of all of our nuclear weapons. I can think of no morally justifiable use for nuclear weapons. If we can never be justified in using them, they make little sense as a deterrent –unless our enemies think that we are willing to use them nonetheless. But what does it say for our credibility in foreign relations if we depend on the perception that we are willing to abandon our morality? Besides that, terrorists will not be deterred by our nuclear arsenal.
To my mind, the status quo exacerbates the proliferation problem. Other states seek their own nuclear weapons out of the desire of possessing their own deterrent. North Korea claims that they pursue their nuclear program in answer to the threat of US exercising military force on the peninsula. Pakistan surely fears the same threat from India, Israel the threat from it’s neighbors, China…
Nuclear proliferation is the real domino effect of the cold war.
On the other side of the nuclear coin, there is nuclear energy. Energy that doesn’t pollute the air or produce green house gasses. Energy that doesn’t require the extraction of fossil fuels from the planet. Energy that as technology develops could eventually be totally sustainable and without waste. Energy that could be used for electricity to “charge” batteries or hydrogen fuel cells. Energy that could fuel a new industrial revolution that lets us slip the bonds of oil addiction. (There is a downside to nuclear energy, that we would have to address for at least the short term, but with innovation I believe we can overcome that.)
Which brings us back to Iran which is pursuing it’s own nuclear program. So far they are engaging in “conversion and enrichment activity — which it has the right to conduct under the NPT [Non-Proliferation Treaty.]” They claim it is an energy program, we claim they seek nuclear weapons. Either way, who are we to say that they can or cannot pursue it? Enriched uranium can be used either for power generation or weapons production. It’s a flip of the nuclear coin: there will always be concerns around independent enrichment programs. Is there a way to safeguard against nuclear weapons proliferation without stifling progress in the area of nuclear energy?
What about “…a global nuclear fuel company, possibly under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency [that] would collect, reprocess, and distribute fuel to every nation in the world, thus keeping potential bomb fixings out of circulation[?]“¹ If we would disarm, and be willing to participate in such an organization, we would gain credibility in our commitment to saving the world from nuclear disaster, and establish the legal grounds on the world stage to go after future questionable programs such as Iran’s.
1. Wired: Nuclear Now!
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August 9th, 2005 at 1:33 pm
[...] Cross posted at Donklephant [...]
August 9th, 2005 at 1:58 pm
This is the fun of nuclear deterrance: your enemy has to think you’re crazy enough to use them, your friends have to think you’re sober enough to own them.
August 9th, 2005 at 2:17 pm
Montag, please clarify something for me. Are you advocating unilateral (nuclear) disarmament on our (the USA’s) part?
August 9th, 2005 at 3:02 pm
Icepick, I advocate disarmament, and I advocate the US taking the lead in the move to disarm.
I am not 100% opposed to unilateral disarmament, however it would obviously be preferable to do so multilaterally with the goal of global (nuclear) disarmament. But to be honest, I do not know the best way toward that goal.
Our disarmament would do little to assuage Pakistan’s fears of India’s capabilities, nor Israel’s concerns about their enemies. So, a unilateral approach on our part is not a silver bullet by any means.
August 9th, 2005 at 3:11 pm
I should add that considering Kim Jong Il’s questionable mental state, that a unilateral move on our part may not change much with respect to NK either.
August 9th, 2005 at 3:13 pm
Thanks for the clarification, Montag. The two scenarios are very different, obviously! (So obvious I had to say it was obvious. Duh.) This is an interesting topic, and I hope I get a chance to post a comment tonight.
I will say this, I think unilateral disarmament on our (the USA’s) part would be VERY BAD. I’ll outline a scenario on that front later. The other way though, is another thing entirely….
August 9th, 2005 at 5:54 pm
Let me consider the unilateral disarmament option. Montag wrote:
(BLOCKQUOTE>Our disarmament would do little to assuage Pakistan’s fears of India’s capabilities, nor Israel’s concerns about their enemies. So, a unilateral approach on our part is not a silver bullet by any means.
While all of this is true, I don’t think this would be the first flash point. I think the China/Taiwan situation would come to a quick head. We would no longer be able to “guarantee” Taiwanese independence. The carrier groups that allow us to project our power would be too vulnerable to Chinese nukes. (And the Chinese have been rattling their nuclear sabres recently anyway.) We wouldn’t be able to go anywhere near Taiwan. It would be a question of whether or not the Chinese could build up their amphibious forces before the Taiwanese build their own bomb. And that leaves out the Japanese response entirely.
There’s too much uncertainty in a unilateral disarmament on our part. So that’s out. (And I’m not suggesting that Montag wants this or is suggesting this. This is just a quick thought experiment.)
August 9th, 2005 at 6:47 pm
Which weapons can be used morally?
Our credibility in foreign relations depends more on our power, what we use it for, and our (percieved) willingness to use it than it does some perceived morality. The only nations who would be moved by such a moral position are not the ones that matter. China runs over its own citizens with tanks. I don’t think they’re going to pause over our not living up to some percieved morality, and any moral censure they would level against us would be worthless.
However, to say we can never use such weapons is to have already disarmed. The fact is we can use them, and given sufficient cause, we will use them. If a 50 kiloton bomb goes off in Manhattan, the probability that some foreign capital will be vaporized approaches 100%. And if we don’t retaliate, the probablity that more US cities get incinerated approaches 100%. Sometimes terrible options are all we have left.
August 9th, 2005 at 7:00 pm
> Which weapons can be used morally?
How about a weapon used in self-defense (gun, knife, etc.)
August 9th, 2005 at 7:21 pm
Any disarmement agreement would require that every nation that has the technology to make nuclear weapons, or that contains uranium, be open to inspections at all times.
And any refusal to let inspectors enter a country would have to be met with immediate reprisals, and I do mean military reprisals. There would be too much incentive to cheat.
August 9th, 2005 at 7:27 pm
How about a weapon used in self-defense (gun, knife, etc.)
If Nation X uses a nuclear weapon on Nation Y, would Nation Y be justified in retaliating against Nation X? What if Y knew X could aquire more nukes, and would use them?
August 9th, 2005 at 8:58 pm
I come from New Zealand where our nuclear free policy has incurred the wrath of the United States in the form of trade bans and financial roadblocks. As we little guys look on, we can only be flabbergasted at the “boys in the sandpit” philosophy of the very few nations who can afford the nuclear race and are instutionally whacko enough to consider using them. We are stunned that America wants to develop new “little” bombs that you just know everyone is going to want and which even the terrorists would think were just right for rucksacks in underground stations. But you can’t stop it now. The real reason for comemmoration of Hiroshima and Nagaski is that these 2 days saw the opening of Pandora’s Box by the men from the nation that always thinks it is the good guy. I believe the bombings are the 2 single most evil things done in world history. Well done America.
August 9th, 2005 at 9:42 pm
See, Montag, it doesn’t matter what you think our principles and morals are. We’re worse than Stalin, Mao, and He Who Cannot Be Named all put together! The 150,000-250,000 we killed with Fat Man and Little Boy pales in comparison to the tens of millions the others killed, but we’re the most evil. It’s impossible to win, lol.
On the other hand, “WE’RE NUMBER ONE! WE’RE NUMBER ONE!”
August 9th, 2005 at 10:03 pm
Well Icepick, we could discuss all night the criteria of evil. But it is safe to say that in terms of a death/time rationale that 250,000 in 1 second is a pretty good effort. It took Saddam weeks in Kurdistan. But Stalin’s putch’s are over and the Kurds are most peaceful Irawis now and we all know He Who Cannot be Named will it cop it in 2 years..(or will he). But nukes will never end until the world does, while you and Montag discuss in reasonable and moral terms the varying levels of incineration you can live with. You gotta agree that looking in from the outside you guys do seem a little strange. Oh and by the way well done on being Number 1. I guess you’ll always been number 1 as when you lose there’ll be no-one there to shake your hand.
August 9th, 2005 at 10:59 pm
Right I’ll try this from your point of view.
First, The US is proliferating with the development of bunker busters. This has made everyone in the nuclear club including Iran think, “Who are those being made for?” That’s why things have sped up this year. So knock that initiative on the head.
Second, let’s presume that China will not nuke Taiwan because it would render the island valueless so let’s say that potential conflict will be conventional. Which brings us to the question why the west is exporting so much intellectual capital to China because they can manufacture cheaply. So be vigilant in the South China Sea in your boats and bring manufacturing home.
Third. North Korea will eat itself. Or their stone age development will mean they’ll bomb themselves.
Fourth, India and Pakistan hate only each other and even then it’s only about Kashmir, which again they will not nuke and really they don’t have the heart to hit Karachi or Delhi. You’ve really got to be very very angry to push the button.
Fifth, Britain and France can’t afford it anymore so theirs will rust away.
Sixth, Russia’s have already rusted or been sold. Frankly if you can’t afford a rescue submarine then there’s not a lot of budget there.
So let’s sit still and be vigilant and pray that the horror of 60 years ago will let humans slowly forget about the idea of mass destruction. Then we can worry about real things like China and USAs rapacious use of fossil fuel and destruction of the very air we breathe which is far more likely to be the cause of humankinds extinction.
August 9th, 2005 at 11:33 pm
Stalin ran pogroms and gulags and purges, not putches. That was one of the other guys. He Who Cannot Be Named, in fact.
And for the record, the person most responsible for the bomb would be one Albert Einstein, a German pacifist. Once E=Mc^2 was published, matter conversion weapons were inevitable. That’s why the Germans and Japanese were both attempting to develope nukes during WWII. (The Soviets probably were late in the war, but I don’t recall when their program kicked off.) We evil Yanks just happened to get them first. I guess the world would have been a better place if it had been our enemies, though. They would have never used anything so eeeeeevvvvvviiiiiiiillllll. Right?
But truly, fission bombs and fusion bombs are just baby steps along the path to total-matter-conversion bombs. Give those guys at CERN and Livermore and all high energy physics labs in-between time, though, and they’ll figure out how to make the really BIG bombs!
August 9th, 2005 at 11:46 pm
China wouldn’t nuke Taiwan, but Taiwan might nuke China. And the Japanese are not going to be happy with an exapnsionist China with practice making amphibious assaults sitting next door. Do you think they’ll sit on there thumbs, or re-arm?
And I find your BS about “humans slowly forgetting about the idea of mass destruction” to be blinkered and offensive. Blaming America for THAT concept ignores the whole of human history. 3,000 people died right goddamn fast just a few years ago, and the key weapon was boxcutters. And how many hundreds of thousands of people got hacked to death by machetes in the last twelve years in Central Africa? Oh, I guess that doesn’t count. What’s important is that I drive a car with, GASP! THE HORROR!, an internal combustion engine! Where will it all end?!!?
August 10th, 2005 at 1:04 am
North Korea is richer than New Zealand?
Who knew?
Evil = kill ratio/time.
But if a small nuclear weapon kills fewer people than a huge conventional one (MOAB), does that make it less evil?
August 10th, 2005 at 2:31 am
Calm down boys. There’s a country that has a mortgage on blinkered and insensitive.
Fact. Only one nation has had the gall and the murderous intention to use the ultimate weapon.
Yes there is a lot of evil in the world, whether it’s pogroms or machetes or concentration camps or planes or nukes. Don’t think we don’t know that. But don’t deflect culpability because there may be equivalent violence in the world. I’m always reminded of the line in a Elvis Costello song “It only takes one little finger to blow you away”. You own the record for the deathliest second in the world. So own it. Osama owns his moment happily.
Let’s go back to the original article. It’s the anniversary of Nagasaki and you started debating flashpoints and advocating the use of the BOMB on the anniversary of the death of 74 Thousand people in an eyeblink at your state’s behest. Now that’s insensitive. For your own reference point, how will you feel when we debate using the new Airbus on September 11. No, I thought not.
Nukes are wrong. You used them. Eisenhower and McArthur thought it was wrong. It was. No one else used them. Ever. Maybe we should thank you but I’m sure there’s a lot of people in Japan who would disagree. Maybe no one really has your courage to fly in high and kill so many on a hot morning at 8.15 as school settled in.
Could it be that underneath it all you’re proud of using it first? Could it be that you regret nothing? Could it be that your nation understands vengence in just the same way that a suicide bomber or a man with a boxcutter does? Could it be that you are no different to those that you detest?
I wonder how Hiroshima Day is comemmorated in the States. Here there are vigils and candles set free on rivers. Yet on this site we’ve debates about where deployment is needed. Is this typical?
I think about the way the Japanese use August the 6th to advocate peace and not hatred towards the States for such an offence.
And I’m sorry but I’ll put money on the internal combustion engine getting you before a bomb. Watch your step as you cross the road tomorrow.
FYI
If a gun kills only one person is that less evil?
If North Korea can afford the BOMB maybe New Zealand can. We just don’t think it’s right. Shame on us.
August 10th, 2005 at 3:34 am
By the way Icepick
from Wikipedia
One of the prominent critics of the bombings was Albert Einstein. Leo Szilard, a scientist who played a major role in the development of the atomic bomb, argued:
“If the Germans had dropped atomic bombs on cities instead of us, we would have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them.”
Who hung?
You have just gone to war against a nation who might have had weapons of mass destruction. Might.
The other insult is why drop 2. Why Nagasaki. Were they warned. Why not flatten Mt Fuji and warn you’re next.
There is much for America to ponder in this 60th anniversary. And to ask that you debate it is not to insult or not to say that fundamentally we are on your side.
August 10th, 2005 at 3:37 am
Looks like a bad case of projection.
And I bet you know exactly who it is, don’t you? Bright boy.
Yes, that’s what it was all about, wasn’t it? Murderous intention. Had nothing to do with the grace of the gods allowing the Americans to develop the technology first, before the Japanese, Russians, Germans, British, or anyone else. They NEVER would have done such a thing.
What’s with the obsession with speed? You probably know that other air raids in that war caused more casualties, and other atrocities killed more people. Only more slowly. Slow death is preferable to a quick one? Or is it just that this particular way of killing has, so far, by the grace of aforesaid gods, been done only by Americans, so the fixation with it suits a fixation with Americans as uniquely evil?
First you demand that we commemorate the day and reflect on the use of the bomb, then you scold us for talking about it. Pick one way of hating America and stick with it, please.
Talk away. It’s a free country. Say any damn thing you like. Just don’t be all pissy if we happen to notice and remember. What exactly are you implying here, anyhow? You have intentions for an Airbus?
OK, so we drop 10 conventional big bombs and get the same bang. That make you happy?
We re-hash that decision over and over. Every year when the anniversary comes up, if not more often. But unlike you, we do it with a bit more complexity than nuclear = evil, America = nuclear, America = evil. Our calculations take into consideration the state of Japanese resistance, the likely casualties in an invasion, the status of slave laborers and captives in Japan-occupied East Indies, and yes, even the likely civilian casualties in a land war in Japan.
Do you have to work to be so vile, or does it come naturally. What, pray tell, was the nuclear bombing of Japane a “revenge” for? Who ever, in calculating that decision, justified it in terms of revenge?
Then you haven’t paid attention to the full spectrum of public expression in Japan. Why am I not surprised?
If you answer everything in widening circles of non sequiteur, have you lost your mind?
Hey, the “can’t afford it” line was your idea. Now, caught in an obvious mistake, rather than admit it, you scamper up the moral high ground.
August 10th, 2005 at 3:45 am
As to the question in the original post, when there’s an incorruptible international agency, where only the most high-minded global players have their hands on the keys, I’ll trust that international agency to hold all the world’s weapons-grade fuel.
August 10th, 2005 at 3:53 am
Still fixated on the two atomic bombs. Hell, you could have gotten any number of American military leaders on war crimes charges well before the Enola Gay took off. E.g. Curtis LeMay for the firebombing of Tokyo 3/9-10/45 (more than 100,000 civilians killed). Even LeMay knew the only thing that saved him was his side won.
But then you’re back to the conventional weapons. The ones everybody used. Even (perish the thought) non-Americans. The tactics that had been honed in London and Berlin and Tokyo before America got into the war. And then you’ve lost your unique set-up of America in the “war criminal” stockade and every other nation on earth standing outside throwing crap at it.
And that’s no fun for you at all, is it?
August 10th, 2005 at 4:09 am
Another howler. You think Britain and France are just going to walk away from the nuclear club? Especially France, which has such a fondness for being a world-shaping power, but so precious little to back it up anymore except the nuclear capability.
France has about 450 nuclear warheads mounted on bomber- and submarine-launched ICBMs. The French have invested in MIRV technology and sophisticated decoy systems. Those numbers are decidedly not “rusting away.”
August 10th, 2005 at 5:05 am
It’s 9pm in NZ so I’m impressed Callimachus.
Sorry about the non sequitor but I got it from this
But if a small nuclear weapon kills fewer people than a huge conventional one (MOAB), does that make it less evil?
Look the debate here is the BOMB on Nagaski Day. I want the world rid of it. Tut tut. How naive. How immature. It seems to me considering it’s great expense and technological requirements it should be easier to get rid of than terrorism. A handfull of men could do it tomorrow. Men we see daily campaigning for peace and democray.
You say Hiroshima and Nagaski was not about revenge. That somehow America’s act of using it was more noble than other acts of extreme violence? Come on.
The bomb was used by Truman for revenge for Pearl Harbour and to justify it’s enormous expense to the Senate as development had cost 1 third of the entire war’s armament. He had to blow it to show where the money went. Revenge, mate, and political survival and it also showed Russia who’s boss. Military advice was against the bomb. If you believe that warranted the instant death of a quarter of a million, well fine. I hope you never get in power Trigger.
Whatever. You let it off. Sorry History will never change that. You can do it first and that’s OK, no one loses their job. After that, well, just think about having the bloody things then you’re all criminals and we will wage war to protect the world from the people who aspire to do what we did. Vaporise people. It’s a beautiful sliding morality.
How bout this….Sure you had it first…Good on you. Why didn’t you trade on it. Why did the only public display of the worst man made wrath have to be on kids, civilians and old people. Was this mature and responsible use of the ultimate weapon. Look at the history books. Were the Japanese truly warned. Leaflets were not dropped on Nagasaki. It was BRUTAL. TWICE.
Somehow your anger seems to be that we can’t pull you up on the obvious contradiction there is between your battle against WMD and the plain fact that you’re the only country to have used it in anger. Live with it and show us the maturity that the world’s greatest nation is supposed to have. Do not debate nuclear wars on Nagasaki Day. It’s unseemly.
By the way. I am tired of “If we hadn’t used it they would have”. Come on, are we in high school. Nyah nyah nyah. I’m looking forward to hitting my boss with baseball bat tomorrow and getting off because if I hadn’t someone else might have. You had the balance of terror. Why did you use it?
We speak English. America is our friend. Check the record. We’re on your side. We have died for you and we were there in Afghanistan and Iraq. We didn’t fight but we were first in to fix up the mess and help you install democracy, such as it is.
If you don’t like what a New Zealander says then you want to hear what the people who don’t like you say.
Read this if you’re worried about the true proliferators of WMD and attack them at will.
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/08/02/the-treaty-wreckers-/
August 10th, 2005 at 5:16 am
Since you’re obviously syntactically picky I meant to say.
Do not debate how to wage nuclear war on Nagasaki Day. It’s unseemly.
August 10th, 2005 at 10:38 am
Icepick:
Which weapons can be used morally?
Self defense is moral. Using WMD on civilians is not.
It’s a paradox, or a catch 22, but I don’t feel we would be morally justified to retaliate with WMD against a population center even if NYC was targeted. Especially in the case of an oppressive totalitarian regime where the civilian population is powerless in terms of their leaders’ actions.
Andrew Dickens:
I have a zero tolerance for the use of nuclear WMD and advocate full disarmament. I can communicate the same point in reasonable and moral terms, or in shrill extremist terms. Which is more constructive?
I think this is a very appropriate discussion for this anniversary. I also think it is oversensitive to object to Icepick’s comments just because of the date. I’m not so sure anybody actually advocated using “the BOMB” anyway.
August 10th, 2005 at 11:12 am
Andrew,
“The bomb was used by Truman for revenge for Pearl Harbour and to justify it’s enormous expense to the Senate as development had cost 1 third of the entire war’s armament. ”
What a mind reader you are. Of course you know better thatn we Americans what Truman’s reasons were. It couldn’t be that by that time people just wanted the war over.
“You gotta agree that looking in from the outside you guys do seem a little strange.”
And you gotta agree that from the outside you guys do not seem strange at all; no you seem very familiar – parasites who profit from a world system secured by the nasty, horrible power politics of the “bullies” of the world and then put on a show of moral superiority to assuage your sense of dependency.
The fact is that you have a Puritanical obsession with nuclear weapons, although in actual use they have been less murderous than most alternatives – no, all, if you include machetes. India and Pakistan have nukes – oh horrors! What are the chances they wouldn’t have had more than a few land skirmishes without the dread of annihilation hanging over them?
August 10th, 2005 at 12:57 pm
Sorry, I thought battles were for battlefields.
If nukes are so much better than the alternatives, why don’t you use them all the time. Think of all the lives you could have saved over the past 60 years. It reminds of the ‘we had to destroy the village to save it’ mindset
NZ was in the war. From 1939. In Europe and Asia. And the first one too. We were very tired of the war too. Wars happening on lands 1000 of miles away from our serence islands. We were standing by our friends. 10s of thousands of us were slaughtered from a country of 1.5 million. Don’t call us parasites. NZ is proud of it’s record. Look it up. It’s also not very hard to find plenty of historians who believe Truman’s motives had little to do with battle fatigue or the desire to reduce casualties.
But in creating a post nuclear age you have created the very exclusive nuke club where anyone without the bomb seems not allowed to debate and anyone not with you must be against you. Excellent.
Thank you Montag for looking at the issues and not closing up in defence. There is no moral weapon. But there are rules of engagement. If we lose all sense of fairplay on the field, from diplomacy, dialogue to combat, then we might as well slaughter each other as it’s the end of civilisation.
August 10th, 2005 at 12:58 pm
Well, it would have been nice to spend the anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki pondering questions like, “would a display of the bomb in a non-populated area in the presence of Japanese military leaders have convinced them to end the war,” or “would they have answered an invitation to all turn out and stand in a cluster at a place where their deadly enemies the Americans were sure to be dropping bombs.”
It would have been nice to spend the day ruminating on the fact that America’s nuclear arsenal is now, since the end of the showdown with the Soviets, a heavy burden that does us little good and brings great risks. We have too much of what we can’t use. With the aberation of the Cold War over, nuclear weapons stand revealed for what they are: the weapon of the weak, not the strong.
Or that the horror of nuclear weapons was not the dead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — as horrible as that was, it was in the continuum of World War II — but in what they became in just a few years after that: true end-of-the-world machines.
You’re talking to someone whose most common recurring nightmare, in my late childhood, was the missiles raining down from the skies and the sun blooming on my street. You’re talking to someone who remembers my mother sending my father off to work during the Cuban missile crisis, and both of them thinking it was very possible they were saying goodbye for the last time.
But instead I didn’t have the chance to ponder any of that because I was too busy shooting down the trollish historical libels of some flake from New Zealand.
Your opinion of this country and how it behaves is duly noted. As one who had two beloved uncles in wartime service in the Navy, men who might have gone to the floor of the Coral Sea with the sleek hulk of the “Lexington,” I would gladly have respected your wish to be untained by “vengeful” American military decisions. And I am sure you would have made a fine adornment to the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
Perhaps the U.S. should negotiate “treaties of guaranteed non-assistance” with nations that find us so odious. We’d promise not to protect them from foreign invasion. We’d also promise them non-assistance from anything remotely connected with the U.S. military in the event of some earthquake or tidal wave.
August 10th, 2005 at 1:08 pm
One last, and then I’m done with this troll.
It was you who chose to debate the bombings of Japan as a pure moral issue, not a matter of military practicality. You are the one who introduces “evil” over and over into the discussion (gee, I thought it was Shrubbie McChimplerburton and the other Christians who were obsessed with “evil”).
It was you who wanted to talk about “the gall and the murderous intention” and to insist that only America had that evil.
It’s not a matter of “if we didn’t use it they would have.” You’re as clumsy at reading blogs as you are at reading history. It’s a matter of “our allies, in the same position as America found itself in 1945, would have done the same thing, and lost even less sleep over it than Truman did;” and of “our enemies would have done it just for the joy of it, regardless of military calculation.”
August 11th, 2005 at 2:57 pm
There are reactor designs which don’t require enriched uranium, e.g. CANDU (wikipedia has a decent introductory article). When a state argues they *need* to develop a large scale uranium enrichment capability in order to have nuclear power, they are lying.
August 11th, 2005 at 4:32 pm
“Don’t call us parasites. NZ is proud of it’s record. Look it up. It’s also not very hard to find plenty of historians who believe Truman’s motives had little to do with battle fatigue or the desire to reduce casualties.”
Andrew,
You had casualties in WWII. Good for you. Guess what. The world didn’t become a paradise of peace and security after the Big One. You lot have done bugger all since then and enjoyed all the benefits, such as they are, of not having the USSR snatch your very desirable island from you. That’s the reason for my comment about parasites. I would say tha your attitude is very European, except that you might take that for a compliment. You get other people to protect you, if only for their own selfish reasons, and then preach about how vicious their methods are, like some damsel blowing a rape whistle because she won’t soil her pretty hands with a nasty old gun.
And by the way, you can’t really imagine that you would have been ablee to keep the Japanese off by your own efforts, do you? You don’t win wars by suffering a glorious number of casualties.
As for historians who doubt Trumans’s motives, historians are all over the map. Google for some that deny the Holocaust. Truman’s motives really don’t matter, his effects do. The real question is which course of action would have killed more people, and how horribly, maybe.
Nukes are absolutely horrible. That isn’t the argument. Callimachus’ and my generation know that in a way that, thank God, is academic for you. There is not some hierarchy of bad to good weapons with nukes in some priveliged spot, so no, they were not going to be used in limited land wars during the Cold War.
August 15th, 2005 at 5:07 am
Jim In case you didn’t realise we have been frozen out of all US defence agreements for 20 years because we wouldn’t allow boats that were nuclear armed into our ports. The US wouldn’t declare if a boat was conventional or not so we kept them out. We were then thrown out of all agreements, including those with Australia our nearest neighbour. So in practice the USSR or China or whoever have had 20 years to invade.
I wasn’t going to come back after being so roundly castigated for pointing out the moral ambiguity of debate on future nuclear conflict on the anniversary of Nagasaki. The anger that I don’t thank you for a nuclear umbrella that you view not just as necessary but also morally defensible.
However David Lange died on Saturday. The NZ Prime Minister who declared NZ nuclear free 20 years ago which has resulted in punitive fiscal measures from your government ever since. 20 years ago he debated just these points at the Oxford Union to great worldwide acclaim.
Here’s an excerpt
“It is my conviction that there is no moral case for nuclear weapons. That the best defence which can be made of their existence and the threat of their use is that they are a necessary evil; an abhorrent means to a desirable end.
The fact is that Europe and the United States are ringed about with nuclear weapons, and your people have never been more at risk. There is simply only one thing more terrifying than nuclear weapons pointed in your direction and that is nuclear weapons pointed in your enemy’s direction: the outcome of their use would be the same in either case, and that is the annihilation of you and all of us. That is a defence which is no defence; it is a defence which disturbs far more than it reassures. The intention of those who for honourable motives use nuclear weapons to deter is to enhance security. Notwithstanding that intention, they succeed only in enhancing insecurity. Because the machine has perverted the motive. The President of the United States has acknowledged that the weapon has installed mass destruction as the objective of the best-intentioned.
The speakers for the negative who asked the question, are we prepared to have a nuclear umbrella from the United States in terms of an ANZUS arrangement … the answer to that is very simply, very definitely, is not only are we [not] prepared to accept it, we deny it, we refuse it and we specifically say – we do not want to be defended by nuclear weapons!
[Applause]
INTERJECTION: Sir, I would just like to say, don’t you feel that you should weigh your moral stance with the pernicious effects it will have not only on Asian security, but western security as a whole? Particularly in light of the fact that there are movements in Japan, Australia and NATO itself, that would like to pull out, and use your precedent as an example, and pull out of their responsibilities to the alliance. And I for one as an American do not feel that we should shoulder the defence of the western world. And I think it’s something that everybody should contribute to and you, sir, are not doing your part
This country New Zealand is not going to contribute to a nuclear alliance. This country New Zealand never has. New Zealand was declared by the former government to be no part of a nuclear alliance – and we will pick up the tab by conventional defence. And one of the immoralities of nuclear weaponry, surely, is that it creates such a level of depersonalisation that the infinite capacity of destruction is unleashed by a few. Much more is there a moral posture in the conventional event where the humanity of a situation has to be constantly assessed, and where there is always a possibility of restraint, because individual people say, dammit, I’m not going to go ahead and do that, because it is absolutely immoral, contrary to the whole ethos of humankind, to do that. You don’t get the checks and balances along the nuclear trail.
And in my country, we pay our tab. We are not creating a policy for imitation or export. We can’t even deport it to Australia! It’s 1200 miles away! And if you think that Belgium and Holland and Greece developed a certain posture, an undercurrent, a surge because of the New Zealand position, you do us a considerable flattery about our omnipotence, because, you, know, we didn’t even know they were even thinking about it! And we are no threat to that.
I say to you we are prepared to pay that price. We have a long history of being anti-nuclear. One of my predecessors in office sent those ships to Mururoa. We’ve had the fight in the legal areas. We are constantly at issue with France. We proposed in ‘75 a South Pacific Zone. We are going to work to protect that. We have honoured our long-standing commitments. We’ve not welshed on any deals for defence.”
David Lange Prime Minister.
He uses the word evil a lot too.
While the nuke club postures they are saving the world their greatest hatred is saved for those who say that the method gives the world the shits.
Don’t come to our rescue. Bugger you. Why should you. We’ve only come to all your wars, why would you want to come to ours?
60 YEARS AND NO-ONE HAS LET OFF A BOMB. PERHAPS YOUR GREATEST SUCCESS WAS SHOWING JUST HOW HORRIFIC AND EVIL IT WAS AND NO-ONE HAS YOUR STOMACH FOR THE FIGHT. GOOD ON YOU. JUST DON’T EXPECT ANYONE TO THANK YOU.
August 24th, 2005 at 9:04 am
[...] I was glad to see the headline: US says N.Korean right to nuke power no deal-breaker. NK’s nuclear weapons program must stop. I have been discouraged by the fact that there is no good way to separate the potential of nuclear energy from the potential to make nuclear weapons. So I was heartened by the headline that implied that we were willing to allow NK to pursue a nuclear energy program. [...]
March 29th, 2006 at 6:08 pm
Cheers everyone! I am Katie Sue Hatcher from England, UK. Just thought I’d leave a short comment. You guys have a super informative blog site, and I like it a lot.