Antinuclear

The Oppenheimer Imperative: Normalising Atomic Terror

Resilience becomes part of the semantics of contemplated, and acceptable mass homicide. Emphasis is placed on the bounce-back factor, the ability to recover, even in the face of such weapons.

To be tactical is to be somehow bijou, cute, and contained, accepting mass murder under the guise of moderation and variation. One can be bad, but bad within limits.

Australian Independent Media, by Dr Binoy Kampmark, 20 Aug 23 https://theaimn.com/the-oppenheimer-imperative-normalising-atomic-terror/#comment-1092670

The atomic bomb created the conditions of contingent catastrophe, forever placing the world on the precipice of existential doom. But in doing so, it created a philosophy of acceptable cruelty, worthy extinction, legitimate extermination. The scenarios for such programs of existential realisation proved endless. Entire departments, schools of thought, and think tanks were dedicated to the absurdly criminal notion that atomic warfare could be tenable for the mere reason that someone (or some people) might survive. Despite the relentless march of civil society against nuclear weapons, such insidious thinking persists with a certain obstinate lunacy.

It only takes a brief sojourn into the previous literature of the nuke nutters to realise how appealing such thinking has proven to be. But it had its challenges. John Hersey proved threatening with his 1946 New Yorker spectacular “Hiroshima”, vivifying the horrors arising from the atomic bombing of the Japanese city through the eyes of a number of survivors.

In February 1947, former Secretary of War Henry Stimson shot a countering proposition in Harper’s, thereby attempting to normalise a spectacularly vicious weapon in terms of necessity and function; the use of the bombs against Japan saved lives, as any invasion would have cost “over a million casualties, to American forces alone.” The Allies, he surmised, “would be faced with the enormous task of destroying an armed force of five million men and five thousand suicide aircraft, belonging to a race which had already amply demonstrated its ability to fight literally to the death.”

Inadvertent as it was, the Stimson rationale for justifying theatrical never-to-be-repeated mass murder to prevent mass murder fell into the bloodstream of popular strategic thinking. Albert Wohlstetter’s The Delicate Balance of Terror chews over the grim details of acceptable extermination, wondering about the meaning of extinction and whether the word means what it’s meant to, notably in the context of nuclear war. 

 “Would not a general thermonuclear war mean ‘extinction; for the aggressor as well as the defender? ‘Extinction’ is a state that badly needs analysis.” Wohlstetter goes on to make a false comparison, citing 20 million Soviet deaths in non-atomic conflict during the Second World War as an example of astonishing resilience: the country, in short, recovered “extremely well from the catastrophe.”

Resilience becomes part of the semantics of contemplated, and acceptable mass homicide. Emphasis is placed on the bounce-back factor, the ability to recover, even in the face of such weapons. 

These were themes that continued to feature. The 1958 report of the National Security Council’s Net Evaluation Subcommittee pondered what might arise from a Soviet attack in 1961 involving 553 nuclear weapons with a total yield exceeding 2,000 megatons. The conclusion: 50 million Americans would perish in the conflagration, with nine million left sick or injured. The Sino-Soviet bloc would duly receive retaliatory attacks that would kill 71 million people. A month later, a further 196 million would die. In such macabre calculations, the authors of the report could still breezily conclude that “[t]he balance of strength would be on the side of the United States.”

Modern nuclear strategy, in terms of such normalised, clinical lunacy, continues to find form in the tolerance of tactical weapons and modernised arsenals. To be tactical is to be somehow bijou, cute, and contained, accepting mass murder under the guise of moderation and variation. One can be bad, but bad within limits. Such lethal wonders are described, according to a number of views assembled in The New York Times, as “much less destructive” in nature, with “variable explosive yields that could be dialed up or down depending on the military situation.”

The journal Nature prefers a grimmer assessment, suggesting the ultimate calamity of firestorms, excessive soot in the atmosphere, disruption of food production systems, the contamination of soil and water supplies, nuclear winter, and broader climatic catastrophe.

Some of these views are teasingly touched on in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, a three-hour cross narrative jumble boisterously expansive and noisy (the music refuses to leave you alone, bruising the senses). While the idea of harnessing an exceptional, exterminating power haunts the scientific community, the Manhattan Project is ultimately functional: developing the atom for military purposes before Hitler does. Once developed, the German side of the equation becomes irrelevant. The urgent quest for creating the atomic weapon becomes the basis for using it. Once left to politics and military strategy, such weapons are normalised, even relativised as simply other instruments in inflicting destruction. Oppenheimer leaves much room to that lunatic creed, though somehow grants the chief scientist moral absolution.

This is a tough proposition, given Oppenheimer’s membership of the Scientific Panel of the Interim Committee that would, eventually, convince President Harry Truman to use the bombs. In their June 16, 1945 recommendations, Oppenheimer, along with Enrico Fermi, Arthur H. Compton and Ernest O. Lawrence, acknowledged dissenting scientific opinions preferring “a purely technical demonstration to that of a purely military application best designed to induce surrender.” The scientific panel proved unequivocal: it could “propose no technical demonstration likely to bring an end to the war; we see no acceptable alternative to direct military use.”

In the film, those showing preference for a purely technical demonstration are given the briefest of airings. Leo Szilard’s petition arguing against a military use “at least not until the terms which will be imposed after the war on Japan were made public in detail and Japan were given an opportunity to surrender” makes a short and sharp appearance, only to vanish. As Seiji Yamada writes, that petition led a short, charmed life, first circulated in the Metallurgical Laboratory in Chicago, only to make its way to Edward Teller at Los Alamos, who then turned it over to Oppenheimer. The petition was, in turn, surrendered to the Manhattan Project’s chief overseer, General Leslie Groves, who “stamped it ‘classified’ and put it in a safe. It therefore never reached Truman.”

Nolan depicts the relativisation argument in some detail – one that justifies mass death in the name of technical prowess – during an interrogation by US circuit judge Roger Robb, appointed as special counsel during the 1954 security hearing against Oppenheimer. In the relevant scene, Robb wishes to trap the hapless scientist for his opposition to creating a weapon of even greater murderous power than the fission devices used against Japan. Why oppose the thermonuclear option, prods the special counsel, given your support for the atomic one? And why did he not oppose the remorseless firebombing raids of Tokyo, conducted by conventional weapons?

Nolan also has the vengeful Lewis Strauss, the two-term chairman of the US Atomic Energy Commission, moan that Oppenheimer is the less than saintly figure who managed to get away, ethically, with his atomic exploits while moralising about the relentless march about ever more destructive creations. In that sentiment, the Machiavellian ambition monger has a point: the genie, once out, was never going to be put back in.

August 22, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Lethal weapons to Ukraine – endless war prioritised over diplomacy: Address to United Nations Security Council

 https://popularresistance.org/danny-haiphong-addresses-un-security-council-on-natos-ukraine-aid/ On August 17, 2023, Danny Haiphong spoke to spoke the latest convening of the United Nations Security Council on the dangers that Western arms to Ukraine poses to international peace and stability. He said,

“Today I am here as a journalist who has dedicated the last ten years of my life writing about and speaking out against the long record of human rights abuses and war crimes committed by my country of birth, the United States. I don’t consider this a hobby or even a profession but rather a duty to all of humanity and those who want to see a better and more peaceful future. I am here to as a US citizen who has witnessed tens of billions of US tax dollars go to funding and arming a proxy war against Russia while people in the US, ordinary people, suffer from rising levels of poverty, homelessness, suicide and economic insecurity.”

August 22, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Most ‘experts’ pushing for endless conflict in Ukraine share a common benefactor.

the top 50 think tanks received over a billion dollars from the US government and its defense contractors and manufacturers, including some of the biggest beneficiaries of weapons production today ‘for Ukraine’. The top recipients of this funding include the Atlantic Council, German Marshall Fund of the United States, Brookings Institution, Heritage Foundation, Center for Strategic and International Studies, New America Foundation, RAND Corporation, Center for a New American Security, Council on Foreign Relations, and the Stimson Center.

A whopping 85% of media quotes on US military involvement come from someone paid by the defense industry

Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist, and host of independently produced talk-shows in French and English.

rachelmarsden.com 20 Aug 23

Experts with important-sounding titles linked to academic-sounding entities have been shaping hearts and minds in the press, both at home and abroad, in favor of endless conflict in Ukraine. Guess what deep-pocketed benefactor lurks beneath the surface? 

During the Iraq War, the Pentagon backed retired generals to make the rounds of TV and radio shows as ‘military analysts’ to promote the Bush administration’s agenda in the Persian Gulf. It was like inviting Ronald McDonald on a program to debate and discuss the merit of Big Macs. You could almost see the strings attached to the puppets, linked to the military-industrial complex that benefited from war without an off-ramp.

Fast forward 20 years, and the sales tactics have drastically changed. The generals have been replaced by various experts with academic credentials, typically linked to one or more ‘think tanks’. Far from the neutral academic centers of intellectual integrity that the names suggest, these entities are little more than laundromats for discreet special interests. I should know – I used to be a director of one.

Every Wednesday, some of the highest-ranking figures of the Bush administration would come to our Washington, DC office to deliver their main agenda points for the week, requesting assistance in placing and promoting them to both grassroots activists sympathetic to the cause and to the general public. The experts within the think tank were hired based on political litmus tests, no doubt to ensure that their views aligned with the organization’s. When they no longer do, you’re either fired or you leave.

The donors, many of whom were well-known millionaires and billionaires driven by a passion for certain issues, would come straight out and ask for bang for their buck in exchange for the opening of their wallets. In some cases, an entire project or department would be mounted at the think tank with the understanding that it would be fully funded by a single donor. These rich, influential folks typically had business or investment interests that benefited from shaping the establishment narrative in their favor, and they wanted to do so without leaving any footprints. What better way than to have it all fronted by a shiny veneer of expert credibility?

So while the generals of the Iraq War era had all the subtlety of a sledgehammer in representing the interests of the military-industrial complex, the new salesmen of endless armed conflict in Ukraine have overwhelmingly adopted the more subtle model. A study published in 2020 found that the top 50 think tanks received over a billion dollars from the US government and its defense contractors and manufacturers, including some of the biggest beneficiaries of weapons production today ‘for Ukraine’. The top recipients of this funding include the Atlantic Council, German Marshall Fund of the United States, Brookings Institution, Heritage Foundation, Center for Strategic and International Studies, New America Foundation, RAND Corporation, Center for a New American Security, Council on Foreign Relations, and the Stimson Center.

Some of these black boxes are more ideologically-driven than others. The Heritage Foundation, for example, leans overwhelmingly neoconservative and interventionist. Others, like the Atlantic Council and German Marshall Fund, are effectively force multipliers for NATO talking points. But the RAND Corporation also houses systems analysts and scientists specializing in space and computing. The fact that not all of these entities – or even the people who work within some of them – can be tossed into the same basket and labeled mere parrots for the special interests of their organization’s benefactors helps to muddy the waters.

In an analysis published in June of media coverage related to US military involvement in Ukraine, the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft found that, when a think tank is cited regarding the issue, 85% of the time it’s a think tank with “financial backing from the defense industry.” Taken at face value, this risks being interpreted by the general public as expert ‘consensus’ on the need for US taxpayers to continue flooding Ukraine with weapons, unaware that it’s really just a bunch of Pentagon-backed actors agreeing with each other about the need to pursue the most profitable course of action on behalf of their War Inc. sugar daddies. Just like when climate scientists, who have parlayed climate change into endless funding and a perpetual justification for their existence, aren’t going to kill their cash cow by arguing that the climate can’t be controlled by man and that throwing cash at the issue – or at them – is futile.

Many of the Ukraine think tank experts are quick to attack analysis and information published on platforms they don’t like – such as RT – as ‘Russian-backed’. You’d have to be living under a rock these days to not know that RT is linked to Russia. No transparency issues there.

But there is far less transparency around their own organizations’ financing. Where is their insistence on being above board about the use of defense industry cash to influence not just the general public but the course of the conflict itself? Around a third of top foreign policy think tanks don’t disclose this Pentagon funding, according to the Quincy Institute. Nor is it unheard of for these experts to springboard from these establishment-friendly platforms and the public notoriety they provide, right into public office – where they can translate the same agenda that they promoted into actionable policy. Isn’t it important for voters to consider the powerful hidden hand who helped to get them there?

August 22, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment