On the 75th of the Hiroshima bombing, I wrote a piece to which I find it only fitting to make a follow-up for the 75th of Nagasaki. In my August 6 piece, a commenter DLup made reference to the author Gar Alperovitz who also wrote a piece in the Nation. This Nation piece came to my attention from a reference comment by Hinoema01 to teacherken’s August 6 piece in regards to the Hiroshima 75th. The Nation piece led me to the transcripts of a presentation by Ward Wilson to the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs discussing the Five Myths about Nuclear Weapons. It is this topic I find worth discussing today.
The Five Myths:
1. Nuclear weapons shocked Japan into surrendering at the end of World War II.
2. Nuclear weapons are the most destructive weapons in history.
3. Nuclear deterrence is essential for our protection.
4. Nuclear weapons are necessary because they keep the peace.
5. Nuclear weapons can't be disinvented.
During this presentation and with its question and answer session, some other topics of concern arose to include:
A. Concern of irrational actors particularly on the parts of the United States and/or Russia.
B. Concern for inadvertent release or misperception of being attacked particularly with automated assessment and/or control systems.
C. Increased numbers of weapons and states possessing weapons increases the chances of an item falling into terrorist hands.
I will summarize or address seven of these points below while striving to show throughout that bad conclusions of history drive poor policy choices and bad strategy to include funding priorities.
Myth One: Japan conceded because of the atom bomb. This is patently false. Soviet entry into the war caused Japan’s surrender. This has been addressed in my previous posting and is covered in detail in both Foreign Policy and in the Nation. You may also find references from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:
“In the absence of the Soviet invasion, Hasegawa concludes, the two atomic bombs would “most likely not have prompted the Japanese to surrender, so long as they still had hope that Moscow would mediate.”
Fire bombing was equally if not more devastating than were the atom bombs yet such didn’t stop Japan. The Japanese had lost their navy and air force while the US had complete maritime and air supremacy. The islands were blockaded. Between complete freedom of US maneuver and lack of logistics, the Japanese knew they were defeated and were trying to come to terms. From the Bulletin again:
“the idea that the US government was faced with only two options in August 1945—full invasion or atomic bombing of Japanese population centers—has little basis in reality. Alternative courses of action, not mutually exclusive, would have included negotiations, a demonstration of the atomic bomb in an uninhabited area, continued strategic bombing short of the use of atomic weapons, continued economic blockade, and waiting for the Soviets to declare war against the Japanese empire.”
An invasion would never have been needed and the atom bomb did not save a single American life — at least not from conflict with Japan. The negative impact of this myth comes as much of the subsequent myths are derived from it and as it drives policy makers ever toward direct action options.
Myth Two: Nuclear weapons are the most destructive in history. This myth is true. Its relevance, however, is suspect. When considering targets, weaponeers look for the least potent item that will get the job done. Any excess is considered overkill. Overkill is waste. This isn’t just true in an economic sense, overkill leads to collateral damage which in turn can hinder follow on options and actions. Nuclear weapons are the ultimate in overkill. We don’t need massive destruction. Better is specificity and precision with a capacity of lesser weapons to service the anticipated number of targets. You can now turn this back to economics as nuclear weapons require special maintenance and servicing, special security, and extra safety measures. They create excess risk for the owners holding them in peacetime reserves. Further, in the case of nuclear weapons, lingering radiation limits follow on military options. If you want to lob them at a massing army to prevent invasion, so long as they’re downwind, ok. But if you want to subsequently occupy that territory, good luck. These weapons are too big to have utility.
Myth Three: Nuclear deterrence is essential to our protection. Yet somehow we still suffer attacks. Even when we’re the aggressor, the possibility of nuclear attack hasn’t cowed our adversaries. The presenter pointed out that Israel had nukes yet this didn’t stop Egypt and Syria from attacking and pushing Israel into an existential situation in the 1973 War. Even Argentina poked Britain. Look at the scrambling Britain had to boost underfunded and out of practice maritime forces to their Falklands campaign. Why were they underfunded? Could it be they thought their bombs protected them? For being in a time of great peace under the aegis of deterrence, we’ve had a lot of conflict. As have other weapon holders. This includes skirmishes in which both parties are weapon holders, like India and China or India and Pakistan. At best, these items offer incomplete deterrence. I would be willing to concede they put Soviet troops in Eastern Europe under threat and served as a force equalizer in this prior to the Soviets getting their own bomb. After this, however, our items lost value. Note this specific instance was a tactical situation in which bombs countered Soviet excessive troop numbers. Strategic threat didn’t really concern Stalin as he didn’t care about his people. Such highlights lack of effect against totalitarian regimes. Such only works backwards against democratic societies in which people matter.
Myth Four: Nuclear weapons are necessary because they keep the peace. I say see the above discussion of myth three. For keeping the peace, these items haven’t been successful. The presenter, however, liked to look specifically across Europe for this myth. Then he made points that the proof of absence is a flawed concept. I say such is the tactic of the cult leader. The presenter gives case for throwing virgins in volcanoes as after having done such, the volcanoes haven’t erupted. I think The Hunger Games makes this argument; tributes selected and sacrificed have kept the peace, see, because while we’ve done it there’s been no war. Correlation isn’t causation.
Let’s pause here and think about the conflict between myth two and myths three and four. Fear of nuclear weapons being the most destructive has driven Israel to bomb Iraq and Syria. False fears of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were used to justify the 2003 invasion. One would have thought suspicion of their possession of weapons should have deterred invasion due to risk of being targeted by these weapons yet fear of the power of the weapons also drove the invasion. There’s conflict in the myths and internal conflict in our policy yet all are common in producing zero and negative sum thinking. Fear of Iran being within any time span of a weapon led to Bolton and Pompeo challenging Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Trump capitalized on Iranian fears to gain votes then discarded the functioning and internationally accepted JCPOA thus created a self-fulfilling prophesy. Our weapons didn’t restrain our actions while they also did not deter others’ attempts to acquire weapons nor in engaging in follow-on conflict — see Quds. They didn’t deter sacking an embassy previously either. Instead of keeping peace, weapons have caused friction and hostility. Now we have Democrats trying to take mutually exclusive positions of no new wars in southwest Asia while also saying Iran won’t be allowed to get the bomb. And to top it all off, Saudi has joined the hunt.
Myth Five: Nuclear weapons can't be disinvented. Ward Wilson said he had the most difficulty with this myth because it is true and it creates fear of others. His counter is simple, technologies found either to be antiquated or dangerous and non-beneficial get bypassed for better. In the case of antiquated, he argues greater precision including over vast distances renders the awesome firepower of nuclear weapons obsolete. You don’t need a big bang to compensate for miss distances when you won’t have miss distances. Further, non-kinetic means like cyber and informational war may be more easily able to achieve desired objectives. In other words, these weapons are obsolete. Who here still watches cathode ray televisions? Who fights with flint locks?
Concern A: Irrational Actors. In the discussion, fear of irrational actors arose. Initial focus was on smaller states, what you may consider rogue nations, with smaller inventories though perceived crazy leaders who may decide to lob an item. Ward Wilson did not say but must have alluded to the fact that these lesser tyrants, even if they often appeared irrational, wouldn’t lob weapons due to a strong sense of self preservation. What he raised as concern is what if irrational actions came from the states holding larger inventories being the United States and Russia. I assume such thoughts aren’t likely common concern as we tend to assume rationality of great states. Nothing could be further from the truth, however. Senator Fulbright taught us psychology applies to countries too. Kahneman and Tversky showed us behavior, even in domains thought to be rational, aren’t as no human is rational. Now consider Trump with his lack of caring or empathy towards other human beings. xil appreciates this fear as does melshim. Melshim is well founded considering lame duck actions in Wisconsin and Michigan. Recall Mattis resigned for the Kurds though he could not stop them being ambushed. If you thought a foreclosed homeowner stripping out the copper and smearing walls with shit was bad, imagine a spiteful vengeful lame duck who doesn’t care about anyone else and happens to still have sole possession of the US nuclear inventory. He’s sinophobic and persiaphobic. Yeah, this concern is real while neither our infrastructure nor our institutions protect us from irrationality.
Pause for a moment and consider the following statement, “Truman made the hard choice.” Does this hold merit for you? Do you feel conviction about this? Now consider this, “Truman took the only reasonable option available to him.” Does this hold merit for you? Many will hold both of these to be true and emotional conviction will hold sway to both premises in them. Yet this is not rational. Irrationality clouds our conclusions thus clouds our future decisions. These two statements are mutually exclusive. You can’t have a hard choice if you have only one reasonable option.
Concern B: Inadvertent Release. Response to a misperceived attack could become a “first strike” triggering an apocalypse. Such could be made by human error or by machines taking more and more pieces of kill chains due to their ability to act faster. Or a combination thereof. War Games and Terminator have merit. Crimson Tide - have a viewing. The End of October - have a read. Look at the recent record of inadvertent shots. Vincennes shoot down of Iranian airliner. Soviet shoot down of Korean airliner. Russian shoot down of Malaysian airliner over Ukraine. Patriot shoot down of F/A-18 Hornet. Patriot shoot down of British Tornado. A Viper and a Patriot duel. Iran shoot down of Ukrainian airline. Now apply these mixups to nuclear weapons. We almost had such in 1983 with a Soviet system misidentifying a launch of five missiles - this after twice Americans having similarly thought we were under attack and rushing to respond.
I’m not addressing Concern C as it seems self explanatory. With these I’d like to leave you with some thoughts. Echoed from above previously, our myths and concerns drive zero and negative sum thinking. Meanwhile, as Covid-19 and the 2016 and 2020 elections are showing us, our biggest security concerns such as pandemic, global warming, cyber vulnerabilities, supply chain stress are the sort to be solved by positive sum thinking. Read Charles Kenny. Highly recommended. Watch out for those capitalizing on zero sum thinking as Prophets of War shows while they also skew policy creating international friction creating sales demands. Some situations are zero sum while others are driven that way as it only takes a non-cooperative player to change positive to either zero or negative as Graham Allison shows us. Lockheed in Prophets of War has taken advantage of nuclear fears though they’ve also profited elsewhere. They’re not alone, skewed US policy has contributed as seen through all Eugene Jarecki American Way of War, Rachel Maddow Drift, and Barbara Tuchman March of Folly as Guns of August showed bad policy based on bad history in both Germany and Britain.
Monday, Aug 10, 2020 · 11:24:38 PM +00:00 · Fffflats
WAPO had an interesting piece discussing accident potential with near misses to include a device nearly detonating over Goldsboro, NC. Only a trigger whose design had failed thirty times previously prevented this. The New Yorker had a piece discussing LeMay actively pushing in ways to get the other guy to start a war. This piece also noted that the launch safety features for missiles during the Cuban Missile crisis were short circuited in a manner that could have caused accidental launch or let an unauthorized launch by a single person be made. Interesting LeMay assessment,
“LeMay and his military colleagues began to think of the U.S. nuclear arsenal as a “wasting asset,” and to consider ways that arsenal might be used before it was lost to mutual deterrence.”
Really does amplify the concerns regarding rationality and inadvertent release as well as the myth regarding necessity for peace.