The Beginning of the Nuclear Age
Joseph Rotblat
We are now half a century in the nuclear age, the new age whose birth was heralded to the world in the bomb that destroyed Hirnshima, the age whose chief characteristic is that for the first time in the history of civilization it has become possible for Man to destroy that whole civilization in one big bang.
During the past 50 years we came several times close to catastrophe, we reached the brink of the abyss and looked into it; it was more by good luck than by good management that we held back at the last moment. With the end of the Cold War the probability of a nuclear holocaust has been greatly reduced but it is still finite. As long as nuclear weapons exist in the arsenals there will always be the danger of their being used in a military confrontation; this danger can be eliminated only by the elimination of all nuclear weapons.
The creation of a nuclear-weapon-free world is no longer a utopian dream. It is a goal that can be achieved within the lifetime of the people born in the nuclear age, but it will require an enormous effort. It will require not only further technological measures to ensure security in a denuclearized world but also new norms in social attitudes. In the first instance it will require a change in the policies of the nuclear-weapon states, policies characterized by deliberate ambiguities from the very beginning of the nuclear age.
The Manhattan Project: role of the scientists and the military
The atom bomb was the invention of scientists. Most of those who initiated the project in the UK and USA were people with humanitarian principles, who believed that science should serve mankind; normally they would view with abhorrence participation in the manufacture of a weapon of mass destruction. But the situation was not normal: it was a quirk of history that the conception of the atom bomb coincided with the start of the Second World War, and the mortal struggle between democracy and the evil doctrine of Nazism. The physicists who began the investigations into the feasibility of the atom bomb knew exactly what they were doing: we needed the bomb in order that it will not be used. This sounds like a paradox, but the argument is still used now as the basis of the nuclear doctrine, namely deterrence. We needed the bomb in order to deter Hitler from using his bomb against us and thus win the war.
But as it turned out, we - the scientists - misjudged the situation: the bomb was used; it was used as soon as it was made; it was used against a civilian population. Contrary to the motivation of the scientists, military and political leaders saw a different purpose of the bomb, from the beginning they saw the bomb as a powerful tool in the ideological struggle with the Soviet Union. General Leslie Groves, the head of the Manhattan Project, said: "There was never from about 2 weeks from the time I took charge of this project any illusion on my part but that Russia was our enemy and that the project was conducted on that basis."
This quotation is from a statement he made in 1954, but General Groves said it in my presence 10 years earlier, in March 1944, long before the bomb was made; at that time the Russians were our confederates and carried the brunt of the war burden, enabling the Allies to prepare for the landing on the Continent of Europe. The war in Europe ended before the bomb was made - thus removing the purpose of the project, as originally perceived by the scientists - but the project went on nonetheless. The bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought the Second World War to an end, but they also served another purpose, an intended purpose, to demonstrate to the Soviet Union the newly acquired overwhelming military might of the United States. This concept, that nuclear weapons give their proprietors enormous military muscle, is to this day at the basis of nuclear doctrines.
Many scientists on the Project realized this and were very unhappy; they knew that this policy was bound to lead to a nuclear arms race, and they foresaw the dire consequences of such a race. Foremost among them was the eminent Danish physicist, Niels Bohr. Earlier than any other person alive at that time he realized the tremendous social and political implications of the discovery of nuclear energy and the development of nuclear weapons. In particular, he predicted with prophetic vision the dangerous repercussions of a nuclear arms race between East and West, and he worked out a plan to prevent it.
The basic principle of Bohr's philosophy was openness. In science, openness is of course a sine qua non; science could not exist unless it was open. But Bohr's idea was to extend it to the realm of international relations, to problems of security. He said: "...it must be realized that full mutual openness, only, can effectively promote confidence and guarantee common security." This was published in 1950, in his famous letter to the United Nations, but he tried to implement it during the war in 1944, a year before the bomb was made. His specific proposal was that the Soviet leaders be told about the atom bomb before it was used, and that they be offered a share in the potentialities of the discovery of nuclear energy on the condition that they agree to a system of international control. Niels Bohr conveyed these ideas to President Roosevelt, who found them attractive, but when Bohr presented them to Winston Churchill, the latter rejected them out of hand; indeed, he wanted to imprison Bohr as a dangerous criminal.
When the war came to an end after the destructive potential of the atom bomb was demonstrated on the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a large number of scientists took up Bohr's ideas in an attempt to formulate a sane nuclear policy and prevent another use of nuclear weapons. The thoughts of many of them were incorporated in a document which became known as the Acheson-Lilienthal Report. It was based on Bohr's philosophy of openness. Under the title "Disclosure of information as an essential of international action" it said: "We believe that this is the firmest basis of security; for in the long term there can be no international control and no international cooperation which does not presuppose an international community of knowledge." The Report recommended the creation of an International Atomic Development Authority, as a subsidiary of the United Nations, to be concerned with all phases of the development and use of nuclear energy in its peaceful and military aspects. With regard to the latter it proposed that: "Manufacture of atomic bombs shall stop. Existing bombs shall be disposed of pursuant to the terms of the treaty."
The Acheson-Lilienthal Report is one example of the efforts of scientists to influence the policies of governments on the nuclear issue. These efforts were continued in the United States by the Federation of American Scientists, a body with a large membership which initially included many of the scientists on the Manhattan Project. In the UK a similar body, although with a smaller membership, was the Atomic Scientists Association, which has also carried out a huge educational effort by organizing a travelling exhibition, to explain to the general public the good and evil aspects of nuclear energy.
However, it was clear to the scientists in these organizations that in order to make a real impact on events, in particular the prevention of nuclear war, it was necessary to bring in the scientists from the Soviet Union. This materialized in the mid 1950s, in the setting up of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs (Pugwash is the name of the Canadian village in Nova Scotia where the first meeting was held), which was called into being by the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, a clarion call to scientists to gather in conference and seek ways to avert the danger of a nuclear war. One of the most important achievements of the Pugwash Movement was to provide a channel of communication between scientists from the East and West to discuss in a rational manner the most important issues relating to the impact of science on society. After nearly 40 years the Pugwash Movement is still going strong in pursuing its objective to create a world without war; in the first instance a nuclear-weapon-free world.
The insane nuclear arms race
The destruction of the Japanese cities has created a wave of revulsion against the atom bomb among the general public and a universal desire to eliminate it. This desire found expression in the United Nations, whose Charter was adopted about two months before the Hiroshima bomb. The very frst resolution of the General Assembly, adopted unanimously in January 1946, set up a committee mandated with "the elimination from national armaments of atomic weapons and of all other major weapons adaptable to mass destruction."
In that climate, the hawks in the United States dare to come out openly with their intention to retain nuclear weapons. Indeed, the official policy of the United States, presented in the Baruch Plan, was based on the Acheson-Lilienthal Report; it called in no uncertain terms for the elimination of nuclear weapons. The opening paragraph of the Baruch Plan reads "We are here to make a choice between the quick and the dead. That is our business. Behind the bleak portent of the new atomic age lies a hope which, seized upon with faith, can work our salvation. If we fail, then we have damned every man to be the slave of Fear. Let us not deceive ourselves. We must elect World Peace or World Destruction." Very strong words, an apocalyptic phraseology. But the hawks had the last word: they managed to insert into the plan certain conditions, clearly designed to make it unacceptable to the Soviets. And this is what did happen. The Baruch Plan was rejected by the Soviet Union, and the United States retained its nuclear monopoly.
But this monopoly did not last long: only four years. Thanks to the nefarious activities of Klaus Fuchs, a member of the British mission in Los Alamos, the Soviets managed to build an exact replica of the Nagasaki bomb, and test it in an explosion in August 1949. Alarmed by this, the Americans started a crash programme to make the hydrogen bomb, but in this too the Russians were hard on their heels. Thus started the race, predicted by the scientists, an insane race with both sides building bombs so powerful that a single one of them could devastate the largest city; both sides, developing and manufacturing more and better weapons; so that by 1986, the arsenals grew to a total of more than 70,000 nuclear warheads, a 100 times more than required for any conceivable purpose.
The main momentum of the arms race came from the scientists and engineers in the secret laboratories: they kept on inventing ways to make their own weapons more powerful and those of the enemy more vulnerable. First there was the missile; next they invented the anti-missile; and then the anti-anti-missile. The intention of each development was to increase security, but often it produced the opposite effect, it destabilized the situation. But such is the nature of an arms race that once started it cannot be stopped; one has to keep up with inventions if one is to stay in the race. Mrs Thatcher - when she was Prime Minister - put it succinctly: "Unless you modernize the deterrent it soon ceases to be a deterrent."
Often the modernization was due not to a real need but to the zeal of scientists to invent new gadgets; and the military are usually ready customers for laboratory inventions. Lord Zuckerman, who was for many years chief scientific advisor to the British Government, expressed this as folIows: "In the nuclear world of today the military chiefs ... as a rule merely serve as the channel through which the men in the laboratories transmit their views. For it is the man in the laboratory ... who at the start proposes that for this or that reason it would be useful to improve an old or devise a new warhead ... If is he, the technician, not the commander in the field, who starts the process of formulating the so-called military need."
The United States led the arms race in almost every aspect. In terms of numbers of warheads the United States was initialiy well ahead, but the Soviet Union eventually surpassed it. The Soviets built up an enormous military industry, in secret towns. They set up an empire within the empire; a parasite that was sucking the life-blood of its people.
Had this race continued, I am convinced that it would have resulted in a nuclear holocaust and the destruction of our civiIization. It has not come to that, but the arms race itself brought economic ruin to the Soviet Union, and contributed to the crippling budget deficit of the United States.
It was a stroke of luck that a sane person came onto the scene at the critical moment. Mikhail Gorbachev adopted the new way of thinking that Pugwash had been advocating all those years. He said "nuclear war cannot be a means of achieving political, economic, ideological or any other goals," and in this spirit he proclaimed policies that actually brought the nuclear arms race to a halt. In order to make his policies acceptable in his own country, he had to adopt another idea advanced by scientists, Bohr's idea of openness. He introduced glasnost: he lifted the curtain of secrecy that hung over the Soviet Union for decades. But once people are allowed to think, they will not be muzzled again. The effect of glasnost was to open the floodgate; Gorbachev himself was engulfed in the flood, which led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the Communist regime. The ideological struggle was over; the erstwhile mortal enemies have become friends and partners.
Published in: INESAP Information Bulletin No. 6
This article is the first part, reprinted with permission from: Joseph Rotblat, A Nuclear-Weapon-Free World: A Fancy or a Reality (in German), in: U. Albrecht, U. Beisiegel, R. Braun, W. Buckel (eds.), Der Griff nach dem Feuer - Die Wissenschaft 50 Jahre nach Hiroshima und Nagasaki, Frankfurt: Peter Lang Verlag, 1995.
