Like what you've read?

On Line Opinion is the only Australian site where you get all sides of the story. We don't
charge, but we need your support. Here�s how you can help.

  • Advertise

    We have a monthly audience of 70,000 and advertising packages from $200 a month.

  • Volunteer

    We always need commissioning editors and sub-editors.

  • Contribute

    Got something to say? Submit an essay.


 The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
On Line Opinion logo ON LINE OPINION - Australia's e-journal of social and political debate

Subscribe!
Subscribe





On Line Opinion is a not-for-profit publication and relies on the generosity of its sponsors, editors and contributors. If you would like to help, contact us.
___________

Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

The nuclear sword of Damocles

By Evaggelos Vallianatos - posted Monday, 20 October 2008


It is possible to explain the atomic bomb as an instrument of massive death born of the fear and hatred of World War II. In addition to the Americans, the Germans were also trying to develop it, so, in the hysteria of war, the Americans won the race for the ultimate killer machine.

The Americans, however, were the first to use atomic bombs against people. On August 6 and 9, 1945 their atomic weapons extinguished the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki from the face of the earth. Thousands of human beings living in those cities evaporated into nothing.

The civilised world pulled back in horror in the aftermath of bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Some Americans also condemned the bombing. In 1950, Admiral William Leahy, chief military commander under President Harry Truman, who ordered the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, denounced the atomic attack against Japan as an act of barbarians observing the standards of dark ages.

Advertisement

Most Americans dismissed domestic and world opinion and, along with their Russian enemies, embarked on a massive program of nuclear armaments. The reason for that madness was world supremacy, the American hubris of unconditional surrender for its enemies, and the fatal conviction of fighting total wars. Both America and Russia were ready to destroy themselves and the planet in their imperial if futile race for being number one in the world.

Historians called the contest a “cold war”, a fierce antagonism that poisoned the world so much that nuclear weapons - and nuclear power plants - became the new sacred symbols of the deformed Western civilisation.

I don’t know how many nuclear weapons - hundreds of times more powerful than the Hiroshima atomic bomb - America and Russia built during the four decades of their crusading conflict between the 1940s and 1980s. But the number must have been in the thousands, more than enough, experts say, to burn and freeze the planet.

As if such affinity for darkness were not enough, the teaching of “physics” brought the theory, and not a little of the gadgetry, of atom-smashing to the classroom. In fact, “nuclear” physics and engineering and nuclear weapons united lots of money, the military, and young students from all over the world. Under the guise of “atoms for peace” and “national security” - fraudulent claims on behalf of potential tyranny and the ultimate bomb, atomic electricity, and atomic medicine - the teaching of “nuclear physics” and “nuclear engineering” and the building of factories for nuclear electricity opened the way for the globalisation of nuclear weapons.

So the sword of Damocles, now armed with nuclear bombs, is ever ready to slice through the earth. Since August 6, 1945, the people of the world have had to live in the shadow of death.

This new immoral condition is the outcome of the logic of total war and the religion of science, which grew around nuclear physics. That the global nuclear terror has survived for 63 years is partly a testimony to the hubris of the teachers of physics and engineering who, corrupted by the military, accepted bomb making as science.

Advertisement

Such transformation of physics from the study of nature to the training of engineers to think and construct bombs and factories of nuclear electricity has had tragic consequences, the extreme example of which is evolving in Pakistan, India, Iran and North Korea possessing or making their own nuclear weapons.

Many Pakistanis and Indians can barely afford one meal a day, yet their countries are armed to the teeth with the ultimate bomb. Iran, governed by Islamic priests, is determined to acquire the bomb. And Communist North Korea is telling the world that now that it has its own atomic or nuclear bomb no one will dare ignore it any more.

To avoid a global nuclear meltdown, we must abolish all that has to do with the smashing of the atom - nuclear weapons and factories of nuclear electricity - or these technologies will abolish us.

In large numbers, nuclear bombs are possibly geocidal. But even one is genocidal.

Perhaps physicists designing nuclear weapons and teachers of nuclear physics and engineering ought to rethink their profession. Sir Joseph Rotblat, 1995 Nobel Laureate in Peace, accused scientists of driving the nuclear arms race and using science to the detriment of mankind.

Is it also ethical to prepare students to manufacture nuclear weapons? There’s no point in controlling “nuclear proliferation” and freezing weapons development when one finds thousands of dissertations on issues of nuclear physics and engineering in the stacks of university libraries.

It would never be moral or acceptable for only one or two countries to be armed with the terminating power of the nuclear bomb. Iran has as much right to a nuclear bomb as Israel, France or the United States. The only option remaining is to convince all countries to do away with their nuclear industries and nuclear weapons.

It is obscene that the United States is probably designing and producing “smaller” nuclear weapons - a policy that, in time, will guarantee the use of nuclear weapons. The Europeans, including the Russians and Chinese, will also build their own small nukes. And with the American monopoly over, the small bombs will find their way into the fields of battle or into the hands of fanatics.

Tadatoshi Akiba, the mayor of Hiroshima, is probably right: Americans worship the bomb. That’s why General John Dailey, director of the National Air and Space Museum, is proud of Enola Gay, the aircraft that dropped the bomb over Hiroshima. “We are displaying it,” he says, “in all of its glory as a magnificent technological achievement”.

Despite such sentiment, Americans must understand that living with the bomb and possible annihilation for more than six decades is enough! And now in the aftermath of 9-11, Muslim fanatics are searching for these weapons. If they can steal or buy a nuke, it is certain they will detonate it in the United States or Israel.

We should know the nuclear bomb is neither a battlefield weapon nor an object of worship. Using this technology for electricity is a dangerous delusion. Nuclear power plants never cease poisoning people and nature. The wastes of these factories will be hazardous for hundreds and thousands of years.

Rotblat was concerned that advances in science or unrestricted scientific research could possibly lead to the wholesale destruction of mankind. He suggested a Hippocratic-like oath for scientists, promising not to subvert science. He also thought that states ought to impose restrictions on biological and physics research.

If the teachers abandon the bomb perhaps politicians will follow.

  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. All


Discuss in our Forums

See what other readers are saying about this article!

Click here to read & post comments.

14 posts so far.

Share this:
reddit this reddit thisbookmark with del.icio.us Del.icio.usdigg thisseed newsvineSeed NewsvineStumbleUpon StumbleUponsubmit to propellerkwoff it

About the Author

Evaggelos Vallianatos is the author of several books, including Poison Spring (Bloomsbury Press, 2014).

Other articles by this Author

All articles by Evaggelos Vallianatos

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Article Tools
Comment 14 comments
Print Printable version
Subscribe Subscribe
Email Email a friend
Advertisement

About Us Search Discuss Feedback Legals Privacy