Is there a “taboo” on the use of nuclear weapons? – The current week reminds us of a sad anniversary: the nuclear disaster of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. At the same time it makes us realize that seventy-nine years have passed since nuclear weapons were last used (August 9, 1945).
So one wonders if the most important event of these seventy-nine years is something that never happened: that we didn’t have a nuclear war. This was not expected: the use of nuclear weapons, especially in the Cold War, had been considered inevitable. Is there some kind of “taboo” that prevents their use, and if so, will we be as lucky in the future?
The decision to use nuclear weapons against Japan in 1945 was not an easy one. Opinion in the American government was divided between those who believed their use was necessary, because it would shorten the war and save lives, since a landing in Japan would mean a hundred deaths. The opposing view held that Japan would surrender anyway if strategic bombing continued and a naval blockade was imposed.
Not that the strategic bombings were bloodless: in the six months before the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, 67 cities had been leveled, resulting in the death of 350,000 Japanese. The bombing of Tokyo had caused more destruction than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.
But what made nuclear weapons different was the imagery of biblical destruction, a metaphysical/theological sense of “apocalypse”. (This sense is beautifully captured in the recent award-winning film Oppenheimer.) The use of these weapons in Japan had a shocking psychological effect, which made the nuclear weapon different from all others. Like a curse comes with it.
Leaders of countries with nuclear arsenals became very cautious in both their threat and their use
- In the Korean War (1950-1953), in an era of American nuclear dominance where there was no possibility of retaliation, there were considerations in the Eisenhower administration to use nuclear weapons, but in the end the nuclear “taboo” prevailed (an expression belonging to the then US Secretary of State Allen Dalles).
- The same “taboo” dominated the Cuban crisis (October 1962), at the height of the Cold War. US and Soviet leaders exercised restraint and opted for diplomatic de-escalation. The film “13 Days” vividly shows how the two leaderships sensed impending doom and sought a way out of a conflict that seemed inevitable.
The prevailing climate at the time was expressed as follows by President Kennedy: “The nuclear powers must prevent those confrontations which bring an adversary to the choice of either a humiliating retreat or nuclear war. To adopt such a course in the nuclear age would be evidence of our political bankruptcy—a collective death wish for the world.”
The strategic shock of the Cuban Missile Crisis thus led to the acceptance that nuclear war would bring about “Mutual Assured Destruction/MAD” and therefore had to be prevented.
The “nuclear taboo” alone is not enough to prevent the use of nuclear weapons in the future, especially when Great Powers such as the US and Russia are playing a risky nuclear poker game in Ukraine while at the same time the institutional framework for nuclear weapons has collapsed through their own fault. non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.
