Five Myths About Nuclear Weapons, by Ward Wilson, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 187 pages, $22.00.
Baby boomers grew up with nuclear bomb drills, premised on the interesting idea that plywood desks could provide adequate shielding from a radioactive apocalypse. That dubious notion has disappeared, but other assumptions limp on. In Five Myths About Nuclear Weapons, Ward Wilson, a senior fellow at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, tackles widespread misunderstandings associated with the world's nuclear arsenals.
Wilson carefully analyzes Japan's surrender in World War II and several supposed instances of nuclear deterrence at work, upending many accepted narratives. When he strays beyond history, however, his arguments become murky. His lapses into the abstract can be forgiven, though, in light of his thought-provoking breakdown of the reasons behind the development and spread of nuclear weapons.
Did Japan surrender in World War II in direct response to the atomic bombs detonated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Wilson suggests it isn't so. He assembles the correspondence of high-ranking officials to indicate that Japan's leaders were far less impressed with atomic warfare than they are portrayed in retrospect. The destruction of a city was by no means unique—Hiroshima's obliteration followed the destruction of 66 prior cities through conventional means. Those other staggering losses had not prompted surrender.
According to Wilson, the Soviet Union played a more decisive role than nuclear weapons in concluding World War II. Japan's leaders had prolonged a doomed war effort in hopes that inflicting staggering losses on the United States might lead to a conditional surrender. If America lost heart, the thinking went, Japan could feasibly keep some of its conquests, or at least spare its leaders from the same fate as the German war criminals already on trial in Nuremberg.
Those hopes were crushed when the Soviet Union, hitherto neutral in the Pacific Theater, declared war against Japan. Japan's entire military was already dedicated to forestalling an American invasion. The prospect of Russians advancing through the empire's unguarded back door meant imminent and unquestioned defeat.
Wilson provides a coherent explanation for why official declarations from the emperor and his regime nonetheless point to atomic bombs, and not Russians, in forcing their surrender. Japan's rulers had maintained a doomed war effort for months, lied to the public, and led their country through years of disastrous warfare that ruined the economy and left millions dead. An unforeseen weapon of unfathomable destruction provided a convenient rationale for ending the war.
Wilson moves on to question the efficacy of nuclear deterrence in crises. During the Cuban missile crisis, he notes, President John F. Kennedy risked mutual atomic annihilation with the Russians. Even before Kennedy's risky blockade, Soviet missiles could have reached American soil. The president chanced unspeakable destruction over political posturing, not actual military significance. Wilson deftly asks, “If fear of nuclear war prevents leaders from taking steps that might lead to nuclear war, then why wasn't Kennedy deterred?” ...
Interesting theory but Kennedy didn't win the Cold War. Reagan did. Reagan wasn't deterred and put huge numbers of nukes on the USSR borders. The USSR went broke trying to keep up.
