In a thoughtful rebuttal, Barton J. Bernstein asserts: "The basic decision on using the bomb flowed from overwhelming, long-held assumptions. To Truman and others, the bomb promised to help end the war earlier than otherwise, presumably to save some American and other Allied lives, possibly to force a surrender before the dreaded November invasion, and, as a potential bonus, conceivably to intimidate the Soviets in future dealings." [See http://www.h-net.org/~diplo/roundtables/PDF/Bernstein-HasegawaRoundtable.pdf , p. 16]
Both scholars agree, however, that to explain why the bomb was used is not to justify its use. As Professor Bernstein notes: A "sustained effort at interpretation does not mean approving of the use of the bombs or refusing to make moral judgments - about the atomic bombing, and about the lack of a serious quest for likely alternatives." [Ibid]
If, as Hasegawa suggests, Truman experienced guilt about the women and children killed by the atomic bomb, it didn't prevent him, in 1948, from warning the Soviet ambassador that "Soviet troops should evacuate Iran within 48 hours - or the United States would use the new superbomb that it alone possessed." [Gerson, pp. 171-72]
Truman also authorized General MacArthur's successor, General Ridgeway, to use nuclear weapons during the Korean War. [p. 82] The possible targets were "Chinese and Soviet troop concentrations, Shanghai, Chinese industrial cities, and four North Korean cities." Fortunately, Ridgeway "held his nuclear fire." [p. 82]
Given the Truman administration's actual use of nuclear weapons and its willingness to threaten their use in 1948 and authorize their use during the Korean War, President Eisenhower could come to the presidency without his previous worries about "shocking world opinion' with such threats or actions. This nuclear "banality of evil" already had taken hold in the United States.
But "the banality of evil" only partly explains Eisenhower's "election campaign promise to bring the [Korean] war to an end on US terms by preparing, threatening, and if necessary proceeding with a nuclear attack." [p.82] For, as Gerson notes: Both Truman and Eisenhower "understood that the US had 'a commanding superiority over the USSR in strategic forces.'" Moreover, "This nuclear supremacy soon came to permeate every dimension of US Cold War policy and practice. By 1953, the US had 329 nuclear-capable bombers that, from bases in Japan and Europe, could kill millions of people and eliminate the economic and military foundations of both Communist powers." [p. 77]
As Eisenhower explained in 1963, "It would be impossible for the United States to maintain the military commitments which it now sustains around the world…did we not possess atomic weapons and the will to use them when necessary." [p. 31] Indeed, his administration adopted the doctrine of "massive retaliation" which linked "local conflicts to the specter of a global war of annihilation." [p. 78]
Thus, in addition to threatening to use nuclear weapons to assure that "the Chinese, Russians and Koreans got the message," the Eisenhower administration also offered atomic bombs to the French in 1954, in order to break the Vietnamese siege at Dien Bien Phu. And it twice threatened China with nuclear attack during the 1955 and 1958 crises concerning the islands of Quemoy and Matsu.
Months after the peaceful resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis (recklessly initiated by Nikita Khrushchev), which had brought the US and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war, the Kennedy administration approached the Soviet leaders about "'a joint U.S -Soviet preemptive nuclear attack' against the Chinese nuclear weapons installation at Lop Nor." [p. 90] (That overture helps to explain why, in 1969, the Soviets could ask the Nixon administration whether it would object, were they to launch their own preemptive strike against Lop Nor.)
In 1965, President Johnson's Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara gave "a background briefing to warn that the 'inhibitions' on US use of nuclear weapons in Vietnam 'might eventually be lifted.'" [p. 148] And in February 1968, General Wheeler "informed senators that the Joint Chiefs would recommend the use of tactical nuclear weapons, if they came to believe they were essential to defend the 6,000 besieged Marines" at Khe Sanh. [p. 152]
By President Nixon's "own count, he seriously considered first-strike nuclear attacks on four occasions: in a 'massive escalation' if the Vietnam war, during the 1973 Israeli-Arab 'October War,' during 'an intensification of the Soviet-Chinese border dispute,' and during the 1971 India-Pakistan war." [p. 153]
Gerson exempts President Gerald Ford from the line of presidents who have threatened to use nuclear weapons. But he notes that, in 1975, during the collapse of South Vietnam, Defense Secretary James Schlesinger "advised Ford that there was only one way to halt the North Vietnamese offensive: tactical nuclear weapons. Ford wisely decided not to pursue that option." [p.166]
In his 1980 State of the Union address, President Carter vowed, "Any attempt by an outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the interests of the United States and will be repelled by the use of any means necessary…" [p. 205] According to Gerson, "this policy was reinforced by Presidential Directive 59, which moved US nuclear war-fighting doctrine from mutual assured destruction to 'flexible' and more 'limited' nuclear war fighting." [p. 204]
Surprisingly, Gerson has little to say about the Reagan administration, except to note how the Nuclear Freeze Movement forced the Reagan administration "to turn away from the rhetoric of 'winning nuclear wars' and engage in arms control negotiations." However, readers would do well to recall that Reagan "did not regard nuclear war as catastrophic," that officials in his administration contemplated "firing a nuclear demonstration shot," and that the Defense Guidance approved by Defense Secretary Weinberger "contained plans for fighting a 'protracted' nuclear war." [Frances Fitzgerald, Way Out There in the Blue, pp. 150-51] Recall as well that Reagan "once maintained that submarine-based missiles could be recalled." [Ibid, p. 150]
The first Bush administration threatened to use nuclear weapons against Iraq, if that country decided to use chemical and biological weapon against U.S. forces during the 1991 Gulf War. [p. 216] And when the US made its transition from the air war to the ground war, Defense Secretary Cheney publicly affirmed his belief that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima had saved US lives. [p. 217]
Finally, President Clinton "threatened nuclear attacks against China, Libya and Iraq before surrendering the Oval Office in 2001 to perhaps the worst and most destructive president in U.S. history, George W. Bush." [pp. 218-19] "In its 2002 Nuclear Posture Review, the Bush II administration reiterated its commitment to first-strike nuclear war-fighting, named seven nations a primary nuclear targets, and urged funding for the development of new and more usable nuclear weapons." [p. 23]
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