The Bomb and US
Praful Bidwai
Khaleej Times, 7 August 2005
Going by the US State Department’s definition of ‘terrorism’ as the indiscriminate killing of innocent civilians, usually for a political cause, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima this very week 60 years ago must be regarded as history’s worst terrorist act. It resulted in the death of 140,000 non-combatant civilians, more than 40 times the number killed in the Twin Towers attack in 2001. The bombing of Nagasaki three days later, where the death-toll exceeded 70,000, was the world’s second greatest terrorist episode.
It’s not just the scale of the mega-death visited upon the two cities that deserves recalling. Equally relevant is the quality of the human suffering, caused first by savage heat and blast effects of the nuclear weapons which flattened the two cities within seconds, and then by the release of radiation which took a slow, painful, excruciating toll through cancer and leukaemia.
Grotesque as they were, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings lacked a military rationale. They did not bring about an early end to the World War or save soldiers’ lives, as was claimed by US leaders. Comprehensively battered Japan was all ready to surrender. Ever since Gar Alperovitz published his masterpiece Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam in 1965, the world has known this.
Now, US-based historians Peter Kuznick and Mark Selden have unearthed fresh archival evidence from different countries to conclusively show that the decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki "was meant to kick-start the Cold War rather than end the Second World War". This provides further corroboration of General Dwight Eisenhower’s 1963 statement that "the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing".
Similarly, US President Harry S. Truman’s chief of staff, Admiral William Leahy, said: "The use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war." The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender". The bombs "worked" to their intended purpose by successfully establishing the US’s (transient) superiority over its principal rival and war-time ally, the USSR. The Bomb, then, was born in ghastly deception. It has since spawned generations of ever-deadlier weapons and the most furious arms race in history, which saw nuclear warheads multiply from a few score in the 1950s to many thousands in the 1970s, to a mind-boggling 70,000 in the mid-1980s.
The epochal tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki revealed the Bomb as an altogether new kind of weapon of mass annihilation, against which there can be no defence of any kind, military, civil or medical. The Bomb remains unique in its potential ability to exterminate all life — the Ultimate Weapon. The tragedies shocked the world’s conscience and spurred a demand for abolition of this scourge from the face of the earth. Thus was born the peace movement.
The peace movement has popular appeal globally. Its pledge, embossed on a plaque at Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park has been endorsed by great statesmen as well as ordinary citizens: "Let all the souls here rest in peace, as we will never repeat this mistake".
However, 60 years on, it’s hard to be confident that Hiroshima will not be repeated. The world today has some 36,000 nuclear bombs in the arsenals of the seven declared nuclear weapons-states (NWSs). (They exclude Israel, which has an estimated 200 nuclear weapons, but still maintains ambiguity, and North Korea.)
The existing global nuclear order, centred on non-proliferation, is in crisis. The promised ‘grand bargain’ on which the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was based hasn’t materialised. The 180 non-NWSs have by and large stuck to their commitment not to go nuclear. But the NWSs have not delivered on their pledge to disarm. They continue to be addicted to these horror weapons for ‘security’. The recent US-India nuclear deal is likely to further weaken the global nuclear restraint regime. It signals that the penalties for violating restraint are not unaffordable.
Seven years ago, the peace movement lost a state-level ally, India, until then a voice of sanity and reason. For 50 years, India argued that nuclear weapons are immoral, illegal, politically ineffective and strategically irrational. Then, in 1998, it succumbed to all the fallacies it had itself exposed, including nuclear deterrence. This doctrine, India argued, is "repugnant" because it holds innocent civilians hostage to bogus notions of security and makes wholly unrealistic assumptions: namely, governments will always behave rationally, and there will never be any strategic misperceptions or accidents.
Nuclear weapons give neither security nor even prestige, which national elites crave. They have made the world less, not more, safe. They cause uncertainty, panic and fear. There were over 10,000 false alarms and mishaps during the Cold War.
Nuclear weapons cannot even tilt conventional strategic balances. The US had to beat a retreat from Vietnam despite its nuclear arsenal. The USSR lost in Afghanistan despite being Nuclear Number Two. Indeed, it couldn’t secure its own survival. In 1979, nuclear China got a bloody nose from tiny Vietnam. As for prestige, let’s ask why Pakistan was considered a ‘failing state’ till 9/11. Does anyone respect North Korea because it may have nuclear weapons?
These arguments apply with greater force to South Asia, ‘the world’s most dangerous place’ post 1998. India and Pakistan have not gained global influence because of their nukes. They have lost the respect of many sensible people. True, India’s global profile has recently improved. But this isn’t because of nuclear weapons. Rather, India is seen as a successful pluralist democracy and an emerging economic power.
The assumption that nukes would induce sobriety and stability in India-Pakistan relations got shattered at Kargil, and then again during the 2002 India-Pakistan standoff. On both occasions, nuclear weapons encouraged rank adventurism and reckless war mongering.
If India and Pakistan are not to get sucked into the vortex of insecurity and high military spending at the cost of their people’s needs, they must disarm their nuclear weapons. Their nuclear renunciation will have a huge political impact on the other NWSs and spur action to rid the world of a terrible scourge.
Copyright 2005 Khaleej Times
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