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CounterPunch
August
13 / 19, 2002
The Legacy of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki
by Ahmad Faruqui
In 1945, the world's largest democracy became
the world's first country to use weapons of mass destruction
on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. An estimated 200,000 non-combatants
were either killed immediately or afterwards. The bombs left
a lasting genetic imprint on those exposed to its residual radiation.
Some argue that the bomb helped to save
further loss of life. However, others have questioned whether
the US had any moral authority for killing civilians. Recently,
Roy Clouser of the College of New Jersey has argued that the
US should have tried a lot harder to avoid using the bomb. The
rationale for developing the bomb was to defeat Hitler. "But
by August, 1945, Hitler was dead and Germany had surrendered."
Albert Einstein, whose theoretical research
enabled the development of the bomb, was forever remorseful that
his name was associated with the Manhattan project. In 1955,
along with Bertrand Russell, he issued a manifesto that cautioned
world governments to abolish nuclear weapons, since they would
almost certainly be used during a future world war.
This Manifesto fell on deaf years. In
November 1957, Mao declared his intention to fight a nuclear
war. In the worst case, perhaps one half of the world's 2.7 billion
people would die. "But there would still be one-half left;
imperialism would be razed to the ground and the whole world
would become socialist." Increasingly distrustful of the
Soviet Union, China carried out its first nuclear explosion in
1964, leading India to carry out its first explosion ten years
later.
The US and the Soviet Union became engaged
in the world's most expensive-and most dangerous-arms race. Henry
Kissinger compared this arms race to a conflict between two heavily
armed blind men feeling their way around a room, "each believing
himself in mortal peril from the other whom he assumes to have
perfect vision. Each tends to ascribe to the other side a consistency,
foresight and coherence that its own experience belies."
Each superpower produced more than enough
warheads to blow up the world's population several times over.
Hoping to secure itself against a Soviet attack that never came,
the US spent five and a half trillion dollars on its nuclear
program. According to one study, had the US spent even half of
the amount on health, education and welfare programs, it would
have permanently eliminated poverty and deprivation from American
society.
In May 1998, as he witnessed India's
five nuclear tests, Dr. Abdul Kalam, now that nation's president-elect,
was elated: "I heard the earth thundering below our feet
and rising ahead of us in terror. It was a beautiful sight."
The world's first nuclear explosion in 1945 had elicited a much
more appropriate comment from the architect of the Manhattan
project. Robert Oppenheimer was moved to quote from the Bhagavad
Gita, "Brighter than a thousand suns, I am become Death,
the destroyer of the worlds."
India and Pakistan almost went to war
this May. When war did not happen, hard liners on both sides
credited its not happening to the presence of nuclear weapons.
That may indeed have been the case, but no one can guarantee
that nuclear weapons will never be used in a future war. Since
1998, both nations have increased their spending on conventional
weapons, and are simultaneously engaged in a nuclear arms race,
belying the assertion that nuclear weapons restrain conventional
military spending.
On August 6, the mayor of Hiroshima invited
President Bush to visit Hiroshima "to confirm with his own
eyes what nuclear weapons can do to human beings." He lashed
out at Washington's go-it-alone stance. "America has not
been given the right to impose a 'Pax Americana' and to decide
the fate of the world. Rather, we, the people of the world, have
the right to insist that we have not given you the authority
to destroy the world."
In a recent report, the Council on Foreign
Relations concludes that ''America's image problem is global,''
and that ''it is essential for the administration to listen to
the world, even as it defines American interests and defends
and asserts them abroad.''
The Bush administration needs to encourage
open debate among Americans, and to welcome dissenters who question
whether current foreign policy is serving America's national
interests. That is the only way to do justice to the democratic
ideals that are enshrined in the US Constitution, and to ensure
that we will not follow imperial Japan's path of wanton military
aggression.
Ahmad Faruqui,
an economist, is a fellow of the American Institute of International
Studies. He can be reached at faruqui@pacbell.net
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