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I supported by fact or history The credibility of this argument
might be less strained without the additional burden of the U S
having unilaterally used nuclear weapons in a first strike against
a non-nuclear and virtually beaten nation. The question of
whether or not a nation appears less dangerous when it credibly
possesses both the Bomb and a demonstrated willingness to use
it asymmetrically is best asked in the cities of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki.
If we reject the idea that Truman was the biggest terror­
ist in history, and that he actually did drop the Bomb for entirely
altruistic reasons, we are then left to speculate as to why his
administration did not immediately pursue negotiations with
the world powers to ensure that the atom bomb would never
be produced or used again, with the obvious and inexpensive
pledge to dismantle our capability in return for the world s
nations’ agreement to never attempt to build one of their own.
The Cold War might have ended then and there, but the oppor­
tunity was rejected forever. Subsequent administrations and
Congress could have refused to pursue development of the
super H-Bomb, as the Russians had appealed to us to not
develop it because they would be compelled to reciprocate.
The Soviet Stockholm petition proposed a ban on all
nuclear weapons but was secretly laughed at in Washington,
and answered with the Korean War in 1950. A test ban proposal
was ignored and 'Operation Gerald’ proceeded in 1952; a young
Andrei Sakharov invented the “Slayka" (layered pastry) design in
1953, which made the USSR's own Hydrogen Bomb a deliver­
able device, which made him the ‘father’ of the Soviet Bomb
Later, his conscience drove him insane. Lucky for us, Edward
Teller, ‘father’ of the U.S. Hydrogen Bomb was immune from
being driven insane because he was already there and quite
mad.
Throughout many Presidential administrations, the
number and variety of U.S. weapons systems was multiplied.
It was the Eisenhower administration that developed the idea
of commercial nuclear electrical power. They did so to counter
the Stockholm petition and the Soviet overtures to disarm. It is
no coincidence that the power reactors chosen were the light-
water design that required enriched fuel and used a metallic fuel
rod assembly. Heavy-water reactors do not require enriched fuel,
whereas enrichment technology required for light-water reactors
can also be used to enrich uranium for bombs. The choice of
the metallic fuel assembly over ceramic fuel assembly leaves
an easily recoverable source of plutonium for the production
of atomic bombs, as we have not pursued breeder reactors in
the U.S.
The problem is, of course, that the cost of nuclear power
had to be fabricated in order to divert international opinion to
believing the U.S. was developing peaceful uses of nuclear
power. This was not difficult since the nuclear industry was new
and unprecedented, and shrouded in secrecy. The initiative to
misstate the true costs of nuclear power came from the highest
executive offices. Eisenhower himself addressed the UN in 1953,
stating the intention of developing commercial power in order to
counter the Soviet move for disarmament — which is why the
current Iranian claim to pursue commercial nuclear power is
discounted as a lie by the U.S.; a lie we fabricated more than
half a century ago.
The historical record will bear analysis that the USA
has, at every opportunity to defuse the proliferation of WMD,
done the opposite and has sought nuclear proliferation and
promotion of the amis race. The U.S. pioneered development
of MRV warheads, the Neutron Bomb, the nuclear submarine
launch platform, the cruise missile and ABM systems. At the
same time, we pursued development and stockpiled vast
arsenals of chemical and biologic weapons, delivery systems,
and stealth or first-strike technologies, and conducted more than
1,000 atomic and H-bomb tests in the atmosphere and under­
ground, conducted animal and human tests of biologic weapons,
and conducted an aggressive policy of stationing U.S. military
forces in hundreds of 'forward' bases in foreign countries. In
the meantime, the U.S. government carried out domestic surveil­
lance, counter-intelligence operations, disruption, harassment,
disinformation and propaganda campaigns against popular anti­
war and anti-nuclear movements.
The U.S. armed, equipped and provided intelligence as
well as biological weapons to Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq,
and despite knowledge of his use of chemical weapons, made
no formal accusation against him for more than a decade. That
makes us complicit in everything he did. The least we could have
done was issue a condemnation of his regime and call for a UN
investigation, if just for show.
Given all this, it is understandable that the rest of the
world does not believe the American position on disarmament or
nonproliferation is altruistically motivated. It is clear to the world
that the position of the U.S. is cynically employed to extend U.S.
hegemony over the interests of other nations. The war in Iraq
(and threat of war against Iran) is about oil, and everybody
knows it.
The additional development of a preemptive war to
allegedly prevent another nation from developing a deterrent
capability will certainly not transform the effect of deterrence
into one that favors nonproliferation. The invasion of Iraq
demonstrated that deterrence is only effective in proportion
to the credibility of the weapons systems to inflict casualties.
To believe that the threat of American invasion because of the
uncompleted intent to acquire weapons of mass destruction will
favor further disarmament or nonproliferation is counterintuitive.
The demonstration of the politics made by the preemptive and
aggressive war against Iraq is provocation for all nations to arm
quickly and secretly, and to never disarm under any condition.
To believe otherwise is what I like to call the Big Crazy because
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ROBERT ARNESON
any other mental illness appears positively sane in comparison.
It is 'Big Crazy’ to say that preemptive war can have any other
effect than intensifying the international political will to build more
prolific and more lethal weapons systems.
In the 1970s, nuclear powers recognized that a world
where every country possesses nuclear weapons of either
their own manufacture or as agents of existing nuclear powers,
endangers the security of all nations.That proliferation is a recipe
to escalate any regional conflict into a global thermonuclear
exchange. In the event the same fears that motivated us
to build the Bomb are not diminished by our preemptive war,
our withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, our failure to disarm or to
stop building weapons, or our asymmetrical first use of nuclear
bombs — it is safe to conclude that every nation that is capable
of building or possessing nuclear weapons now has a greater
number of people who passionately wish to acquire them or
more of them.
You cannot force the world to disarm by force of arms
through preemptive war unless you intend to wage war upon
the world as Hitler did. Even if you could, what would distinguish
your altruism from simple imperialistic conquest when the tactics
and outcomes are indistinguishable?
You cannot have disarmament and deterrence at the
same time. The only legitimate encouragement of nonprolifer­
ation is an international framework of agreement to not build
or maintain arsenals of either nuclear, chemical or biologic
weapons in any country to guarantee security through peace
not deterrence. That we devote ourselves to a genuine elimin­
ation of all war forever and an eternal peace between nations.
BOMB NOTES:
The creation and use of the Atomic Bomb was
fundamentally undemocratically decided under the duress
and condition of war. We created it under the cover of
secrecy because if the world found out what we were
undertaking, they would emulate. This move to absolute
secrecy in matters of international political relationships
is dictatorial and counter to democracy, as all monarchies
are fundamentally secret deliberations closed to the direction
of the people except by the most extreme actions. The
national security state is not just counter and antagonistic
to the democratic constitution of a republic, it is the death
of the democratic republic. Those involved in the secretive
world of governing and directing the construction and main­
tenance of the nuclear arsenal have become the new priest­
hood of the world. We have never surrendered the sovereignty
of the people over the direction of our society. It was usurped
and it is up to us to recapture it from the monsters who would
conceive of us as acceptable losses in a “winnable” nuclear
war.
At the close of World War 2, the only threat to
world peace was admitted by Leo Szilard: “Perhaps the
greatest danger that faces us now is the probability that
our ‘demonstration’ of the bomb will precipitate a race in
the production of these devices between the U.S and
the USSR."
By the middle of 1980, the number of nuclear war­
heads manufactured on each side had reached 95,000,
a truly astoundingly-insane large number.
By the close of 1961, the USA fielded five Polaris 1
nuclear submarines, each with 16 nuclear missiles of 12NM
range, and placed missiles in Turkey and who knew where
else on aggressive forward U.S military around the world
In 1963, we fielded another five Polaris 2 nuclear submarines
armed with 16 missiles of 1500NM range, and followed that
closely in 1964 with the introduction of the Polaris 3 nuclear
submarine that the A-3 missile that had three maneuverable
reentry warhead vehicles apiece That was succeeded by
the Poseidon missile that had a 2800NM range, and the 1974
Ohio Class ballistic missile submarine that carried 24 missiles
with 10 MRV, and not to rest there, the Trident 1 and Trident 2
nuclear submarines carried the Trident missile with a range of
over 4000NM and eight MRV per warhead of at least 100 KT
power Every one of these developments was launched, not
to maintain parity with our Cold War adversaries, but to try
and recapture the asymmetrical advantage of force that
unilateral possession of the Bomb first offered the U S in
1945
- J R S
Coupled with this is the reality that all weapons systems and
armies exist in defiance of the peace, which means we must
renounce the use of military force to settle international disputes.
We must end world hostilities and institute a phased and
balanced reduction and elimination of all weapons and military
forces to a reasonable level for a civil constabulary.
The 20th century witnessed the outcome of nations
devoting their economies to the alternative of peace; the military
resolution of political and ideological conflicts between nations.
I was under the naive assumption that the costs of military
conflicts had already been demonstrated to be so inflated by
the technologies of war that they were accepted by all powers
as too great to justify the imagined benefits. That aggressive war
was outlawed and that the United Nations’ reason for being is
to oppose the waging of aggressive war by sanctioning actions
against it. The preemptive invasion of Iraq is a great step away
from this principle, and has so destabilized the world that only
the foolish could think of the world as a safer place.
We must withdraw from the Middle East and ensure
that the sovereignty of existing nations is not violated. Close our
foreign military bases and reduce the number of warships and
overflights of warplanes. Civil secular government by majority
rule is not that difficult to establish if imperial powers are not after
other nations’ resources. Allow national self-determination to
flower, and the divisions of resources to benefit peoples of
nations and the world peacefully and fairly through the ballot.
We can make a world of expanding human rights and
prosperity where life is affirmed and where trade between
nations increases their mutual welfare and the better angels
of our natures prevail.
Peace has never come through the threat of war,
nuclear or otherwise. The road to peace bears a cost, but I
believe it will be cheaper than the alternative of continuously
escalating hostility to the ultimate end we are technologically
capable of.
All people now need to devote their lives to manufactur­
ing peace. The only body that can facilitate this is a congress
of nations such as the UN should be, empowered to adjudicate
grievances between nations effectively enough to restrain the
large-scale violation of the peace. At the same time, it is also
necessary to provide a council capable of inspections as well
as being able to encourage multilateral dismantling of the
implements of war and the reduction in size of military forces.
What purpose, after all, can the maintenance of militaries and
proliferation of weapons systems serve if not to threaten the
peace? The price for an eternity of peace has been paid by the
hundreds of millions of casualties in the last century; this century
should not discard their sacrifice. We must step away from the
brink of renewed world wars.
If you can speak, do not draw breath but to speak for
peace. If you can write, write letters, speeches, books and
articles for peace Write your Congresspeople. If you can travel,
go to Washington, D C. and seek out your representatives,
go to the next World Social Forum, attend peace rallies. Go to
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If you feel comfortable lying down in
front of trucks carrying bombs or munitions, do it! I don’t know
what you can do, but you have to start now in your heart to live
your life for peace You will not find out what can be done if you
do not search for the answers Do not let the grim lessons of
the 20th century die ignominiously in a bloodbath of millenarian
stupidity.
J R S lives on the North Oregon Coast
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