Nukes

I remember this lesson at school about the effects of the Hiroshima (or was it Nagasaki?) bombing. It left me, well, totally untouched. I guess it was poorly written or maybe I was too young for it. Also, it didn’t have sound bites, like the International Court of Justice ruling that said:

“Their destructive power…cannot be contained in space and time.”

Space and time. So Einsteinian in its sound. Kind of ironic, isn’t it?

Recently, I read a book titled “How the End Begins: The Road to a Nuclear World War III” by Ron Rosenbaum. I am totally unmoved by any of the let-us-get-rid-of-nukes argument the book had. Mostly because the genie is well and truly out of the bottle. How would you ensure everyone not only eliminates their stockpiles but can also be trusted to not build them again ever? Besides, I am not worried about nukes with the Americans, Russians, Chinese, Brits, French, Israelis and Indians since they all desire to live; none of them is suicidal. That leaves the Pakistanis, North Koreans, maybe Iran, and the jihadists. Of course, you could wonder whether nukes would act as a deterrent against the latter set of suicidal madmen. What if they are “value-rational” people, a term Malcolm Gladwell used in the context of religious cults:

“They were “value-rational”—that is to say, their rationality was organized around values, not goals. A value-rational person would accept his fourteen-year-old daughter’s polygamous marriage, if he was convinced that it was in fulfillment of Biblical prophecy.”

In any case, I am totally sold on the ability of nukes to “wage deterrence”, as General Chilton put it. The Cold War is proof of that. Rosenbaum does talk in detail about the non-fool proof’ness of the mechanisms to launch the nukes. He also talks of the risk of some nut job (including some President or Prime Minister) deciding to launch them…on a whim. Or because they are drunk. Or just insane. Or a radar malfunction.

And yet it turns out that (some) American submariners have devised a “spoon-and-string trick” to launch the nukes to overcome the scenario where, even in the face of an authorized order, “one of the guys turns peacenik and refuses to twist his key”. And here you thought the only risk was people launching nukes without proper authorization!

Another question Rosenbaum raises is about the morality of a retaliatory strike:

“Would it be justice, vengeance, or pure genocide to strike back once the threat of deterrence had failed?...Would the punishment fit the crime or would the punishment itself be a crime? And would it all be too late?”

Then again, as many others point out:

“To talk about whether we will, or should, retaliate is to invite a foe to think there’s a chance we won’t and thus make an attack more likely.”

That’s the reason why every nation maintains a deliberate fog of ambiguity about their nukes use policies.

And given that nukes have never been used since 1945, it is possible we have “evolved” as a species. What Rosenbaum describes as:

“Darwin has saved us from Einstein.”

So at the end of the day, I feel nukes help keep the peace. A Cold Peace, Rosenbaum calls it. I’ll take it anyway.