Hiroshima: the beginning and the end of nuclear history

Yet, despite the hysteria, nuclear history never quite managed to step out of the shadows. Britain and France came to join the nuclear club, if, for nothing else, than to ensure that they would retain elite status in the shifting geo-political world. Similarly, China’s nuclear breakout precipitated greater international integration and an easing of military tensions; the South Africa nuclear program gradually became too heavy a burden, after which they voluntarily dismantled it in the 1990’s; and Israel’s acquisition only increased regional antipathy, and did nothing to stop its neighbours from posturing for conflict nor from publicly calling for its destruction.

Kashmir remains the most likely spark-point for direct nuclear conflict, yet the Indian and Pakistani tests in the closing years of the last century were followed by only a brief three-year period of sanctions, after which the international community lost its resolve – Kashmiri tensions have since simmered along, materially un-impacted by the new nuclear dimension.

As North Korea began nearing nuclear capability, a leaked internal report was made public by defectors to South Korea: recognising that a nuclear bomb would offer no tangible defensive improvement, offensive options were war-gamed. The only feasible option involved a nuclear strike on the southern half of the Korean peninsula, in order to neutralise South Korea’s ability to re-group following a hypothetical invasion of Seoul. Understanding that this would almost certainly provoke a regime-changing international response, the ordinarily bellicose leadership dismissed this possibility out of hand – the Kim dynasty had gone to considerable effort to arm themselves with a weapon, only to find out that they could not use it.

However, it was the Soviet Union and the spectre of the Cold War that crystallised our nuclear imaginations. The stage was poignantly set: two global superpowers, in an intractable ideological divide, competing for international influence, and viewing nuclear build-up as the means to this end. And as the accepted logic goes, it was only the prospect of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) that prevented this conflict from turning hot.

MAD involves a recognition from both sides in any given standoff, that a nuclear strike on the other, even if it were to render their entire territory lifeless and uninhabitable, would however, not be able to destroy all their nuclear launch-pads. As such, a retaliatory strike could be expected, so it holds that the destruction of your enemy also represents the destruction of yourself.

This logic, itself, speaks volumes about our larger-than-life attachment that to nuclear weapons. Any discussion of nuclear deterrence begins with the preface of ‘rational actors’. If the leaders in question lack a rational concern for their own survival and that of their nation, then all bets are, colloquially, off!

Yet if this point is granted – which it must be – then it is also inconceivable that such a rational actor would also launch the retaliatory strike. The leader of either country, suddenly aware that the enemy’s entire nuclear arsenal had been launched at their homeland, would have only one choice: that is, with their own death, and the deaths of all their citizens then imminent, would they also like to kill the population of another country out of sheer spite. The logic of mutual deterrence disappears the moment the first strike is undertaken.

This is the real impact of the nuclear era: where it might once have been possible to marginalise, or even to ignore, the messianic and the irrational individuals amongst us, the prospect of acquiring a nuclear bomb embodies them with a whole new menace. The current panic over Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon has less to do with the geo-political implications, and everything to do with previous statements from the Supreme Leader Khamenei and from former-President Ahmadinejad championing the destruction of Israel.

With the presence of such an apocalyptic mind so far having been absent in nuclear history, the near-misses that we have witnessed, such as with the Cuban Missile Crisis, have been the fault of misunderstandings and/or accidents.

This mundane reality stands in contrast to the place nuclear weapons continue to hold in the public mind. This has been apparent from the very beginning: Oppenheimer’s powerful reflection on the first successful nuclear test, ruminating on ‘death’ and the ‘destruction of worlds’ was a revision upon what he first claimed had crossed his mind: “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendour of the mighty one” – once again quoting from the Bhagavad Gita. But even this seems an unlikely and over-aggrandized first thought. What we do know for sure, is what Oppenheimer actually said at the time: “It worked!” – It is only in our minds that nuclear history has ever risen above this banal statement. But just as well, because the moment it becomes exciting is the moment it becomes horrible.