Abstract
Shortly before his death on August 31, Joseph Rotblat, one of the Bulletin's original (and brightest) guiding lights, graciously penned the following letter to the editor. His unwavering voice for peace will be deeply missed.
A fateful decision
In the fortieth anniversary issue of the Bulletin, I wrote an article giving my reasons for leaving the atomic bomb project in 1944.1 described how Niels Bohr discussed in conversations with me his fears of the dire consequences of a nuclear arms race between the East and West, which he foresaw with such great prescience (“Leaving the Bomb Project,” August 1985 Bulletin).
Today, in my ninety-seventh year, and on the fiftieth anniversary of the Einstein-Russell Manifesto, of which I am now the sole surviving signatory, I find that I am still as deeply confirmed in my belief that nuclear weapons are fundamentally immoral, and that we must do everything in our power to stop their proliferation. It is not only the enormous scale of their powers of destruction (to the point of destroying the whole of civilization), but, even if limited, their action is indiscriminate, affecting civilians as well as military, innocents and aggressors alike, killing people alive now and generations as yet unborn.
Are we going to base our world on a culture of peace or on a culture of violence?”
All this makes nuclear weapons unacceptable instruments for maintaining peace in the world. But this has been exactly our policy during, and since the end of, the Cold War. Nuclear weapons have been kept as a deterrent, to prevent war by the threat of retaliation. And we have to ask ourselves: Are we going to base our world on a culture of peace or on a culture of violence?
If we rest the security of the world on a balance of terror, not only is it extremely dangerous, but in the long run it will erode the ethical basis of civilization.
Joseph Rotblat
London, England
The memory of the unprecedented cruelty of the atrocity committed by the United States in Hiroshima and Nagasaki 60 years ago is fading even in the minds of many Japanese people–particularly in the younger generations–perhaps due to the deliberate and shameless efforts by the Japanese government, which since the end of World War II has been eager to appease the United States.
Nevertheless, we should not give up. In every corner of the world, we should make a sincere effort to spread the idea that nuclear weapons are an absolute evil. It may take a long time, but eventually I believe the abolition of nuclear weapons will come true.
Toshiyuki Toyoda
Physics professor emeritus, Nagoya University, Tokyo, Japan
It is startling that none of the respondents to the question posed in your special package (“60 Years Later: “Would You Have Dropped the Bomb?” July/August 2005 Bulletin) suggested that they would have given the Japanese a firm assurance regarding the fate of Emperor Hirohito. Such an assurance might well have secured a swift end to hostilities, rendering the bomb unnecessary.
The Clock
Painting by a Hiroshima survivor.
As Robert Butow documented in his 1954 book Japan's Decision to Surrender, that assurance was what the Japanese cabinet meant by the intercepted euphemism “unconditional surrender is the only obstacle to peace.” Undersecretary of State Joseph Grew advocated such an assurance. And even after Nagasaki, the Japanese cabinet extracted it from President Harry S. Truman as a price of immediate surrender. Surely the issues of imagination and empathy are germane to the question addressed in the package.
Gordon L. Shull
Wooster, Ohio
Your roundtable “Would You Have Dropped the Bomb?” was an exercise in intellectual futility. The authors who claimed they would not have bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki are making their statements based on 60 years of historical and political hindsight that was not available to President Harry S. Truman and his advisers in 1945.
Personally, I don't see how a president properly fulfilling his duty to defend his country could have made any other decision. The idea that Japan would have responded to a demonstration of the bomb is ridiculous given the militancy of the Japanese leadership at the time.
I am convinced that the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved hundreds of millions of lives by effectively demonstrating the horrors of nuclear war. It's not a coincidence that such weaponry hasn't been used since. Without the sobering memory of what the bomb did to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it's very likely that a nuclear holocaust would have happened long ago.
Steve Allen
Taylorsville, Utah
I read your collection of essays with great interest. In 1945,1 was a frightened 18-year-old soldier serving in the U.S. Army on the island of Luzon in the Philippines. We were preparing for an amphibious landing on Japan when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.
That decision saved my life.
The military dictatorship governing Japan at the time was prepared to fight to the death to save its homeland. Contrary to what's been published, the emperor was supportive of his generals to the bitter end. As for morality, it's time for the Japanese government to admit Japan's culpability in murdering 300,000 Chinese civilians in Nanjing from December 1937 until February 1938 and another 300,000 Chinese civilians in 1942 with biological weapons.
Michael J. Franzblau
San Francisco, California
Nuclear chicken
Rebecca Johnson's critical assessment of the U.S. performance at the May 2005 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference (“Arms Control: All Talk, No Action,” July/August 2005 Bulletin) begs the question: “What drives the United States?
Johnson blames John Bolton. But the roots are far deeper. True, the Bush administration “refused to acknowledge the consensus outcome of the 2000 review conference.” But no other administration, Republican or Democratic, would have done otherwise–especially when doing so means surrendering the bomb. For proof, compare the Clinton administration's defense posture (“Nuclear forces are an essential element of U.S. security”) to the Bush administration's 2001 Nuclear Posture Review (“Nuclear weapons play a critical role in the defense capabilities of the United States”).
UPDATE
And the winner is …
Detail from the winning entry.
Last fall, the Bulletin sent out a call for entries to its More Than Minutes Contest. In response, dozens of submissions arrived from every corner of the country. The objective: Select a year the Doomsday Clock moved and create a display commemorating it. Participants included home-schooled students, news junkies, and professional artists.
Serving as judges were graphic design expert James Mohler, anthropology professor Joseph Masco (author of The Nuclear Public Sphere), Phil Truesdale–art director at Chicago-based Grip Design, Bulletin Editor Mark Strauss, and Bulletin An Director Joy Olivia Miller.
After much deliberation, the judges awarded first place to Robert Dohrmann and J. Craig Tompkins, an Oklahoma-based team that tackled the year 1 988–six minutes to midnight–because of the political significance of the late 1 980s. “Anyone old enough to read a newspaper or turn on a television during those years saw the Berlin Wall dying, the Cold War thawing and the Soviet Union suffering,” they noted. Their interactive display featured a digital “Berlin Wall” interface emblazoned with the famous phrase “Tear down this wall!” Clicking on the wall led to pages about events like the 1 988 Moscow Summit and “tore down” bits of the wall, erasing them from the screen.
Check out snapshots from the winning entry, and others, online at thebulletin.org, after November 1, 2005.
Both hawks and doves share the same objective–reducing the probability of war. From the hawks' perspective, defense procurement rather than arms control serves this objective better. But such an argument means that only the elimination of strategic threats would prompt the United States to eliminate its nuclear arsenal.
Absent such a turn, only two contingencies might nudge Washington: a catastrophic nuclear event generating public clamor against the bomb, or the withdrawal of non-nuclear states from the NPT. But would playing this game of chicken be worth unraveling the nonproliferation regime, however flawed? I think not.
Bennett Ramberg
Los Angeles, California
Fair warning
If launch-on-warning is a very real and potentially catastrophic policy, as Pavel Podvig believes (and I agree), then why didn't the Norwegian rocket false alarm in 1995 constitute a risk of accidental nuclear war? (See “If It's Broke, Don't Fix It,” July/August 2005 Bulletin.) Podvig claims that a false warning can be discovered in time, as was the case (thankfully) in 1995; he suggests that we ignore deteriorating Russian early warning systems and that the United States and Russia adopt de-alerting without verification.
Both proposals miss the mark–even though de-alerting is a good idea. There's a need to abandon launch-on-warning policy and not tolerate increased uncertainty. A “reliable” warning system should tell us if an attack has been launched. But the system can err and only a first detonation is true proof. Ignoring warnings does not allow for easier decision making, nor is it the equal of abandoning launch-on-warning.
As Podvig notes, de-alerting will “introduce physical barriers to prevent launch-on-warning.” But it also requires shunning deterrence as currently practiced. Although de-alerting is a good and necessary step toward nuclear disarmament, it cannot be accomplished without sophisticated verification, trust, and a doctrinal shift.
Abandoning launch-on-warning, meanwhile, is a simple military decision–not something that requires transparency. It's a must if Russia and the United States are to assure that false warnings do not lead to missile launches.
Robin Collins
Ottawa, Ontario
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PAVEL PODVIG RESPONDS:
I have never suggested “ignoring” the Russian early warning system. My contention is that this system cannot support launch-on-warning in its current form and most likely never will. In my opinion, this is a positive development. If we want to abandon launch-on-warning, we need to completely remove early warning systems from the decision-making process, which is quite different from trying to increase their reliability.
As for transparency in de-alerting, its value would depend on whether we see de-alerting as a substitute for disarmament or as a measure that reduces the danger of an accidental launch. “Sophisticated verification” might be important in the first case, but it would be irrelevant in the second. (An analogy: An unloaded gun cannot fire, whether we know it's loaded or not.) Moreover, by making de-alerting conditional on verification, we ensure only that we get neither.
Zoned in
Thank you for Jonas Siegel's timely article about the growth of nuclear-weapon-free zones (“In the Zone,” July/August 2005 Bulletin). At every layer of society (community, regional, national, and international) nuclear-weapon-free zones (NWZs) are building blocks to a nuclear-weapon-free world.
Twenty-five years ago, I was proud to move a local council resolution declaring the City of Manchester a NWZ. Against the backdrop of a terrifying nuclear standoff in Europe between the United States and the Soviet Union, the idea rapidly gained momentum both in Britain and internationally. The NWZ movement signaled that certain segments of the world were not about to be led obediently into a nuclear abyss.
There is still a long way to go, but every new NWZ declaration–whether it is in a tiny municipality or a powder-keg region such as the Middle East–brings us a step closer to a nuclear-free planet.
My only quarrel with Siegel is regarding his description of nuclear-free towns and cities as “largely symbolic.” They were not. In fact, they served as springboards to action in many different directions. Over the years, the network of nuclear-free towns and cities–while still working toward the abolition of nuclear weapons–began addressing other threats to peace and global security. For example, many Italian NWZ local authorities provided development assistance to Palestinian municipalities–a task that transcends mere symbolism.
Bill Risby
Manchester City Council Manchester, England
I wish to point out an omission from “In the Zone” that is unfortunately common to discussions of nuclear-weapon-free zones (NWZs). On June 8, 1987, New Zealand enacted the Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act.
The act is usually referred to in terms of its ban on visits to New Zealand by nuclear-armed and nuclear-powered ships, but it also established the first-ever single nation nuclear-free zone. Mongolia is often incorrectly cited as the first nation to do this. The zone, distinct from the South Pacific NWZ established by the so-called Treaty of Rarotonga, encompasses New Zealand's land, inland waters, internal waters, territorial sea, and airspace, and is governed by much more rigorous restrictions than the treaty. For this reason, the New Zealand zone merits specific mention.
Robert E. White
Director, Centre for Peace Studies, University of Auckland Auckland, New Zealand
Plane crazy
I couldn't have been the only one to snort in amusement at your “No-Fight Zone” piece (July/August 2005 Bulletin), which was inspired by a musing from the inestimable aircraft analyst Richard Aboulafia.
Surely Aboulafia was misquoted because the only way that the statement “two countries that have F-16s have never fought a war” can possibly be correct is if you add “with their F-16s–yet.”
Otherwise it's total nonsense. Israel and Egypt? And Jordan? Greece and Turkey? I'm sure it's been in some of the newspapers. Yes, they are “historical” conflicts, but the fighting was real enough. So perhaps we need to modify the F-16 diktat a little.
And, as you point out, with the United States hot to sell more F-16s to Pakistan and a whole bunch of new ones to India, who knows what nuclear-fueled entertainment awaits us in the future.
Robert Hewson
Editor, Jane's Air-Launched Weapons London, England
Correction
The article “Security for Whose Sake?” (September/October 2005 Bulletin) misidentified Joseph Bir-man's affiliation. Birman is the chairman of the Committee on Human Rights of Scientists of the New York Academy of Sciences, not the Committee on Human Rights of the National Academy of Sciences.