For some years after the Soviet Union collapsed, America’s nuclear forces — the missiles, the subs, the silos, the bombers, the nuclear artillery shells and mines along with the vast hidden nuclear geography of plants, factories, transport systems, and storage facilities that crisscross our land — entered a kind of limbo. These forces and their support systems, which had ostensibly been called into being only by that other, now departed, superpower, had no mission, no purpose when facing the pygmy “enemy” nations of this world. And yet, deeply entrenched — literally, financially, psychologically — they did not go away either. Collectively, they were like some enormous semi-hibernating beast awaiting its moment to reawaken.
Now, with the Bush administration, the nuclear beast has reawakened with a start and is being prodded into action. A threatening nuclear posture statement, dismantled treaties, a global preemptive strike doctrine backed by further threats of use, plans to restart nuclear testing, plans to use and further develop nuclear-tipped “bunker busters,” a stated willingness to employ nuclear weapons to deter the use of chemical or biological weapons against American forces in the field — the urge to find uses for this most destructive and useless of weapons gains greater traction all the time, while nuclear weaponry, once again a global currency of state power and pride, proliferates.
In an elegant essay in the Insight section of today’s San Francisco Chronicle, Jon Else, professor at the University of California Journalism School and creator of a fine film, The Day After Trinity, about the making of the first atomic bomb, takes us back to the original “ground zero” and reminds us of how the journey to our moment began. I’ve added a tiny piece from the Christian Science Monitor (picked up off the globalsecurity.org web site) speculating about how we might use nuclear weapons in a war on Iraq. The fact that such a humdrum little article can appear says all too much about the moment we’re in. Tom
The man who gave the world the bomb
Jon Else
December 15, 2002
The San Francisco Chronicle.At just the moment when the United States contemplates home-grown A- bombs in Iraq and communist North Korea, newly released documents have rekindled the debate over whether J. Robert Oppenheimer, “the father of the atomic bomb,” was himself a secret Communist in the 1930s. As we dance toward war in the Middle East, we should remember how half a century ago Oppenheimer, perhaps against his better judgment, helped set in motion an arms race from which we may never escape.
Whether or not the enigmatic physicist, chosen by President Franklin Roosevelt’s generals in 1942 to oversee the pioneering nuclear weapons work at Los Alamos, lied about being a member of a secret Communist cell, as reported in Gregg Herken’s recent book, “The Brotherhood of the Bomb,” is an intriguing question.
Jon Else teaches at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism and is the director of “The Day After Trinity: J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Atomic Bomb.”
At just the moment when the United States contemplates home-grown A- bombs in Iraq and communist North Korea, newly released documents have rekindled the debate over whether J. Robert Oppenheimer, “the father of the atomic bomb,” was himself a secret Communist in the 1930s. As we dance toward war in the Middle East, we should remember how half a century ago Oppenheimer, perhaps against his better judgment, helped set in motion an arms race from which we may never escape.
Whether or not the enigmatic physicist, chosen by President Franklin Roosevelt’s generals in 1942 to oversee the pioneering nuclear weapons work at Los Alamos, lied about being a member of a secret Communist cell, as reported in Gregg Herken’s recent book, “The Brotherhood of the Bomb,” is an intriguing question.
Jon Else teaches at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism and is the director of “The Day After Trinity: J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Atomic Bomb.”
To read more of Else click here
What might a US nuclear strike in Iraq look like?
By Matthew Clark
Christian Science Monitor
December 12, 2002This familiar question takes on greater relevance after the US Wednesday chose to remind the world that it is ready to use nuclear weapons if necessary to retaliate against any nation using weapons of mass destruction.
Clearly aimed at Iraq, this reminder was part of a joint report from US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and US Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge called the “National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction.”
Most analysts believe that the US will not use nuclear weapons against Iraq.“From a military standpoint, [a nuclear attack] doesn’t accomplish any more than conventional weapons would,” said Tim Brown, a senior analyst at Globalsecurity.org. “It would be seen as complete overkill.”
But, in the unlikely event of a nuclear attack, Brown believes the US would be probably first use the B-61 Mod-7.
To read more of this Christian Science Monitor piece click here