RK - Yeah, well, you know we had lunch today so we're kind of recapping the conversation we had at lunch. And what I said to you was I just submitted the book I've been working on, Bottom Up, for the first time to the editor.
WW - And talk about what you told me about the nuclear weapons part of that.
RK - Yeah, well, the chapter - one of the sample chapters is about top down, bottom up war and in a previous conversation with you it made me realize that nuclear weapons are about as top down as you can get. It's the idea that one powerful person can just push a button and wipe out an Army or a nation or a civilization. In a way my experience with it is--I've had people say, "nuke those people," and it might be Iraq, it might be Iran, and it's like a fantasy. It's a delusion. It doesn't get any more top down than that and what I learned from you is that it's total BS. People are not going to use it. The people that talk about it are blowing steam out of their butts and it's ridiculous and the fact is even when it is - this whole idea that it's a deterrent is nonsense. It's a fantasy. It's almost like word porn.
WW - Well there is a sense in which--so you could tell the Cold War history the way we tell it or you can tell it in an entirely different way. Imagine that the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki didn't win the war. This is not a moral argument about us being wrong and whatever, whatever. This is an effectiveness argument. So now you drop these bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Russians declare war on the same day that we drop the bomb on Nagasaki. The Japanese see the writing on the wall. They know that adding another great power to the war essentially cooks their goose, so they say, "okay we have to surrender." So they offer to surrender. We say, "Oh, nuclear weapons are a miracle weapon." And because we are the largest country undamaged in the world at the end of World War II, what we say has a lot of influence in the world. We set nuclear weapons as the currency of power. If you want to be a great power, if you want to be a super power, you've gotta have nuclear weapons. Now nuclear weapons got this huge reputation and we basically only ever had one test of what affect they have. Remember the important thing about nuclear weapons for deterrence is not what they do to buildings and cars and factories and human bodies. The important thing is what they do in the minds of leaders. Deterrence is psychological, and in terms of the psychological impact of nuclear weapons we basically have eight or nine pieces of data, maybe twelve. We have two explosions at Hiroshima and Nagasaki and a small number of crisis during the Cold War that involved nuclear weapons. So we've got this huge reputation for nuclear weapons based really on not much evidence. And the fundamental - the first episode that gave us the idea that nuclear weapons were so amazing now appears to have not proved that they're amazing at all. It now appears to have not proved that they're amazing but proved that they can be ignored like any other city bombing. The Germans didn't surrender after we bombed Hamburg and they didn't surrender after we bombed Dresden. It's possible that we've wildly exaggerated the usefulness and power of deterrence. This kind of magic abra cadabra word that we use to solve all of our foreign policy problems--you know, "We'll be safe because we've got deterrence. We can hold them off because we have deterrence. We'll use deterrence to get them to do this." Well what if - we have never really tested deterrence because how do you measure what's going on inside the mind of an adversary? What if we've totally made deterrence up? What if it's a myth? So I wrote an essay called, "The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence" that's kind of getting a little traction. I actually had a full professor from Leeds University write a long essay about how I was totally wrong and there was definite proof that deterrence was real and stuff. If nothing else it's a compliment to be getting the attention of full professors at departments international relations.
RK - So you - let's talk more about this idea of a myth because I'm really into mythology and heroes and archetypes. Why do you call it a myth?
WW - Well I don't know. It just - it's not - what is nuclear deterrence? It's not a box. It's not something physical. It's kind of an idea like - you know - think about the islanders living on a volcanic island and the volcano erupts and they're all terrified and appalled. Half the village is wiped out and the religious Shaman says, "We have to throw a virgin into the volcano to mollify the mountain god." So they look around and they decide to do it. They throw a virgin in and a year goes by and there's no eruption of the volcano and they say, "Huh. It must be working." And then every year they throw a virgin into the volcano until the next time the mountain explodes. You know we have--as human beings we have this capacity to infuse objects with meaning. You think about a Totem Pole, it's just a stump of wood but somehow we carve it and then we look at it a particular way and it becomes heroes and demons and gods and you know, evil spirits. I think that the symbolic power of nuclear weapons is very strong. Weapons often become symbols. If you look at Dreadnoughts (which was the word for battleships at the turn of the century--the turn of the 1900's), there was a whole arms race over Dreadnoughts and everyone needed Dreadnoughts. Kaiser Wilhelm told his friend the King of Italy that once he had enough Dreadnoughts built then the other leaders in Europe would listen to him with respect. Dreadnoughts were a symbol of military might and they were going to give you political power and influence. And it turned out that they were really just symbols. When World War I came what they discovered is that battleships were very vulnerable to torpedoes from submarines or from surface ships. And in World War II they found conclusively that battleships are not very powerful. Anytime you get a fighter bomber you can sink a battleship--it's much easier to sink them, in fact, because they're such big targets. They're these huge expensive piece of military equipment, impressive in peacetime but highly vulnerable in wartime. So their value was really symbolic more than real. I'm concerned that we made this big todo about nuclear weapons and it will turn out that they don't have real value. That they're just myths. Let me tell you the argument that persuaded the guys at the Pentagon. I went and talked to the A10 Directorate which is the Air Force's Policy, Planning, and Strategy staff for nuclear weapons. So it's the heart of the nuclear endeavor in Washington. And we had a great conversation. They liked the presentation. They weren't necessarily persuaded, but they listened respectfully and attentively. But the thing that really got their attention was a guy said, "Come on, Ward. It may true that Hiroshima didn't win the war but the fact is nuclear weapons now have this reputation. The reputation is now the reality and so you have to live in the world as it is. You can't ignore the reputation and pretend it ought to be less or wish that it was less. It is what it is." And I said, "What I always think about when I think about reputation is Patroclus." Patroclus, you remember, was Achilles' best friend. They stole Achilles' girl, so Achilles decided to sulk in his tent. He wasn't going to fight. He was the best warrior for the Acheans--this was in the Trojan War. So the Trojans kept winning and winning and killing the Acheans, and the Acheans kept falling back and taking losses. And they kept sending delegations to Achilles' tent saying, "Dude, come on! You've got to fight" - or whatever the ancient Greek equivalent of dude was - "You've got to fight for us." But he said, "I won't fight, I won't fight. They took my girl." Finally Patroclus goes to him and says, "Okay, you won't fight. I get it. But lend me your armor." And Achilles says, "Okay." So Patroclus puts on the shining breast plate and he picks up the famous shield and puts on the helmet and goes out onto the battlefield. And for a while the reputation of Achilles carries the day. The Trojan fall back, the Acheans push forward, and they retake some of the conquered ground. Eventually Hector says, "Well I don't care. Achilles or no, I've got to go out and fight him." He goes out on the battlefield and Apollo (who favors Hector swoops) down and knocks Patroclus over. He doesn't hurt him. But he knocks him down and his helmet come off. The Trojans see that it is not the great Achilles inside the armor but some other mere mortal and they run him through with spears. And what I said to those guys at the Pentagon is, "I don't want my country to be defended by a reputation. --Not by a hollow suit armor. I want the real Achilles. I want actual defense. Reputation is smoke and mirrors and can disappear at any time."
RK - And you know told this whole story of Patroclus to them?
WW - Yeah, and they really liked it because of course they're trained to be warriors--they want to be Achilles, too. But I think that the point is that you don't want to defend yourself with a myth. Because a myth can evaporate at any moment.
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