JustinLogan.com: More Magazines, More Nukes

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July 23, 2005

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More Magazines, More Nukes

While I'm on the topic of plugging magazines, let me commend to you the current issue (again, not online) of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which includes a sometimes extremely interesting symposium on "Would You Have Dropped the Bomb?" August 2005 will bring the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so BAS culled a bunch of nuclear experts, strategists, and historians and, er, popped the question. The issue also has a promising-looking essay by Jason Vest on how the Pentagon "forgot to equip U.S. troops with a counterinsurgency doctrine," and a review of an essay that alleges Ike was ready and half-eager to use nukes in both Korea and mainland China in the 1950s. (There have been more than a few extremely vigorous debates in my office about the Ike-and-nukes question...)

Below the jump, I've got a few of the highlights from the "would you have dropped the bomb?" symposium:

"...Absent the possibility of an effective classic defense by denial, we are forced to resort to deterrence, the promise of retaliation. But that reality does not relieve us of our responsibility to limit the impact on civilians. Our targets should be military forces and leadership, and ultimately any industry directly connected to the prosecution of the war by the enemy. Beyond that, we get into acts that cannot even be justified by allusions to self-defense. This suggests that President Truman should have looked for targets that were primarily military or genuine war industry--targets that involved fewer, rather than more, civilan casualties. It is unlikely that Hiroshima and Nagasaki could be so described. Breaking the will of the enemy or hoping to put future enemies on notice cannot justify the intentional slaughter of innocent civilians who certainly did not vote for the government that was conducting the war and did not work directly to support the war.

I would not have used nuclear weapons to destroy those cities. History cannot be revised, but perhaps our current strategic targeting plan ought to be."

--Robert L. Gallucci, Dean of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown

"...Most top U.S. military leaders (including even the famous hawk Gen. Curtis LeMay) strongly condemned the decision as soon as they felt free to speak publicly after the war.

LeMay, for one, is on record as judging the war would likely have ended in two weeks. Japan was essentially defeated by the summer of 1945--her navy sunk, her industries in ruins, her cities undefended against conventional bombardment. U.S. intelligence argued as early as April 1945 that a modification of the unconditional surrender formula plus the shock of the forthcoming Russian declaration of war (expected in early August) would almost certainly end the conflict long before the first landing of troops could occur in November.

Moreover, even if U.S. intelligence advice proved wrong, three full months remained in which the bombs could be used before any troops hit the beachheads. During this period, Gen. George Marshall, chief of staff of the U.S. Army, urged another option. A document dated May 1945 reads: '[Marshall] thought these weapons might first be used against straight military objectives such as a large naval installation and then if no complete result was derived from the effect of that, he thought we ought to designate [a] number of large manufacturing areas from which the people would be warned to leave...'

[...]

Neither Hiroshima nor Nagasaki was a significant military target. The bombs were targeted to kill as many workers as possible, with the explicit purpose of creating shock (i.e. terror). After the war Admiral [and Chairman of the JCS William D.] Leahy framed the moral issue as well as any civilian--indeed better: '[T]he use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan...[I]n being the first to use it, we...adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages.'..."

-Gar Alperovitz, Poli Sci prof at University of Maryland College Park

and here's one robust dissent from the consensus. (It ended up 4 nos to 2 yesses, with one non-answer.):

"...had the decision been mine to make, I would have authorized the use of atomic bombs.

Far from regarding their situation as hopeless, Japanese leaders crafted a military-political strategy called Ketsu Go to secure their twin war aims. Ketsu Go rested on the premise that inflicting heavy losses during the initial invasion woul dshatter brittle American resolve. The Japanese shrewdly anticipated that southern Kyushu (Japan's third largest island) would be the U.S. beachhead and packed it with defenses...

U.S. leaders confronted an extensive menu of options. Naval and air officers advocated continuation of the ongoing campaign of bombardment and blockade. This strategy contemplated killing Japanese by the tens or hundreds of thousands with bombs and shells, and by the millions through starvation. U.S. decistion makers looked to complement bombardment and blockade with an invasion followed by Soviet entry. But the Joint Chiefs of Staff in April 1945 defined the ultimate American nightmare not as the invasion, but the peril that, even if the Japanese government surrendered, Japan's armed forces would not. The prospect of defeating some five million unyielding Japanese in the Home Islands, on the Asian continent, and throughout the Pacific far overshadowed the potential losses in the initial invasion of Japan.

[...]

This brings us to costs. The bombs killed between 100,000 and 200,000 Japanese--many from the horrifying effects of radiation that U.S. policy makers were ignorant of in 1945. The alternatives were worse. Beyond the military losses, the Soviet Union's initial intervention in the war against Japan ultimately cost the lives of between 340,000 and 500,000 Japanese, overwhelmingly noncombatants. Had the war not ended when it did, many more would have perished. The blockade would have killed millions.

...Ghastly as the bombs were, the grim reality is that no other combination of events would have produced an enduring peace at less cost."

-Richard B. Frank, author of Downfall: The End of the Japanese Imperial Empire

July 23, 2005 | Permalink

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"Throughout the nation's history, the national destiny of the United States has been understood in antimilitaristic, libertarian terms." -Hans J. Morgenthau

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January 2008

July 23, 2005

More Magazines, More Nukes

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