What $5.821 trillion buys

“My God, what have we done?” – Robert Lewis, the co-pilot of the Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the first atomic bomb.

In the past few years I have tried to determine why our country goes to such great lengths to demonize countries who try to pursue nuclear technology; the adage, “all’s fair in love and war” comes to mind. In the cold war years during the 1980’s, I recall flipping through Time and Newsweek magazine, which gave shocking details as to what The United States and the former Soviet Union’s nuclear capabilities were. During my stint in the U.S. Air Force, I came to work on installations with incredible weaponry, finding a hard time believing that such destruction was so mass produced and only a button away.

Nations like North Korea and Iran have been deemed part of an “Axis of Evil.” I’m not certain what makes a nation evil, but I have some ideas. This notion intrigued me because many citizens were, or are, very much in favor of bombing or invading either country. I keep coming back to the time in my life when I had viewed such weaponry. I wondered why a country that prevents others from having nuclear technology would be the only one who ever used it against another people. Twice.

This isn’t an easy fact to forget, either.

President Eisenhower’s farewell speech, given before I was born, serves as a warning, but also reminds me of the Mutually Assured Destruction, or Mutual Deterrence, which would be as funny as snippet from Dr. Strangelove, if it weren’t true.

Eisenhower seems like an ancient soothsayer to me. This old man, fumbling his words without a teleprompter gives me pause. The speech is well known for his viewpoint and warnings of a “military-industrial complex,” but there is genuine compassion for his citizens, reverence for the position of which he was stepping down from, and most certainly a fear of Corporate America. This fear wasn’t just of any corporations; but of those who create the guns, bullets, gasses, tanks, bombs, ships and planes. His fear was rightfully placed back on January 17, 1961.

Forty-six years later, we are dependent on corporations like Halliburton, General Electric, or the thousands more like them, to manage our defense, lately under no-bid contracts.

As Eisenhower warned, universities would clamor to open their doors for research, as it would be easy revenue. It is clear that subsidies in research ought not to be for military gain, but that is exactly where we are. It makes for a lazy military and puts the scientists on morally ambiguous ground. After the atomic bomb was developed, many scientists disagreed with the way in which their work was being used. On July 17, 1945, Leó Szilárd, a scientist on the Manhattan Project, drafted what came to be known as the Szilárd petition. The document was signed by over one hundred fifty-five contemporaries (seventy in Chicago alone) working in Oak Ridge, Tennessee and Chicago, Illinois. The petition was subsequently shelved by director J. Robert Oppenheimer; perhaps never given to President Truman (this information is in dispute).

The petition in part, stated, “[W]e, the undersigned, respectfully petition: first, that you exercise your power as Commander-in Chief, to rule that the United States shall not resort to the use of atomic bombs in this war unless the terms which will be imposed upon Japan have been made public in detail and Japan knowing these terms has refused to surrender; second, that in such an event the question whether or not to use atomic bombs be decided by you in the light of the considerations presented in this petition as well as all the other moral responsibilities which are involved.” 

Albert Einstein urged Szilárd to pen the document, and signed the petition himself, though he did not work on the bomb directly. Szilárd would later say about the petition, “I knew by this time that it would not be possible to dissuade the government from using the bomb against the cities of Japan…I thought the time had come for the scientists to go on record against the use of the bomb against the cities of Japan on moral grounds. Therefore I drafted a petition which was circulated in the project.” 

 

 Einstein and Szilárd recreating the document signing moment for photographers.

Image source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Szilard

Japan tried to surrender, but it is widely held that an excuse was needed to test the bomb and make an example.  I support a global ban on nuclear weapons. It’s not my agenda to weaken America by giving terrorists atomic bombs, but I cannot understand telling someone on their own soil what they can and cannot produce. When the statement is made from Americans who spout nationalistic ideals of freedom; it seems like hypocrisy to me. Either we must get rid of our own weapons of mass destruction, or stop holding them over other nation’s heads as the bargaining chip of fear. Even after all the SALT agreements and non-proliferation agreements, The United States of America has approximately 10,455 nuclear weapons, according to the Nuclear Threat Initiative. The figures below are rough estimates in April 2004.

Country	Warheads
United States	10,455
Russia	8,400
China	400
France	350
Israel*	250
United Kingdom	200
India**	65
Pakistan**	40
North Korea***	8
TOTAL	20,168

*Asterisks represent best estimates. See Nuclear Threat Initiative link for more information.

America still has more nuclear weapons than the rest of the world combined; that’s a scary thought when you consider that it is the only country to have the audacity to use them…twice. 
 

According to research done by The Brookings Institution in 1998, America spent $5.821 trillion from 1940 to 1996 on nuclear technology. Perhaps these funds could have been better spent developing better care for our citizens: affordable housing, nationalized health care, free college tuition, cures for diseases, conservation of our wildlife and their habitats, environmentally safe waste disposal, and alternate fuel sources are just a few that come to mind. 

I don’t know what $5.821 trillion buys, but I imagine that it could train a few diplomats. When you have diplomacy, you don’t need the bomb. Diplomacy is always in need, that is, unless you have the bomb.