The Second Coming of the Nuclear Age

Fred Charles Iklé

From Foreign Affairs, January/February 1996

Article preview: first 500 of 3,447 words total.

Summary:  Nuclear weapons were used for the first and only time in World War II, and the world has grown accustomed to their nonuse. But the overwhelming deterrent forces that worked during the Cold War will not provide protection against the new threats: terrorism and catastrophic accident. The arsenals and mindsets of the past half-century present a formidable barrier to change, but the United States must lead the way in preventing nuclear weapons from becoming acceptable.

Fred Charles Iklé was Under Secretary of Defense for Policy in the Reagan administration and Director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency under President Ford. He is affiliated with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

A PLAN TO CONTROL THE ATOMIC MENACE

Half a century after it began, the nuclear drama has reached the conclusion of its first act--a rather happy ending in spite of the gloomy prospects for civilization that darkened the stage at the outset. This respite, though, is not a lasting redemption from the dangers of nuclear warfare. Whether by accident, because of a terrorist act, or as part of a military campaign, a nuclear bomb might explode someday, unleashing forces that would transform the international system far more profoundly than did the collapse of the Soviet empire. The end of the present era, in which nuclear weapons are plentiful but never used, would be sudden, and the major nuclear powers are ill prepared for the revolution in strategic thinking this event would compel.

Fifty years ago the atomic devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had an immense emotional impact. The long period of nonuse that followed has shriveled public awareness of the bomb's power to merely a faint apprehension. Just one or two destructive nuclear detonations would revive that anxiety everywhere, and Americans would find it much harder to cope with these reawakened passions than in August 1945. After their great victory in World War II, Americans rode a wave of optimism and were comforted by the knowledge that, at least for a while, no other state possessed atomic technology. Unlike after a future nuclear explosion, in 1945 there were no threats of nuclear revenge, no arsenals with thousands of nuclear warheads, no nuclear "guarantees" that had abruptly disintegrated, no disproved theories of deterrence, no failed safeguards and controls. Above all, there was no worldwide presumption of continued nonuse that had unexpectedly been shattered. Before such a calamity occurs, the United States must lead the great powers in planning for the international control of nuclear weapons.

USED TO NONUSE

The nuclear threat appears to have faded only because no nuclear bomb has been detonated in the past 50 years, except at secluded test sites. And for the last 30 years most tests have been hidden events, tucked away deep underground. The atmosphere after Hiroshima was quite different. In an internal government memorandum from the fall of 1945, Under Secretary of State Dean Acheson--that hard-nosed realist--described the innovation of atomic weaponry as "a discovery more revolutionary in human society than the invention of the wheel." He added, "If the invention is developed and used destructively, there will be no victor, and there may be no civilization remaining." Today, a tough-minded senior U.S. official would deem this prose mawkish. But if warnings from men like Acheson, "father of the atomic bomb" J. Robert Oppenheimer, and financier Bernard Baruch (appointed American ambassador to the U.N. Atomic Energy Commission in 1946) at the dawn of the nuclear age sound like hyperbole today, it is not because nuclear arms have become less dangerous, but rather because we have grown accustomed to their nonuse.

Following Japan's surrender, some strategic thinkers in the United States began to explore ...

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