The Ethics of Nuclear Bombing

My rambling this week, and a genuine rambling it is, is based on random thoughts generated while doing research for the Hiroshima/Nagasaki article last week.

Quotes, snippets and Bhagvad Gita

Before boarding the plane leaving on a mission to bomb Hiroshima, Dick Nelson, a 24 year old kid then, an old man now, recalls:

“You knew it was big, you just didn’t want to mess anything up… When we were in the air somebody said… this bomb costs as much as an aircraft carrier…well … then you really get the monkey on your back.”

Van Kirk, another crew member, also 24 at that time, remembers the late-night scene just before departure. Spotlights had lit the aircraft up. Van Kirk compares the atmosphere to a Hollywood premier. Dick Nelson thinks of a supermarket opening,

“Klieg lights and all kinds of photographers… you’re almost embarrassed.”

The glorious event in America’s history needed to be documented for posterity.

The most famous photo is that of a grinning Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the plane that dropped the Hiroshima bomb. Just before departure, he is seen waving, delight on his face, to the night-time crowd. Tibbets had named his plane “Enola Gay”, his mother’s maiden name. This was his way of honouring her.

Bernard Waldman, a physician, was part of the crew with the task of taking live photographs of the historic explosion. The Hiroshima mushroom cloud pictures we see today were taken by his Pentax camera that could take 7000 frames per second.

Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb, and a philosophy scholar; on hearing the Hiroshima bombing described his feelings by recalling a verse from Bhagvad Gita:

“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

[Bhagvad Gita, chapter 11, verse 32]

It’s said Oppenheimer had quoted another verse in regard to the explosion itself:

If the radiance of a thousand suns were to

Burst forth at once in the sky, that would

Be like the splendour of the Mighty One.”

[Bhagvad Gita, Chapter 11, verse 12]

The prophetic Bhagvad Gita has it all. In Mahabharata, the Indian epic probably five thousand years old; the two armies of warring cousins are ready to begin the battle. Arjuna, a master archer, one of the central heroes of the epic, a conscientious man; suddenly (in chapter 11) develops moral doubts about the whole exercise. He wants to put the weapons down to stop the potential slaughter. His chariot is driven by God Himself. Lord Krishna, his charioteer and advisor, boosts his morale by doing two things. Krishna first reveals his divine form to Arjuna. (Form comparable to thousand suns bursting in the sky at once. See verse above).  Secondly, he explains to Arjuna his duty in the battlefield. “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds. Whether you kill them or not, they’re all going to perish one day. Remember, only bodies can be killed, the souls are immortal. So please, dear Arjuna, do your duty without worrying about the consequences.”

[Nothing much seemed to have changed in 5000 years since the Bhagvad Gita. The civilians in Hiroshima, and later Nagasaki, were going to die one day anyway. And only their bodies got radiated and pulverised. The souls of the Japanese – like those of other humans – are immortal.]

And finally, President Truman ordering no more nuclear attacks without his explicit approval. He said he was tired of killing, particularly all those kids.

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The Ethics of killing Civilians with A-bombs

In school, I remember some teacher telling us about the pilot who bombed Hiroshima feeling remorse and committing suicide later. That is patently untrue. Both pilots repeatedly said how proud they were of their patriotic heroic actions. (Sweeney, the Nagasaki pilot died in 2004; and Tibbets, the Hiroshima pilot, is 91 and alive).

Which brings me to the question of ethics of atomic bombing. For most Americans involved in the creation and use of a-bombs, it was not an ethical issue at all. I think I understand their psychology.

In WWII, the professional warriors were engaged in destroying the enemy. Allies wished to kill as many Japanese, civilians and combatants alike, as possible.  Killing them one by one with 200 pound bombs was a time-consuming activity. It also risked American lives.  The A-bomb was 200,000 times more powerful. It was simply a far more efficient weapon. It destroyed in few seconds what normally took months. So the issue was not moral or spiritual, it was one of economics and cost of production.

My personal view is that nuclear bombing is as ethical or unethical as ordinary bombing, or use of a handgun. Only the scale is different. Human race, as it progresses, strives to benefit from economies of scale. Technological inventions make this feasible. I can send this essay to 100 readers worldwide through a click. My grandfather would have spent a year to achieve similar results. The same with nuclear weapons. They are more efficient, and offer better value and quicker results for materials and labour expended.

The second moral issue is that of killing civilians. Again, in modern times, I personally don’t differentiate between killing of civilians and military. The combat is no longer face-to-face with primitive weapons. Deception and surprise attacks are a norm of the 21^st century warfare. Moreover, many uniformed combatants are conscripted (drafted) against their wishes. Russian kids, unwilling and untrained, sent to die in Chechnya are a good example. For me, in a surprise attack, killing of a civilian or of a man in uniform is ethically equal. If you don’t agree with me, please compare the 11^th September attacks on Pentagon and the World Trade Center. Was killing of the military personnel at Pentagon less unethical than killing the civilians in the World Trade Center?

Uniform by itself does not make the action of killing ethical. 

For Americans in the Second World War, atom bomb was not a moral problem. Neither it is, I suspect, for the present American government.  In Afghanistan and Iraq, nuclear weapons are not used, only because they are not necessary. There is no need to kill a million Iraqis for controlling oil in Iraq. (On the contrary, nuclear explosion may endanger the oil reservoirs.)  

At least 50,000 Iraqi civilians are confirmed killed to-date, for a loss of 2811 Americans and 120 British, which though not as efficient as the 911 ratio (on 9-11, each suicide bomber took 150 lives of the enemy) is fairly decent at about 17:1. (Vietnam was about 40 Vietnamese corpses for each American corpse.)  For expediency, I will call it the Corpse ratio. Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing had produced the best corpse ratios in the history of warfare.  If you ignore the small number of unfortunate Americans stationed there, the two bombs killed more than 200,000 enemy bodies without losing a single of their own.

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A Million to One Ratio

These days, imperialism is rarely a declared motive for a war. In recent wars, after a few years of fighting, no-one understands or remembers the war objectives any more (Americans in Vietnam, Russians in Afghanistan). If you ask an American or a British soldier in Iraq today what exactly he is fighting for, improving the corpse ratio is the only rational answer he could come up with. If we accept ratio analysis as the basis for war, we can analyze the following three situations of a nuclear attack:

(a) A Nuclear State against a Nuclear State

(b) A Nuclear State against a Non-Nuclear State

(c) Terrorists with nuclear weapons against any State

In the first scenario, say America striking China, they’ll have an excellent corpse ratio for a short time. Until China strikes back. The ratio will keep fluctuating with each strike. Because of China’s population, America will be in a favourable position. However, when both countries are obliterated, the war would have produced at best 4:1, too low a ratio to be acceptable. Owing to the deterrent nature of the mutually iterative operation, one nuclear State striking another is unlikely.

In the second scenario, the Hiroshima/Nagasaki scenario; countries like America could use a-bombs or Hydrogen bombs if a particular situation warrants terrorising a country into submission. N-programmes such as the ones developed by North Korea and planned by Iran could trigger such a threat. However, as the examples of Afghanistan and Iraq have shown, conventional weapons are strong enough to achieve the objectives. This chess board contains material so unequal on two sides, that the game is not interesting. This scenario, as things stand today, is also unlikely.

Terrorists using the nuclear weapons is the most likely scenario. Human casualties are most important to terrorists. Corpse ratio most relevant for them. Even at the 9-11 ratio, Al Qaida would need 2 million suicide bombers to expunge American population. A nuclear weapon, on the other hand, could achieve an impressive million to one ratio.

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Population Density

Any weapon, including nuclear bombs, targets an area, not people. The stronger weapons destroy more square miles. People just happen to be part of that area. Hence, population densities become important in a war game. Some readers (you can guess from where) have asked me why I keep harping on about Manhattan being a high-risk proposition. The answer is its density. Manhattan has a density of 66,950 people per sq. mile compared to say Los Angeles (8,190). Terrorists always want value for money. Blowing the weapon in Manhattan makes eight times more sense than in Los Angeles. Then again, Manhattan or Central London for that matter, being working places, the threat enhances dramatically during working hours. I can say with certainty no major terrorist attack will happen there in the night-time or on a Sunday. (Note 1: Hiroshima was bombed on Monday, Nagasaki on Thursday, and 9/11 happened on Tuesday. All three acts took place during office hours).

(Note 2: If the USA wanted to destroy the military infrastructure in Japan as claimed, the ethical route was to (a) warn first; (b) allow Hiroshima, Nagasaki to be evacuated and then (c) bomb them. Unfortunately; Americans knew that destruction, without human casualties, does not have the same psychological impact.)  

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Can the Terrorists get their hands on it?

The nuclear virus exists. In several forms. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, three new nuclear states had emerged in a day: Ukraine, the third biggest nuclear power after US and Russia; Belarus, no.4 and Kazakhstan, no.8. Allegedly, all three are now denuclearised. Not without creating a black market for spare parts and technical know-how. Fifteen years after the Soviet demise, Americans are still doing book-keeping; trying to reconcile the missing inventory. You also have the Soviet scientists, their brains still functioning. Not all of them are taken good care of by the societies they live in. As the example of Pakistani Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan showed, smuggling of know-how or parts is as dangerous as smuggling of actual weapons. 

A palm-sized i-pod today easily contains 2000 songs. Like laptops, nuclear weapons keep increasing in power and reducing in size. Eventually, the suitcase n-bomb in the James Bond films must become reality.

http://lugar.senate.gov/reports/NPSurvey.pdf  is a survey collating opinions of 85 non-proliferation and security experts. It says the possibility is real and increasing every year. The risk of nuclear attack in the next 10 years is estimated to be 29.2%. (That of a Radiological attack 40%). A majority of the group designated a black market purchase as the most likely method by which terrorists could obtain the weapons or fissile materials.

http://www.icrc.org/Web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/htmlall/review-859-p497/$File/irrc_859_Egger_Wirz.pdf

This link from a scientific year-old report is benign. Trusting it will make you feel comfortable. The report gives in detail why manufacture of a nuclear weapon or use of a stolen one by terrorists is improbable. It, however, concurs with the earlier link that risk of radiological terrorism is high.

Nuclear explosion: Manhattan.

http://www.atomicarchive.com/Example/Example1.shtml

This link offers a wonderful, if wonderful is a word I could use, simulation of terrorists detonating a nuclear bomb in the heart of Manhattan. The nine slides give a ball-by-ball commentary on what happens in the few minutes after the explosion.  20 sq. miles of property get destroyed; 800,000 killed and 900,000 injured.

For comparison, I attach another example, this one of a nuclear accident near San Francisco.

 http://www.atomicarchive.com/Example/SF_Example1.shtml

Due to lower density; though 105 sq. miles of property get destroyed, only 224,000 are killed and 175,000 injured.

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PNAC: Launch of World War III

The United States of America had two options.

One option was to concentrate on economics and material prosperity of America, non-aggression towards others, non-interference in the running of other sovereign nations.

The second option was the one they have chosen. Of starting World War III.

In 1998, Usama Bin Laden issued a fatwa declaring war against America. Few people know America had declared their desire for war a year before, on 3 June 1997 – through the “Project of the New American Century” (PNAC). (http://www.newamericancentury.org/). The project signatories attempt to make a case for the global dominance by America and aim to rally support for it. They believe America has a vital role in maintaining security and peace in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. They want America to create an international order – friendly to American security, American prosperity and American principles.

Signatories include some familiar names: Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfield, Jeb Bush, Paul Wolfowitz and John Bolton.

Careful analysis of the vocabulary used by modern American rulers shows how the current war is cleverly juxtaposed with the World War II. I’ll give here only two examples that are widely known.

On and after 11^th September 2001, the term “Ground Zero” was extensively used. The current generation is unlikely to know its etymology. The expression was used first in 1946 by New York Times in connection with the Hiroshima bombing. Oxford Dictionary explains: “Ground Zero is that part of the ground situated immediately under an exploding bomb, especially an atomic one.”

America calls its coalition partners “Allies”, again a WW terminology. The World War II was fought between Allies and the Axis powers. The Axis of evil then was: Germany, Japan and Italy. Bush has contemporarised the term using replacements: Iraq, Iran and North Korea.

America has subtly begun the third World War. God bless America, and may they win the war against terror. I’m not a technical expert to calculate the probability of terrorists acquiring or blowing a nuclear bomb. But my analysis confirms to me that once it is technically possible, the political probability of it happening is high. Once America has declared a “War on Terror”, its opponent - “Terror” - is forced to think of counter-moves all the time.

In this World War III, the Mighty One may come from the wrong end.

Ravi