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| A Maginot Line in the Mind by David Krieger December 26, 2012 |
Nuclear weapons were born in the crucible of war. Their parents were fear and science.
The Manhattan Project, under the military leadership of General Leslie Groves and scientific leadership of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, was the first significant harnessing of the insights of physicists to the military ends of mass annihilation.
The Manhattan Project scientists feared that Germany would succeed in developing an atomic bomb, and that an Allied bomb would be needed to deter Germany from using its bomb. While the Germans never succeeded in developing a Nazi nuclear weapon, the Allied scientists did succeed and almost immediately used two atomic weapons on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Only one Manhattan Project scientist left the project as a matter of conscience. Joseph Rotblat, a Polish born physicist, withdrew in late 1944 when he came to understand that the Germans would not succeed in developing an atomic weapon. Rotblat was a beacon of scientific integrity. After the war he was a leader in the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, which brought together scientists from East and West. Fifty years after the first use of nuclear weapons at Hiroshima, Joseph Rotblat and the Pugwash Conferences shared the Nobel Peace Prize. On his 90th birthday in 1998, Rotblat declared that his short-term goal was the abolition of nuclear weapons and his long-term goal was the abolition of war.
Prior to World War II, the French built a concrete and steel structure along the French border with Germany to prevent the invasion of France. It was called the “Maginot Line,” named after the French Minister of War André Maginot who promoted it. But, when World War II came, the Maginot Line did not prevent the Germans from going around the French fortifications to invade and occupy France. The Maginot Line has become a term of derision that reflects strategic failure of unsuccessful reliance on technology to defend a country.
For a very long time I have thought of missile defenses as a Maginot Line in the Sky, a high-tech defensive system designed to shoot down incoming missiles, but one highly likely to fail under real world conditions. Now, I take one further step in my thinking to recognize that nuclear deterrence itself is a Maginot Line in the Mind. Nuclear deterrence is no more than a theory that the threat of nuclear retaliation will prevent a nuclear attack, a theory that is located in the mind, not in reality. Nuclear deterrence theory requires rational opponents, a condition that may not be present in the real world where all political leaders are not rational at all times. It also requires a territory to retaliate against, and thus cannot work against terrorist organizations that have no territory. Irrational leaders and nuclear-armed terrorists can simply circumvent this Maginot Line in the Mind.
This means that nuclear weapons cannot and do not protect their possessors. They do not make their possessors safer or more secure. If they did, missile defenses would not be needed. Nuclear deterrence threatens vengeance in response to an attack – massive retaliation that is both illegal and immoral. Rather than safeguarding the future, nuclear weapons threaten to foreclose the future for human beings and other forms of complex life.
These weapons could be used by accident or design. The US and Russia each keep some 1,000 thermonuclear weapons on high-alert status, ready to be fired with a few moments notice. This is no way to live. As John F. Kennedy said, “Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident, or miscalculation, or by madness.”
The only way to be secure from nuclear threat is to abolish nuclear weapons. This must be the cry that rises from humanity if we are to survive the Nuclear Age. Some say that humanity has never given up a powerful weapon of its own accord. In fact, countries have agreed on a Biological Weapons Convention and Chemical Weapons Convention to eliminate these weapons.
Now, we must continue to advance and agree upon a Nuclear Weapons Convention for the phased, verifiable, irreversible, and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons. This would be to the advantage of all nations and peoples, providing an opportunity to eliminate the Maginot Line in the Mind and move from Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) to Planetary Assured Security and Survival (PASS).
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Comments
When chastened by post-WWII allied scientists for collaborating with the Nazi project to build an atomic weapon, the German physicist Werner Heisenberg reminded his critics that it was they, the "good scientists", and not the evil Nazis, who had recently incinerated two Japanese cities without warning or concern for massive civilian casualties.
This only confirms the abject immorality of such notions as Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), as those scientists who today uphold such inherently irrational doctrines continue to proclaim their rational scientism.
Albert Einstein said "Since the splitting of the atom, everything has changed but the way men think. This too must change or we will destroy the Earth." I have come to believe that the way most men think is dictated by outside forces described well by Edward Bernays who we know as the father of modern advertising. Today in the industrialized nations of the world the MSM (mainstream media) virtually controls the values and the belief systems of the majority of the people, the "99%." Opening these people's eyes , and thus their minds, to the reality, and thus the insanity, of nuclear weapons and nuclear power generation is our task at hand.
I learned about nuclear weapons and nuclear power and the dangers and permenance of nuclear waste as an elementary school student in the mid 50s. It was obvious to me right away that ownership of nuclear weapons was insane. I remember advocating in class in the 5th grade for unilateral disarmament and using the argument that even if the USSR destroyed the US and killed millions of innocent civilians, that would be better than than them doing that to us and us doing that to them and adding our fallout to theirs. MAD is, in fact, mad!
As the years have passed, I have only become more convinced that my initial summation of the situation was and remains correct. If all nuclear weapons on the planet were dismanteled and the only big problem associated with tne "Nuclear" industry was waste disposal, this problem alone is great enough to justify the immediate cessation of the creation of nuclear power and the generation of the vast majority of radionuclides.
No less than the long term survival of humanity depends upon the success of your (our) efforts to eliminate the production of fissile materials and the as safe as possible disposal of those already created. The half-life of these poisons being what it is, there is no way to get this evil jeanie back into the bottle, but our hope lies in doing the best we can.
As horrible as Fukushima-Diashi was and is, it did help awaken many to the real threat we all face. Continuing to focus on the ongoing effect of Fukushima and Chernobyl are useful tools we can use to bring home the reality of this menace to others. Another tool seldom mentioned yet very useful is the effects that the use of Depleted Uranium weapons are having on the peoples of the Balkans and Iraq. The incidence of birth deffects and miscarriages in Falugia Iraq has skyrocketed since that city of a million humans was pummeled with DU "Bunker Busters" and other DU rounds. The utter horror of serious birth deffects is easily understood by most rational beings. We all are aware of the innocence of children and have great compassion for their suffering and the associated suffering of their parents. As the Australian bumper sticker from the 60s so aptly said "Plutonium is Thalidomide Forever!"
© Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
It's very sad that the scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project, many of whom continued to work on atomic and thermonuclear weapons research and development long after WWII ended, didn't see sufficient danger in their work to cause them to halt what they were doing. The pursuit of scientific discovery can cause scientists to be blind (or at least to be in denial about what they can foresee).
"In 1945, therefore, I proved a sentimental fool; and Mr. Truman could safely have classified me among the whimpering idiots he did not wish admitted to the presidential office. For I felt that no man has the right to decree so much suffering, and that science, in providing and sharpening the knife and in upholding the ram, had incurred a guilt of which it will never get rid. It was at that time that the nexus between science and murder became clear to me." -- Erwin Chargaff, Austrian biochemist (1905-2002)