How I learned to love the bomb

We have lived a fragile existence since 1945. Images of entire Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, being engulfed by mushroom clouds rising high into the stratosphere have shown us what it means to live in a world with nuclear weapons. Just one man’s push of a button can destroy everything we have ever known. And so it seemed inevitable that nuclear weapons would someday bring the world to an end. But six decades on and the world still stands in one piece. In excess of 100,000 nuclear missiles were manufactured during the Cold War, but none of them were ever used, to the relief of pessimists who believed that man could not be trusted with wielding such power. Why did the widely anticipated nuclear holocaust never come?

Cold War historians attribute this fortunate turn of events to what they called “Mutual Assured Destruction” (or MAD). The supposed reason why America and the Soviet Union never launched their nuclear missiles was that they figured that doing so would lead to their own utter destruction. The enemy had their own nukes and could destroy them by retaliating within minutes of attack. Nobody would survive the day, so both reasoned that doing nothing was better in the end. So as much as the USSR and the US would have loved to rip one another to shreds, committees of advisers and strategists equipped with this well-reasoned theory convinced their leaders to restrain themselves. This theory, however, lacks faith in the goodness of man. It means that the nuclear-free world that we’ve enjoyed for the past six decades is not to the credit of humanity nobly rejecting the horrors of nuclear war, but rather of timid men restraining their violent tendencies in the name of reasoned self-preservation. To conclude that humanity stands today in one piece only because of fear would be depressing — and wrong. What marks the nuclear-free world that we enjoy today isn’t merely fear, but love.

Well, not the mushy type between two people. It is love between a person and the world he lives in that has spared us nuclear war for six relatively stable decades. We exist today thanks to man’s sympathy for the countless innocents he might have killed, his compassion for all humanity and his love for the world. How could someone, after all, stomach destroying the world? Regardless of the circumstances, anyone who has ever had the chance to use a nuclear weapon since World War II has chosen not to. Even individuals who had little to lose, when given the chance to push the big red button that could blow up the world, refused to.

This possibility arose surprisingly often in the Cold War. There was Vasiliy Arkhipov, the lone voice onboard a Russian submarine who convinced his crew not to fire the ship’s nuclear torpedo as they were surrounded by American ships. Later on came Stanislav Petrov, who was on duty at a Soviet base when an incoming American nuclear missile supposedly appeared on radar. He dismissed it as a false alarm and neglected his duty to order a retaliatory nuclear strike. Good call. It turned out that the radar system had just malfunctioned and Petrov had averted an accidental nuclear war. The world was a push of a button away from utter destruction at the hands of these two men. Yet despite the apparent threats they faced, they were reluctant, even stubborn, about throwing the world into nuclear war. Their consciences just wouldn’t let them.

And then there are the cases of unreasonable people being handed the ability to launch nuclear missiles today. Not many people would call the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-il, a reasonable man. He has deprived his 24 million North Korean subjects of contact with the outside world, yet is himself obsessed with Hollywood movies. This is the same man who reportedly has the capability of deploying a nuclear bomb. But he hasn’t, choosing instead to use the fear of it to threaten the West. That is as far as he dares to go. Kim Jong-il is still human: even he, apparently, has second thoughts about blowing up the world.

So does Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Despite calling for Israel to be “wiped off the map,” he has kept himself from doing so. The worst he has done with his long-range missiles is to post threatening videos of them on YouTube. Beware, some say, because Iran will have its first nuclear missile by the end of the year. Yet we have no reason to worry. On February 10, the 30th anniversary of the country’s Islamic revolution, Ahmadinejad told the crowd that “the Iranian nation is ready for talks, but in a fair atmosphere with mutual respect.” No calls for nuclear war here. Even Ahmadinejad wants to avoid that as much as possible.

It doesn’t take the wisdom of a committee considering “Mutual Assured Destruction” and fearing for their own lives to decide against the use of nuclear weapons. Lone officers far down the chain of command and irrational world leaders don’t fit this typical description, yet they too have made the same decision not to let slip the dogs of nuclear war. What has stopped them isn’t fear or well-reasoned strategy. It’s the common humanity that we all share.

“All and all can only fall with a crashing yet meaningless blow,” Bob Dylan once sang to a world gripped by fear of nuclear war. His words capture what it means to live in a nuclear age complete with all its ironies. Everything we have ever known, potentially obliterated by the mere push of a button, whether from a lone Russian submarine officer or the President of the United States. It’s sad that men have been given this much power. But out of this comes our silver lining. Nuclear weapons have given human nature a test. “Mutual Assured Destruction” has, for the first time, offered individuals the chance to singlehandedly destroy the world. And we have, so far, maintained a perfect record. You give a man the power to destroy the world, and he always chooses not to. This, better than anything, offers proof that we are not a violent people, and that human nature is inherently good. And just like that, the existence of nuclear weapons has taught us that man is by nature peaceful and loving (not warlike or hateful), however ironic that sounds.

Still, the threat of our sudden annihilation at the hands of a nuclear weapon is always here. The classic Cold War film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb presented the threat of a rogue army officer getting his hands on a nuclear missile and starting World War III. That’s all it really takes for the world to come to an end. Yes, with more than 100,000 nuclear missiles still around, some safely tucked away, some not, our existence still hangs by a thread. But don’t worry. Bound to the inherent goodness of human nature, that thread is awfully strong.

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For comments and suggestions, please e-mail me at levistel@gmail.com.