But does it work?
One last thought on Hiroshima
I was at a lovely memorial for Barry Blechman at the Philips Gallery on a rainy night in Washington, DC late last month. Barry was a friend and mentor who co-founded the Stimson Center. Someone told a wonderful (and telling) story that night about Barry’s early days in Brooklyn as a door-to-door brush salesman. He was a great salesman, apparently. He would tell whoever answered the door about all the benefits of the brushes, they were great quality, and so on. Barry recounted later, so the story goes, that even with the great pitch, when he was done, people would always ask the same question: “But does it work?”
And this, I think, is the central, overlooked question about nuclear weapons. We know they have a fancy reputation. There’s a lot of sales talk out there about them—they can do this, they can do that. But I think we’re failing to focus on the right question: “Do they work?”
Take Hiroshima, for example. People talk endlessly about whether it was moral or not.
In the Pew Research Poll I wrote about a month ago they headlined with the results to the question “were the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki justified?” Further down there was far more important (even shocking) news: Americans feel, by almost two to one, that nuclear weapons don’t make the United States safer. But the morality of bombing Hiroshima was still the lead.
Or again, take Garett Graff. Graff writes a respected and popular newsletter about “national security, geopolitics, history, and—unfortunately—the fight for democracy in the Trump era” called “Doomsday Scenario.” He recently wrote a long piece about whether it was moral or immoral to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic weapons.
It’s good stuff. He talks about his own doubts. He goes through the history carefully and fairly. He gets the facts right. He talks about the massive conventional bombing campaign that decimated 66 Japanese cities that summer. But why is he wasting our time and his by writing about whether this act of ours was moral or not? It was a long time ago. Other stuff has happened. Why are we all still focused on this?
As far as I’m concerned all this talk about whether it was right to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki is beside the point. Sure it matters, some, but there’s a far more important question about bombing cities with nuclear weapons: “Does it work?”
People say nuclear weapons are the “ultimate” weapon. How do they know? Hiroshima, they say. People say nuclear weapons guarantee our safety. How do they know? “They won the war against Japan in just four days,” they say. People say they’re sure deterrence will work. How do they know? “Well, Secretary of War Stimson said they were psychological weapons. And Hiroshima proved how powerful that psychological shock can be,” they say. Almost all the claims about nuclear weapons and how great they are ultimately rely on Hiroshima in some way or other as proof.
It’s not that I don’t care about morality. I’d like to know if my country did something immoral more than three quarters of a century ago. A little. But what I really care about, and what is really pressing, is whether the bombings worked. Were they what forced Japan to surrender? Are these weapons really going to protect the United States and keep me alive? That’s the central question, it seems to me—survival.
If the bombings worked, then nuclear weapons really do represent god-like power. And all the claims that nuclear weapons advocates make about them aren’t just sales talk. But if they didn’t win the war, though, we might be in danger. We might be relying on something for our safety and security on something that won’t work. And there is now substantial reason to think they didn’t force Japan to surrender.
We’re counting on nuclear weapons to keep us alive. Shouldn’t we be absolutely certain we’ve got the facts right about Japan’s surrender? It could determine whether you and I live or die. Shouldn’t that be what we’re paying attention to rather than all this stuff about moral or not?
Just a reminder that I wrote a six part series laying out why it’s extremely doubtful that bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki “shocked” Japan into surrendering.
You have captured the essence of the lessons from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Japanese surrender at the end of WWII.
“The first rule of survival is to see the world as it is, not as you wish it to be.”
- Schopenhauer
“That’s the central question, it seems to me—survival.” This is indeed, to paraphrase Schopenhauer, the first rule of survival and our central task: to show the world as it is, not as we or others wish it to be. Violating this rule has severe consequences.
“We’re counting on nuclear weapons to keep us alive. Shouldn’t we be absolutely certain we’ve got the facts right about Japan’s surrender? It could determine whether you and I live or die. Shouldn’t that be what we’re paying attention to rather than all this stuff about moral or not?” I don’t know all of Schopenhauer’s rules for survival, if such a list exists, but practically speaking, I doubt any “stuff about moral or not” appears anywhere on any such hypothetical list.
A cursory check of recent high school texts’ treatment of this subject, the Japanese Surrender at the end of WWII, still falsely concludes or dismisses the Soviet entry into the war and the invasion of Manchuria.
We face an uphill battle.