The Search for Security in the Age of the Bomb

ON THE night of July 27, 1943, thousands of firebombs pummeled Hamburg, Germany. The result was something new to warfare: a vast, consuming inferno, a fire storm. Rising currents of air caused hurricane-force winds to feed the fire from all sides, sucking people into the flames. The heat was intense. Air-raid shelters became ovens, baking and shriveling those huddled within. Other people were bogged down in molten asphalt. Over 40,000 perished, more than 20 times the number killed in an ordinary bombing raid.

Two years later, on the other side of the globe, another fire storm consumed Hiroshima, Japan. This time the conflagration was lit by a single plane that dropped only one bomb.

The bomb, an atom bomb, was dubbed Little Boy. But its effect was anything but little. It was horrendous. It blinded with brilliant light. It killed and maimed by fire and heat and blast wave. It poisoned by deadly radiation.

Three days later, another bomb, named Fat Man, obliterated half of Nagasaki. A ridge that runs through the center of this hilly city protected the other half.

The Nuclear Arsenal Today

Today, there are about 50,000 of these weapons of mass destruction in existence. Consider:

◻ If the two superpowers used a mere 5 percent of their strategic nuclear weapons against each other’s cities, within minutes 200 million people would die, four times the number slain in World War II. The huge number of wounded survivors could expect little or no care from overburdened medical centers.

◻ Just one U.S. Trident submarine is equipped with enough nuclear missiles to blast 192 separate targets. Each of those explosions would be eight times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb.a

◻ The world’s stockpile of nuclear weapons has 2,600 times more explosive power than the combined munitions used in World War II.

Such statistics are mind-boggling, and they underscore the magnitude of the problem.

A West African proverb says: “When elephants fight, the grass too will suffer.” Likewise, the consequences of a nuclear war would not affect merely the combatants. In a recent essay in Foreign Affairs magazine, scientist Carl Sagan said that a nuclear war “would imperil every survivor on the planet. There is a real danger of the extinction of humanity.”

[Footnotes]

[Diagram on page 3]

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Today’s nuclear stockpile has 2,600 times the explosive power used in World War II

16,000 million tons

6 million tons

The Ultimate Weapon and the Race for Security

“A WEAPON of unparalleled power is being created which will completely change all future conditions of warfare . . . Unless, indeed some agreement about the control of the use of the new active materials can be obtained in due time, any temporary advantage, however great, may be outweighed by a perpetual menace to human society.”​—Danish nuclear physicist Niels Bohr. Written in 1944.

A United Nations study states: “There is . . . no target strong enough to resist the intense effects of nuclear weapons, no effective defence against a determined attack . . . In this sense, mankind is faced with the absolute weapon.”

Men quickly realized that not only could cities be blotted out within a few seconds but the devastation could be accomplished with relative ease​—there would be no need to defeat an army first. With nuclear weapons a country’s population could be annihilated and its economy utterly destroyed within a day, without a single skirmish.

The realization that there was no effective defense against atomic weapons led to the concept of nuclear deterrence. In November 1945, U.S. Army Air Forces commanding general Henry H. Arnold stated in a report to the secretary of war: “Real security against atomic weapons in the visible future will rest on our ability to take immediate offensive action with overwhelming force. It must be apparent to a potential aggressor that an attack on the United States would be immediately followed by an immensely devastating air-atomic attack on him.”

Many do not agree that such deterrence provides real security. Robert J. Oppenheimer, the brilliant physicist who led in the development of the atom bomb, likened opposing nuclear powers to “two scorpions in a bottle, each capable of killing the other, but only at the risk of his own life.” More recently, President Ronald Reagan said that U.S./​Soviet posture was like two people holding pistols at each other’s heads.

Attempt to Internationalize the Atom

In June 1946 the United States presented a plan to the newly formed United Nations organization. The plan called for the creation of an international agency that would have authority to control and inspect all atomic-energy activities worldwide. After such an agency was established, the United States would hand over its atomic secrets, scrap its existing atom bombs, and not make any more.

The Soviet Union asserted that atomic weapons should be done away with first. Once that was done, then control and inspection arrangements could be worked out. The issue became deadlocked, and in the cold-war years that followed, hope of UN control of atomic weapons perished.

The Arms Race: Action and Reaction

In 1949 the Soviets exploded their first atom bomb. Suspicion and distrust deepened between East and West, and the arms race began in real earnest. The U.S. response to the Soviet bomb was the development of a vastly more powerful weapon, the hydrogen bomb. The first one tested (in 1952) was about 800 times more powerful than the early atom bombs. After only nine months, the Soviets had successfully developed their own hydrogen bomb.

Next came the ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile). The Soviet Union was first with this in 1957. Now a nuclear strike could be accomplished in minutes rather than hours. The United States rushed to catch up and by the following year had added the ICBM to its arsenal.

In the meantime other countries worked on and tested atom bombs of their own. In turn, the United Kingdom, France, and others became nuclear powers.

The action-reaction syndrome continued unabated in the 1960’s. Both the United States and the Soviet Union experimented with antiballistic missiles. Both learned how to fire missiles from submarines. Both developed multiple warheads.

The race continued into the 1970’s with the significant development of MIRV (multiple independently-targeted reentry vehicle). One missile could now carry many warheads, each of which could be directed to a separate target. For example, the modern American MX, or Peacekeeper, missile carries ten such warheads; so does the Soviet SS-18. Each missile, therefore, can destroy ten cities.

Missiles were becoming more accurate too, and this, along with the development of MIRVs, led to renewed fears. Instead of targeting cities, opposing missile bases and military installations could be and were targeted many times over by MIRVs. Some now speculated that nuclear war might be winnable. A powerful first strike might eliminate the capacity or will of the adversary to strike back.