Thoughts on the Bomb

...I am not suggesting that we should madly bluff, or that we should swagger around with a nuclear chip on our shoulder, but rather that we should stoically accept the fact of the Bomb's existence, recognize the possibility of our eventually having recourse to it—while straining every effort to avoid and nullify this possibility...

...We believe that a small country like the Federal Republic can still best protect itself and can still most further world peace if it positively and voluntarily renounces the possession of atomic weapons of any kind...

...It is a maddening feature of extreme situations that one's moral choice is irremediably personal and contingent...

...Those who died in past battles are quite dead, even if we are alive...

...This, oddly enough, was the original idea behind NATO...

...What right, they ask, do we have to make decisions that so radically affect future generations...

...The Bomb contributes to world peace and freedom...

...The Christian Church, Herr von Weizsacker explains, cannot possibly sanction the use of the Bomb...

...For that would merely encourage Russia to be bolder and more adventurous in its policies, and this in time is likely to give rise to situations where all real choice will have escaped us, and we in our turn should feel we had to use it...

...The choice for Europe is not between servitude and survival on the one hand and catastrophe on the other...

...On the other hand, it cannot possibly suggest the renunciation of the Bomb either, "for she does not know, none of us knows, what such a suggestion would mean...

...publicly standing by this renunciation against all criticism and coercion...

...and it is a little pathetic to listen to the demands that "Britain should give a lead" when one knows full well that there are so few who would see any reason to follow...

...They could do a great deal, if they so desired...

...Not that there is nothing England, and the countries of Western Europe, could do...

...The countries of Western Europe, taken together, have the population, the industrial resources and the trained personnel to match Soviet Russia in conventional military strength—if they want to...

...So are many of his remarks about the need for an international "easing of tensions"—an overworked cliche that has not yet lost all its substance...

...The enormity of such a decision is awful...

...and as for Russia—the Russians are so little interested in Britain's "moral leadership" that they have instructed the British Communist party not to support the campaign for unilateral disarmament: The party line is that Britain should keep the Bomb while leaving the American alliance...

...These men are moderate Socialists politically, and are as appalled as anyone else at the very thought of using an H-bomb...

...President Truman, whose decision it was to drop the first atom bomb on Hiroshima, has never shown the least awareness that his action was other than routine...

...It universalizes and makes common what was once an extreme situation...

...But I think such a demand is hypocritical unless it is conjoined to an insistence on longer terms of compulsory military service and the diversion of our resources to the maintenance of a very large, well-equipped, well-trained military establishment based on non-nuclear armaments...

...and their state would not have been rendered more deathly in the slightest if, ten minutes after they drew their last breath, a natural catastrophe had destroyed all living creatures...

...Since the only purpose of these tests is to make nuclear arms the standard fighting weapons of the services, I sympathize with the demand for their cessation: We already have a sufficient quantity and variety of atomic and nuclear weapons to deter any enemy from casually having recourse to them...

...and (2) that those who died in all previous wars are somehow the less dead because we, the sons of the survivors, still inhabit the earth and enjoy the fruits thereof...

...On no account is a signatory prepared to take any part whatever in the production, trial or use of atomic weapons...

...Priestley can demand unilateral disarmament while sedulously avoiding any explicit adherence to pacifism...

...Surrender on the spot...

...In his lecture he quotes from this declaration as follows: "We declare faith in a freedom such as the Western world today upholds against Communism...

...Of Herr von Weizsacker's profound sincerity as a Christian there can be no doubt...

...Such an eventuality is by no means unimaginable—and there is a strong case for the view that it would be the more easily imaginable if the Western governments were to accede to Lord Russell's persuasion...

...Since the facts of the case do not permit such an unconditional affirmation, one ought not be surprised at the sophistical way in which these crusades simplify the issue...

...It has apparently never even occurred to Commander King-Hall that the first thing Russia would do, in an occupied Britain, would be to construct missile bases of her own, pointing westward this time...

...But I cannot understand how someone like Lord Russell or Mr...

...As for the wretched American or Russian scientists, they presumably are in captivity to the Damonie der Macht, and everyone knows that there is nothing at all to be done for this condition...

...The particular assertion that it is not desirable for Germany and other smaller countries to possess atomic weapons is sensible enough...

...This problem, of course, presents itself to different countries in different shapes...

...It is most unlikely that France would be impressed by all these eccentric goings-on across the channel...

...Neither commandments, casuistry nor custom can guide us in circumstances where any particular course of action is, on a human estimate, both irreproachable and indefensible...

...One might even suggest that in the agitation against the Bomb there is a last exhibition of the imperial mentality...

...But what if the wicked were so affected by their noble example, were so bitten with remorse, that they followed suit...

...We do not feel competent to make concrete suggestions toward a policy for the Great Powers...

...And if we in our turn are wiped out by the Bomb, we shall be neither more nor less dead than they...

...This is not to suggest that the H-bomb has "changed nothing...

...One can scarcely believe it...

...I cannot believe the United States will be stirred to its core...

...and "we do not feel competent to make concrete suggestions toward a policy for the Great Powers How lucky to be a scientist in Germany today, where righteousness is buttressed by ineffectualness...

...And rarely can modesty have been so certain of being its own reward...

...It is not the habit of historians to sneer at those unfortunate medieval Jews who accepted baptism rather than death...

...There seems to be a great deal of fuss over the testing of nuclear weapons—but astonishingly little over their possible use...

...The individual Christian, however, does have an escape from this dilemma...

...Putting it in such terms, one sees how overwhelming are the reasons for pessimism...

...It would mean large standing armies, long-term conscription, a halt to the rise in the standards of living...

...That choice is out of its hands...

...Just how much high-minded equivocation the question of the Bomb can provoke may be seen in the Burge Memorial Lecture (Ethical and Political Problems of the Atomic Age) recently given in English by the noted German physicist Carl-Friedrich von Weizsacker...

...One of the ironies of the present excitement in Britain over this issue is its slight bearing on reality...

...Even if every Englishman put on a dhoti, chanted the Mahabharata, and became as passive as an oyster, it would not have much effect on the present configuration of world politics, except to add a dash of color...

...It would mean, in fact, precisely all those things which the Socialist parties, now leading the campaign against the Bomb, traditionally abhor and are most unlikely to accept...

...For it would require some sacrifices...

...The line of thought, proceeding from the most elevated of premises, begins to wander precisely as it nears the point where conclusions have to be reached and decisions made...

...I can understand how, in this dilemma, many decent people might seek refuge in pacifism— though there is also the prospect that, in the endless and mindless conflict of nuclear-armed desperadoes that human history will then become, they may have opted for both pacifism and the extinction of the human race...

...This would, to be sure, mean a perceptible militarization of American life and, as with our European allies, a cutting into our material standards of living...

...What the Bomb does is to pose this question concretely to each and every one of us...

...But if the pretense by the Pentagon that the Bomb is "only another weapon" is a flight from these novel perplexities, so is the "moral" crusade against the Bomb per se...

...but they do, and until international relations become less barbarous than they are, there will always be circumstances in which intelligent and sober men might feel that they ought to be used...

...While it is perhaps impossible for the United States, with its world-wide responsibilities, to be prepared to meet all military challenges with conventional armament, it could nevertheless approach this ideal instead (as it is now doing) of running away from it, by making nuclear weapons themselves "conventional...

...Or is it essential to the abolitionist position that evil be not only triumphant but conscienceless as well...

...He can simply opt out—refusing to participate "in whatever has to do with atomic weapons...

...This is, it can be seen, a very modest position...

...It is, morally, the identical question the medieval Jews (in Christian lands) and the medieval Christians (in Moslem lands) had to face when they were offered the choice between forced conversion and annihilation...

...nor of his scientific authority...

...I only wish I heard them saying so...

...In particular: Are they worth dying for now and in this way...

...Both assumptions are, of course, erroneous...

...One grows weary of repeating the obvious, but it remains true: The problem of the Bomb is the problem of the cold war...

...Reply in kind, knowing only too well that this step might lead to full-scale nuclear war...

...It strikes me as well worth the cost, and I have a feeling it must strike other Americans the same way...

...The real European choice is between a military readiness to defend itself with conventional arms, which means having to do without as many television sets, cigarettes and washing machines as it would like...

...We shall be faced with the alternatives of participating in the killing of millions—perhaps hundreds of millions—or of announcing that the world henceforth will be the property of the desperado...

...And there's the rub...

...it also threatens to destroy world peace and freedom...

...One thing, however, is certain: The surest way of magnifying the risk of nuclear warfare is to paralyze ourselves before the very idea of it...

...Above all, they could exert themselves to see to it that the defense of Western Europe is conceived and conducted in terms of conventional armaments rather than atomic ones—that if and when a crisis arises it would not necessarily degenerate into a holocaust...

...The question is, always has been, and always will be: Are the values we die for worth dying for...

...But we consider this means of insuring peace and freedom as unreliable in the long run, and we consider the danger that would, in the event of breakdown, accrue to be fatal...

...As to whether one would go so far as to endanger the whole future existence of the human race—that is the sort of question it is impossible to answer in the abstract...

...It is, morally, the identical question the ancient Greeks had to contemplate during the wars between the city-states, when the victor more often than not slaughtered the entire male population and sold the women and children into slavery...

...Who were more "justified" in their action, it is beyond human capacity to decide...

...Their attitude can most accurately be described as an impassioned defeatism, and I see precious little morality in it...

...One wishes the damn things didn't exist...

...but neither is it their habit to scorn those who accepted death for themselves (and their families, or indeed for their entire communities) rather than baptism...

...We do not deny that the mutual fear of the hydrogen bomb contributes considerably toward the maintenance of peace throughout the whole world and of freedom throughout part of it...

...But it does not transcend that situation...

...But in Hungary, at that time, in those conditions, they know they would have had to use it...

...Mindlessness, indeed, seems to me as much a by-product of the Bomb as radioactivity...

...nor of his personal courage...

...It may be that, were they sufficiently hard pressed, they would take refuge at the extremity of passive resistance and declare that, in the kind of intolerable situation a particularly nasty mind might imagine, they would commit suicide—sacrificing themselves so that the world may survive...

...and an unqualified reliance on the deterrent value of the Bomb, with all that this implies...

...Nor, when one turns to the United States, are there any grounds for optimism...

...But as for the rest—one really needs to be intellectually double-jointed to get a grip on it...

...One wonders: Are there in truth no circumstances to which the proponents of unilateral nuclear disarmament would feel that the destruction of human life on earth presents itself as a possible alternative...

...Once one has made the moral choice between the conflicting values that have given rise to this war, it would seem dishonorable to raise the question of whether one would die for them...

...If Herr von Weizsacker has provoked me to a testiness of tone, I can only plead that my own quota for the tolerance of mindless rhetoric about the Bomb has been exhausted...

...But the idea lapsed when the European nations failed to produce the necessary soldiers, as a consequence of which American troops in the European theater were supplied with atomic weapons...

...Mindless, too, was the Pentagon's postwar decision, for reasons of "economy" and domestic politics, to place the armed forces on an "atomic" basis...

...but not otherwise meddling with world politics, except for an occasional lecture...

...But what one does miss is a simplicity of character and a firmness of mind that would allow his ideals to make some visible mark on reality...

...On the contrary, it has drastically changed and complicated a great many things in the realm of politics, war and diplomacy...

...Only a pacifist has the logical right to insist that nuclear weapons ought not be used by the West under any conditions...

...Not heroic ones—though in a way these are the easiest to demand—but small, nagging, personal sacrifices...

...At times, indeed, they are downright disingenuous...

...Much of what he says about the difficulty inherent in such an "absolute" deterrent as the Bomb, and the various temptations it offers to a political leader, is very sound if familiar...

...And mindless now in Britain is the self-flagellant hysteria which, impetuously conceding liberty as the price of survival, may yet have the opportunity to discover that survival is not so easily purchased...

...Herr von Weizsacker is a member of the group of prominent German scientists who, a year ago, signed a well-publicized "declaration of conscience" with regard to atomic weapons...

...I have been told by several men who played a leading role in the Hungarian Revolution that, had they possessed a stock of H-bombs, they would certainly have used them, regardless of the consequences...

...As if we did not make such decisions every day, and most emphatically when we decide to bear children in the first place...

...But in anyone familiar with German moral-political literature over the past half-century the lecture will evoke disturbing echoes...

...nor of any of the other virtues one can think to ascribe to a man...

...The point is worth making, because there seem to be widespread assumptions that (1) if the Bomb extinguishes the whole lot of us we shall in some way be more dead than those who, in the past, wrere killed by less sensational methods...

...To take one instance: What if, in the course of a "local" war, Korean-style, things go so badly for the Communists that, in desperation, they employ "tactical" nuclear or atomic weapons...

...One of the more melancholy aspects of the crusade for unilateral nuclear disarmament, represented in Britain by Lord Russell, J. B. Priestley and Stephen King-Hall, is precisely that it is a crusade, a profession of unconditional righteousness...

...What should we do then...

...Irving Kristol, co-editor with Stephen Spender of Encounter magazine in London, was formerly an associate editor at Commentary magazine in New York...