The movie Oppenheimer, the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer and the development of the atomic bomb during WWII, reportedly left a number of viewers in despair and dreading an impending nuclear doomsday. But, why should it? Observing comfortably from today’s vantage, things are actually rather encouraging.
The movie was, of course, a historical drama, and we already know the ending. The U.S. was in a desperate race against Nazi Germany, and incidentally our then ally, the Soviet Union, to develop the atomic bomb, a weapon so devastating that no adversary could stand against it. If the insane and depraved Hitler had won the race, our future would have been unthinkable, and the horrors of even the Holocaust overshadowed by even greater atrocities. While never used against Hitler, our bombing of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki inflicted such terrible death and damage that Japan was forced to surrender, shortening the war and thereby saving perhaps a million or more lives, Japanese and American.
Not surprisingly, Oppenheimer and many of those participating in the development of the bomb agonized over not just the death and suffering to be inflicted upon the targets, but the future of humanity after the development of such “doomsday” weapons. Following WWII, as we developed vastly more powerful fusion weapons (the H-Bomb), these concerns intensified. Many saw our race as “technologically clever monkeys” who had invented the mechanism of our own extinction.
The good news? We’re still here after nearly 80 years, and plenty of armed conflicts. Despite now having far more devastating and numerous weapons, they have never again been used.
We have had some close calls. Perhaps the closest was during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis blockade, in which the restraint of a Soviet sub captain overrode the insistence of the sub’s political officer on using a nuclear torpedo, averting a likely nuclear exchange. There have been other fraught moments. And the nations possessing nuclear weapons have grown to include Russia, Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea. South Africa became the only country to build the bomb and later give it up.
There are several takeaways. First, the possession of such weapons by various potential adversaries has discouraged their use, due to likely nuclear retaliation. For decades we lived under a doctrine of “mutual assured destruction” with the Soviets. Any use was essentially a mutual suicide pact. This has made leaders more cautious, and both less given to “adventures,” and more anxious to avoid situations in which an armed conflict between nuclear powers might develop.
Second, in a nuclear war everyone is a “combatant,” not just the soldiers. No longer can leaders pound their chests over national honor and send troops off to a remote war. Now the leaders, their families, and the life they know, are all subject to destruction. This has helped elevate pragmatism over principle and ideology. This inhibition seems to work on even a murderous thug like Putin.
Third, nuclear weapons are just not all that useful militarily, and bigger is not always better. As the Soviets discovered after testing their 58 megaton “super bomb” in 1961, what can you do with it? Nuclear weapons may destroy far more than you want destroyed. As South Africa discovered, they were of little use against guerrillas and internal unrest. They are useful mainly as a retaliatory “terror weapon” to deter an enemy from attacking you.
Fourth, the existence of nuclear weapons probably prevented an all-out conventional war between ourselves and the Soviets, which would have taken hundreds of thousands or more lives and destroyed much of Europe. With many small tactical nuclear weapons in place, the chance of it turning into a worldwide nuclear exchange discouraged adventurism.
Fifth, treaties and agreements to disarm offer little protection. Consider North Korea, and Bill Clinton’s “Agreed Framework” agreement, which allowed us to give them a lot of aid, in return for a promptly breached promise to give up their nuclear program. Russia’s agreement to guarantee the sovereignty of Ukraine in exchange for surrendering their nuclear weapons is another example. It would be impossible to ensure that everyone has actually given up all of their nukes, and a country that retained only a few would effectively rule the others.
We may no longer live with a “hair trigger” threat of instant nuclear annihilation, but are not out of the woods just yet. We have threats like North Korea, and an Iranian bomb in the near future. Nuclear armed Pakistan and India have had armed conflicts, and Saudi Arabia is widely rumored to have purchased weapons from Pakistan for protection against Iran. Hopefully, those countries will stay sufficiently sane to observe the mad, suicidal calculus that has protected us for 74 years.
Still, the existence of the bomb has probably saved far more lives than it has taken. Thank you, Oppenheimer! Δ
John Donegan is a retired attorney in Pismo Beach who didn’t study enough physics in school to develop his own nuclear arsenal and smite his detractors. Send a response for publication to letters@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Aug 31 – Sep 10, 2023.
Excellent column, Mr. Donegan. I agreed with all of it.
I’d be more worried about Russia and the US than the countries you mentioned as far as sanity is concerned. If Trump gets back in there may be no adults in the room to prevent a catastrophy this time. Putin and Trump are malignant sociopaths that may opt for total annihilation rather than admit defeat.
This is a perceptive and intelligent article by John Donegan, but I cannot agree with him that “things are actually rather encouraging.” To get the full impact of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, a small nuclear weapon by today’s standards, one should read John Hersey’s book of the same name. One can understand, as Mr. Donegan points out, the motives for bombing before the war ended, but not after the war was over and the full extent of the horror was realized.
Gunther Anders, a German journalist, wrote on this topic: “Between our capacity for making and our capacity for imagining, a gap is opened up that grows larger by the day. No human being is capable of imagining something of such horrifying magnitude: the elimination of millions of people.”
This gap, resulting from unbounded ignorance and arrogance, allows for the existence of offensive nuclear weapons, such as those dangerously fixed in missile silos. There was a time when Reagan and Gorbachev spoke global sanity about nuclear weapons. Whatever was “encouraging” seems to have died with them and, as the film “Oppenheimer” rightly points out, the horror has been resurrected.
Dan Biezad
Daniel Biezad: What I found most encouraging was that, despite mankind’s usual enthusiasm for waging war, we have improbably managed to forgo using our ultimate weapon for so long. Apparently, the horror and the scale of death and destruction from using them, as well as the likely suicidal outcome, induces a sense of sobriety even in those who might otherwise eagerly jump into the abyss of military conflict. I tend to take a pessimistic view of human nature, so I find this to be a pleasant surprise. I think that Oppenheimer would have been pleasantly surprised as well.
I have no illusions that nuclear weapons will never be used again. A limited exchange between nuclear states is always possible, and while that would cause vast death and destruction to the combatants, it is much less likely to trigger an all-out nuclear apocalypse of the sort we were threatened with for decades. Hopefully, China’s alarming expansion of its nuclear arsenal will not return us to a “hair trigger” situation.