Reflections on the Nuclear Age

I was born almost four years after the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I had no direct experience of the era leading up to World War II, and my knowledge of its fateful conclusion, like that of most “baby boomers”, was limited to seeing flickering, grainy newsreels as I sat in a school auditorium. Whether newsreel or sci-fi flick, the opening scene was always the same; an image of a surging column of smoke and ash that embroils itself upward in a thick billowing stalk and then ponderously crescendos downward to form the familiar shape, and most notorious symbol of the nuclear age, a mushroom cloud.

Like the twin towers of the World Trade Center, this image was repeated with a frequency and repetition that seared the image into the mind’s eye, and imprinted the soul with something akin to a generational scar; a scar which branded a generation with the knowledge that whatever passed for security before was no longer true.

The official version in news reels was that ‘the bomb’ was a testament to the marvels of science and American technological ingenuity. They gave them ‘cutsie’ names like ‘Fat Man’ and ‘Little Boy’ and quickly changed the topic to the promise of a nuclear future with plenty of cheap, clean energy.

But the rosy spin of government propaganda doesn’t last long in the hands of a popular culture. Science fiction movies quickly saw another future, one that was dark and foreboding, as the earth as we knew it was annihilated. The legacy of the next nuclear event would be stark and decimated landscapes where even the very atmosphere and weather were forever altered and human beings, the few that remained, reverted back to a desperate tenuous survival that was far from assured.

Out of the rubble of WWII, and the spectacle of a nuclear holocaust, came a renewed determination to create a world body that would prevent a repeat of the past. The United Nations was formed to rectify the failure of its predecessor, the League of Nations, to contain national aggressions and prevent another world war.

The United States of America, much to its shame, never signed on to the League of Nations. Only as one of the victors of WWII would it emerge from its former isolationism. The charter of the UN, like the declaration of independence for the US, proclaims a number of noble ideas about the rights of people and of nations. Yet the structure of the UN was immediately flawed and unbalanced as it established the victorious nations of WWII as permanent members of the Security Council. It was only a matter of time until each of the member nations followed the technological lead of the United States and tested their own nuclear weapons.

Then, ten years after China unveiled their first nuclear test, India too, became a member of the nuclear club. Pakistan, India’s rival, was not to be outdone, and by 1998 had developed nuclear weapons of their own. It was largely through Pakistan that North Korea gained the technological “know-how” for the development of their nuclear program. No one has admitted that Israel has conducted a nuclear test, but most believe that this nation, too, holds an arsenal of nuclear weapons. And Iran is not far behind.

Robert Oppenheimer, on seeing the first US test of a nuclear bomb in the New Mexican desert was reported to have quoted from the Bhagavad Gita:

If the radiance of a thousand suns

were to burst into the sky,

that would be like

the splendor of the Mighty One—

I am become Death, the shatterer of Worlds.

Oppenheimer advocated that no individual nation should hold the power of the atom but that it was necessary for an international body to serve as the sole authority for the management and use of nuclear resources. The United Nations was never given a clear mandate to serve as this authority, but it is clear that the limited role it has played in this effort has failed. We have been on a continued path toward nuclear proliferation, and now the rate of such proliferation is increasing. The ‘war on terror’ and the war in Iraq have been distractions that have taken our eye “off the ball,” have led to a misguided use of resources and have blinded us to seeing who are our friends and allies and how best we could secure the safety and future of our people and the people’s of the world.