Articles

By Ward Hayes Wilson

The Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) goes into effect on January 22, 2021. Most Americans haven’t heard of it. It’s a treaty that prohibits the developing, testing, possessing, using, threatening to use, or storing of nuclear weapons. Critics say the treaty is pointless because it only applies to the countries that signed it and none of the nuclear-armed states are signing on. But the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons is important and will have a critical impact.

Not because it will force countries to retire nuclear weapons, but because it will change the way people think about nuclear weapons.

How people think matters when it comes to nuclear weapons because nuclear weapons are the most important military symbol in the world today. They are the international currency of power. Currencies of power are types of weapons that are taken to be symbols of national strength. Battleships, for example, were the currency of power at the turn of the twentieth century. In the medieval world, heavily-armored mounted knights were the currency of power. Currencies of power bring prestige to their owners, they often incite arms races, and people tend to use them as a rough guide to a nation’s strength. Want to know how powerful a country is? In the early 1900s, you count the number of battleships; today we count nuclear weapons.

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By Jessica Sleight, Ward Hayes Wilson, and Derek Johnson

David Von Drehle, in a long essay in the Washington Post (published the day before the seventy-fifth anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima by the United States), asks us to resign ourselves to living under the shadow of nuclear weapons. This grim advice is apparently motivated by the belief that nuclear weapons are a necessary evil. Necessary, that is, to maintaining a mythical “nuclear peace.”

Von Drehle’s essay is as allusive, thought-provoking, and engaging as it is fundamentally wrong — both in its larger message, and in its individual arguments. Von Drehle is led astray by a series of assumptions that are standard fare in the nuclear weapons debate.

There are good reasons to conclude that much of the traditional wisdom about nuclear weapons is wrong. Most of these beliefs were formed during the Cold War, a time of high emotion, anxiety, paranoia, and fear. These fevered emotions ought to raise questions about the reliability of those assumptions. After all, no one does their best thinking when they’re afraid. And yet these same attitudes and beliefs still shape US nuclear policy.

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By Ward Hayes Wilson

Sometimes people draw the wrong conclusion from failure. Imagine you tried to take your pants off 20 times in a row and failed every time. You might conclude that it’s just going to be impossible to get that particular pair of pants off. But, if you’d been trying to do it by pulling them off over your head, maybe you shouldn’t rush to conclusions.

Of course, eliminating nuclear weapons is a little more complicated than removing a pair of pants, but the analogy is sound. Policy makers in the United States first set about trying to eliminate nuclear weapons in 1946, when the Truman administration brought the Baruch Plan to the United Nations. Since then, efforts to reach toward global nuclear zero have mostly met with failure. For some, that implies that the challenge is impossible. But maybe they’ve been trying to pull their pants off over their heads.

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By Ward Hayes Wilson

Throughout the Middle Ages, the heavily armored nobleman mounted on a charger was considered the pinnacle of military power. Few were surprised when the French put their faith in such knights. But at Crécy and Agincourt the French discovered that noblemen could be defeated by British yeomen armed with longbows. The Carthaginians committed to elephants as the ultimate weapon, only to be utterly destroyed by the Romans. British officials were convinced that battleships were the most important measure of a nation’s strength. Their infatuation blinded them to changes in technology, and they poured millions into building these warships long after it was plain that they would soon be obsolete. World War II brought that realization with a shock — torpedo boats, submarines, and dive bombers had ended the reign of battleships as “must-have” weapons. Refusing to think about what might happen if a weapon becomes obsolete can lead to military defeat (or worse).

Nuclear weapons, I would argue, bewitch us. They cast a spell on us so that they fill our field of vision — we see only the threat and reality blurs into the background. This is all very much like the way a spellbound person can only see what the spell allows. Nuclear weapons gaslight us, insisting they are the center of our world, constantly trying to convince us that the dark, ominous, and indistinct landscape they put before us is reality.

But of course, they’re lying.

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By Ward Hayes Wilson

Der Norge tidligere hadde en utålmodig stemme, har regjeringen på FNs generalforsamling sist høst vist resten av verden at den er mest opptatt av å bevare kjernefysisk avskrekking som et legitimt virkemiddel for Nato. Den tror åpenbart at kjernefysisk avskrekking gir oss sikkerhet. Det er en naiv illusjon.

Jeg tror at vi kan anta at kjernefysisk avskrekking virker...noen ganger. Det kan forhindre kriger...noen ganger. Det kan være den ultimate sikkerhetsgarantien...noen ganger. Men kjernefysisk avskrekking må virke hele tida hvis det skal være en akseptabel strategi. Konsekvensene av en svikt kan bli full atomkrig, hvilket ville føre til at minst 300 millioner mennesker blir drept og all sivilisasjon vil bli lammet i flere århundrer. Hvis det finnes den minste mulighet for et slikt utfall, da kan ikke det å belage seg på kjernefysisk avskrekking være en opsjon. Da må vi kvitte oss med atomvåpnene.

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By Ward Hayes Wilson

The U.S. use of nuclear weapons against Japan during World War II has long been a subject of emotional debate. Initially, few questioned President Truman’s decision to drop two atomic bombs, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But, in 1965, historian Gar Alperovitz argued that, although the bombs did force an immediate end to the war, Japan’s leaders had wanted to surrender anyway and likely would have done so before the American invasion planned for Nov. 1. Their use was, therefore, unnecessary. Obviously, if the bombings weren’t necessary to win the war, then bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki was wrong. In the 48 years since, many others have joined the fray: some echoing Alperovitz and denouncing the bombings, others rejoining hotly that the bombings were moral, necessary, and life-saving.

Both schools of thought, however, assume that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with new, more powerful weapons did coerce Japan into surrendering on Aug. 9. They fail to question the utility of the bombing in the first place — to ask, in essence, did it work? The orthodox view is that, yes, of course, it worked. The United States bombed Hiroshima on Aug. 6 and Nagasaki on Aug. 9, when the Japanese finally succumbed to the threat of further nuclear bombardment and surrendered. The support for this narrative runs deep. But there are three major problems with it, and, taken together, they significantly undermine the traditional interpretation of the Japanese surrender.

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By Ward Hayes Wilson

FIVE years ago, four titans of American foreign policy — the former secretaries of state George P. Shultz and Henry A. Kissinger, the former defense secretary William J. Perry and the former senator Sam Nunn — called for “a world free of nuclear weapons,” giving new momentum to an idea that had moved from the sidelines of pacifist idealism to the center of foreign policy debate.

America’s 76 million baby boomers grew up during the cold war, when a deep fear of nuclear weapons permeated American life, from duck-and-cover school drills to backyard fallout shelters. Then, in the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan’s leadership, combined with immense anti-nuclear demonstrations, led to negotiations with the Soviet Union that drastically reduced the size of the two superpowers’ nuclear arsenals.

Sadly, the abolition movement seems stalled. Part of the reason is fear of nuclear weapons in the hands of others: President George W. Bush exploited anxieties over nuclear weapons to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq; most Republican presidential candidates last year said they would fight a war with Iran rather than allow it to get the bomb.

There is also a small group of people who still believe fervently in nuclear weapons. President Obama had to buy passage of the New START treaty with Russia, in 2010, with a promise to spend $185 billion to modernize warheads and delivery systems over 10 years — revealing that while support for nuclear weapons may not be broad, it runs deep. That support endures because of five widely held myths.

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By Ward Hayes Wilson

The original mindset developed for thinking about nuclear weapons was theoretical. Herman Kahn, one of a group of civilians who eventually came to be called “nuclear strategists” and played an important role in shaping ideas about nuclear weapons, described the justification for this theoretical approach in 1965:

Despite the fact that nuclear weapons have already been used twice, and the nuclear sword has been rattled many times, one can argue that for all practical purposes nuclear war is still (and hopefully will remain) so far from our experience that it is difficult to reason from, or illustrate arguments by, analogies from history. Thus, many of our concepts and doctrines must be based on abstract and analytical considerations.1

Military wisdom grows out of pragmatism, which is, in some ways, the opposite of the theoretical and abstract approach advocated by Kahn. Pragmatism is founded on experience. It takes the facts of history seriously and is tied to events rather than high concepts. In the 20 years since the end of the Cold War, a thorough review of the facts has thrown a new, more critical light on nuclear weapons. It seems that Cold War fear and tension led a number of nuclear weapons thinkers to overlook what should have been obvious. Military officers were always some- what skeptical of nuclear weapons. It now appears that much of that skepticism was justified.

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By Ken Berry, Patricia Lewis, Benoît Pélopidas, Nikolai Sokov, and Ward Wilson

In addressing nuclear disarmament, people – be they expert, practitioners or one of the interested public – find themselves in a bind. All bar a few countries, including the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, have repeatedly committed themselves in word and in law to pursuing nuclear disarmament in good faith and to the elimination of nuclear weapons. There is enormous concern about the spread of nuclear weapons to more countries and – in the longer term – to non-state armed factions. On the other hand, however, we are told that nuclear weapons are important and useful. Those that possess them or feel protected by them say that they are not deployed to be used; rather they are employed solely as a deterrent to would-be attackers and thus prevent war. We are told that they ended the Second World War in 1945, that they “kept the peace” during the Cold War, and that they provide an “umbrella” or extended deterrence to military allies of the nuclear weapons possessors. Nuclear weapons are the great protectors, the ultimate guarantee. Why then would we ever want to eliminate such weapons if they could provide so much security, and why should we not want every country to have them so as to eliminate war completely? At the heart of the double bind of nuclear weapons is the issue of deterrence. It is the belief in nuclear deterrence that enables people to accept their presence on their territories. The belief in nuclear deterrence creates an underlying fear that if we were to give up this great protection, major conflict might once again ensue. In large part, it is this fear that is causing the delay in fulfilling the long-made promises of nuclear disarmament. The hypothesis of nuclear deterrence has conferred a degree of legitimacy on the possession – by some states only – of nuclear weapons.

If the global elimination of nuclear weapons is ever going to be undertaken in earnest, nuclear deterrence must be held up to scrutiny and found wanting. This paper sets out to examine deterrence as the core attribute assigned to nuclear weapons and their associated legitimacy in the international security system. We have examined the evidence for nuclear deterrence and found it to be paltry, if it exists at all. Our aim in this study is to stimulate thought, debate and action. We have written this paper with several audiences in mind: disarmament practitioners including government officials, diplomats and nuclear weapons designers; experts from policy analysts to academic dons; and the engaged, questioning public. This should not be a comfortable read; we hope to challenge the reader and to introduce new approaches and options for ways out of the nuclear conundrum.

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By Ward Hayes Wilson

Nuclear weapons pose profound risks to all nations. As they spread, these dangers multiply, not only because nuclear weapons are more likely to be used in wars, but because each additional national nuclear arsenal increases the risk that a terrorist organization could buy or steal nuclear weapons.

If a world with nuclear weapons is so dangerous, why not move toward a world without them? Would a world without nuclear weapons be as dangerous? Less dangerous? More dangerous? Ever since US President Barack Obama turned the goal of eliminating nuclear weapons into a national objective in his April 2009 speech in Prague, a number of questions have been raised by his critics. Some suggest that a world without nuclear weapons would be more dangerous because the temptation to cheat on a nuclear disarmament treaty would be overpowering. If a state cheated successfully, critics argue, it would be in a position to inflict such devastation on the world that all other nations would be obliged to bow to its commands.

At first glance, this possibility seems to be a disabling argument against the elimination of nuclear weapons. After all, the conclusion of the verification chapter in this volume is that there is no perfect guarantee against cheating, either during dismantlement or once other nations had disarmed. As critics are fond of pointing out, the knowledge of how to build nuclear weapons cannot be erased.

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By Ward Hayes Wilson

It is often asserted as fact that nuclear deterrence works, that it kept us safe for fifty years during the Cold War, and that because of the peculiar characteristics of mutual assured destruction, it provides unique stability in a crisis. Besides this general security and stability, the conventional wisdom also holds that nuclear deterrence provides three specific benefits: 1) protection against attacks with nuclear weapons, 2) protection against attacks with conventional forces, and 3) indefinable additional diplomatic clout. If the conventional wisdom is true, if nuclear deterrence is as well defined and successful as is sometimes assumed, it is both a powerful argument against nuclear disarmament and a considerable obstacle to those who wish to prevent proliferation. These issues matter because nuclear weapons remain dangerous and powerful and appear to be slowly but steadily spreading.

There are reasons, however, for doubting the conventional wisdom. First, closer inspection calls the fundamental soundness of nuclear deterrence theory into question. In addition, three practical arguments put the efficacy of nuclear deterrence into doubt: 1) the characteristic attack threatened in most nuclear deterrence scenarios (city attack) is not militarily effective or likely to be decisive; 2) the psychology of terror that is supposed to work in nuclear deterrence’s favor actually creates the circumstances for unremitting resistance; and 3) even though the field is mostly conjectural, what little unambiguous evidence does exist contradicts the claim that nuclear deterrence works.

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By Ward Hayes Wilson

Did the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki force the Japanese to surrender in 1945? Did nuclear weapons, in effect, win the war in the Paciac? These questions matter because almost all thinking about nuclear war and nuclear weapons depends, in one way or another, on judgments about the effect of these attacks.

Scholarship about Japan’s decision to surrender can be divided into three phases. During the first twenty years after Hiroshima, historians and strategists rarely questioned the necessity of using the atomic bomb or the decisive role it played in bringing World War II to a close. In 1965, however, a revisionist school began examining the decision to use the bomb more closely, raising moral questions about the use of nuclear weapons and asking probing questions about the motives of U.S. leaders. They continued to believe, however, that the bomb was instrumental in ending the war. Since 1990 new scholarship, including recently declassiaed documents and extensive research into Japanese, Soviet, and U.S. archives, has led to new interpretations of Japan’s surrender. New questions have been raised about the centrality of nuclear weapons in coercing Japan to end the war. In particular, analysis of the strategic situation from a Japanese perspective has led some scholars to assert that the Soviet Union’s entry into the Pacific war may have been as important or even more important in coercing Japan’s leaders.

To date, this new research has mostly been used to support various positions in the debate on the morality of using nuclear weapons. This article, however, is not concerned with whether the U.S. decision to use nuclear weapons was justified under the circumstances or with more general moral questions about using nuclear weapons. It asks a question with considerably more contemporary significance: Were nuclear weapons militarily effective? Is it possible that the Soviet intervention alone coerced the Japanese and that nuclear weapons had no effect on their decision?

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