July/August 2003

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

Nuclear War: from MAD to NUTs

John Lamperti taught mathematics at Dartmouth College for many years. He lives in Vermont and is active with the American Friends Service Committee in New England.

When Albert Einstein signed the letter to President Roosevelt in 1939 that began the atomic bomb project, he and his colleagues did not want to create a usable weapon. They had one supreme motivation: fear of nuclear bombs in the hands of Adolph Hitler. Should Nazi Germany succeed in making an A-bomb, they thought, the same weapon in Allied hands might deter the actual use of such a terrible invention. However, top US leaders had a very different idea. The bomb was in fact built and tested after Germany had been defeated, and it was used against two Japanese cities in August 1945.

Throughout the Cold War, the dilemma continued: what were nuclear weapons for? The US and the USSR, followed by other powers, built arsenals of nuclear explosives that could have destroyed industrial society worldwide and killed hundreds of millions of people. Thousands of “small” weapons were created for use on the battlefield; thousands more, with long-range delivery systems, were aimed at the hearts of the great powers themselves. The engineering genius and vast resources devoted to creating the bombs and missiles stood in stark contrast to the far shallower thinking about their meaning and use. No sane leaders wanted all-out nuclear war, but some were prepared in a crisis to use the smaller, tactical weapons. Opponents pointed out that escalation to an ultimate disaster would then be highly probable. Fortunately, none of this came to pass. In the end, the deterrence of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD)—or perhaps just decency and common sense—prevailed, and the bombs did not again explode on human beings.

With the end of the Cold War there was hope that the nightmare of nuclear holocaust could be permanently eliminated. The danger of all-out US-USSR war receded, and the megatons of overkill in the nuclear stockpiles declined. Agreements such as SALT, the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) treaty, START, the non-proliferation treaty, and the Comprehensive Test Ban were welcomed around the world. Perhaps after all the nuclear genie could be brought under control.

Unfortunately the United States has not led the way toward the abolition of nuclear weapons. To our cost and shame, partisan politics triumphed in 1999 when the Senate rejected the test ban treaty, signed by the United States and 160 other nations. Advocates of “usable” nuclear weapons gained ground, and the belief that deterrence of nuclear attack was the only valid purpose for nuclear arsenals lost influence. In fact, while a world-destroying cataclysm has become less likely, the danger that nuclear weapons would be used somewhere did not go away and may well be increasing. Recent nuclear threats between India and Pakistan, for example, brought both countries close to an almost unimaginable disaster.

At this critical time, the Bush administration has come down entirely on the wrong side. President Bush opposes the comprehensive test ban. He has taken a historic step backwards by repudiating the long-standing ABM treaty that put an important brake on the nuclear arms race, and is throwing vast sums of money into unworkable and dangerous schemes for missile defense. Worst of all, the Bush administration actually wants nuclear weapons to be usable. It is pushing for new designs, including a large “Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator” and “small” bombs that would blur the distinction between “conventional” and nuclear weapons. (These new weapons were debated in Congress during May and June with mixed results, neither a full green light nor a clear rejection.) The administration also wants to prepare for the early resumption of nuclear tests, needed only if new kinds of weapons are to be built.

This approach will encourage the spread of nuclear weapons and make the world a far more dangerous place for us all. For fifty years, the world survived the policy of MAD and avoided the disaster of nuclear war. The next fifty years, with the ascendancy of Nuclear Use Theorists, may not be so fortunate. It is essential that the American people and their Congress get the NUTs under control.

*Thanks to William Hartung for this evocative phrase.

Take action: According to the Friends Committee on National Legislation, members of Congress need to continue hearing from constituents that limiting low-yield and “nuclear bunker buster” research is important for American security and US nonproliferation efforts worldwide.

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