Long read: An Astonishing Sixty Years: The Legacy Of Hiroshima

This is a 20yr old lecture referring to the American dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima in 1945. Hence the astonishing sixty years in the title; now still an astonishing eighty years indeed. Astonishing because the world hasn’t seen a single incidence of the use of nuclear weapons over what is a reasonably long time during which the world has witnessed all sorts of geopolitical conflicts – from the cold war to the conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, the Middle East, Afghanistan, Ukraine, etc. Yet last week’s events in South Asia threatened this might not last long with an escalating conflict between two nuclear armed states, one of which is virtually under martial law, experiencing civil wars and a crumbling economy all while being a non-signatory to the no-first-use policy. Especially with social media abuzz with rumours about one calling for a meeting of the command centre that controls nuclear weapons and the other speculated to have targeted a nuclear weapons storage facility. Fortunately, good sense seems to have prevailed, and we can continue to be astonished by the world’s restraint in using nuclear weapons. Is this just good fortune or is there a logical explanation for this restraint that has lasted this long? Thomas Schelling discussed this in a lecture in 2005 when he was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for “having enhanced our understanding of conflict and cooperation through game theory analysis”.

He starts with how this wasn’t as much a conscious restraint for much after WW-II. He cites the American President Dwight Eisenhower:

“On March 12, 1955, Eisenhower said, in answer to a question, “In any combat where these things can be used on strictly military targets and for strictly military purposes, I see no reason why they shouldn’t be used just exactly as you would use a bullet or anything else”

…Using short range nuclear weapons in a purely defensive mode, solely against offensive troops, especially at sea or on beachheads devoid of civilians, might have been something that Eisenhower would have been willing to authorize and that European allies would have approved, and nuclear weapons might have proved that they could be used “just exactly as you would use a bullet or anything else.””

However, more restraint seems to have emerged during the thick of the cold war under the Kennedy and Johnson presidencies:

“The contrast between the Eisenhower and Kennedy-Johnson attitudes toward nuclear weapons is beautifully summarized in a statement of Johnson’s in September 1964. “Make no mistake. There is no such thing as a conventional nuclear weapon. For 19 peril-filled years no nation has loosed the atom against another. To do so now is a political decision of the highest order”

…I am particularly impressed by the “19 peril-filled years.” Johnson implied that for 19 years the United States had resisted the temptation to do what Dulles had wanted the United States to be free to do where nuclear weapons were concerned. He implied that the United States, or collectively the United States and other nuclear weapon states, had an investment, accumulated over 19 years, in the non-use of nuclear weapons; and those 19 years of quarantine for nuclear weapons were part of what would make any decision to use those weapons a political one of the highest order. It is worth a pause here to consider just what might be the literal meaning of “no such thing as a conventional nuclear weapon.” Specifically, why couldn’t a nuclear bomb no larger than the largest blockbuster of World War II be considered conventional, or a nuclear depth charge of modest explosive power for use against submarines far at sea, or nuclear land mines to halt advancing tanks or to cause landslides in mountain passes? What could be so awful about using three “small” atomic bombs to save the besieged French at Dien Bien Phu as was discussed at the time? What so wrong about using nuclear costal artillery against a communist Chinese invasion flotilla in the Gulf of Taiwan?

There are two answers that this question has received, one mainly instinctive, the other somewhat analytical, but both resting on a belief, or a feeling – a feeling somewhat beyond reach by analysis – that nuclear weapons were simply different, and generically different. The more intuitive response can probably best be formulated, “If you have to ask that question you wouldn’t understand the answer.” The generic character of everything nuclear was simply – as logicians might call it – a primitive, an axiom; and analysis was as unnecessary as it was futile. The other, more analytical, response took its argument from legal reasoning, diplomacy, bargaining theory, and theory of training and discipline, including self discipline. This argument emphasized bright lines, slippery slopes, well defined boundaries, and the stuff of which traditions and implicit conventions are made. (The analogy to “one little drink” for a recovering alcoholic was sometimes heard.) But both lines of argument arrived at the same conclusion: nuclear weapons, once introduced into combat, could not, or probably would not, be contained, confined, limited”

It’s this link to game theory that won him the Nobel Prize. He goes on to discuss various other geo-political conflict situations where this might have worked before alluding to the possibility of what transpired last week. He was speaking back in 2005:

“An immediate question is whether we can expect Indian and Pakistani leaders to be adequately in awe of the nuclear weapons they now both possess. There are two helpful possibilities. One is that they share the inhibition – appreciate the taboo – that I have been discussing. The other is that they will recognize, as the United States and the Soviet Union did, that the prospect of nuclear retaliation made any initiation of nuclear war nearly unthinkable.

The instances of non-use of nuclear weapons that I’ve discussed were, in every case, possible use against a non-possessor. The non-use by the USA and the USSR was differently motivated: the prospect of nuclear retaliation made any initiation appear unwise except in the worst imaginable military emergency, and that kind of military emergency never offered the temptation. The experience of the USA-USSR confrontation may impress Indians and Pakistanis; the greatest risk is that one or the other may confront the kind of military emergency that invites some limited experiment with the weapons, and there is no history to tell us, or to tell them, what happens next.”

Schelling truly deserves the Nobel prize as we continue to be astonished by the world’s restraint when it comes to use of nuclear weapons.

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