A Black Falcon Wrote:The most dangerous moment almost certainly has to be the Cuban Missile Crisis.

(21st December 2011, 12:42 AM)Weltall Wrote: It's been neglected for ages. So, let's get our debate on.

One of the most hotly-debated subjects of the last century has been whether or not America was justified in using atomic weapons against Japan to end the second World War.

I am not the man of black and white morality I was years ago, which is why I can only say that the ends justified the means in this particular scenario. Certainly, the reason America used the atomic bomb had everything to do with the short-term goal of defeating a very obstinate enemy. Certainly, there weren't too many people involved with the decision who were thinking of how this event would influence the course of human history thereafter. As we all know, the weapon had its effect: Japan realized that fiery nuclear death was the only alternative to surrender, and wisely decided against fiery nuclear death.

But, was this necessary? One opinion is that there is no justification for using nuclear weapons for any reason, towards any end--a laudable goal if perhaps too idealistic. Another is that one was necessary and two was overkill. Maybe this was true.

However, I am firmly convinced that the destruction of Hiroshima, in spite of how horrible it was for those who fell victim to it, the most fortunate decision of the entire 20th century.

Once atoms were confirmed to exist, it was probably inevitable that the potential of the atom to produce amazing amounts of energy would soon be realized. It was certainly inevitable that this revelation would result in a drive to weaponize this phenomenon. It is a simple, yet basically true, statement to say that nuclear weapons were going to happen after certain scientific discoveries were made.

The United States won the nuclear race by several lengths, thanks in large part to the defection of several genius physicists from Europe before and during the rise of National Socialism and Italian fascism. Germany and Japan both had at least some interest in developing atomic weapons, the Germans especially. Had they not been so relentlessly xenophobic, the Nazis may very well have acquired the bomb before the United States. Clearly, it was to the world's benefit that America won this race, because America was, in relation to Nazi Germany, not as crazy and bloodthirsty. I doubt anybody believes the Nazis would have hesitated to use atomic weapons with little or no discretion against anybody they liked, especially if they had exclusive access to the weapons. America simply has not been so inclined. But, America did use two of them, and on civilian population centers rather than military targets.

I believe this was absolutely necessary. Not for the purposes of making Japan surrender; any successful demonstration of the atomic bomb would have probably done that trick. In this, I think the Nagasaki bomb was dropped in the belief that it was necessary to prove to the Japanese military establishment that we weren't fucking around and we could keep on doing this if we wanted to. Maybe this is true, maybe this isn't true. Maybe the destruction of Hiroshima would have been enough to convince Japan to sit down and shut up. We'll never know for sure.

However, Hiroshima had to happen, and the people living there had to suffer and die. A terrible fate for them, and I don't wish to make light of it, but in a sense, they were sacrifices to the future of humanity. Their deaths were not in vain. In fact, I believe they may helped save the world.

Given the situation, completing the Manhattan Project and getting functional atomic weapons was a high priority of the Allies. They were some of the very first, and the destructive power may have been exponentially greater than anything mankind had come up with previously, but they were followed in the coming decades by warheads with yields exponentially more destructive still than even Fat Man or Little Boy. The bombs dropped on Japan were some of the weakest ever made until research into tactical nuclear weaponry began decades later.

This is important because we were able to see, firsthand, just what these things could do. There exists much visual material and in-depth description of the devastation, the death, the suffering, and the slow, terrible destruction to the body brought about by radiation poisoning and full-body burns. We needed to see these things. When the physicists and engineers tested prototypes in the New Mexico desert, they saw how much shit you could blow up, but they had no idea of what the true human toll would be if one of these things fell on a major city. Hiroshima gave us this lesson, and it is a lesson we absolutely had to have in a world in which nuclear weapons were inevitable.

Imagine if the bombs had not been used. A land invasion of Japan would have probably happened, and if the estimates were anywhere near accurate, the final death toll would have been far greater, for both sides, than what the bombs produced. This is, actually, rather beside the point. Once the United States had a nuclear weapons arsenal, the Soviet Union had to match it. As a result, ten years after the end of World War II, you had the world's two superpowers on their way to practically bristling with city-erasing weapons of doom and well on their way to inventing missile delivery systems to carry these things thousands of miles. Yet, the Cold War lasted close to 50 years without a single one of these things ever being exploded in anger. We like to attribute this to the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction. This is true.

But, imagine how differently this might have gone if MAD were based upon a theory, rather than the hard and terrible reality witnessed by Japan? One of the reasons America wasted little time in using its new bomb was that, as previously mentioned, we only had theories about how devastating its effects would be. People, both individuals and groups, are willing to do dangerous things if the dangers exist to them as mere hypotheses. Hiroshima and Nagasaki gave us stark evidence we absolutely had to have. We now knew just what these weapons could do. We now understood how terrible it would be to see our own cities destroyed, our own people incinerated. We were now able to comprehend that, if dozens, hundreds, even thousands, of these things were used at once, the actual end of the world could be a very real possibility.

If we did not have this lesson, is it so hard to imagine that some flashpoint might have seen either the United States or the Soviet Union launching in response to some real or perceived threat? To me, it is not hard at all, nor is it hard to imagine that the other party would respond in kind with everything it had, using hundreds of missiles with destructive power hundreds of times that of the bombs dropped on Japan. It is not hard to imagine that our world would be a nearly-lifeless hell afterwards. The lesson of nuclear warfare would be learned then, if anybody survived to learn it.

For that reason, it is plain to me that America's use of the bomb was necessary for the peace of the world, both in the immediate sense of ending the worst war mankind ever fought, and to giving people to come a very good reason to not ever want to launch any more of them.