Current Events August 2007

All month I have anticipated that this month’s current events column would focus on the apparent resumption of the Cold War. After all, the US is trying to deploy missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic, which has led to:

Russia Halts Participation In Arms Pact For Europe

Suspension Seen as Response To U.S. Missile Defense Plan

By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, July 15, 2007

MOSCOW, July 14 –

Russia on Saturday formally suspended its participation in a conventional arms treaty dating from the last years of the Cold War that limits NATOand Russian military deployments in Europe. The Kremlin said in a statement that the 1990 pact was suspended "due to exceptional circumstances in relation to the treaty's content that affect the security of the Russian Federation and require immediate measures." Russia previously had threatened the move because of its opposition to U.S. plans to deploy a missile defense system in Eastern Europe to ward off a potential threat from Iran.

Russian officials regard the project as unnecessary because they believe that Iran is many years from developing long-range missiles. And, more critically, military officials here believe the system can -- and probably will -- be used by the United States to peer deep into Russian territory.

Suspension of the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty will deepen the country's strained relations with its immediate neighbors in Eastern Europe. Russia can now move more tanks and other heavy weapons to its western borders, and officials in Poland, Estonia and other neighboring countries quickly said they deplored the suspension.

But political and military analysts said major redeployments are unlikely. The suspension, they said, was both a symbolic expression of Russian anger over missile defense and a demonstration that the country has returned as an assertive power that must be reckoned with.

NATO called Russia's decision a "disappointing step in the wrong direction." "NATO considers this treaty to be an important cornerstone of European security," said James Appathurai, a spokesman for the alliance.

Professor Francis Boyle highlighted the seriousness of these developments from Russia’s point of view in an article that appeared in Global Research in June 2007:

Recent disinformation by the western media about Russia starting a new Cold War not only masks the threat of a US Anti-Ballistic Missile shield deployment but, as always, projects the blame on the victim, Russia.

The US missile shield must be understood in the context of its geo-strategic nuclear deployment. Far from being defensive, its ultimate purpose is to obtain such an unassailable advantage over any other nuclear power as to be able to threaten any would-be opponent with nuclear extinction if it were not to comply with the wishes of the US.

This new form of nuclear strategy has been called 'compellence'. Remember the word because you won't hear it mentioned by the western MSM [mainstream media], which has already tried to distract us from the real dangers behind the deployment of the US missile shield with matters which bear no relevance such as the Litvinenko affair and the inevitable Russian response to retaliate with its own missiles.

By means of a US first strike about 99%+ of Russian nuclear forces would be taken out. So Bush Jr. needs ABMs to take care of what remains. And in any event what really matters here is the perception. Namely, the United States Government believes that with the deployment of a facially successful first strike capability, they can move beyond deterrence and into "compellence."

In other words, with an apparent first strike capability, the USG [US government] can compel Russia to do its bidding during a crisis. The classic case in point here was the Cuban Missile Crisis where the Soviet Union knew the USG could strike first and get away with it. Hence they capitulated.

This has been analyzed ad nauseam in the professional literature. But especially by one of Harvard's premier warmongers in chief, Thomas Schelling, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics granted by the Bank of Sweden-- who developed the term "compellence" and distinguished it from "deterrence."

The USG is breaking out of a "deterrence" posture and moving into a "compellence" posture. Easier to rule the world that way. Henceforth the USG will be able to compel even nuclear-armed adversaries to do its bidding in a crisis or otherwise.

This “compellence” talk is frightening, but even I, a known alarmist who still fears that the US may use a nuclear bunkerbuster in Iran, find it hard to believe that the US is really planning a nuclear first strike on Russia. Sounds to me like the military-industrial complex in both countries is up to its old income-producing scare tactics. Therefore, in this column I will take a break from alarm-raising and a brief, reluctant look back at the decision to use atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I look back, against my better judgment, because history has been a persistent theme this year in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It all started in July when Japanese Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma casually expressed his opinion that the atomic bombings were “shoganai” (unavoidable). This term “shoganai” is vague, to say the least, but it was widely interpreted as somehow accepting, if not justifying, the use of the atomic bombs. Whatever Kyuma actually meant, his use of the light-weight, everyday term “shoganai” also revealed a profound and unacceptable lack of concern.

How could a leading Japanese politician make such a gaffe? Kyuma was obviously astonished by the outrage he stimulated across a broad spectrum of his own people. My own interpretation is that he inadvertently revealed the extent to which the Japanese government is overly influenced by the US military-industrial complex. Shortly after Kyuma made his remark, Robert Joseph, US special envoy for non-proliferation, tried to support him by saying, 'I think most historians would agree that the use of an atomic bomb brought to a close a war that would have cost millions more lives, not just hundreds of thousands of Allied lives but literally millions of Japanese lives'.

Here we have a full-blown expression of the American myth spoken with the confidence of a true believer. There may be some historians who would support Joseph’s remarks, just as there are still a few oil-sponsored scientists who cast doubt on global warming, but Peter Kuznick, professor at American University in Washington DC and a leading authority in this field, has this to say:

As critics of the bombing have become more vocal in recent years, casualty estimates [for an invasion of the Japanese homeland] have grown apace--from the War Department’s 1945 prediction of 46,000 dead to Truman’s 1955 insistence that General George Marshall feared losing a half million American lives to Stimson’s 1947 claim of over 1,000,000 casualties to George H.W. Bush’s 1991 defense of Truman’s “tough calculating decision, [which] spared millions of American lives,”ⁱ to the 1995 estimate of a crew member on Bock’s Car, the plane that bombed Nagasaki, who asserted that the bombing saved six million lives--one million Americans and five million Japanese….

Truman ordered the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki despite the fact that he and his top advisors were aware that the Japanese had largely abandoned hope for military victory and were seeking an end to the war. This was apparent to many who analyzed the intercepted exchanges between Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo in Tokyo and Ambassador Naotake Sato in Moscow. The Pacific Strategic Intelligence Summary for the week of Potsdam meeting reported: “it may be said that Japan now, officially if not publicly, recognizes her defeat. Abandoning as unobtainable the long-cherished goal of victory, she has turned to the twin aims of (a) reconciling national pride with defeat, and (b) finding the best means of salvaging the wreckage of her ambitions.”ⁱⁱ As Colonel Charles “Tick” Bonesteel III, chief of the War Department Operations Division Policy Section, recalled: “the poor damn Japanese were putting feelers out by the ton so to speak, through Russia.”ⁱⁱⁱ OSS official Allen Dulles briefed Stimson on Japanese peace feelers at Potsdam. Dulles wrote in The Secret Surrender: “On July 20, 1945, under instructions from Washington, I went to the Potsdam Conference and reported there to Secretary Stimson on what I had learned from Tokyo--they desired to surrender if they could retain the Emperor and the constitution as a basis for maintaining discipline and order in Japan after the devastating news of surrender became known to the Japanese people.”^iv That such indications of Japanese intentions were not lost on Truman is apparent not only in his July 18 diary entry referring to “the telegram from the Jap Emperor asking for peace“^v but in the August 3 diary entry by Byrnes’s assistant Walter Brown, who recorded, “Aboard Augusta/ President, Leahy, JFB agrred [sic] Japas [sic] looking for peace.”^vi Similar comments by Forrestal, McCloy, and Stimson show how widespread this realization was. But, at Potsdam, when Stimson tried to persuade Truman to alter his approach and provide assurances in the Potsdam Proclamation, Truman told his elderly Secretary of War that, if he did not like the way things were going, he could pack his bags and return home….

Top U.S. military leaders recognized Japan’s growing desperation, prompting several to later insist that the use of atomic bombs was not needed to secure victory. Those who believed that dropping atomic bombs on Japan was morally repugnant and/or militarily unnecessary included Admiral William Leahy, General Dwight Eisenhower, General Douglas MacArthur, General Curtis LeMay, General Henry Arnold, Brigadier General Bonner Fellers, Admiral Ernest King, General Carl Spaatz, Admiral Chester Nimitz, and Admiral William “Bull” Halsey. Leahy, who chaired the Joint Chiefs of Staff and served as Truman’s personal chief of staff, made little effort to hide his opposition prior to the bombing. Groves admitted that he circumvented the Joint Chiefs of Staff to avoid, in part, “Admiral Leahy’s disbelief in the weapon and its hoped-for effectiveness; this would have made action by the Joint Chiefs quite difficult.”^vii In reflecting on his opposition, Leahy emphasized the barbaric nature of the atomic bombs, not doubts about their effectiveness, chillingly proclaiming, “It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender....My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages.”^viii Eisenhower was equally appalled, writing in his 1963 Mandate for Change that when he learned from Stimson at Potsdam that use of the bomb was imminent, “I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of face.’”^ix

Sixty-two years after the bombings, most Americans reject this history and what their own military leaders believed at the time of the atomic bombings. Instead, they believe their nation’s greatly inflated propaganda regarding the number of lives the bombings saved. Even those who accept that the bombings may not have been necessary tend to point out that the Japanese started the war at Pearl Harbor and committed horrific atrocities throughout Asia. Thus, they deserved to be A-bombed and Americans have nothing to feel bad about.

I hate arguing history. Such arguments are hopeless because all parties are guilty and all are extremely skilled at twisting the facts to make themselves look blameless. No matter how many US generals condemned the atomic bombings, those determined to justify them will find a way to do so. But regardless of any historical debate, we all need, for the sake of the future, to accept two important truths. First, two atrocities don’t make a right. Second, regardless of whether they were justified militarily (to end the war) or morally (by Japanese atrocities or insane unwillingness to give up), the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a terrible mistake from the viewpoint of human evolution. They began a competitive military process that has drained our coffers and could still kill us all tomorrow. Through great care, dumb luck, and, perhaps, divine intervention, we have survived for six decades, but we still live in the nuclear age. If we’re smart, we’ll all stop arguing about who set the house on fire and start looking urgently for some extinguishers.