Why are nuclear weapons morally different from conventional bombs or machine guns or cannons?
Strategic nuclear weapons—the original and most widespread nuclear weapons—cannot be used with restraint. They have huge a blast radius and they kill everyone in it indiscriminately.
The one time they were used demonstrated this well. They are the most effective and efficient way, not merely to defeat an enemy army (which has bunkers, widely dispersed units, and retaliation capabilities), but to kill the entire civilian population of an enemy city.
To kill all the inhabitants of an enemy city, usually by one or another type of bombardment, was a goal pursued by all sides in both world wars. Nuclear weapons made it much easier, cheaper, and harder to defend against.
Tactical nuclear weapons are probably different; they haven’t seen (much? any?) use in real wars to be certain.
Strategic nuclear weapons—the original and most widespread nuclear weapons—cannot be used with restraint.
They can. One of the problems that America had, going into the 80s, was that its ICBM force was becoming vulnerable to a potential surprise attack by the CCCP. This concerned them because only the ICBM force, at the time, had the sort of accuracy necessary for taking out hardened targets in a limited strike—like their opponent’s strategic forces. And they were understandably reluctant to rely on systems that could only be used for city busting—i.e. the submarine force.
If you’re interested in this, I suggest the—contemporary with that problem—documentary First Strike.
Strategic nuclear weapons—the original and most widespread nuclear weapons—cannot be used with restraint. They have huge a blast radius and they kill everyone in it indiscriminately.
What do you mean by “restraint”?
For example, the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki killed around 70,000 people. The fire-bombing of Tokyo in March of 1945 (a single bombing raid) killed about 100,000 people.
In addition to nshepperd’s point, there’s the fact that sending a bomber fleet to destroy an enemy city is very expensive—the costs of planes, fuel, and bombs add up quickly, not to mention pilots’ lives. And if the defenders can destroy 50% of the planes before they drop their bombs, the bombing campaign becomes 50% less effective.
Whereas a strategic nuclear warhead only requires one plane to deliver it (or one ICBM). Much cheaper, much less risky, and much more stealthy. If you build a small fleet of nuclear bombers (or, again, a small stable of ICBMs), you can theoretically destroy all of the enemy’s cities in one night.
If the atom bomb had by chance been developed a few years earlier, when the US still faced serious opposition in Europe, then quite probably they would have used it to wipe out all the major German and German-held cities.
Not Paris, of course, which had a lot of diplomatic and sentimental value and little industrial value. I meant cities of high industrial value in occupied Czechoslovakia, Austria, Poland, and other countries the West didn’t care as much about.
It’s one thing to create a weapon that can be used to kill O(100,000) people at once (though, it’s not really “at once” if you do it by dropping N bombs consecutively). It’s another thing to create a weapon that can only be used to kill O(100,000) people at once.
Or something. Of course, if inventing nukes is evidence humans aren’t very moral, the fact that people chose to kill a hundred thousand people in Tokyo with conventional weapons is a different kind of evidence for humans being not very moral.
It’s another thing to create a weapon that can only be used to kill O(100,000) people at once.
Clearly a nuke is not that.
evidence for humans being not very moral
Given that both humans and moralities are quite diverse, I don’t see any information content in the phrase “humans are not very moral”. It’s just trivially true and pretty meaningless.
Given that both humans and moralities are quite diverse, I don’t see any information content in the phrase “humans are not very moral”. It’s just trivially true and pretty meaningless.
I agree, and besides I’m not a moral realist. I was originally responding to people in this thread who discussed whether humans could be described as moral.
If the bombing of Nagasaki contributed more to the end of the war than the bombing of Tokyo, then we could easily say it was morally superior. That is not to say there weren’t better options of course.
We can debate endlessly the wisdom of bombing Hiroshima, but does anybody have a defence for bombing Nagasaki? Since this is the quotation thread, I’ll quote Dave Barry:
It was Truman who made the difficult decision to drop the first atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, the rationale being that only such a devastating, horrendous display of destructive power would convince Japan that it had to surrender. Truman also made the decision to drop the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, the rationale being, hey, we had another bomb.
I’m seriously curious. (Reasonably rational arguments, of course.)
I read that, amongst other WP articles, while researching my comment. That one doesn’t even attempt to explain the reasons for dropping the second bomb. (The quotation from the comedian is not meant to be an argument either.)
At first, some refused to believe the United States had built an atomic bomb. The Japanese Army and Navy had their own independent atomic-bomb programs and therefore the Japanese understood enough to know how very difficult building it would be.[74] Admiral Soemu Toyoda, the Chief of the Naval General Staff, argued that even if the United States had made one, they could not have many more.[75] American strategists, having anticipated a reaction like Toyoda’s, planned to drop a second bomb shortly after the first, to convince the Japanese that the U.S. had a large supply.[59][76]
OK, thanks, I must have missed that anticipating the immediately following section.
Looking over my posts, I see that I may have given the impression that I doubted that there was any rational argument in favour of dropping the second bomb. I only meant to say that I didn’t know one, because the discussion (here and elsewhere) always seems to focus on the first one.
It would be more accurate to say ‘barely surrendered even after the simultaneous bombing of Nagasaki and their most feared enemy Soviet Russia declaring war on them’.
Many (most?) historians believe that the Soviet entry into the war induced the Japanese surrender. Some historians believe that American decision makers expected Japan to surrender soon and wanted to use atomic bombs before the end of the war, to demonstrate their power to the Soviets. Gaddis Smith:
It has been demonstrated that the decision to bomb Japan was centrally connected to Truman’s confrontational approach to the Soviet Union.
A very small number of historians believe that the atomic bomb on net cost American lives. Martin Sherwin:
Many more American soldiers… might have had the opportunity to grow old if Truman had accepted Grew’s advice. [that all that would be needed to induce Japanese surrender starting in May was explaining that US occupying forces would follow the rules of war, not exploit the Japanese, etc, and that delaying to use the atomic bomb was wasteful]
Some historians believe that American decision makers expected Japan to surrender soon and wanted to use atomic bombs before the end of the war, to demonstrate their power to the Soviets.
I favor this hypothesis, it seems to me the demonstration of the power of atomic bombs was as much for Stalin’s benefit as it was for the Japanese leadership’s. One can make a reasonable case that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the real reason why the battle-hardened Soviet army stopped in Germany and didn’t just roll over the rest of Western Europe.
That is no reason to drop the bomb on a city though; there are plenty of non-living targets that can be blown up to demonstrate destructive power. I suppose doing so wouldn’t signal the will to use the atomic bomb, but in a time when hundreds of thousands died in air raids I would think such a thing would be assumed.
I suppose this highlights the fundamental problem of the era: the assumption that targeting civilians with bombs was the best course of action.
If you drop a nuke on a Japanese city you kill three birds with one stone: you get to test how it works for intended use (remember, it was the first real test so uncertainty was high); you get to intimidate Japan into surrender; and you get to hint to Stalin that he should behave himself or else.
Strategic nuclear weapons—the original and most widespread nuclear weapons—cannot be used with restraint. They have huge a blast radius and they kill everyone in it indiscriminately.
The one time they were used demonstrated this well. They are the most effective and efficient way, not merely to defeat an enemy army (which has bunkers, widely dispersed units, and retaliation capabilities), but to kill the entire civilian population of an enemy city.
To kill all the inhabitants of an enemy city, usually by one or another type of bombardment, was a goal pursued by all sides in both world wars. Nuclear weapons made it much easier, cheaper, and harder to defend against.
Tactical nuclear weapons are probably different; they haven’t seen (much? any?) use in real wars to be certain.
They can. One of the problems that America had, going into the 80s, was that its ICBM force was becoming vulnerable to a potential surprise attack by the CCCP. This concerned them because only the ICBM force, at the time, had the sort of accuracy necessary for taking out hardened targets in a limited strike—like their opponent’s strategic forces. And they were understandably reluctant to rely on systems that could only be used for city busting—i.e. the submarine force.
If you’re interested in this, I suggest the—contemporary with that problem—documentary First Strike.
You mean СССР?
What do you mean by “restraint”?
For example, the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki killed around 70,000 people. The fire-bombing of Tokyo in March of 1945 (a single bombing raid) killed about 100,000 people.
Was the bombing of Nagasaki morally worse?
In addition to nshepperd’s point, there’s the fact that sending a bomber fleet to destroy an enemy city is very expensive—the costs of planes, fuel, and bombs add up quickly, not to mention pilots’ lives. And if the defenders can destroy 50% of the planes before they drop their bombs, the bombing campaign becomes 50% less effective.
Whereas a strategic nuclear warhead only requires one plane to deliver it (or one ICBM). Much cheaper, much less risky, and much more stealthy. If you build a small fleet of nuclear bombers (or, again, a small stable of ICBMs), you can theoretically destroy all of the enemy’s cities in one night.
If the atom bomb had by chance been developed a few years earlier, when the US still faced serious opposition in Europe, then quite probably they would have used it to wipe out all the major German and German-held cities.
German-held? Like Paris?
Not Paris, of course, which had a lot of diplomatic and sentimental value and little industrial value. I meant cities of high industrial value in occupied Czechoslovakia, Austria, Poland, and other countries the West didn’t care as much about.
It’s one thing to create a weapon that can be used to kill O(100,000) people at once (though, it’s not really “at once” if you do it by dropping N bombs consecutively). It’s another thing to create a weapon that can only be used to kill O(100,000) people at once.
Or something. Of course, if inventing nukes is evidence humans aren’t very moral, the fact that people chose to kill a hundred thousand people in Tokyo with conventional weapons is a different kind of evidence for humans being not very moral.
That’s not how Big O notation works: O(100,000) = O(1).
You presumably mean “in the order of 100,000”, which is sometimes written “~100,000″.
Clearly a nuke is not that.
Given that both humans and moralities are quite diverse, I don’t see any information content in the phrase “humans are not very moral”. It’s just trivially true and pretty meaningless.
I agree, and besides I’m not a moral realist. I was originally responding to people in this thread who discussed whether humans could be described as moral.
If the bombing of Nagasaki contributed more to the end of the war than the bombing of Tokyo, then we could easily say it was morally superior. That is not to say there weren’t better options of course.
We can debate endlessly the wisdom of bombing Hiroshima, but does anybody have a defence for bombing Nagasaki? Since this is the quotation thread, I’ll quote Dave Barry:
I’m seriously curious. (Reasonably rational arguments, of course.)
Recommend reading the actual history, rather than comedians.
I read that, amongst other WP articles, while researching my comment. That one doesn’t even attempt to explain the reasons for dropping the second bomb. (The quotation from the comedian is not meant to be an argument either.)
This section seems relevant:
Emphasis mine.
OK, thanks, I must have missed that anticipating the immediately following section.
Looking over my posts, I see that I may have given the impression that I doubted that there was any rational argument in favour of dropping the second bomb. I only meant to say that I didn’t know one, because the discussion (here and elsewhere) always seems to focus on the first one.
Well, the Japanese just barely surrendered even after Nagasaki.
It would be more accurate to say ‘barely surrendered even after the simultaneous bombing of Nagasaki and their most feared enemy Soviet Russia declaring war on them’.
Many (most?) historians believe that the Soviet entry into the war induced the Japanese surrender. Some historians believe that American decision makers expected Japan to surrender soon and wanted to use atomic bombs before the end of the war, to demonstrate their power to the Soviets. Gaddis Smith:
A very small number of historians believe that the atomic bomb on net cost American lives. Martin Sherwin:
I favor this hypothesis, it seems to me the demonstration of the power of atomic bombs was as much for Stalin’s benefit as it was for the Japanese leadership’s. One can make a reasonable case that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the real reason why the battle-hardened Soviet army stopped in Germany and didn’t just roll over the rest of Western Europe.
That is no reason to drop the bomb on a city though; there are plenty of non-living targets that can be blown up to demonstrate destructive power. I suppose doing so wouldn’t signal the will to use the atomic bomb, but in a time when hundreds of thousands died in air raids I would think such a thing would be assumed.
I suppose this highlights the fundamental problem of the era: the assumption that targeting civilians with bombs was the best course of action.
If you drop a nuke on a Japanese city you kill three birds with one stone: you get to test how it works for intended use (remember, it was the first real test so uncertainty was high); you get to intimidate Japan into surrender; and you get to hint to Stalin that he should behave himself or else.
True. Some sources indicate that some Japanese cities were left intact precisely so the American military could test the effects of a nuke!