August 6, 2020
Today is the 75th anniversary of the Atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the first of only two times a nuclear bomb has been used in ‘anger’. For many years I’ve sent out a “Happy H-Day” to Peter (and sometimes other) on this day. In part it makes fun (gallows humour) but my real point is to remind that the atomic bomb was used to stop a war, and ultimately to avoid the seaboard invasion of the Japanese Homeland at the end of the Second World War.
In making light of the bombing of Hiroshima, I certainly was crass and insensitive. But I also took pains to point out that, while we judge the use of the bomb from a position of many decades of peace, the reality of the decision-making at the time was much different, and the use of the bomb was justified. Casualty estimates were as high as 1 million American dead and 3 million Japanese or more. And with the experience on Okinawa and other islands, the estimates of Japanese deaths was probably very low, even if the estimate of American death is high.
There has been too much discussion about the ethics of using the bomb in the first place. I think that has been misplaced. The ethics of wholesale bombing of civilian populations in the pursuit of strategic exhaustion of the enemy is another topic, of which the use of the atomic bomb is a subset. We now accept as a given (and it should be noted that this has been the case since the first Geneva Conventions) that attacks on civilian populations is a war crime. Yet in a time when ‘surgical’ strikes against industrial capacity were not possible, civilian “collateral damage” was inevitable.
We commemorate August 6th as the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, but we (outside Japan) ignore and if fact do not even remember the firebombing of Tokyo on the night of 9-10 March 1945, which killed over 100,000 people and destroyed 16 square kilometres of the city. That was probably a bigger war crime than Hiroshima, in that incendiary attacks on cities cannot be reframed as anything other than attacks on civilians, as the objective is not to destroy industrial capacity, but destroy entire cities and kill and displace as many people as possible.
But enough of the moral equivalence for just a moment.
The very existence of the ability to produce and (threaten to) use atomic weapons has been a significant contributor to world peace for 75 years. I would nuance that by saying “developed world and European peace”, but only to point out that a new “World War” has been averted. Without the threat of escalation to atomic weapons, it would have been almost impossible to counter the overwhelming military might of the Soviet Union, and with that the defection or weakening of Western European countries in the 1950, ‘60s and beyond.
Instead of fighting on land, sea and in the air, the world fought an economic war. In the process, countless people and countries saw their standard of living climb, infant mortality fall, and trade increase. And once the “West” (the US) had a dominating economic superiority, they could use that to drive the Soviet Union into an arms race that could only bankrupt the Soviet Union, ending the “cold war” and “defeating” Communism as a global threat.
Instead of attacking entire civilian populations, military technology now enables the targeting of individual automobiles from 10 miles away, using a “Ninja” missile fired from a circling drone that may have been loitering in the area for a day or more, waiting for just that moment. Planners no longer need to factor in estimates in the hundreds or even thousands of civilians killed to reach a particular “target”. They can now estimate how many other people will be in that car.
Of course, nature, and international relations, abhors a void, and eventually the US, having “won” the cold war, was unable to continue to afford to keep winning the peace. Now the US finds itself on the Soviet Union side of the economic war equation, and the US is losing. This cannot bode well for global security and peace over the next five to ten years, but it is a natural evolution of economics and global power, and the cost of maintaining that position of power.
But I digress.
The use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and then on Nagasaki the following week, provides a punctuation mark between a pre-atomic era, and an era of much greater peace in the world. No, the world is not at peace and never has been. But the first half of the 20th century was the period in which industrial warfare and the demonstrated and executed strategic destruction of populations and countries was perfected. The use of the atomic bomb was simply the culmination of that evolution in strategic thinking, and in the execution of that strategic concept.
We should be celebrating (and commemorating) H-Day as the day that the world woke to the reality of the trajectory of strategic industrial war, and realised that there must be a better way. “Small wars” to destabilise the periphery, while horrible locally and to neighbouring countries, helped forestall a more general global conflagration. Continued testing of atomic weapons by ‘both sides’ (but of course including eight of the nine current members of the ‘atomic club’) has served as “Beware of the Dog” signs more than deployments for actual imminent use.
We should be celebrating the fact that two cities in Japan taught the world that strategic industrial population destruction is not only unacceptable, immoral, illegal, and repugnant, we should be celebrating that for each of the past 75 years (starting from the 10th of August, the day after Nagasaki) atomic weapons have not been used in anger. We should be acknowledging that the shock of demonstrated capability has, we continue to hope, brought an end of the period of such industrial slaughter. And we should be relieved that the horrendous loss of life that strategic industrial warfare accepted is no longer acceptable even in concept.
Without Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Herman Kahn’s question “Will the living will envy the dead?” would not have been asked. That question, even though his answer is uncomfortable to read and actually provides a defence of the future use of atomic weapons, demonstrated that leaders and peoples had moved beyond victory at any cost (to the enemy of course) to victory within an ‘acceptable’ cost. Specifically, industrial slaughter was, from the 10th of August 1945, off the table.
May it remain off the table.
Happy H-Day.
Today is the 75th anniversary of the Atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the first of only two times a nuclear bomb has been used in ‘anger’. For many years I’ve sent out a “Happy H-Day” to Peter (and sometimes other) on this day. In part it makes fun (gallows humour) but my real point is to remind that the atomic bomb was used to stop a war, and ultimately to avoid the seaboard invasion of the Japanese Homeland at the end of the Second World War.
In making light of the bombing of Hiroshima, I certainly was crass and insensitive. But I also took pains to point out that, while we judge the use of the bomb from a position of many decades of peace, the reality of the decision-making at the time was much different, and the use of the bomb was justified. Casualty estimates were as high as 1 million American dead and 3 million Japanese or more. And with the experience on Okinawa and other islands, the estimates of Japanese deaths was probably very low, even if the estimate of American death is high.
There has been too much discussion about the ethics of using the bomb in the first place. I think that has been misplaced. The ethics of wholesale bombing of civilian populations in the pursuit of strategic exhaustion of the enemy is another topic, of which the use of the atomic bomb is a subset. We now accept as a given (and it should be noted that this has been the case since the first Geneva Conventions) that attacks on civilian populations is a war crime. Yet in a time when ‘surgical’ strikes against industrial capacity were not possible, civilian “collateral damage” was inevitable.
We commemorate August 6th as the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, but we (outside Japan) ignore and if fact do not even remember the firebombing of Tokyo on the night of 9-10 March 1945, which killed over 100,000 people and destroyed 16 square kilometres of the city. That was probably a bigger war crime than Hiroshima, in that incendiary attacks on cities cannot be reframed as anything other than attacks on civilians, as the objective is not to destroy industrial capacity, but destroy entire cities and kill and displace as many people as possible.
But enough of the moral equivalence for just a moment.
The very existence of the ability to produce and (threaten to) use atomic weapons has been a significant contributor to world peace for 75 years. I would nuance that by saying “developed world and European peace”, but only to point out that a new “World War” has been averted. Without the threat of escalation to atomic weapons, it would have been almost impossible to counter the overwhelming military might of the Soviet Union, and with that the defection or weakening of Western European countries in the 1950, ‘60s and beyond.
Instead of fighting on land, sea and in the air, the world fought an economic war. In the process, countless people and countries saw their standard of living climb, infant mortality fall, and trade increase. And once the “West” (the US) had a dominating economic superiority, they could use that to drive the Soviet Union into an arms race that could only bankrupt the Soviet Union, ending the “cold war” and “defeating” Communism as a global threat.
Instead of attacking entire civilian populations, military technology now enables the targeting of individual automobiles from 10 miles away, using a “Ninja” missile fired from a circling drone that may have been loitering in the area for a day or more, waiting for just that moment. Planners no longer need to factor in estimates in the hundreds or even thousands of civilians killed to reach a particular “target”. They can now estimate how many other people will be in that car.
Of course, nature, and international relations, abhors a void, and eventually the US, having “won” the cold war, was unable to continue to afford to keep winning the peace. Now the US finds itself on the Soviet Union side of the economic war equation, and the US is losing. This cannot bode well for global security and peace over the next five to ten years, but it is a natural evolution of economics and global power, and the cost of maintaining that position of power.
But I digress.
The use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and then on Nagasaki the following week, provides a punctuation mark between a pre-atomic era, and an era of much greater peace in the world. No, the world is not at peace and never has been. But the first half of the 20th century was the period in which industrial warfare and the demonstrated and executed strategic destruction of populations and countries was perfected. The use of the atomic bomb was simply the culmination of that evolution in strategic thinking, and in the execution of that strategic concept.
We should be celebrating (and commemorating) H-Day as the day that the world woke to the reality of the trajectory of strategic industrial war, and realised that there must be a better way. “Small wars” to destabilise the periphery, while horrible locally and to neighbouring countries, helped forestall a more general global conflagration. Continued testing of atomic weapons by ‘both sides’ (but of course including eight of the nine current members of the ‘atomic club’) has served as “Beware of the Dog” signs more than deployments for actual imminent use.
We should be celebrating the fact that two cities in Japan taught the world that strategic industrial population destruction is not only unacceptable, immoral, illegal, and repugnant, we should be celebrating that for each of the past 75 years (starting from the 10th of August, the day after Nagasaki) atomic weapons have not been used in anger. We should be acknowledging that the shock of demonstrated capability has, we continue to hope, brought an end of the period of such industrial slaughter. And we should be relieved that the horrendous loss of life that strategic industrial warfare accepted is no longer acceptable even in concept.
Without Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Herman Kahn’s question “Will the living will envy the dead?” would not have been asked. That question, even though his answer is uncomfortable to read and actually provides a defence of the future use of atomic weapons, demonstrated that leaders and peoples had moved beyond victory at any cost (to the enemy of course) to victory within an ‘acceptable’ cost. Specifically, industrial slaughter was, from the 10th of August 1945, off the table.
May it remain off the table.
Happy H-Day.
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