Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Category: Nuclear Threat

  • Dangers of Nuclear Proliferation and Terrorism

    The greatest nuclear danger that I am concerned with is not the proliferation of nuclear weapons to other states, though that is a grave danger. Of even greater concern is the invidious belief of policy makers in a small number of states that they have a right to maintain nuclear weapons indefinitely, and that in their hands nuclear weapons do not constitute a threat either to their own citizens or to the remainder of humanity. This is a foolish belief that discounts the principle that if something can go wrong it will go wrong. It is also a belief that is likely to encourage proliferation to other states and possibly to terrorist groups as well.

    There is no reason to be assured that nuclear weapons in the hands of the current nuclear weapons states will not result in tragedy surpassing all imagination. One can only wonder what it is that makes most citizens of nuclear weapons states so complacent under these circumstances. Clearly, for the most part, otherwise normal people have learned to live with the terror of nuclear weapons and, in doing so, have become accustomed to condoning terrorism at a national level.

    It is this situation that compounds the danger because without the vigorous protests of citizens in the nuclear weapons states, there is no impetus to change the status quo. And if the status quo with regard to reliance on nuclear weapons does not change, there will surely be proliferation and it will be only a question of time until nuclear weapons are again used in warfare.

    Due to the intransigence of the nuclear weapons states, there has been virtually no progress toward nuclear disarmament in the past five years. The START II Treaty, which was agreed to by Presidents Bush and Yeltsin in January 1993, called for reductions in deployed strategic nuclear warheads to 3,500 on each side by January 1, 2003. Since then, Presidents .Clinton and Yeltsin have agreed to move this date back five years to December 31, 2007.

    The total number of nuclear warheads in the arsenals of the U.S. and Russia at the completion of START II, if it is completed, will be around 10,000 on each side.

    For decades India has made it clear that it supports complete nuclear disarmament, but that it is not willing to live in a world of “nuclear apartheid.” Indian leaders have stated that if all states will renounce nuclear weapons and agree to go to zero, India will happily join them. On the other hand, Indian leaders have said that if the nuclear weapons states insist on maintaining nuclear arsenals, India will do so as well.

    As we know, India gave the world a wake-up call in May when it tested nuclear weapons, followed a few weeks later by Pakistan’s tests. In light of the testing by India and Pakistan, I would like to offer five propositions.

    My first proposition is that the nuclear testing by India and Pakistan does not constitute nuclear proliferation. Both states have long had nuclear weapons. India first tested a nuclear device, which it said was for peaceful purposes, in 1974. The world largely ignored the possession of nuclear weapons by India and Pakistan by referring to them, along with Israel which also has a nuclear arsenal, as “threshold states.” This was simply a euphemism to perpetuate the denial that nuclear proliferation had already occurred.

    It is interesting to note the reactions to the recent nuclear testing in South Asia. President Clinton responded to the Indian tests by stating, “To think that you have to manifest your greatness by behavior that recalls the very worst events of the 20th century on the edge of the 21st century, when everybody else is trying to leave the nuclear age behind, is just wrong. And they clearly don’t need it to maintain their security.”

    There are several points worth noting in President Clinton’s response. Haven’t the United States and the other nuclear weapons states sought to manifest their greatness in just this way? Isn’t this the basis for UK’s or France’s claim to great power status, whatever that is, at this point in time? Where is the evidence that “everybody else is trying to leave the nuclear age behind”? Certainly it is almost impossible to find that evidence in President Clinton’s own record. And if India does not need nuclear weapons to maintain its security, wouldn’t that argument be even stronger for the United States and other countries infinitely more militarily powerful than India?

    Referring to this reaction by President Clinton, Henry Kissinger, who many would argue should rank among the greatest war criminals of the latter part of the 20th century, stated, “But he [Clinton] destroys the U.S. case by using hyperbole that cannot be translated into operational policy: by claiming a special insight into the nature of greatness in the 21st century; by the dubious proposition that all other nations are trying to leave the nuclear world behind (what about Iran, Iraq and North Korea?), and by the completely unsupported proposition that countries with threatening nuclear neighbors do not need nuclear weapons to assure their security.”

    Mr. Kissinger has perhaps always felt that only he has “special insight into the nature of greatness.” Unfortunately for humanity, the United States has allowed him an operational platform on which to act upon his insights in Chile, Iran, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and elsewhere. Clearly all other states are not trying to leave the nuclear world behind, but why does he pick out only Iran, Iraq, and North Korea? What about the nuclear weapons states themselves? And their NATO allies that join in a common nuclear strategy? What about Japan accumulating tons of reprocessed plutonium suitable for making nuclear weapons? What about Israel?

    Kissinger’s final point about countries with threatening nuclear neighbors needing nuclear weapons to assure their security is a clear recipe for proliferation as well as disaster. Would he advise the countries of the Middle East to develop nuclear arsenals in response to Israel having done so? Perhaps Mr. Kissinger has calculated that the nuclear weapons of the United States and its allies are not threatening. Other states, with other experiences, may view U.S. nuclear weapons and those of its allies somewhat less benignly.

    My second proposition is that proliferation of nuclear weapons is virtually assured given the continuation of present policies by the nuclear weapons states. So long as the nuclear weapons states maintain that nuclear weapons are necessary for their security, we can expect that other countries will desire to have these weapons. Statements condemning proliferation by leaders of nuclear weapons states, like Mr. Clinton’s response to India’s testing, will not be taken seriously so long as the U.S. continues its current policy of maintaining its nuclear arsenal for the indefinite future.

    There is only one way to prevent nuclear proliferation. That is for the nuclear weapons states to make an unequivocal commitment to the elimination of their nuclear arsenals and to take steps, such as de-alerting their arsenals, separating warheads from delivery vehicles, and so on, to show that they are serious about their commitment. Short of moving rapidly in this direction and bringing all nuclear warheads and nuclear weapons materials under strict international controls, nuclear proliferation is assured.

    My third proposition is that nuclear weapons do not provide security. If you possess nuclear weapons, you will be the target of a threatened nuclear weapons attack. I wonder if the citizens of nuclear weapons states really understand the jeopardy in which they are placed by their governments’ policies. Of course, there is also the risk to the security of the world. By the obscenely large arsenals created and maintained by the U.S. and Russia, the entire world is jeopardized — the future of humanity, the future of most forms of life. It always amazes me that many people calling themselves environmentalists don’t seem to understand that nuclear weapons pose a manmade environmental threat that exceeds all bounds of reason.

    Deterrence is simply a theory. It is not a shield. One cannot prove that a nuclear war has not occurred because of deterrence. There is no clear cause and effect linkage. In fact, it is not possible to prove a negative — that because of one thing, something else does not happen. We may be just plain lucky that a nuclear war has not occurred since two or more countries have been in possession of nuclear weapons. India and Pakistan, countries that have warred three times in the past 40 years, will certainly put additional strain on the theory of deterrence.

    My fourth proposition is that arms control agreements have served largely as a “figleaf” of respectability for maintaining the two-tier structure of nuclear “haves” and “have-nots.” The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty actually enshrines the proposition that there are two classes of states — those that possessed nuclear weapons before January 1, 1967 as one class, and everyone else as the other class. The only way around this situation is for the nuclear weapons states to pursue good faith negotiations for nuclear disarmament as set forth in the treaty. Unfortunately, the nuclear weapons states have not done this despite the strong reinforcement of this treaty provision by the World Court in its 1996 Advisory Opinion on the general illegality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons.

    The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty may also be viewed as a treaty that supports the favored position of the nuclear weapons states. After conducting over 2,000 nuclear tests, the nuclear weapons states agreed to stop testing. However, they have interpreted this prohibition as not applying to so-called “sub-critical” tests that use conventional explosives around a nuclear core but do not result in a sustained nuclear chain reaction. The U.S. has already conducted three sub-critical tests, and Russia has announced that it also has plans to conduct such tests this year.

    My fifth and final proposition is that terrorism has become an accepted and integrated part of the national security policies of the nuclear weapons states. Terrorism is the threat to injure or kill innocent people unless the terrorist’s demands are met. Nuclear weapons threaten to injure or kill innocent people. That is what they are designed to do. That is what they did at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That is what the nuclear weapons states threaten to do with them as a matter of policy. The nuclear weapons states, no matter how they argue their intentions, have become terrorist states. They have made their citizens either willing or unwilling accomplices in acts of terrorism. In time, if nothing is done to alter the present situation in the world, other states or criminal groups will obtain nuclear weapons and they too will act as terrorists.

    The current situation is fraught with danger. There seems to be a loss of moral bearing in the world. What is most tragic is that an opportunity to abolish nuclear weapons is being squandered in the nuclear weapons states by leaders with a lack of vision and citizens caught in an amoral drift of complacency. In order to change the world before it is too late, these citizens must awaken to their responsibilities as members of the human species and demand change from their governments. Otherwise significant progress toward the elimination of nuclear weapons is unlikely to occur, and the result will be increased nuclear proliferation and terrorism and, as a certainty, disastrous consequences.

    *David Krieger is the president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. You can contact him at Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, 1187 Coast Village Road, Santa Barbara, CA 93108-2794. The quotes by Clinton and Kissinger were in an op-ed by Henry Kissinger, “Hyperbole Is Not a Nonproliferation Policy,” Los Angeles Times, June 7, 1998.

  • Betrayal

    It’s as safe as mother’s milk, they’ll say When wanting to assure you that it’s all O.K. But mother’s milk can be a deadly dish If mom, a downwinder, eats Columbia River’s fish, Or consumes white snow – garden salads on the spot Then mother’s milk can become a deadly lot.

    So I fed poison to my nursing son With radioactive iodine-131. Just because we lived in the wrong place I maimed my babe for that nuclear race.

    This was written by a woman who has lived all of her life in Eastern Washington and remembers consuming local milk and produce around the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. Her husband loved to fish the Columbia River downstream from Hanford. Her name withheld by request. She says, “When [my youngest son] was seven – and again when he was eight years old – I had two surgeries for thyroid cancers. I didn’t tell people because it would be hard on our children….

    “In 1985 my husband died quite suddenly. Early in 1986 word got out that radioactive iodine-131 and other pollutants had been released in large amounts by the government just to see what would happen to us downwinders from the nuclear plant at Hanford, Washington.

    With the injuries from my thyroid cancers and the worry over my husband’s bladder and bone cancers, I was very angry and felt betrayed by my government. They used us as guinea pigs but we weren’t even that good because the government never followed up to see what did happen to us downwinders. I write poems, but they are all too mild for my anger at my government.” [Reprinted from the Hanford Health Information Network.]

    This atrocity against all people is once again in the news.

    In an extraordinary but not surprising statement, the Department of Energy has admitted that an explosion of a toxic radioactive waste container at the plant on May 14, 1997 exposed workers and released toxic materials into the atmosphere, including plutonium. This from the supposedly “closed” plant, the former flagship of the Department of War’s nuclear bomb plants (that’s what the Defense Department used to be called until the name was changed after World War II – it makes easier to get money from the taxpayers when you are asking for a “defense” budget rather than a “war” budget). Hanford may now rival Chernobyl as the most toxic site on planet Earth, with cleanup costs (if cleanup is even possible for such a site) estimated in the hundreds of billions of dollars. The site promises to be toxic for tens of thousands of years.

    The May 14th explosion and series of errors is just part of the legacy of this nightmarish place. We as human beings must be angry about that place and what it represents. We must learn what is going on there and use our power to get something done about it.

    Since 1943 when 600 square miles of land in Washington State was legally condemned and 1,500 residents of the towns of Richland, Hanford, and White Bluffs were ordered to leave their homes within 30 days, Hanford has released hundreds of thousands of curies of radioactive iodine-131 and other radioactive by-products into the atmosphere. Between 1944 and 1972, Hanford released as much as 740,000 curies of iodine-131 into the air!

    For comparison, the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant partial core meltdown in 1979 released 15 curies of radioactive iodine-131 into the air; the Chernobyl accident released 35 million to 49 million curies of iodine-131 in 1986.

    Thousands of lives have been adversely affected by this subtle, insidious, and mostly intentional radiation poisoning. Only today are some of these victims realizing what has given them cancer, killed their mates and children, and so horribly affected their lives. This information was kept secret until February 1986, when public pressure resulted in the release of 19,000 pages of U.S. Department of Energy documents under the Freedom of Information Act.

    During the 30 years of Hanford’s operation, a staggering 440 billion gallons of radioactive toxic wastes were dumped into the ground! Underground nuclear waste tanks have leaked hundreds of thousands of gallons of waste. No complete records of the exact contents of these waste containers were kept, so the clean-up teams don’t even know what they are dealing with most of the time.

    But the Cold War is over, you may say, right? Is it really. Is there anything behind the talk we hear of peace from our leaders? Has much of anything changed? It doesn’t appear so. In fact, it could be argued that things are much worse. Things are different, but the building of our nuclear arsenal has not stopped.

    Did you know that in 1990, the amount of plutonium in the civilian sector of the world was 654 metric tons and in the military was 257 metric tons? By the year 2010, the amount of military plutonium is expected to remain the same while the civilian plutonium will grow to 2,100 metric tons! Civilian plutonium is plutonium produced in power generating nuclear reactors. Plutonium is a by-product of these reactors and many countries are planning to use this deadly material to power other reactors. This plutonium could conceivably be used to make a nuclear bomb.

    We still spend over a trillion dollars world-wide on the military. Countries all over the world are building nuclear weapons stockpiles. The U.S continues to test nuclear weapons – they call them “sub-critical tests” to get around the current moratorium on testing – because the military wants to build a new generation of smaller, more powerful nuclear bombs. Scotland, of all places, is estimated to have as many as 266 Trident submarine warheads, many purchased from the U.S., each one a powerful nuclear weapon. It is estimated that Britain builds a new nuclear bomb every 8 days!

    Five countries have nuclear-powered naval vessels: Russia, the United States, Great Britain, France and China. Even India is currently building a nuclear sub! The submarines of the Western countries typically have only one reactor on board, whereas two reactors power most Russian submarines. Excluding Russia, these nations have 132 nuclear submarines. Russia has 109 nuclear subs in its fleet. Britain has 13 nuclear subs, France has 11, and China has 6. The United States, the country of “peace,” has a staggering 101 nuclear submarines. Two hundred and forty one nuclear subs in the world!

    At least 20 nuclear bomb-carrying U.S. subs are at sea 24 hours a day, each ready to fire on virtually any target in 15 minutes. One U.S. Trident submarine carries the explosive power of 1,000 Hiroshima bombs. The locations of these subs is the most closely guarded of secrets.

    And we are still building more! Nine nuclear submarines are under construction in the U.S. alone. So much for the end of wartime.

    “It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing,” said Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Commander Allied Forces Europe and later President of the United States, referring to the atomic bomb dropped on Japan.

    And we must remember the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, two cities murdered by the U.S. But we had to do this to end the war, didn’t we? Well, diaries and documents released since then tell a different story. It seems that President Truman and his senior staff did not believe that we needed to drop the bomb on Japan to end the war. They believed that Japan would surrender without an invasion. In fact, diplomatic contacts and decoded Japanese wireless transmissions proved that surrender was imminent. So why was the bomb used?

    Records suggest that Truman and his advisors believed that if they showed the world that they were willing to use the bomb, it would aid them in negotiating with Stalin over the future of Eastern and Central Europe. There was also a pervasive, racist disregard for Japanese life. The bomb was used to literally burn a memory into the minds of communist and non-European nations of an image of scientific and technological superiority for the Allied countries.

    So, for the sake of image and to test the effects of our new weapons, 200 000 human lives were horribly ended and since 1945, more than 680,000 people have died or have been affected by the radiation released in those blasts.

    These are sobering revelations. I wonder personally what to do with all this awareness. During an Environmental Science class I taught yesterday, I was trying to share environmental awareness with people who had never considered these issues before. Three of my students were police officers who, in the course of their duties, have witnessed the aftermath of illegal toxic spills and see the effects of a disconnected world daily. They fight each day for personal survival, let alone have the time for global thinking. I sometimes feel deflated at the daunting task of opening my fellow travelers’ eyes. But we must go on. We must love the beauty of this world and work towards stopping the folly.

    Nuclear madness must stop. We can stop it. Everyday, we should do these things:

    1. E-mail or write our elected representatives (the Resources section below will tell you how) and tell them to stop this nuclear madness.
    2. Not support nuclear power in any form. Governments and corporations cannot be trusted with that power. There is no way that the relatively small amount of electrical power that is produced can justify the nuclear waste, the excess plutonium, or the temptations to make bombs.
    3. Insist that our elected representatives do something NOW about those who are suffering from the effects of Hanford and all the other bomb-making plants in the country. Insist that they stop all the studies and simply use the abundant money available in the world to help these people. We must stop letting them whine about who should be responsible and simply make them take responsibility. (Still think that money is an issue? See the Resources section below.)
    4. All nuclear testing must stop. Now. The U.S. must show the world that it is willing to take the first step.
    5. The U.S. must get out of the arms business. We sell our weapons of destruction to other nations. This is nuts and it must stop.
    6. All nuclear submarines should come home NOW. Set them up in ports around the country, build impenetrable “caskets” around them (NASA has the technology to build these cases – they do for their deep space probes) as museums so that people can learn of how insane we can be.
    7. Refuse to trade with any country with nuclear war technology.

    But there are so many other horrors in our world? How can we invite this awareness into our lives and survive? I think we can, every day.

    • We must surround ourselves with this knowledge and awareness and get very very angry. Feel the obscenity of these numbers, feel the horror of these events.
    • Then, feel your feet firmly on the ground and take a deep breath. Center yourself. You have work to do.
    • Look at your own personal priorities. What does your day look like? Do you take the time to nurture yourself – take a bath, do something creative, take a nap, exercise? Do you take the time to spend meaningful moments with those in your life that you love? Or do you feel hopelessly driven from one activity to another, not really in control of your own time?
    • Change your priorities. Make the time for nurturing activities and communication with loved ones. Don’t wait for someone or something to come into your life that will allow this to happen. Do it now.
    • Decide what is important to you. What values do you want to have? What values do you want the world to have? What do you want to be remembered for when you are gone? What do you want children to think of you?
    • Make “mindfulness moments” part of your every day, time when you will fully allow the awareness horrors in the world to come in. Visualize the starving child, the suffering and frustrated person poisoned by Hanford, the homeless, the nuclear stockpiles, the Trident submarines traveling at sea, waiting to strike, and whatever else you have chosen to care about.
    • Take an action of some kind every day. Teach someone about what you know. Send e-mail messages to your elected representatives making your demands clear. Choose to not buy something from a socially irresponsible company and write them a note telling them about it. Use your power every day.
    • Allow yourself an occasional “day-off.” Bring your vision for change to mind in some quiet moments, pray for peace, and then go do something for yourself or your loved ones. After a while, you won’t need a day-off.
    • Look at each day as a precious, vital collection of moments that must be savored, for they will never occur again.

    Awareness does not have to be feared. Your day can include walking around the block in the morning, loving your partner, going to work, taking time to see the trees at lunch or wishing there were some, writing an e-mail message to your senator, and having dinner. We can make the desire for change a daily part of our life rather than a feared, unfulfilled dream.

    We must take our power now. Hanford will always be there to remind us of what can happen when people believe the unbelievable – that those in Washington have anything other than a personal agenda of terror and greed. And those nuclear subs will continue to sail – until we say STOP!

    Please, dear mother Earth, Help me to stand firm on my own two feet Drawing on the solid earth below me Help me to know the constancy of your strength the power that is you, oh dear mother earth Help me to walk with the blood of rivers in my veins and the dark crumbling soil of earth in my flesh let my muscles be strong as tree trunks that rise up out of your belly To dance in the sky and sing praises to the life all around Beating, pulsing, rich and full with your sweet energy. Oh dear mother earth live in this body today. Sing loudly in every breath I take Stretch wildly and flow freely with all the directions I move and come home with me, come home to my belly live deep in my soul oh mother earth, SING!

    — Stephanie Kaza

    Ah, not be cut off, not through the slightest partition shut out from the law of the stars. The inner – what is it? if not intensified sky, hurled through with birds and deep with the winds of homecoming.

    — Ranier Maria Rilke

    * Jackie Giuliano is a Professor of Environmental Studies for Antioch University, Los Angeles, the University of Phoenix, and the Union Institute College of Undergraduate Studies. He is also the Educational Outreach Manager for the Ice and Fire Preprojects, a NASA program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to send space probes to Jupiter’s moon Europa, the planet Pluto, and the Sun.

  • Nuclear War: The Perspectives of a Planetary Astronomer

    https://wagingpeace.davidmolinaojeda.com/articles/wagingpeaceseries/sagan.pdf

  • Resolution 715 (1991) on Iraq

    Adopted by the Security Council at its 3012th meeting

    The Security Council,

    Recalling its resolutions 687 (1991) of 3 April 1991 and 707 (1991) of 15 August 1991, and its other resolutions on this matter,

    Recalling in particular that under resolution 687 (1991) the Secretary-General and the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) were requested to develop plans for future ongoing monitoring and verification, and to submit them to the Security Council for approval,

    Taking note of the report and note of the Secretary-General (S/22871/Rev.1 and S/22872/Rev.1), transmitting the plans submitted by the Secretary-General and the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency,

    Acting under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations,

    1. Approves, in accordance with the provisions of resolutions 687 (1991), 707 (1991) and the present resolution, the plans submitted by the Secretary-General and the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (S/22871/Rev.1 and S/22872/Rev.1);

    2. Decides that the Special Commission shall carry out the plan submitted by the Secretary-General (S/22871/Rev.1), as well as continuing to discharge its other responsibilities under resolutions 687 (1991), 699 (1991) and 707 (1991) and performing such other functions as are conferred upon it under the present resolution;

    3. Requests the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency to carry out, with the assistance and cooperation of the Special Commission, the plan submitted by him (S/22872/Rev.1) and to continue to discharge his other responsibilities under resolutions 687 (1991), 699 (1991) and 707 (1991);

    4. Decides that the Special Commission, in the exercise of its responsibilities as a subsidiary organ of the Security Council, shall:

    (a) Continue to have the responsibility for designating additional locations for inspection and overflights;

    (b) Continue to render assistance and cooperation to the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, by providing him by mutual agreement with the necessary special expertise and logistical, informational and other operational support for the carrying out of the plan submitted by him;

    (c) Perform such other functions, in cooperation in the nuclear field with the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, as may be necessary to coordinate activities under the plans approved by the present resolution, including making use of commonly available services and information to the fullest extent possible, in order to achieve maximum efficiency and optimum use of resources;

    5. Demands that Iraq meet unconditionally all its obligations under the plans approved by the present resolution and cooperate fully with the Special Commission and the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency in carrying out the plans;

    6. Decides to encourage the maximum assistance, in cash and in kind, from all Member States to support the Special Commission and the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency in carrying out their activities under the plans approved by the present resolution, without prejudice to Iraq’s liability for the full costs of such activities;

    7. Requests the Committee established under resolution 661 (1990), the Special Commission and the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency to develop in cooperation a mechanism for monitoring any future sales or supplies by other countries to Iraq of items relevant to the implementation of section C of resolution 687 (1991) and other relevant resolutions, including the present resolution and the plans approved hereunder;

    8. Requests the Secretary-General and the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency to submit to the Security Council reports on the implementation of the plans approved by the present resolution, when requested by the Security Council and in any event at least every six months after the adoption of this resolution;

    9. Decides to remain seized of the matter.

  • Preventing Accidental Nuclear War

    https://wagingpeace.davidmolinaojeda.com/articles/wagingpeaceseries/krieger.pdf

  • You and the Atomic Bomb

    Considering how likely we all are to be blown to pieces by it within the next five years, the atomic bomb has not roused so much discussion as might have been expected. The newspapers have published numerous diagrams, not very helpful to the average man, of protons and neutrons doing their stuff, and there has been much reiteration of the useless statement that the bomb “ought to be put under international control.” But curiously little has been said, at any rate in print, about the question that is of most urgent interest to all of us, namely: “How difficult are these things to manufacture?”

    Such information as we–that is, the big public–possess on this subject has come to us in a rather indirect way, apropos of President Truman’s decision not to hand over certain secrets to the USSR. Some months ago, when the bomb was still only a rumour, there was a widespread belief that splitting the atom was merely a problem for the physicists, and that when they had solved it a new and devastating weapon would be within reach of almost everybody. (At any moment, so the rumour went, some lonely lunatic in a laboratory might blow civilisation to smithereens, as easily as touching off a firework.)

    Had that been true, the whole trend of history would have been abruptly altered. The distinction between great states and small states would have been wiped out, and the power of the State over the individual would have been greatly weakened. However, it appears from President Truman’s remarks, and various comments that have been made on them, that the bomb is fantastically expensive and that its manufacture demands an enormous industrial effort, such as only three or four countries in the world are capable of making. This point is of cardinal importance, because it may mean that the discovery of the atomic bomb, so far from reversing history, will simply intensify the trends which have been apparent for a dozen years past.

    It is a commonplace that the history of civilisation is largely the history of weapons. In particular, the connection between the discovery of gunpowder and the overthrow of feudalism by the bourgeoisie has been pointed out over and over again. And though I have no doubt exceptions can be brought forward, I think the following rule would be found generally true: that ages in which the dominant weapon is expensive or difficult to make will tend to be ages of despotism, whereas when the dominant weapon is cheap and simple, the common people have a chance. Thus, for example, tanks, battleships and bombing planes are inherently tyrannical weapons, while rifles, muskets, long-bows and hand-grenades are inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon–so long as there is no answer to it–gives claws to the weak.

    The great age of democracy and of national self-determination was the age of the musket and the rifle. After the invention of the flintlock, and before the invention of the percussion cap, the musket was a fairly efficient weapon, and at the same time so simple that it could be produced almost anywhere. Its combination of qualities made possible the success of the American and French revolutions, and made a popular insurrection a more serious business than it could be in our own day. After the musket came the breech-loading rifle. This was a comparatively complex thing, but it could still be produced in scores of countries, and it was cheap, easily smuggled and economical of ammunition. Even the most backward nation could always get hold of rifles from one source or another, so that Boers, Bulgars, Abyssinians, Moroccans–even Tibetans–could put up a fight for their independence, sometimes with success. But thereafter every development in military technique has favoured the State as against the individual, and the industrialised country as against the backward one. There are fewer and fewer foci of power. Already, in 1939, there were only five states capable of waging war on the grand scale, and now there are only three–ultimately, perhaps, only two. This trend has been obvious for years, and was pointed out by a few observers even before 1914. The one thing that might reverse it is the discovery of a weapon–or, to put it more broadly, of a method of fighting–not dependent on huge concentrations of industrial plant.

    From various symptoms one can infer that the Russians do not yet possess the secret of making the atomic bomb; on the other hand, the consensus of opinion seems to be that they will possess it within a few years. So we have before us the prospect of two or three monstrous super-states, each possessed of a weapon by which millions of people can be wiped out in a few seconds, dividing the world between them. It has been rather hastily assumed that this means bigger and bloodier wars, and perhaps an actual end to the machine civilisation. But suppose–and really this the likeliest development–that the surviving great nations make a tacit agreement never to use the atomic bomb against one another? Suppose they only use it, or the threat of it, against people who are unable to retaliate? In that case we are back where we were before, the only difference being that power is concentrated in still fewer hands and that the outlook for subject peoples and oppressed classes is still more hopeless.

    When James Burnham wrote The Managerial Revolution it seemed probable to many Americans that the Germans would win the European end of the war, and it was therefore natural to assume that Germany and not Russia would dominate the Eurasian land mass, while Japan would remain master of East Asia. This was a miscalculation, but it does not affect the main argument. For Burnham’s geographical picture of the new world has turned out to be correct. More and more obviously the surface of the earth is being parceled off into three great empires, each self-contained and cut off from contact with the outer world, and each ruled, under one disguise or another, by a self-elected oligarchy. The haggling as to where the frontiers are to be drawn is still going on, and will continue for some years, and the third of the three super-states–East Asia, dominated by China–is still potential rather than actual. But the general drift is unmistakable, and every scientific discovery of recent years has accelerated it.

    We were once told that the aeroplane had “abolished frontiers”; actually it is only since the aeroplane became a serious weapon that frontiers have become definitely impassable. The radio was once expected to promote international understanding and co-operation; it has turned out to be a means of insulating one nation from another. The atomic bomb may complete the process by robbing the exploited classes and peoples of all power to revolt, and at the same time putting the possessors of the bomb on a basis of military equality. Unable to conquer one another, they are likely to continue ruling the world between them, and it is difficult to see how the balance can be upset except by slow and unpredictable demographic changes.

    For forty or fifty years past, Mr. H.G. Wells and others have been warning us that man is in danger of destroying himself with his own weapons, leaving the ants or some other gregarious species to take over. Anyone who has seen the ruined cities of Germany will find this notion at least thinkable. Nevertheless, looking at the world as a whole, the drift for many decades has been not towards anarchy but towards the reimposition of slavery. We may be heading not for general breakdown but for an epoch as horribly stable as the slave empires of antiquity. James Burnham’s theory has been much discussed, but few people have yet considered its ideological implications–that is, the kind of world-view, the kind of beliefs, and the social structure that would probably prevail in a state which was at once unconquerable and in a permanent state of “cold war” with its neighbors.

    Had the atomic bomb turned out to be something as cheap and easily manufactured as a bicycle or an alarm clock, it might well have plunged us back into barbarism, but it might, on the other hand, have meant the end of national sovereignty and of the highly-centralised police state. If, as seems to be the case, it is a rare and costly object as difficult to produce as a battleship, it is likelier to put an end to large-scale wars at the cost of prolonging indefinitely a “peace that is no peace.”