Exposing the myth of nuclear necessity

Five years ago, four titans of American foreign policy — the former secretaries of state George P. Shultz and Henry A Kissinger, the former defence secretary William Perry and the former senator Sam Nunn — called for “a world free of nuclear weapons,” giving new momentum to an idea that had moved from the sidelines of pacifist idealism to the centre of foreign policy debate.

America’s 76 million baby boomers grew up during the cold war, when a deep fear of nuclear weapons permeated American life, from duck-and-cover school drills to backyard fallout shelters. Then, in the 1980s, president Ronald Reagan’s leadership, combined with immense anti-nuclear demonstrations, led to negotiations with the Soviet Union that drastically reduced the size of the two superpowers’ nuclear arsenals.

Sadly, the abolition movement seems stalled. Part of the reason is fear of nuclear weapons in the hands of others: President George W Bush exploited anxieties over nuclear weapons to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq; most Republican presidential candidates last year said they would fight a war with Iran rather than allow it to get the bomb.

There is also a small group of people who still believe fervently in nuclear weapons. President Obama had to buy passage of the New Start treaty with Russia, in 2010, with a promise to spend $185 billion to modernise warheads and delivery systems over 10 years -- revealing that while support for nuclear weapons may not be broad, it runs deep. That support endures because of five widely held myths.

America’s decision

The first is the myth that nuclear weapons altered the course of World War II. Leaving aside the morality of America’s decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, new research by the historian Tsuyoshi Hasegawa and other scholars shows that Japan surrendered not because of the atom bomb but because the Soviets renounced neutrality and joined the war. Sixty-six Japanese cities had already been destroyed by conventional weapons — two more did not make the difference. Attributing surrender to the bomb was also convenient for Japan’s leaders, allowing them to blame defeat on a ‘miracle’ weapon.

Second is the myth of ‘decisive destruction.’ Mass destruction doesn’t win wars; killing soldiers does. No war has ever been won simply by killing civilians. The 1941-44 siege of Leningrad didn’t deter Soviet leaders from pressing the fight against Hitler. Nor did the 1945 firebombing of Dresden force Germany to submit. As long as an army has a fighting chance at victory, wars continue. Building ever more destructive weapons simply increases the horror of war, not the certainty of ending it.

Third is the myth of reliable nuclear deterrence. Nuclear proponents might argue that no cold war crisis ever erupted into nuclear war, so deterrence must work. But they’re moving the goal posts. Fourth is the myth of the long peace: the argument that the absence of nuclear war since 1945 means nuclear weapons have ‘kept the peace.’ But we don’t accept proof by absence in any circumstance where there is real risk. The last and most stubborn myth is that of irreversibility. Whenever idealists say that they want to abolish nuclear weapons, so-called realists shake their heads and say, in tones of patient condescension. “You can’t stuff the nuclear genie back in the bottle.”

Not everyone wants nuclear weapons. What most people don’t realise is that 12 countries have either abandoned nuclear programs, dismantled existing weapons, as South Africa did in the early 1990s, or handed them over, as Kazakhstan did after the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union. By contrast, only nine have nukes today (the United States, Russia, Britain, France, China, India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea).

America and other nuclear powers must pursue the gradual abolition of nuclear weapons, but it will not be easy. Many leaders have little interest in giving up power, real or perceived. Any agreement would have to include stringent inspections and extensive safeguards. It would have to include all current nuclear-armed states in a complicated diplomatic process. But bans on other dangerous but clumsy armaments, like chemical and biological weapons, have been negotiated in the past. These bans — like laws — are sometimes broken. But the world is far safer with the bans than it would be without them.

As Reagan knew, nuclear weapons make the world more dangerous, not less. Imagine arming a bank guard with dynamite and a lighter and you get a good idea of nuclear weapons’ utility: powerful, but too clumsy to use. Nuclear weapons were born out of fear, nurtured in fear and sustained by fear. They are dinosaurs — an evolutionary dead end. The trend in warfare today is toward smaller, smarter, more effective precision-guided weapons. Nuclear weapons — extremely dangerous and not very useful — are the wave of the past.