On 27 May 2016, US President Barack Obama
became the first sitting president of the United States to visit Hiroshima, the
first city bombed using nuclear weapons by the United States. The Nobel Peace
Prize winner spoke eloquently, saying, “We have known the agony of war. Let us
now find the courage, together, to spread peace, and pursue a world without
nuclear weapons.” He continued, “That is a future we can choose, a future in
which Hiroshima and Nagasaki are known not as the dawn of atomic warfare but as
the start of our own moral awakening.” But what he did not do, was apologize.
The United States remain the only country
in the world to have ever used nuclear weapons on an enemy. And despite then
President Truman’s steadfast claim that the use of nuclear weapons was
justified by the fact that it ‘saved millions of lives’ and ‘ended the war
early,’ the facts oppose President Truman’s assertion. If the aim was to
impress the Japanese with the United States’ military might, then why were the bombs
dropped on cities with significant civilian populations? Together, the two
bombs killed 127 000 Japanese civilians immediately, with the total death toll
reaching 200 000 when deaths due to radiation sickness are taken into
account.
Japan was already on the cusp of surrender.
Militarily, the country had already been defeated since June 1945. Japan’s once
mighty Imperial Navy and its air force had been almost completely wiped out.
American planes flew at will over the country without opposition. Tokyo had been
firebombed since March 1945, and by May 1945 about 145 square kilometres of the
city were destroyed. 100 000 Japanese were killed, with a million left
homeless. Oil had run out in the country by April 1945. Japan was beaten
already.
Even before the Potsdam declaration, the
Japanese had offered a surrender basically identical to the one ultimately
accepted by the Americans at the formal surrender ceremony on September 2 - that
is, complete surrender of everything but the person of the Emperor. But it was
that very last condition that prompted the bombs – anything other than
unconditional surrender was not acceptable to the United States. Ironically,
the Emperor was eventually retained as a symbol of continued authority anyway.
In 1963, US General (and later President)
Dwight D Eisenhower said “The Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't
necessary to hit them with that awful thing ... I hated to see our country be
the first to use such a weapon." Even the United States Strategic Bombing
Survey rejected the notion that Japan gave up because of the atomic bombings.
It’s 1946 report stated “The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs did not defeat Japan,
nor by the testimony of the enemy leaders who ended the war did they persuade
Japan to accept unconditional surrender. […] It seems clear that air supremacy
and its later exploitation over Japan proper was the major factor which
determined the timing of Japan's surrender and obviated any need for invasion.”
By any conventional measure then, the
nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would be considered a war crime. But
mention this in company, and you’ll find the apologists come out of the
woodwork. Yes, they’ll say, but the Japanese committed war crimes as well.
Japanese conduct in Manchuria during the time was reprehensible, and those
committed by Unit 731 particularly so. Yet the United States gave these men
immunity from prosecution for war crimes in exchange for their data on human
experimentation, claiming it "could never have been obtained in the United
States because of scruples attached to experiments on humans", and
"the information was obtained fairly cheaply."
But war crimes by one side does not excuse
war crimes by the other. The Allied firebombing of Dresden certainly did not
excuse the Jewish holocaust. Ultimately, though, history is written by the
winners, and while Germany had to endure the Nuremburg Trials and Japan the
Tokyo trials and live with the stain on their collective conscience, the Allied
powers did not. President Obama’s unwillingness to apologize even 71 years after
the fact speaks to that.
And for all his talk of a “world without
nuclear weapons,” it remains incontrovertible that actions speak louder than
words. After the denotation of the first two nuclear weapons, the Bulletin of
the Atomic Scientists have depicted on its cover a Doomsday Clock, representing
a countdown to possible global nuclear catastrophe. Initially set at 7 minutes
to midnight (midnight signifying “Goodbye human civilization!”), it reached its
closest level during 1953 to 1960, after the US and the Soviet Union both
tested thermonuclear devices.
During the intervening years, the clock
moved further away, as nuclear arms treaties were signed, culminating in the
clock being set back to 17 minutes from midnight in 1991, after the Strategic
Arms Reduction Treaty was signed, and the Soviet Union dissolved. But a series
of events since then has moved us back to the brink of catastrophe. In 2002,
under President Obama’s predecessor, President Bush, the United States withdrew
from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Needless to say, this caused great
concern in the Russian Federation, then, as now, led by President Putin.
Under President Putin’s leadership, the
Russian Federation has strengthened almost back to its former self. This has
been characterized by the media sometimes as a Revanchist Russia, and
interpreted as aggressive. But the western, Anglosphere world has a different
mind-set than the Russians. The Anglosphere world was dominated by first the
expansionist British Empire, who presided over the largest empire in the world
ever, and then by the United States, who has military bases in over 130
countries around the world, with more than 900 bases in those countries. It
makes sense from that perspective to see President Putin as aggressive.
But Russia is different from the
Anglosphere nations. Russia has had two Patriotic Wars during the last two
centuries. The Patriotic War of 1812, when Napoleon invaded Russia was still
fresh in the Russian psyche when World War I broke out. World War I devastated
Russia with its political aftermath, and when they had just started to get back
on their feet, Operation Barbarossa ushered in the Great Patriotic War, as
World War II is known in Russia. The German Siege of Leningrad was the longest
siege in history, at 872 days. The Russians never relented. It’s but a myth
that it was the Allied powers that defeated Hitler during the WWII, because it
was the Russians that defended their motherland at great cost that wore out the
Axis war machine. Out of a population of
190 million, Russia lost 26 million lives during the war, 13.5% of its
population.
In Russia, strength is seen as defensive –
to protect the motherland. Almost every family in Russia lost someone during
the war, and the Victory Day parade is a matter of national pride to every
Russian. When a US President that wants to “pursue a world without nuclear
weapons,” thus snubs them by not attending and honouring their sacrifice, it
worries them. When this US President then approves spending US$ 348 billion in
upgrading its nuclear arsenal, they get very concerned. And when this US
President sets up an anti-ballistic missile system right next door to them in
Romania, their worries just escalate.
During the cold war, Russia and the United
States had a doctrine of nuclear deterrence called Mutual Assured Destruction
(MAD). Each side has enough nuclear firepower that even if a first-strike
eliminated 99% of the opposing force’s firepower, the remaining 1% would be
enough to retaliate with enough force to eliminate their capabilities as well.
Russia has always had its Perimetr system, a dead hand switch that would
automatically launch if Russian command capability was destroyed.
Under a Nobel Peace Prize winning
President, the Doomsday clock has moved to 3 minutes to midnight. President
Putin has to date showed remarkable restraint – even asking his parliament to
revoke the authorization for use of military force in Ukraine after they
granted him that power. President Obama’s successors… Well. Donald Trump seems
most likely to de-escalate tensions, but his other policies are less coherent.
Former Secretary Clinton seems destined to continue President Obama’s legacy of
escalation.
At times like these I’m glad Namibia’s
constitution advocates that we follow a policy of non-alignment. The MAD
doctrine is alive and well, and it seems it’s a MAD world we live in.
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