How We Learned to Love the Bomb

...The Bomb's debut as a shatterer of worlds sealed the most promising exit from the arms race: nuclear disarmament...

...There was also the problem of science's own insularity and remoteness from the real word—qualities that screened out the unorthodox, the unquantifiable, the emotional, the unthinkable: a remoteness which disqualified science for decisionmaking in a democracy...

...about the health effects of atmospheric testing...

...Their efforts to secure international control of atomic energy foundered on the parochialism of petty politicians...

...Management of the nuclear arms race, like piloting a commercial airplane, was not something for the untutored, the fainthearted, or the dreamy...

...In an era of dynamic industrial growth, especially in military and nuclear technologies, opposing the nuclear arms race had evolved into a highly sophisticated art of managing deterrence...

...Was it not in the name of deterrence, the peace advocates ask, that fission bombs became fusion bombs...

...A busy revolving door linked the two camps together...

...But Feld, von Hippel, and others were "pragmatic," so they accepted "nuclear deterrence"— the doctrine that, given the reality of nuclear arms, the weapons themselves must serve as the preventers of nuclear war...

...Was it not in the name of deterrence that the Trident submarine-launched missile followed Poseidon which, in turn, followed Polaris...

...In a world where nuclear weapons systems, like other aspects of technology, are subject to unending innovation and growth, it has been an attempt to channel the arms race along the lines of maximum stability...

...Events have since convinced me that I was indeed wrong—that Americans made what may have been a fatal mistake when we left the shaping of the nuclear age to the people who had brought us the Bomb...

...they provided the ammunition that shot down such unneeded weapons as the antiballistic missile and paved the way for the first strategic arms limitation treaties...

...Samuel H. Day Jr...

...And widespread opposition to nuclear power in the 1970s raised questions about the military atom as well...

...In the 1960s, student activism challenged academic ties with the military...

...Arms control has meant accepting nuclear weapons as a fact of life and devising arrangements to minimize the possibility of their use...

...And it was to be expected that others would defer to them...

...In 1979, as managing editor of The Progressive, I took part in an exercise challenging the secrecy with which the U.S...

...Some of the weapons establishment's most vocal and effective critics were also its paid consultants...

...about the desirability of such innovations as antiballistic missiles, multiple warhead missiles, maneuverable re-entry vehicles, super-hardened silos, and the like...

...In the furor that followed the Government's suppression of Howard Morland's article about Hbomb secrecy, none were more outraged by this defiance of the secrecy mystique than the leaders of the arms control community...

...Iwas an eighteen-year-old seaman on a freighter in the South Atlantic on August 6, 1945, when the ship's radio crackled out the startling and all-but-incomprehensible news of an American superweapon that promised to bring a quick end to World War II...

...Early events seemed to vindicate our faith...

...Today, more multitudes are arriving not just to survey the once cloistered groves of arms controlbut to stay...

...It was clear to me that right was on their side in their differences with the Pentagon...

...The nuclear arms race could serve only to strengthen the traditional links between science and its patrons in industry and the military...

...But hindsight shows that the efforts of the atomic scientists were bound to fail...

...But their circumstances did not so readily equip them to deal with the new reality they had wrought...

...Lacking an independent base from which to challenge the military and commercial exploitation of the atom, the atomic scientists could muster barely more than token opposition born of their personal guilt...

...Occasionally there would be rumbles from behind the scenes—about whether to build the H-bomb...

...The participants were not unmindful of the underlying cosmic issues, but these were debates from which moral judgments, sentiment, and gut feeling were carefully excluded...

...To begin with, the struggle to prevent a nuclear arms race had already been fought and lost before the weapon's existence was known to the world...

...With missionary zeal, the atomic scientists emerged from their secret laboratories to proclaim that their invention had rendered warfare obsolete— that humanity had no choice but to make peace with this unimaginably destructive power...

...Indeed, it seems clear that the physical scientists and engineers who carried out the Manhattan Project would be unlikely candidates to lead others to the sort of social transformation the atomic bomb required...

...But in reality the relationship was more congenial...

...But the scientific community did wage a successful campaign for a civilian U.S...

...And still the arms race continues...

...When I joined the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in 19741 needed a glossary to keep up...

...Department of Energy shielded its hydrogen bomb program from public examination...

...The leadership of the arms control community included many whose abhorrence of nuclear war was beyond question—such as M.I.T...

...Such intrusions into atomic weapons issues caused as much consternation in the arms control community as in the Pentagon...

...is a contributing editor of The Progressive...

...This development has its roots in the late 1950s, when environmentalists expressed concern about the effect of radioactive fallout from weapons tests...

...Or would such weapons make a holocaust more likely by eroding the "firebreak" between conventional and nuclear war...

...physicist Bernard Feld, who was torn by guilt for his part in the making of the Nagasaki bomb, and Princeton's Frank von Hippel, grandson of James Franck, the German refugee physicist who led the unsuccessful wartime move against dropping the Bomb on civilian targets...

...But, looking back to 1945, it is difficult to imagine how America's destiny could have been worse managed...

...Within what limits of "circular error probability" (a measurement of accuracy) did an intercontinental ballistic missile become "destabilizing...

...The route taken instead, with the atomic scientists pointing the way, was a process the world has come to know as "arms control"—the management of the nuclear balance of terror...

...The last lingering hopes for avoiding an arms race were destroyed in the summer of 1949, when the Soviets broke America's nuclear monopoly (long before many U.S...

...The scientists were teaching us how to live with the Bomb...

...Atomic scientists may despair at the lack of sophistication of these concerned people...

...Was it not in the name of deterrence that the Atlas intercontinental missile gave way to Titan, which gave way to Minuteman, which gave way to Peacekeeper...

...The single apocalyptic question raised by the Bomb's appearance came, over time, to be diffused into issues of a more manageable size...

...If The two superpowers alone have accumulated more than enough bombs to render the planet unfit for human habitation...

...The voices calling for disarmament are still clearly in the minority, but they are no longer timorous or defensive...

...But it was a debate that seemed increasingly remote...

...To the uninitiated, this tension looked like a contest of doves and hawks—peace-minded scientists against pro-nuclear warriors...

...It was inevitable that those who had introduced the fury of the atomic bomb would take the lead in trying to bring about its control...

...Would the development of additional battlefield nuclear weapons (for example, "enhanced radiation warheads" for Europe) strengthen the credibility of NATO's nuclear deterrent and thus make nuclear war less likely...

...Should the Pentagon be encouraged to develop nuclear submarines, which are relatively invulnerable and therefore a good deterrent—but which are also capable of firing first-strike weapons...

...But maybejust maybe—they have what it takes to pull us through...

...The field has become peopled with millions of Europeans concerned about the specter of "limited nuclear war" on their continent, with feminists who perceive the Bomb as part of their own oppression, with religiously motivated activists moved by a deep stirring in many of the world's churches...

...Was not deterrence behind the placement of Pershing II missiles within eight minutes of Moscow...

...An arms control expert's stock in trade was credibility with the "defense community" and knowledge of facts in a field strictly curtailed by rules of secrecy...

...they fought for a ban on nuclear weapons testing...

...Nevertheless, the responsibility for coping with the Bomb fell to science by default, commissioned by a preoccupied, overawed, and deferential public...

...It was common for a critic to submit to security checks in order to gain access to the "secret restricted data" necessary for informed criticism...

...Arguing that unilateral use of the weapon would provoke a postwar nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union (which had been excluded from the bomb project), the scientists urged that the atomic bomb not be treated as just another weapon...

...This further limited the circle of participants and defined the terms of debate...

...The best evidence of our present danger can be seen in today's balance of terror: 1! Our arsenal has been built up and fine-tuned to the point where it is virtually impossible for this nation to engage in large-scale hostilities without starting a nuclear war...

...These Utopian hopes were stillborn in the fires of Hiroshima and Nagasaki...

...Nuclear weapons development became a central feature of the Cold War, particularly for the United States, which felt a greater need for the worldwide projection of massive firepower...

...In recent years, however, an outpouring of newcomers has given a fresh dimension to the struggle against the Bomb...

...It had become the turf of atomic scientists and their fellow liberals in academia and government, applying what restraints they could bring to bear on the appetites of their colleagues in the nuclear weapons establishment...

...It The growing offensive capabilities of the United States and the Soviet Union increase the possibility of nuclear war by hair-trigger accident or miscalculation...

...True, the world has thus far escaped nuclear war...

...These were the kinds of questions the arms control experts at Berkeley, Cornell, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and in the liberal Federation of American Scientists asked themselves—and wrote scholarly monographs about...

...In the spring of 1945, when the collapse of the Third Reich made it certain that the Axis powers would not be the'first to develop the atomic bomb—and with the first field test of an American nuclear device still weeks away—scientists in the wartime Manhattan Project pressed for reconsideration of the program's aims...

...While the outside world worried about Vietnam and Watergate and hoped for the best in the Middle East, the arms control experts in academia jousted urbanely with their counterparts from the State Department, the strategic think tanks, and the U.S...

...The abolition of nuclear weapons—disarmament— has begun to rival nuclear deterrence as a rallying cry...

...Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, which was then on its way to becoming a subsidiary of the Pentagon...

...What went wrong...

...Not until the mid-1970s, when I undertook a four-year apprenticeship in these issues as editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the international journal founded by scientists to warn of the approach of nuclear doomsday, did I begin to wonder whether my long-held confidence had been misplaced...

...If the atomic scientists lost as often as they won, it was plainly not for want of trying...

...In time, science's nuclear stewardship became the prerogative of a self-selected few...

...The reinvigorated peace movement is increasingly challenging the nuclear deterrence doctrine of the arms control community...

...For them, more than for most, the Bomb opened up opportunities for career growth, professional development, fame and fortune, and public acceptance and support...

...Nuclear arms issues in the 1950s and 1960s retreated behind a veil of secrecy and specialization that effectively excluded most of the public...

...One suggestion was that the Japanese be invited with others to a remote Pacific isle to view its awesome powers...

...They made clear their distaste for the hydrogen bomb...

...An unusual combination of circumstances— epic discoveries in theoretical physics, the exigencies of a great war, unlimited access to money and the ear of power—gave atomic scientists their godlike dimensions in 1945...

...about the spread of nuclear weapons to smaller, "less responsible" countries...

...experts thought it possible...

...To me, a nonscientist unschooled in nuclear arms doctrine, little happened in those first decades of the atomic age to shake my confidence in the ability of nuclear scientists to safeguard the public interest...

...It seemed logical to me, a fly-speck half a world away, and to others of my generation, that those who had unlocked the secret of the atomic bomb might also have the best notion of how to put the vast new force to good use in the postwar world...

...Atomic Energy Commission, designed to keep control of the atom out of the hands of the military...

...The incident was a lesson in the self-serving mutual protectionism of the nuclear weapons enterprise and its loyal opposition in the arms control community—a symbiosis which has helped propel the world toward its present fix...