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AN ANALYSIS OF THE INFLUENCE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS ON INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT

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83 Nuclear Weapon Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best nuclear weapon topic ideas & essay examples, 📌 simple & easy nuclear weapon essay titles, 👍 good essay topics on nuclear weapon, ❓ research questions about nuclear weapons.

• Was the US Justified in Dropping the Atomic Bomb? In addition to unleashing catastrophic damage upon the people of Japan, the dropping of the bombs was the beginning of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the U.S.
• Means of Destruction & Atomic Bomb Use Politics This information relates to the slide concerning atomic energy, which also advocates for the participation of the Manhattan Project’s researchers and policy-makers in the decision to atomic bombing during World War II. We will write a custom essay specifically for you by our professional experts 808 writers online Learn More
• Truman’s Decision the Dropping an Atomic Bomb The operations planned for late 1945 and early 1946 were to be on mainland Japan, and the military fatalities on both sides, as well as civilian deaths, would have very certainly outweighed the losses caused […]
• Can a Nuclear Reactor Explode Like an Atomic Bomb? The fact is that a nuclear reactor is not designed in the same way as an atomic bomb, as such, despite the abundance of material that could cause a nuclear explosion, the means by which […]
• Ethics and Sustainability. Iran’s Nuclear Weapon The opponents of Iran’s nuclear program explain that the country’s nuclear power is a threat for the peace in the world especially with regards to the fact that Iran is a Muslim country, and its […]
• The Decision to Drop the Atom Bomb President Truman’s decision to use the atomic bomb on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a decision of unprecedented complexity and gravity and, without a doubt, the most difficult decision of his life.
• E. B. Sledge’s Views on Dropping the A-Bomb There is a pointed effort to present to the reader the reality of war in all its starkness and raw horror. However, in the case of a war veteran like E.B.
• The Atomic Bomb of Hiroshima The effects of the bombing were devastating; the explosion had a blast equivalent to approximately 13 kilotons of TNT. Sasaki says that hospitals were teaming with the wounded people, those who managed to survive the […]
• Middle East: Begin Doctrine and Nuclear Weapon Free Zone This happens to be the case despite the fact that many countries and different members of the UN have always been opposed to the validity and applicability of this foreign doctrine or policy.
• Atomic Bomb as a Necessary Evil to End WWII Maddox argued that by releasing the deadly power of the A-bomb on Japanese soil, the Japanese people, and their leaders could visualize the utter senselessness of the war.
• Nuclear Weapon Associated Dangers and Solutions The launch of a nuclear weapon will not only destroy the infrastructure but also lead to severe casualties that will be greater than those during the Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks.
• Why the US Decided to Drop the Atomic Bomb on Japan? One of the most notable stains on America’s reputation, as the ‘beacon of democracy,’ has to do with the fact that the US is the only country in the world that had used the Atomic […]
• The Marshallese and Nuclear Weapon Testing The other effects that the Marshallese people suffered as a result of nuclear weapon testing had to do with the high levels of radiations that were released.
• Was the American Use of the Atomic Bomb Against Japan in 1945 the Final Act of WW2 or the Signal That the Cold War Was About to Begin Therefore, to evaluate the reasons that guided the American government in their successful attempt at mass genocide of the residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, one must consider not only the political implications behind the actions […]
• Leo Szilard’s Petition on the Atomic Bomb The group of scientists who created the weapon of mass destruction tried to prevent the usage of atomic bombs with the help of providing the petition to the President.
• Atomic Audit: Nuclear Posture Review Michael notes that the use of Weapons of Mass Destruction, such as nuclear bombs, tends to qualify the infiltration of security threats in the United States and across the world.
• Why the US used the atomic bomb against Japan? There are two main reasons that prompted the United States to use the atomic bomb against Japan; the refusal to surrender by Japan and the need for the US to assert itself.
• The Use of Atomic Bomb in Japan: Causes and Consequences The reason why the United States was compelled to employ the use of a more lethal weapon in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan has been at the heart of many scholarly writings.
• The Tradition of Non Use of Nuclear Weapon It is worth noting that since 1945 the concept of non use of nuclear weapons have occupied the minds of scholars, the general public and have remain the most and single important issues in the […]
• Was it Necessary for the US to Drop the Atomic Bomb? When it comes to discussing whether it was necessary to drop atomic bombs on Japan’s cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945, it is important to take into account the specifics of geopolitical […]
• Iran and Nuclear Weapon However, whether world leaders take action or not, Iran is about to get the nukes, and the first target will be Israel followed by American and the rest of the world.
• An Analysis of the United States’ Nuclear Weapon and the Natural Resources Used to Maintain it
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• What Are the Problems With Nuclear Weapons?
• How Have the Threats Posed by Nuclear Weapons Evolved Over Time?
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• Why Have Some Countries Chosen to Pursue Nuclear Weapons While Others Have Not?
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Article contents

Nuclear weapons and international conflict: theories and empirical evidence.

• Daniel S. Geller Daniel S. Geller Daniel S. Geller is Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Wayne State University. He conducts research and teaches in the areas of International Politics, Defense Policy, and Foreign Policy. From 2000 through 2010 Dr. Geller served as a consultant to the U.S. Department of State, Office of Technology and Assessments, and in 2009 he was a member of a Senior Advisory Group to the U.S. Strategic Command on the Nuclear Posture Review. Dr. Geller was a Co-Principal Investigator on an NSF grant involving the expansion of the militarized interstate dispute database. He has published extensively in books, journals and edited collections on the subject of interstate war. His most recent books are Nations at War: A Scientific Study of International Conflict (Cambridge University Press) co-authored with J. David Singer and The Construction and Cumulation of Knowledge in International Relations (Blackwell, Ltd.) co-edited with John A. Vasquez.
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.347
• Published online: 27 July 2017

The balance of conventional military capabilities is intrinsic to understanding patterns of war among nations. However, cumulative knowledge relating to the effects of nuclear weapons possession on conflict interaction is largely absent. Framework is provided for analyzing the results of quantitative empirical research on this question and to identify any extant strong and consistent patterns in the interactions of states that can be associated with the possession of nuclear weapons.

Since 1945, a vast, sophisticated, and contradictory literature has developed on the implications of nuclear weaponry for patterns of international conflict and war. This theoretical and empirical work has principally focused on the conflict effects of these weapons for the interaction of nuclear-armed states, although a growing number of studies have explored the impact of a state’s possession of nuclear weapons on the behavior of nonnuclear opponents. Given the destructive capacity of these weapons and their questionable value for battlefield use, most of this work has concentrated on the requirements for successful deterrence. In categorizing the studies, some scholars note that “classical deterrence theory” derives from the Realist paradigm of international politics and subdivide this theory into two complementary strands: structural (or neorealist) deterrence theory and decision-theoretic deterrence theory. In contrast, other analysts choose to classify work on nuclear deterrence into three schools of thought: nuclear irrelevance; risk manipulation, escalation, and limited war; and the nuclear revolution. The essence of these divisions involves a debate about what the possession of nuclear weapons does for a state that controls them. Does the possession of these weapons affect the behavior of nuclear and nonnuclear opponents in disputes over contested values? Do the weapons impart political influence and hold military utility, or are they useless as tools for deterrence, compellence, or war?

• nuclear weapons
• crisis escalation
• nuclear war
• international conflict
• empirical international relations theory

Introduction

The balance of conventional military capabilities is intrinsic to understanding patterns of war among nations (Geller, 2000a ). However, cumulative knowledge relating to the effects of nuclear weapons possession on conflict interaction is largely absent. This article seeks to provide a framework for analyzing the results of quantitative empirical research on this question and to identify any extant strong and consistent patterns in the interactions of states that can be associated with the possession of nuclear weapons.

Since 1945 , a vast, sophisticated, and contradictory literature has developed on the implications of nuclear weaponry for patterns of international conflict and war. 1 This theoretical and empirical work has principally focused on the conflict effects of these weapons for the interaction of nuclear-armed states, although a growing number of studies have explored the impact of a state’s possession of nuclear weapons on the behavior of nonnuclear opponents. Given the destructive capacity of these weapons and their questionable value for battlefield use, most of this work has concentrated on the requirements for successful deterrence. In categorizing the studies, Zagare and Kilgour ( 2000 ), for example, note that “classical deterrence theory” derives from the Realist paradigm of international politics, and they subdivide this theory into two complementary strands: structural (or neorealist) deterrence theory and decision-theoretic deterrence theory. In contrast, Jervis ( 1979 , 1984 , 1988 ), among others, chooses to classify work on nuclear deterrence into three schools of thought: nuclear irrelevance; risk manipulation, escalation, and limited war; and the nuclear revolution. The essence of these divisions involves a debate about what the possession of nuclear weapons does for a state that controls them. Does the possession of these weapons affect the behavior of nuclear and non-nuclear opponents in disputes over contested values? Do the weapons impart political influence and hold military utility or are they useless as tools for deterrence, compellence, or war?

Nuclear strategy has principally concerned itself with the efficacy of nuclear weapons as a deterrent. One school of thought—nuclear revolution theory—characterized by the works of Brodie ( 1946 , 1959 , 1978 ), Waltz ( 1981 , 1990 , 1993 , 2003 ), and Jervis ( 1984 , 1988 , 1989a ), holds that the incredibly rapid and destructive effects of nuclear weapons creates a strong disincentive for nuclear-armed states to engage each other in disputes that might escalate to the level of war. The “nuclear revolution” means that nuclear weapons can deter aggression at all levels of violence and makes confrontations and crises between nuclear-armed states rare events. The maintenance of a nuclear second-strike capability is all that is required for a successful military deterrent force.

A second school of thought—risk manipulation, escalation, and limited war—emphasizes the problem of “risk” in confrontations between states in possession of nuclear weapons. The issue here is that, in disputes between nuclear-armed states, the use of nuclear weapons carries such enormous costs for both sides that any threat to use the weapons lacks inherent credibility. While allowing that a nuclear second-strike capability can deter a full-scale nuclear strike by an opponent, these analysts argue that states will manipulate the risk of dispute escalation and war for the purposes of deterrence and compellence (e.g., Gray, 1979 ; Kahn, 1962 , 1965 ; Schelling, 1960 , 1966 ). In this view, crises and brinkmanship tactics become surrogates for war in confrontations between nations in possession of nuclear weapons (Snyder & Diesing, 1977 ). Associated with this thesis is the concept of the “stability-instability paradox” (Snyder, 1965 ), whereby nuclear-armed states are secure in the deterrence of general nuclear war but are free to exploit military asymmetries (including strategic and tactical nuclear asymmetries as well as conventional military advantages) at lower levels of violence (e.g., Kissinger, 1957 ).

Yet another perspective holds nuclear weapons to be “irrelevant” as special instruments of either statecraft or war (Mueller 1988 , 1989 ). 2 In this argument, nuclear weapons are not substantially different in their deterrent effect from conventional military forces and, in John Mueller’s view, developed nations will not engage each other in either conventional or nuclear wars—having already witnessed the devastation that can be produced with both types of weaponry. A related argument holds that the possession of nuclear weapons provides little or no coercive advantage in confrontations with either nuclear-armed or nonnuclear states. A number of quantitative empirical studies of deterrence failures and successes (in both direct- and extended-deterrence cases) have produced results supportive of this thesis. Additionally, a notable formal mathematical study of deterrence by Zagare and Kilgour ( 2000 ) demonstrates that raising the costs of war above a certain threshold has no effect on deterrence stability. In this work, Zagare and Kilgour also maintain that, while nuclear weapons may increase the costs associated with a deterrent threat, they simultaneously decrease the credibility of the threat—and hence the stability of deterrence. These contrary effects serve to minimize the impact of nuclear weapons on effective deterrence. In short, nuclear and nonnuclear crises should exhibit the same patterns of escalation.

Over the past 35 years, large-scale quantitative empirical studies have attempted to generate evidence relating to these theories. Discussion of some of these works follows.

Nuclear Weapons and Patterns of International Conflict

The nuclear revolution.

The term “nuclear revolution” was coined by Robert Jervis ( 1989a , ch. 1), although the initial recognition of the alterations in patterns of international politics likely to be wrought by nuclear weapons should be credited to Bernard Brodie ( 1946 ). As Jervis has noted:

the changes nuclear weapons have produced in world politics constitute a true revolution in the relationships between force and foreign policy. The fact that neither [the United States nor the Soviet Union] can protect itself without the other’s cooperation drastically alters the way in which force can be used or threatened . . . The result is to render much of our prenuclear logic inadequate. As Bernard Brodie has stressed, the first question to ask about a war is what the political goal is that justifies the military cost. When the cost is likely to be very high, only the most valuable goals are worth pursuing by military means . . . What prospective . . . goals could possibly justify the risk of total destruction? (Jervis, 1989a , p. 13, 24)

Moreover, for Jervis ( 1989b ), that this destruction was essentially unavoidable under any plausible strategy constituted the essence of the nuclear revolution. Jervis ( 1989a , pp. 23–25) went on to enumerate changes in international politics directly attributable to the presence of nuclear weaponry, including the absence of war among the great powers, the declining frequency of great power crises, and the tenuous link between the conventional or nuclear balance among great powers and the political outcomes of their disputes. 3

Kenneth Waltz ( 1981 , 1990 , 1993 , 2003 , 2008 ) has been exceptionally prominent in developing and forwarding the thesis that nuclear weapons are a force for peace and that nuclear proliferation will lead to declining frequencies of war. Waltz argues that nuclear weapons are simply more effective in dissuading states from engaging in war than are conventional weapons:

In a conventional world, states going to war can at once believe that they may win and that, should they lose, the price of defeat will be bearable (Waltz, 1990 , p. 743). A little reasoning leads to the conclusions that to fight nuclear wars is all but impossible and that to launch an offensive that might prompt nuclear retaliation is obvious folly. To reach these conclusions, complicated calculations are not required, only a little common sense (Waltz in Sagan & Waltz, 1995 , p. 113). The likelihood of war decreases as deterrent and defensive capabilities increase. Nuclear weapons make wars hard to start. These statements hold for small as for big nuclear powers. Because they do, the gradual spread of nuclear weapons is more to be welcomed than feared. (Waltz in Sagan & Waltz, 1995 , p. 45)

Given this logic, evidence consistent with an absence of war or the use of force short of war between nuclear-armed states and few (or a declining frequency of) crises between nuclear powers would be supportive of the nuclear revolution thesis.

Empirical Evidence

A number of quantitative empirical studies have produced evidence relevant to the nuclear revolution thesis. In an early study of the effects of nuclear weapons possession, Bueno de Mesquita and Riker ( 1982 ) present both a formal mathematical model and an empirical test of deterrence success. The model assumes the possibility of nuclear war (i.e., the use of nuclear weapons) when nuclear asymmetry exists (only one side possesses nuclear weapons), but assumes the absence of nuclear war among nuclear-armed states. The model indicates a rising probability of nuclear war resulting from nuclear proliferation to the midpoint of the international system, where half of the states possess nuclear weapons, at which point any further proliferation results in a declining probability of nuclear war. When all nations possess nuclear weapons, the probability of nuclear war is zero. The supporting empirical analysis uses early Correlates of War (COW) Project Militarized Interstate Dispute (MID) data, for the years 1945 through 1976 , for four classes of dyads: nuclear/nuclear, nuclear/nonnuclear with a nuclear ally, nuclear/nonnuclear, and nonnuclear/nonnuclear. The analysis examines the distribution of threats, interventions, and wars across the four dyad classes and indicates that the presence of a symmetric nuclear threat constrains conflict by reducing its likelihood of escalation to the level of war. The two classes of nuclear/nuclear and nuclear/nonnuclear with a nuclear ally have the highest probabilities of employing only threats and the lowest probabilities of engaging in interventions and wars. This evidence is consistent with the predictions of the nuclear revolution thesis. 4

Rauchhaus ( 2009 ) provides a multivariate analysis of factors associated with both militarized interstate disputes and wars for all dyads between 1885 and 2000 (MID database). The data set used in his study contains 611,310 dyad years, and tests were performed on time sections from 1885–1944 and 1945–2000 . He reports that in symmetric nuclear dyads (both states possess nuclear weapons) the odds of war drop precipitously. Rauchhaus concludes that Waltz and other nuclear revolution theorists find support for their thesis in the patterns uncovered by his study.

Asal and Beardsley ( 2007 ) examine the relationship between the severity of violence in international crises and the number of states involved in the crises that possess nuclear weapons. Using data from the International Crisis Behavior (ICB) Project for the years 1918 through 2000 , their results indicate that crises in which nuclear actors are involved are more likely to end without violence and that, as the number of nuclear-armed states engaged in crises increases, the probability of war decreases. This evidence is interpreted as supportive of the nuclear revolution thesis: the presence of nuclear weapon states in international crises has a violence-dampening effect due to the potential consequences of escalation and the use of nuclear force.

In a second study, Beardsley and Asal ( 2009a ) hypothesize that nuclear weapons act as shields against aggressive behavior directed toward their possessors. Specifically, it is postulated that nuclear states will be constrained in engaging in aggressive actions toward other nuclear-armed powers. Data is drawn from the ICB Project for the years 1945 through 2000 , using directed dyads as the unit of analysis. The results indicate that nuclear opponents of other nuclear-armed powers are limited in their use of violent force. However, Beardsley and Asal ( 2009a , p. 251) also note that the “restraining effect of nuclear weapons on violent aggression does not appear to affect the propensity for actors to engage each other in general crises, in contrast with the expectations of . . . the ‘nuclear revolution’ model. . .”

Additional results consistent with the nuclear revolution thesis are reported in a study by Sobek, Foster, and Robinson ( 2012 ). Using directed-dyad year with MID data for the period between 1945 and 2001 , the study examines the effects of efforts to develop nuclear weapons on the targeting of the proliferator in militarized disputes. Sobek et al. ( 2012 , p. 160) conclude that “. . .if a state . . . gains nuclear weapons, then the odds of being targeted in a militarized dispute falls.” States developing nuclear weapons are high-frequency targets in MIDs, but “. . .[t]argeting drops precipitously when [joint] acquisition is achieved” (Sobek et al., 2012 , p. 160).

However, Bell and Miller ( 2015 ) present evidence that is counter to the preceding studies. Using data collected by Rauchhaus ( 2009 ), they contend that nuclear dyads are neither more nor less likely to fight wars or engage in sub-war conflicts than are nonnuclear dyads. They argue that the evidence indicating a strong negative probability of war in symmetric nuclear dyads is due to the statistical model used by Rauchhaus, whereas the positive association for nuclear dyads and crisis frequency reported by Beardsley and Asal ( 2009a ) is due to selection effects (i.e., nuclear weapons possession is more a consequence rather than a cause of conflict).

The nuclear revolution thesis maintains that there should be a general absence of war or the use of force short of war among nuclear-armed states. In addition, there is the expectation of few (or a diminishing number of) crises in nuclear dyads, as the fear of escalation will exert a powerful constraint on aggressive behavior.

Bueno de Mesquita and Riker ( 1982 ) present compelling evidence that nuclear asymmetry or the absence of nuclear weapons on both sides of a conflict are more likely to be associated with war. In their data, between 1945 and 1976 , there were 17 cases of war between nonnuclear states, two cases of war in asymmetric nuclear dyads, and zero cases of war in either nuclear dyads or nuclear/nonnuclear dyads where the nonnuclear party had a nuclear-armed ally. Rauchhaus’s ( 2009 ) study also presents evidence that symmetric nuclear dyads are unlikely to engage in war. The article by Asal and Beardsley ( 2007 ) reports results consistent with those of Bueno de Mesquita and Riker ( 1982 ). Specifically, crises ending in war are not uncommon for confrontations engaging nonnuclear states and for confrontations in which only one state possesses nuclear weapons. However, as the number of nuclear participants increases beyond one, the probability of full-scale war diminishes. Only the results of Bell and Miller ( 2015 ) stand in contrast with the findings on symmetric nuclear dyads and the probability of war. Similarly, Beardsley and Asal ( 2009a ) show findings consistent with the nuclear revolution thesis: symmetric nuclear dyads engage in few crises where violence is the “preeminent” form of interaction. This conclusion is also supported by the findings reported by Sobek et al. ( 2012 ). However, Asal and Beardsley ( 2007 ) and Beardsley and Asal ( 2009a ) also note that there appears to be no constraining effect produced by nuclear weapons on the occurrence of crises that exhibit lower levels of hostility in symmetric nuclear dyads.

Since the advent of nuclear weapons in 1945 , there has been one war between nuclear-armed powers: the Kargil War of 1999 involving India and Pakistan (Geller, 2005 , p. 101). This conflict remained at the conventional level and surpassed the threshold of 1,000 battle deaths set by the Correlates of War Project for classification as a war (Singer & Small, 1972 ; Small & Singer, 1982 ). However, Paul ( 2005 , p. 13) argues that, despite the conventional military asymmetry between India and Pakistan (in India’s favor) that existed at the time of the Kargil War, the development of Pakistani nuclear weapons actually permitted Pakistan to launch a conventional invasion of the disputed territory of Kashmir. As Paul explains, only in a long war could India mobilize its material superiority, but as a result of the development of Pakistani nuclear weapons, a long war becomes “inconceivable” without incurring the risk of nuclear escalation. Hence, Pakistan’s leaders were emboldened to initiate a conventional war behind the shield of their nuclear deterrent despite their conventional military inferiority. This sole case of conventional war between nuclear-armed states—and its facilitation by the risk of unacceptable escalation provided by nuclear weapons—stands in stark contradiction to the predictions of nuclear revolution theory. 5

These collective results provide only partial support for the nuclear revolution thesis. As the theory suggests, war between nuclear-armed states should be nonexistent or a very rare event. This prediction, to date (with one notable exception), has been upheld. However, Beardsley and Asal ( 2009a ) report that symmetric nuclear dyads engage in an unexpectedly large number of crises—in contradiction to the predictions of nuclear revolution theory. This is an empirical question that will receive additional examination in the following section.

Risk Manipulation, Escalation, and Limited War

A second school of thought—risk manipulation, escalation, and limited war—finds its archetypal expression in the seminal work of Henry Kissinger ( 1957 ). According to this thesis (and counter to that of nuclear revolution theory), the possession of a nuclear second-strike capability may deter a nuclear attack by an opponent on one’s home territory, but not much else. Kissinger argued that the United States (and its NATO allies) required the ability to conduct successful combat operations at levels of violence below that of general nuclear war if the protection of Europe against Soviet aggression was a political goal. Some years later, Snyder ( 1965 ) discussed this as what was later termed the “stability-instability paradox.” The essence of the paradox was that stability at the level of general nuclear war permitted the exploitation of military asymmetries at lower levels of violence—including strategic (counterforce) and tactical nuclear wars as well as conventional forms of combat. The thesis that strategic nuclear weapons possessed little political or military utility other than deterring a nuclear attack on one’s home territory led to a number of works devoted to the analysis of tactics for coercive bargaining and limited war by Thomas Schelling ( 1960 , 1966 ), Herman Kahn ( 1960 , 1962 , 1965 ), and others. 6

As Snyder and Diesing ( 1977 , p. 450) maintain, the primary effect of the possession of nuclear weapons on the behavior of nuclear adversaries is the creation of new constraints on the ultimate range of their coercive tactics—a result of the extraordinary increase in the interval between the value of the interests at stake in a conflict and the potential costs of war. They note that before the advent of nuclear weapons, this interval was comparatively small and states could more readily accept the risk of war in a coercive bargaining crisis or engage in war in order to avoid the loss of a contested value. In contradistinction, given even small numbers of nuclear weapons in the stockpiles of states, it is far more difficult to conceive of an issue worth incurring the high risk of nuclear war, much less the cost of actually fighting one. 7

According to this thesis, a direct result of the constraints created by the presence of nuclear weapons has been the attempt by nuclear powers to control, in a more finely calibrated manner, the threat and application of force in disputes with other nuclear-armed states. These developments find theoretical and empirical expression in the concept of escalation , which is defined as the sequential expansion of the scope or intensity of conflict (Osgood & Tucker, 1967 , p. 127, 188). 8 In most standard formulations, escalation is conceived as a generally “controllable and reversible process,” 9 which a rational decision maker can employ in conflict situations as an instrument of state policy (Osgood & Tucker, 1967 , p. 188). Decision makers estimate the relative bargaining power of the rivals and engage in increasingly coercive tactics that are designed to undermine the opponent’s resolve. Controlled escalation occurs when each side is capable of inflicting major or unacceptable damage on the other but avoids this while attempting to influence the opponent with measured increases in the conflict level that incorporate the threat of possible continued expansion.

The measured application of force and the ability to control escalation in nuclear disputes are seen—by these strategic theorists—as indispensable for securing political values while minimizing risk and cost (Osgood & Tucker, 1967 , p. 137; Russett, 1988 , p. 284). A preeminent theorist in this school, Herman Kahn ( 1965 , p. 3), described escalation as “an increase in the level of conflict . . . [often assuming the form of] a competition in risk-taking or . . . resolve.” As this theory developed, conflict analysts elaborated the risks involved in the process and incorporated the manipulation of these risks as a possible tactic in one’s strategy. 10

Clearly, nuclear weapons have not altered the values at stake in interstate disputes (and the desire to avoid political loss), but rather have increased the rapid and immediate costs of war. As a result, in a severe conflict between nuclear powers, the decision maker’s dilemma is to construct a strategy to secure political interests through coercive actions that raise the possibility of war without pushing the risk to an intolerable level. Some analysts argue that the solution to this problem has entailed an increase in the “threshold of provocation,” providing greater area of coercive maneuver in the threat, display, and limited use of force (Osgood & Tucker, 1967 , pp. 144–145; Snyder & Diesing, 1977 , p. 451). Hostile interaction between nuclear powers under this higher provocation threshold can range from verbal threats and warnings, to military deployments and displays, to the use of force in limited wars. Hence, in disputes between nuclear powers, it is argued that military force should be viewed as requisite but “potentially catastrophic power” that must be carefully managed and controlled within the bounds of reciprocally recognized constraints (Osgood & Tucker 1967 , p. 137).

It is frequently stated that the principal exemplar of this new form of competition is the local crisis. Obviously, crises have an extensive history in international politics, but the argument is made that the nuclear age has produced an expansion of steps on the escalation ladder and has intensified the maneuvering of nuclear rivals for dominant position in conflicts below the level of all-out war. For example, Snyder and Diesing note that:

the expanded range of crisis tactics in the nuclear era can be linked to a new conception of crises as surrogates for war, rather than merely dangerous incidents that might lead to war. . . [S]ince war is no longer a plausible option between nuclear powers, they have turned to threats of force and the demonstrative use of force short of war as a means of getting their way. The winner of the encounter is the one who can appear the most resolved to take risks and stand up to risks. (Snyder & Diesing, 1977 , pp. 455–456)

Given this logic, conflicts between nuclear powers should reveal different escalatory patterns than conflicts between states where only one side possesses nuclear arms, or conflicts where neither side possesses nuclear arms. Specifically, disputes between nuclear powers should evidence a greater tendency to escalate—short of war—than nonnuclear disputes or disputes, in which only one side possesses a nuclear capability.

Kugler ( 1984 ) presents an empirical test of classical nuclear deterrence theory: the study examines whether nuclear weapons are salient in preventing the initiation or escalation of war to extreme levels. The analysis focuses on crisis interactions involving the United States, the Soviet Union, and China (PRC) with the case set drawn from Butterworth ( 1976 ) and CACI (Mahoney & Clayberg, 1978 , 1979 ). The cases used in the analysis constitute 14 extreme crises where nuclear nations were involved and where nuclear weapons “played a central role” (Kugler, 1984 , p. 477). The results indicate that crises of extreme intensity diminish as the threat of nuclear devastation becomes mutual. In other words, as the capacity of actors to destroy each other with nuclear weapons increases, there is a tendency to decrease the intensity of conflict, and to settle those crises that reach extreme proportions by compromise. This suggests that deterrence of war through the symmetric possession of nuclear weapons is operative in the conflict dynamics of great-power crises.

As Siverson and Miller ( 1993 , pp. 86–87) note, the earliest systematic statistical work on the effect of nuclear weapons possession in the escalation of conflict is by Geller ( 1990 ). This study employs the Correlates of War (COW) Militarized Interstate Dispute (MID) data covering 393 MIDs between 1946 and 1976 and uses the MID five-level dispute hostility index in coding the dependent variable. The results indicate that dispute escalation probabilities are significantly affected by the distribution of nuclear capabilities. Comparing the escalatory behavior of nuclear dyads with the escalatory behavior of nonnuclear dyads in militarized disputes, it is reported that symmetric nuclear disputes indicate a far greater tendency to escalate—short of war—than do disputes for nonnuclear pairs: disputes in which both parties possess nuclear weapons have approximately a seven times greater probability (0.238) of escalating of escalating than do disputes in which neither party possesses nuclear arms (0.032). The conclusion indicates that the presence of nuclear weapons impacts the crisis behavior of states, with disputes between nuclear states more likely to escalate, short of war, than disputes between nonnuclear nations.

Huth, Gelpi, and Bennett ( 1993 ) analyze 97 cases of great power deterrence encounters from 1816 to 1984 as a means of testing the explanatory power of two competing theoretical approaches to dispute escalation. Dispute escalation is defined as the failure of the deterrent policies of the defender. Deterrence failure occurs when the confrontation ends in either the large-scale use of force or defender capitulation to the challenger’s demands. For the post- 1945 period, the findings indicate that, for nuclear dyads, the possession of a nuclear second-strike capability by the defender substantially reduces the likelihood of the confrontation ending either in war or in capitulation by the defender. However, the possession of nuclear weapons in great power dyads does not deter the challenger from initiating militarized disputes.

Asal and Beardsley ( 2007 ) examine the relationship between the severity of violence in crises and the number of states involved in the confrontations that possess nuclear weapons. Using data from the International Crisis Behavior (ICB) Project, the study includes 434 international crises extending from 1918 through 2001 . The results indicate that symmetric nuclear dyads engage in an unexpectedly large number of crises—and that “crises involving nuclear actors are more likely to end without violence. . . [A]s the number of nuclear actors increases, the likelihood of war continues to fall” (Asal & Beardsley, 2007 , p. 140). The authors also note that their results indicate that there may be competing effects within nuclear dyads: specifically, that both sides will avoid war but engage in sub-war levels of escalatory behavior (Asal & Beardsley 2007 , p. 150, fn. 6).

Rauchhaus ( 2009 ) also attempts to test the effects of nuclear weapons possession on conflict behavior. The data are generated using the EUGene (v.3.203) statistical package for dyad years from 1885 through 2000 and for a subset period from 1946 through 2000 . 11 The findings indicate that, in militarized disputes, symmetric nuclear dyads have a lower probability of war than do dyads where only one nation possesses nuclear arms. Moreover, in dyads where there are nuclear weapons available on both sides (nuclear pairs), the findings indicate that disputes are associated with higher probabilities of crises and the use of force (below the level of war). The author suggests that the results support the implications of Snyder’s ( 1965 ) stability-instability paradox. The results are also supportive of the Snyder and Diesing ( 1977 ) contention that crises have become surrogates for war between nuclear-armed states where the manipulation of risk through coercive tactics is employed to secure political objectives.

A study by Kroenig ( 2013 ) provides similar results. Using an original data set of 52 nuclear crisis dyads drawn from the International Crisis Behavior Project for the years 1945 through 2001 , Kroenig codes the outcomes of nuclear crises against nuclear arsenal size and delivery vehicles, and the balance of political stakes in the crisis. He concludes “. . . that nuclear crises are competitions in risk taking, but that nuclear superiority—defined as an advantage in the size of a state’s nuclear arsenal relative to that of its opponent—increases the level of risk that a state is willing to run” (Kroenig, 2013 , p. 143), and hence its probability of winning the dispute without violence. These results support the contention that crises between nuclear-armed states tend to involve dangerous tactics of brinkmanship and tests of resolve.

Evidence consistent with the risk manipulation, escalation, and limited war thesis would include the presence of severe crises between nuclear powers that exhibit escalatory behavior short of unconstrained war but inclusive of the use of force. The limited conventional war of 1999 between India and Pakistan, initiated and carried out by Pakistan under the umbrella of its nuclear deterrent, is an extreme example of precisely this type of conflict interaction. It captures the logic of Snyder’s stability-instability paradox and incorporates, as well, descriptions by Schelling and by Kahn of the use of limited war (with the risk of greater violence to follow) as a means of persuading an adversary to relinquish a contested value.

Beardsley and Asal ( 2009a ) report that symmetric nuclear dyads engage in an unexpectedly large number of crises—a finding that is consistent with the Snyder and Diesing ( 1977 ) contention that crises have become surrogates for war among nuclear-armed states. Similarly, Huth, Bennett, and Gelpi ( 1992 ) note that, in great-power dyads, the possession of nuclear weapons by the defender does not deter dispute initiation by a nuclear-armed challenger, and that an outcome of either war or capitulation by the defender is unlikely. In findings not inconsistent with those of Huth et al., ( 1992 ), Kugler ( 1984 ) reports that (between 1946 and 1981 ), as the capacity of nuclear actors to destroy each other increases, there is a tendency to decrease the intensity of the conflict. Both Geller ( 1990 ) and Rauchhaus ( 2009 ), in large-scale quantitative empirical analyses of escalation patterns in nuclear, nonnuclear, and mixed (asymmetric) dyads, report that symmetric nuclear dyads are substantially more likely to escalate dispute hostility levels—short of war—than are nonnuclear pairs of states. In Geller’s study, the findings indicate that disputes in which both parties possessed nuclear weapons had approximately a seven times greater probability of escalation (0.238) than did disputes in which neither party possessed nuclear arms (0.032). Last, Kroenig ( 2013 ) demonstrates that confrontations between nuclear-armed states may be understood as competitions in risk taking and that an advantage in the size of one’s nuclear arsenal is associated with increased levels of risk acceptance and, hence, successful coercion.

These cumulative findings are strongly supportive of the risk manipulation, escalation, and limited war thesis on the effects of symmetric nuclear weapons possession. 12 Moreover, the case of the 1999 limited conventional war between India and Pakistan reflects both the logic of this school of thought as well as the patterns of escalation described in the large-scale quantitative studies of militarized disputes between nuclear-armed states.

Nuclear Irrelevance

The views of John Mueller are most commonly associated with the thesis of “nuclear irrelevance.” Mueller ( 1988 , 1989 ) makes the highly controversial argument that nuclear weapons neither defined the stability of the post-Second World War U.S.-Soviet relationship nor prevented a war between the superpowers; he also maintains that the weapons did not determine alliance patterns or induce caution in U.S.-Soviet crisis behavior. His contention is that the postwar world would have developed in the same manner even if nuclear weapons did not exist.

Mueller’s logic allows that a nuclear war would be catastrophic, but that nuclear weapons simply reinforced a military reality that had been made all too clear by World War II: even conventional war between great powers is too destructive to serve any conceivable political purpose. Moreover, the satisfaction with the status quo shared by the United States and the Soviet Union removed any desire for territorial conquest that might have led to conflict, as each superpower held dominance in its respective sphere of influence. Similarly, provocative crisis behavior was restrained by the fear of escalation—and although the presence of nuclear weapons may have embellished such caution, the mere possibility of fighting another conventional war such as World War II would have induced fear and restraint on the part of decision makers. In short, nuclear weapons may have enhanced Cold War stability, but their absence would not have produced a different world. Mueller closes his argument with the extrapolation that war among developed nations is obsolescent. It may simply be that, in the developed world, a conviction has grown that war among post-industrial states “would be intolerably costly, unwise, futile, and debased” (Mueller, 1988 , p. 78). In this sense, nuclear weapons lack deterrent value among developed states because—absent the incentive for war—there is nothing to deter.

In a related thesis, Vasquez ( 1991 ) holds that it is unlikely—given what is known about the complex conjunction of multiple factors in the steps to war—that any single factor, such as the availability of nuclear weapons, causes or prevents wars. He makes the nuanced argument, in discussing the long post-war peace between the United States and the Soviet Union, that:

There is little evidence to support the claim that nuclear deterrence has prevented nuclear war or that it could do so in the future, if severely tested . . . Nuclear war may have been prevented not because of deterrence, but because those factors pushing the United States and the USSR toward war have not been sufficiently great to override the risks and costs of total war (Vasquez, 1991 , p. 207, 214).

Of principal significance to Vasquez is the absence of a direct territorial dispute between the superpowers. Other factors that Vasquez believes contributed to the long peace include satisfaction with the status quo, the experience of the two world wars, the establishment of rules and norms of interaction between the superpowers, procedures for crisis management, and effective arms control regimes. 13

A second area of application for the nuclear irrelevancy thesis involves asymmetric dyads. Little has been written about the effects of nuclear weapons on the patterns of serious disputes where this technology is possessed by only one side. However, what has been written suggests that in these types of conflicts nuclear weaponry may lack both military and psychological salience. For example, Osgood and Tucker ( 1967 , p. 158) and Blainey ( 1973 , p. 201) argue that tactical nuclear weapons are largely devoid of military significance in either Third World conflicts or insurgencies, where suitable targets for the weapons are absent. An additional disincentive to the use of nuclear weapons against a nonnuclear opponent is that it might be expected to increase the pressures for nuclear proliferation and to incite international criticism and denunciation of the nuclear state (Huth, 1988a , p. 428). It also has been suggested that a sense of fairness or proportionality contributes a moral aspect to the practical military and political inhibitions on using nuclear weapons against a nonnuclear opponent and that the set of these concerns has undermined the efficacy of nuclear power as a deterrent in asymmetric conflicts (Huth & Russett, 1988 , p. 38; Russett, 1989 , p. 184).

Moreover, Waltz ( 1967 , p. 222) and Osgood and Tucker ( 1967 , pp. 162–163) caution against exaggerating the differences due to nuclear weapons between contemporary and historical major power-minor power conflicts. Long before the advent of nuclear weapons, minor powers frequently defied or withstood great power pressure as a result of circumstances of geography, alliance, or an intensity of interests that the major power could not match.

In a similar argument, Jervis ( 1984 , p. 132) examines the logic of escalation in a losing cause (presumably a tactic relating directly to disputes between nuclear and nonnuclear states) and suggests that a threat to fight a war that almost certainly would be lost may not be without credibility—indeed, there may be compelling reasons for actually engaging in such a conflict. Specifically, if the cost of winning the war is higher to the major power than is the value at stake in the dispute, then the confrontation embodies the game structure of “Chicken.” Hence, even if war is more damaging to the minor power than to the major power, the stronger may still prefer capitulation or a compromise solution to the confrontation rather than engaging in the fight. In sum, Jervis ( 1984 , p. 135) argues that: “the ability to tolerate and raise the level of risk is not closely tied to military superiority . . . The links between military power—both local and global—and states' behavior in crises are thus tenuous.”

The third area of application for the nuclear irrelevancy thesis involves policies of extended deterrence. The efficacy of nuclear weapons for the purposes of extended deterrence was an issue of immense importance throughout the Cold War. In fact, the positions on whether American strategic nuclear weapons were sufficient to deter a Soviet-Warsaw Pact invasion of Western Europe or whether substantial conventional and tactical nuclear weapons were necessary for successful deterrence constituted a continuing debate for decades. Nuclear revolution theory contended that the U.S. strategic nuclear arsenal (with its ability to destroy the Soviet Union) was sufficient to induce caution and restraint on the part of the Soviet leadership. However, the strategists who formulated the stability-instability paradox argued that U.S. strategic nuclear weapons would deter a direct nuclear strike on the United States itself, but little else. According to this logic, for the successful extended deterrence of an attack on Europe, the United States and NATO required effective combat forces that could fight at the level of conventional war and even war with tactical nuclear weapons. Escalation dominance was required to sustain extended deterrence. Of course, extended deterrence policies existed long before the development of nuclear weapons and applied to any situation where a powerful defender attempted to deter an attack against an ally by threat of military response. The issue at hand is the effectiveness of a strategic nuclear threat in sustaining a successful extended deterrence policy. The nuclear irrelevancy position is that such weapons lack significance in extended deterrence situations.

In sum, the nuclear irrelevance thesis suggests that nuclear weapons have little salience in the interaction patterns of nuclear-armed dyads. Evidence consistent with this position would indicate that, for symmetric dyads, the possession of nuclear weapons or the nuclear balance does not affect crisis escalation, crisis outcomes, or dispute initiation patterns. In addition, if a set of practical, political, and ethical constraints has weakened the military advantage of possessing nuclear weapons in a serious dispute with a nonnuclear state, then the monopolization of a nuclear capability will not confer a bargaining edge to the nuclear-armed state in an asymmetric crisis. The nuclear irrelevance school would also gain support in findings indicating the absence of substantive effects resulting from possession of nuclear weapons in extended deterrence situations.

In evaluating the empirical evidence regarding the nuclear irrelevance thesis, it is useful analytically to separate the studies into distinct categories: (a) findings involving the effects of nuclear weapons in nuclear-armed dyads; (b) findings involving the interaction patterns of nuclear-armed states against nonnuclear opponents; and (c) findings bearing on extended deterrence situations.

(a) Nuclear dyads . The examination of evidence relating to nuclear revolution theory upheld the prediction that, as the theory suggests, war between nuclear-armed states should be nonexistent or a very rare event (e.g., Asal & Beardsley, 2007 ; Bueno de Mesquita & Riker, 1982 ; Rauchhaus, 2009 ). The success of this prediction (with the exception of the 1999 Kargil War) serves as the principal finding in support of the nuclear revolution thesis. However, this finding holds negative implications for the validity of the nuclear irrelevancy thesis. In other findings counter to the patterns hypothesized by the nuclear irrelevancy thesis, Geller ( 1990 ) reports results that indicate that the distribution of nuclear capabilities affects the patterns of escalation in militarized interstate disputes, and that symmetric nuclear dyads show substantially higher dispute escalation probabilities, short of war, than do nonnuclear dyads. Rauchhaus’s ( 2009 ) findings mirror Geller’s. Similarly, Beardsley and Asal ( 2009a ) note that the crisis behavior of symmetric nuclear dyads differs from that of asymmetric dyads. Only the work of Bell and Miller ( 2015 ) stands in opposition to this general pattern. Using data from Rauchhaus ( 2009 ), Bell and Miller ( 2015 , p. 83) contend that nuclear dyads do not exhibit conflict patterns distinct from nonnuclear dyads either in terms of war or sub-war militarized disputes.

However, other evidence relating to conflict behavior, crisis interaction patterns, or crisis outcomes that indicate that nuclear weapons were inconsequential in the disputes would support the contention that nuclear forces are irrelevant in symmetric dyads. For example, Blechman and Kaplan ( 1978 ) provide an empirical analysis of 215 incidents between 1946 and 1975 , in which the United States used its armed forces for political objectives. Their findings indicate that the strategic nuclear weapons balance between the United States and the Soviet Union did not influence the outcome of competitive incidents involving the two states (Blechman & Kaplan, 1978 , pp. 127–129). Instead, the authors maintain that the local balance of conventional military power was more important in determining the outcomes of the confrontations (Blechman & Kaplan, 1978 , p. 527).

Kugler ( 1984 ) presents an empirical test of nuclear deterrence theory by examining whether nuclear weapons are efficacious in preventing the initiation or escalation of crises to the level of war. The case set is 14 extreme crises between 1946 and 1981 involving the United States, the Soviet Union, and China. Of the 14 crises, five involved nuclear-armed dyads (a nuclear power on each side). He concludes that: “nuclear nations do not have an obvious and direct advantage over other nuclear . . . nations in extreme crises. Rather, conventional [military] capabilities are the best predictor of outcome of extreme crises regardless of their severity” (Kugler, 1984 , p.501).

In contrast to the findings by Blechman and Kaplan ( 1978 ) and Kugler ( 1984 ), a study by Kroenig ( 2013 ) provides different results. Using a data set of 52 nuclear crisis dyads ( 1945–2001 ) drawn from the International Crisis Behavior (ICB) Project, Kroenig codes the outcomes of nuclear crises, nuclear arsenal size and delivery vehicles, and the balance of political stakes in the crisis. He concludes that nuclear superiority—defined as an advantage in the size of a state’s nuclear arsenal relative to that of its opponent—increases the level of risk that a state is willing to run and hence its probability of winning the dispute without violence (Kroenig, 2013 , p. 143).

Huth et al. ( 1992 ) examine militarized dispute-initiation patterns among great power rivalries between 1816 and 1975 as a means of testing a set of explanatory variables drawn from multiple levels of analysis. The principal focus of the study is to investigate the relationship between the structure of the international system and the initiation of great power disputes. However, the analysis does include a variable coded for the possession of nuclear weapons by the challenger’s rival. The findings indicate that the presence of defenders’ nuclear weapons does not deter challengers from initiating militarized disputes among great powers (Huth et al., 1992 , p. 478, 513).

Gartzke and Jo ( 2009 ) examine the effects of nuclear weapons possession on patterns of militarized dispute initiation using a sophisticated multivariate model and data drawn from the COW/MID database for directed dyads over the years 1946 through 2001 . Their findings indicate that nuclear weapons possession has little effect on dispute initiation behavior. The authors note that: “Instead, countries with security problems, greater interest in international affairs, or significant military capabilities are simultaneously more likely to fight and proliferate” (Gartzke & Jo, 2009 , p. 221). The relationship between nuclear weapons and MID initiation is rejected statistically: this finding applies to both symmetric (nuclear) and asymmetric (nuclear/nonnuclear) dyads.

(b) Asymmetric dyads . The nuclear irrelevancy school also maintains that the possession of nuclear weapons confers no bargaining advantage on the nuclear-armed power engaged in a confrontation with a nonnuclear state.

In a seminal study examining the effects of nuclear weapons on conflict interaction patterns, Organski and Kugler ( 1980 , pp. 163–164) identify 14 deterrence cases that occurred between 1945 and 1979 in which nuclear weapons could have been used. Seven of these cases involved a nuclear power in confrontation with a nonnuclear state (or a state with an ineffective nuclear force ). Their findings indicate that in only one case out of the seven did the nuclear-armed state win: “Nonnuclear powers defied, attacked, and defeated nuclear powers and got away with it” (Organski & Kugler, 1980 , p. 176). In the six cases that the nuclear power lost to a nonnuclear state, the winner was estimated to have conventional military superiority at the site of the confrontation (Organski & Kugler, 1980 , p. 177).

In a related study, Kugler ( 1984 ) isolates 14 cases of extreme crisis that occurred between 1946 and 1981 , in which nuclear weapons were available to at least one party in the dispute. Of these 14 cases, nine involved confrontations in which only one state had access to nuclear arms. In all nine cases, the outcomes of the crises favored the nonnuclear challenger. Once again, the balance of conventional military capabilities—not nuclear weaponry—provided the best predictor of crisis outcome (Kugler, 1984 , p. 501).

In an early large-scale study, Geller ( 1990 ) examines conflict escalation patterns in serious interstate disputes among nations with both symmetric and asymmetric types of weapons technology. This study employs the Correlates of War (COW) Militarized Interstate Dispute (MID) data, inclusive of 393 MIDs between 1946 and 1976 , and uses the MID five-level dispute hostility index in coding the dependent variable. The findings indicate that, for asymmetric dyads (with only one state in possession of nuclear arms), the availability of nuclear force has no evident inhibitory effect on the escalation propensities of nonnuclear opponents. In fact, the findings show that in this class of confrontation, both nonnuclear dispute initiators and targets act more aggressively than do their nuclear-armed opponents. The summation suggests that in confrontations between nuclear and nonnuclear states, war is a distinct possibility, with aggressive escalation by the nonnuclear power probable. In such cases, it is concluded that the conventional military balance may be determinative of the outcome (Geller, 1990 , p. 307).

In two studies published in 1994 and 1995 , Paul employs the case study method to examine the dynamics of asymmetric war initiation by weaker powers. Paul ( 1994 ) analyzes six cases of war initiation by weaker states against stronger states: three of these cases (China/U.S. in 1950 ; Egypt/Israel in 1973 ; and Argentina/Great Britain in 1982 ) involve nonnuclear nations initiating wars against nuclear-armed opponents. Paul ( 1994 , p. 173) concludes that nuclear weapons appear to have limited utility in averting war in asymmetric dyads. He notes that, with either nuclear or conventional weapons, a significant military advantage may be insufficient to deter a weaker state that is highly motivated to change the status quo. In a more focused study, Paul ( 1995 ) discusses the possible reasons underlying the nonuse of nuclear weapons by nuclear-armed states against nonnuclear opponents. Here he analyzes two cases (Argentina/Great Britain in the Falklands War of 1982 and Egypt/Israel in the Middle East War of 1973 ) in which nonnuclear states initiated wars against nuclear opponents. Paul argues that in both cases nuclear retaliation by the targets was deemed highly improbable by the nonnuclear war initiators due to a combination of limited war goals and taboos (unwritten and uncodified prohibitionary norms) against the use of nuclear weapons.

Rauchhaus ( 2009 ) attempts to test the effects of nuclear weapons possession on conflict behavior for asymmetric as well as for symmetric dyads using data generated by the EUGene (v.3.203) statistical program for dyad years from 1885 through 2000 . The findings indicate that, for asymmetric (nuclear/nonnuclear) dyads (in comparison to symmetric dyads), there is a higher probability of war. Asymmetric dyads are also more likely to be involved in militarized disputes that reach the level of the use of force (Rauchhaus, 2009 , pp. 269–270). In short, the study produces results that hold in opposition to the view that conflict between nuclear and nonnuclear states will be limited. As Rauchhaus ( 2009 , p. 271) concludes: “nuclear asymmetry is generally associated with a higher chance of crises, uses of force, fatalities, and war.”

A study by Beardsley and Asal ( 2009b ) produces findings that stand in counterpoint to the main body of analyses on conflict in asymmetric dyads. This work examines the question of whether the possession of nuclear weapons affects the probability of prevailing in a crisis. The data are drawn from the International Crisis Behavior (ICB) Project for directed dyads covering the years between 1945 and 2002 . The findings indicate that the possession of nuclear weapons provides bargaining leverage against nonnuclear opponents in crises: nuclear actors are more likely to prevail when facing a nonnuclear state (Beardsley & Asal, 2009b , p. 278, 289).

However, with regard to bargaining advantages that may be derived from the possession of nuclear weapons, Sechser and Fuhrmann ( 2013 ) argue (counter to Beardsley & Asal) that compellent threats based on nuclear force may lack credibility due to their indiscriminately destructive effects and the reputational costs that, presumably, would be associated with their use. Drawing on a new data set (Militarized Compellent Threats) containing 242 challenger-target dyads for the period 1918 to 2001 , they report findings indicating that “states possessing nuclear weapons are not more likely to make successful compellent threats [than nonnuclear states] . . . and that nuclear weapons carry little weight as tools of compellence” (Sechser & Fuhrmann, 2013 , p. 174).

An interesting corollary finding is presented by Narang ( 2013 ). Using data collected by Bennett and Stam ( 2004 ) to explore the conflict behavior of regional (non-superpower) nuclear actors from 1945 through 2001 , Narang finds little evidence supporting an existential deterrent effect for nuclear weapons against nonnuclear opponents. Rather, he concludes that the nuclear posture adopted by the nuclear-armed state is determinative of deterrence success, with an “asymmetric escalation” posture superior to either a “catalytic” or “assured destruction” posture in deterring conventional attacks with military force (Narang, 2013 , p. 280, 284–286).

(c) Extended deterrence . The logic of the nuclear irrelevancy thesis suggests that nuclear weapons should be of little salience in extended deterrence situations.

Huth defines deterrence as a policy that seeks to convince an adversary through threat of military retaliation that the costs of using military force outweigh any expected benefits. Extended deterrence is then defined by Huth ( 1988a , p. 424) as a confrontation between a defender and a potential attacker in which the defender threatens the use of military force against the potential attacker’s use of force against an ally (protégé) of the defender. There have been a large number of studies produced on the issue of the efficacy of extended nuclear deterrence—the majority of which report a body of consistent or complementary findings.

As noted in Harvey and James ( 1992 ), Bruce Russett’s ( 1963 ) analysis of 17 crises that occurred between 1935 and 1961 appears to be the first aggregate study of the factors associated with extended deterrence success and failure. Nine crisis cases involved defenders with a nuclear capability, and six of the nine cases resulted in successful extended deterrence. However, Russett draws no conclusions as to the independent effect of nuclear weapons on those outcomes. He does note that military equality on either the local (conventional) or strategic (nuclear) level appears to be a necessary condition for extended deterrence success.

Two studies published by Weede ( 1981 , 1983 ) also deal with the effectiveness of extended nuclear deterrence. Weede examines 299 dyads between 1962 and 1980 for evidence relating to patterns of extended deterrence success or failure. His findings are supportive of the position that nuclear weapons assist in producing extended deterrence success.

In a subsequent study, Huth and Russett ( 1984 ) increased the size of Russett’s ( 1963 ) sample set from 17 to 54 historical cases of extended deterrence from 1900 through 1980 . The findings indicate that the effect of nuclear weapons on extended deterrence success or failure is marginal. Of much greater import are the combined local conventional military capabilities of the defender and protégé; hence, conventional, rather than nuclear, combat power is associated with the probability of extended deterrence success.

In two related studies, Huth ( 1988a , 1988b ) examines 58 historical cases of extended deterrence and reports findings similar to those found in Huth and Russett ( 1984 ). Specifically, the possession of nuclear weapons by the defender did not have a statistically significant effect on deterrence outcomes when the target itself was a nonnuclear power. In addition, the ability of the defender to deny the potential attacker a quick and decisive conventional military victory on the battlefield was correlated with extended deterrence success.

Huth and Russett ( 1988 ) present an analysis of Huth’s ( 1988b ) 58 historical cases of extended deterrence success and failure. In this database, there were 16 cases of extended deterrence crises where defenders possessed nuclear weapons. The findings indicate that a defender’s nuclear capability was essentially irrelevant to extended deterrence outcomes; existing and locally superior conventional military forces were of much greater importance to deterrence success.

Huth ( 1990 ) produced another study based on the data set described in his 1988b book. In this study, he examines the effects of the possession of nuclear weapons by a defender only in extended deterrent crises not characterized by mutual assured destruction (i.e., where the potential attacker either does not possess nuclear weapons or does not possess a significant nuclear capability). He reports that, when the defender has an advantage in conventional forces, nuclear weapons do not play a significant role in the outcomes of extended deterrence confrontations (Huth, 1990 , p. 271).

In an unusual work, Carlson ( 1998 ) combines a formal mathematical model with an empirical test of escalation in extended deterrence crises. Using Huth’s ( 1988b ) data extending from 1885 to 1983 , the analysis examines the 58 cases of extended deterrence crises. Measures include the estimated cost-tolerance of both attackers and defenders. The findings indicate that low cost-tolerance challengers are less likely to escalate a crisis to higher levels of hostility when the defender possesses nuclear weapons.

Fuhrmann and Sechser ( 2014 ) report findings similar to those of Weede ( 1981 , 1983 ) and Carlson ( 1998 ), insofar as the independent extended deterrent effect of nuclear weapons is supported. Using Militarized Interstate Dispute (MID) data for the years 1950 through 2000 , and controlling for the effects of contiguity, polity-type of challenger, power ratio, and nuclear status of challenger, they conclude that “formal defense pacts with nuclear states have significant deterrence benefits. Having a nuclear-armed ally is strongly associated with a lower likelihood of being targeted in a violent militarized dispute . . .” (Fuhrmann & Sechser, 2014 , p. 920).

The empirical evidence regarding the nuclear irrelevance thesis has been divided analytically into three distinct categories: (a) findings involving the effect of nuclear weapons in nuclear dyads; (b) findings involving the interaction patterns of nuclear-armed states against nonnuclear opponents; and (c) findings relating to extended deterrence situations.

Regarding Category “a”—the effect of nuclear weapons on conflict patterns in nuclear dyads—the results are mixed. According to the logic of the nuclear irrelevancy thesis, nuclear-armed dyads should show identical conflict patterns to nonnuclear dyads. This prediction is supported by the findings of Bell and Miller ( 2015 ). However, Asal and Beardsley ( 2007 ), Bueno de Mesquita and Riker ( 1982 ), and Rauchhaus ( 2009 ) all note that empirical probabilities of war are far lower for nuclear dyads than for nonnuclear dyads. Moreover, Geller ( 1990 ) reports results indicating that the distribution of nuclear capabilities affects escalation patterns in militarized interstate disputes, and that symmetric nuclear dyads show substantially higher dispute escalation probabilities—short of war—than do nonnuclear dyads. Rauchhaus’s ( 2009 ) findings are identical to Geller’s. Similarly, Beardsley and Asal ( 2009a ) note that the crisis behavior of symmetric nuclear dyads differs from that of asymmetric dyads. In sum, contrary to the predictions of the nuclear irrelevancy school, these findings suggest that patterns of war and crisis escalation differ among symmetric nuclear dyads, asymmetric dyads, and nonnuclear dyads.

Nevertheless, there is a body of evidence for nuclear dyads that supports the nuclear irrelevancy thesis; these findings focus on the effects of the nuclear balance on crisis outcomes and the effect of nuclear weapons on patterns of dispute initiation. Both Blechman and Kaplan ( 1978 ; with 215 incidents from 1946 to 1975 ) and Kugler ( 1984 ; five extreme crises between 1946 and 1981 ), report that the balance of nuclear forces in nuclear dyads was less significant in influencing the outcome of confrontations than was the local balance of conventional military capabilities. Only Kroenig’s ( 2013 ) work indicates a crisis bargaining advantage accruing to a state with nuclear superiority in symmetric nuclear dyads. With regard to dispute initiation, Huth et al. ( 1992 ) report a lack of salience regarding the availability of nuclear weapons for great powers and the initiation patterns of their militarized disputes. Gartzke and Jo ( 2009 ) similarly note that nuclear weapons show no statistically significant relationship to the initiation of militarized interstate disputes in either symmetric or asymmetric dyads. In sum, the findings of this subset of studies are consistent with the thrust of the nuclear irrelevancy thesis regarding both the effects of the nuclear balance on crisis outcomes and the effects of the availability of nuclear weapons on dispute initiation patterns.

Category “b”—focusing on the interaction patterns of nuclear-armed states against nonnuclear opponents—provides a second set of cumulative findings. Organski and Kugler ( 1980 ), Kugler ( 1984 ), Geller ( 1990 ), and Rauchhaus ( 2009 ) all conclude that the possession of nuclear weapons provides little leverage in the conflict patterns or outcomes of disputes in asymmetric dyads. Organski and Kugler ( 1980 ) note that, in six cases out of seven, nonnuclear states achieved their objectives in confrontations with nuclear-armed states. Kugler ( 1984 ) reports that in nine crises between nuclear and nonnuclear states, the outcomes in every case favored the nonnuclear party. In both studies, conventional military capabilities at the site of the confrontation provided the best predictor of crisis outcome.

Geller’s ( 1990 ) analysis indicates that in 34 asymmetric disputes with a nuclear initiator, the nonnuclear target matched or escalated the initiator’s hostility level in 24 cases (71%); in 56 asymmetric disputes with a nonnuclear initiator, the nuclear target deescalated the crisis by failing to match or exceed the nonnuclear initiator’s hostility level in 35 cases (63%). Moreover, 35 of the total of 90 cases (39%) of asymmetric disputes reached the level in which force was used. These findings show that in this class of dyad, nonnuclear dispute initiators as well as targets act more aggressively than do their nuclear-armed opponents. The conclusion suggests that in confrontations between nuclear and nonnuclear states, the use of force, including war, is a distinct possibility, with aggressive escalation by the nonnuclear state probable. In such cases of asymmetric distribution of nuclear forces, the conventional military balance may well be the determinative factor in the outcome of the dispute.

The findings of Rauchhaus ( 2009 ) reinforce those discussed above: there is a higher probability of war in asymmetric dyads than in symmetric nuclear dyads, and asymmetric dyads are more likely than symmetric nuclear dyads to experience militarized disputes that engage the use of force. As Rauchhaus concludes, nuclear asymmetry is associated with higher probabilities of crises, limited use of force, and war, than are symmetric nuclear dyads.

A study by Narang ( 2013 ) offers corollary evidence that the deterrent effect of the possession of nuclear weapons (for regional nuclear powers engaged in disputes with nonnuclear states) depends heavily on the nuclear posture that is adopted. Specifically, in contrast to catalytic or assured destruction postures, only an asymmetric escalation posture has any effect in deterring conventional military assaults. Last, Sechser and Fuhrmann ( 2013 ) report findings indicating that, although nuclear weapons may provide deterrent value, they are irrelevant as instruments of compellence.

These results are generally consistent with the predictions of the nuclear irrelevance thesis regarding conflict patterns in asymmetric dyads: the possession of nuclear weapons confers little or no advantage to nuclear-armed states in disputes with nonnuclear opponents. Paul’s ( 1994 , 1995 ) case studies of instances of war initiation by nonnuclear states against nuclear-armed adversaries offer additional evidence in conformity with this pattern.

In sum, the findings of this subset of studies are supportive of the thrust of the nuclear irrelevance thesis regarding both the effects of the nuclear balance on crisis outcomes and the effects of nuclear weapons possession on dispute initiation patterns: the possession of nuclear weapons does not impede aggressive behavior by nonnuclear states.

Category “c”—extended deterrence crises—also provides a pattern of results. Studies by Huth and Russett ( 1984 , 1988 ), and Huth ( 1988a , 1988b , 1990 ) report the essential irrelevance of a defender’s possession of nuclear weapons to extended deterrence success. These studies indicate that existing and locally superior conventional military force is the factor most frequently associated with the majority of successful extended deterrence outcomes. Russett ( 1963 ) notes the ambiguous effects of a nuclear capability in situations of extended deterrence and concludes that military equality on either the conventional or nuclear level appears to be minimally requisite for extended deterrence success. However, Weede ( 1981 , 1983 ), Carlson ( 1998 ), and Fuhrmann and Sechser ( 2014 ) report evidence contrary to the general set of findings: specifically, that nuclear weapons assist in producing successful outcomes in extended deterrence situations.

In sum, the cumulative findings in all three areas are consistent with some of the predictions of the nuclear irrelevance school and inconsistent with others. For symmetric nuclear dyads, a substantial set of findings indicates that patterns of war and crisis escalation differ between symmetric nuclear dyads, asymmetric dyads, and nonnuclear dyads. Counter to the predictions of the nuclear irrelevancy thesis, nuclear weapons affect the nature of conflict interaction between nuclear-armed states. At the same time, there is a subset of findings consistent with the predictions of nuclear irrelevancy for nuclear dyads: the nuclear balance does not affect the outcome of crises (the balance of local conventional military forces is more important), nor does the symmetric possession of nuclear weapons distinguish initiation patterns of militarized disputes from initiation patterns in asymmetric or nonnuclear disputes. Also supportive of the irrelevancy thesis are findings indicating that, for asymmetric dyads, the possession of nuclear arms provides scant advantage in crises and confrontations with nonnuclear states. Escalation by the nonnuclear adversary and its use of force—including war—are outcomes with surprisingly high probabilities. Last, in extended deterrence situations, the cumulative findings tend toward the essential irrelevance of nuclear weapons possession and point instead toward the salience of the local balance of conventional military forces in determining crisis outcomes.

This article has reviewed the three principal schools of thought regarding the effects of nuclear weapons possession on patterns of international conflict: (a) nuclear revolution theory; (b) risk manipulation, escalation, and limited war; and (c) nuclear irrelevance. Quantitative empirical works that produced findings relevant to evaluating the predictions of these schools were then collated by category and their results compared to the predictions.

For nuclear revolution theory, the findings offer limited, but not insignificant, support. For example, as predicted, wars among nuclear-armed states have been rare events. To date, with the exception of India and Pakistan in 1999 , no other militarized dispute between nuclear powers has reached the level of war (based on Correlates of War Project coding rules). As Waltz and Jervis have predicted, wars occur among nuclear-armed states at a far lower proportional frequency than in asymmetric or nonnuclear dyads. However, the prediction of nuclear revolution theory—that there will be few crises among nuclear-armed powers—has not been supported by the quantitative empirical evidence. Similarly, the prediction that those crises that do develop among nuclear powers will be settled rapidly and without serious escalation has not found empirical support.

For the risk manipulation, escalation, and limited war school, the evidence has proved more uniformly favorable. The prediction by Snyder and Diesing ( 1977 ) that crises among nuclear-armed states will be used as surrogates for war—with associated tactics (including the limited use of force) designed to increase risk and intimidate through dangerous escalatory behaviors—has been largely supported. Comparisons of crisis escalation probabilities between symmetric nuclear dyads, asymmetric dyads, and nonnuclear dyads clearly show higher escalation probabilities for nuclear dyads than for the other two classes, with disputes for nuclear dyads approximately seven times more likely to escalate—short of war—than disputes for nonnuclear dyads. Moreover, the case of the 1999 war between India and Pakistan conforms to the logic of Snyder’s stability-instability paradox whereby limited war is fought between nuclear powers under the protective umbrellas of their nuclear deterrents.

The nuclear irrelevance school, like nuclear revolution theory, finds mixed support in the extant empirical evidence. The nuclear irrelevancy thesis can be categorized according to predictions involving (a) the effects of nuclear weapons in nuclear dyads, (b) the effects of nuclear weapons possession in asymmetric dyads, and (c) the effects of nuclear weapons in extended deterrence situations. Counter to the logic of this school, cumulative empirical evidence indicates that nuclear weapons do make a difference in certain types of conflict interaction. Patterns of war and crisis escalation differ between symmetric nuclear dyads, asymmetric dyads, and nonnuclear dyads, with nuclear dyads less likely to fight wars and more likely to exhibit crisis escalation patterns short of war than nonnuclear dyads.

Supportive of the contentions of the nuclear irrelevancy school are findings indicating that in asymmetric dyads, the possession of nuclear arms provides no discernable advantage in crises and confrontations. Escalation by the nonnuclear adversary and its use of force against its nuclear-armed opponent—including war—are distinct outcomes with surprisingly high probabilities. Lastly, in extended deterrence situations, the cumulative findings indicate the essential irrelevance of nuclear weapons possession and point instead toward the salience of the local balance of conventional military forces in determining outcomes.

Three conclusions may be drawn from the patterns discussed above.

Wars among nuclear-armed states are improbable. If confrontations do escalate to the level of violence, such violence will likely remain conventional. Hence, the spread of nuclear weapons increasingly supports the maintenance of the status quo.

Crises among nuclear powers have a higher probability of escalating—short of war—than do crises for asymmetric or nonnuclear dyads. It is apparent that symmetric nuclear dyads engage in dangerous tactics involving the manipulation of risk as a means of securing policy, objectives.

In asymmetric dyads the possession of nuclear weapons does not impede aggressive behavior by a nonnuclear adversary. Hence, the advantage in holding nuclear weaponry does not translate into bargaining leverage in confrontations between nuclear states and their nonnuclear adversaries.

It is evident that the effects of nuclear weapons possession on patterns of international conflict are complex. Moreover, the patterns themselves may be subject to change as a result of events. For example, the future use of nuclear weapons in a war between nuclear-armed states or the use of such weapons in a war against a nonnuclear state might lead to different expectations of outcomes and thereby alter the subsequent strategic calculations and policy choices of decision makers. Unmistakably, nuclear weapons have raised the prompt and potential long-term costs of war. Empirical analysis has indicated in what way these weapons have affected the patterns of international conflict in the past. How these weapons may ultimately affect the future conflict patterns of states remains to be determined.

Acknowledgment

I wish to thank John Vasquez, Jack Levy, and Peter Wallensteen for their expert commentaries on an earlier version of this article. This article is an expanded and revised version of Daniel S. Geller (2012), Nuclear Weapons and War, in J. A. Vasquez (Ed.), What Do We Know About War? (2d ed.). Used by permission of Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group. All rights reserved.

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• Weede, E. (1981). Preventing war by nuclear deterrence or by détente. Conflict Management and Peace Science , 6 (1), 1–8.
• Weede, E. (1983). Extended deterrence by superpower alliance. Journal of Conflict Resolution , 27 (2), 231–254.
• Zagare, F. C. (2007). Toward a unified theory of interstate conflict. International Interactions , 33 (3), 305–327.
• Zagare, F. C. , & Kilgour, D. M. (2000). Perfect deterrence . Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.

1. See Gartzke and Kroenig ( 2016 ) for an excellent review of this literature. Related studies that examine the determinants of nuclear proliferation include Meyer ( 1984 ), Sagan ( 1996/1997 ), Geller ( 2003 ), Singh and Way ( 2004 ), Hymans ( 2006 , 2012 ), Solingen ( 2007 , 2012 ), Jo and Gartzke ( 2007 ), Gartzke and Kroenig ( 2009 ), Kroenig ( 2009 , 2010 ), Fuhrmann ( 2009 ), Horowitz ( 2010 ), Bleek ( 2010 ), Bleek and Lorber ( 2014 ), Brown and Kaplow ( 2014 ), Miller ( 2014 ), Way and Weeks ( 2014 ), and Reiter ( 2014 ).

2. As Mueller ( 1988 , pp. 55–56) notes: “nuclear weapons neither define a fundamental stability nor threaten severely to disturb it. . . [W]hile nuclear weapons may have substantially influenced political rhetoric, public discourse, and defense budgets and planning, it is not at all clear that they have had a significant impact on the history of world affairs since World War II.”

3. Others attributing to nuclear weapons causal significance for the “long peace” between the United States and the Soviet Union include The Harvard Nuclear Study Group ( 1983 ), Tucker ( 1985 ), Quester ( 1986 ), Bundy ( 1988 ), and Gaddis ( 1991 ). However, Levy ( 1989 , pp. 289–295), while noting the stability in the superpower relationship produced by nuclear weapons, cautions about pressures for preemptive war that may develop between nuclear-armed states.

4. Intriligator and Brito ( 1981 ) present a similar formal mathematical analysis of the effects of nuclear proliferation on the probability of nuclear war—but in this case without associated empirical data. The mathematical model demonstrates that the effects of nuclear proliferation on the probability of nuclear war depend on the number of existing nuclear weapon states, and that proliferation may reduce rather than increase the probability of nuclear war. Once two or more states achieve a secure second-strike capability, the addition of new nuclear states decreases the incentive to initiate a nuclear war. However, Intriligator and Brito note that, while the probability of a calculated nuclear attack may decrease as a result of proliferation, there may be an increase in the probability of accidental or irrational nuclear war as these weapons spread throughout the system.

5. For a different interpretation of the 1999 Kargil War—by Waltz—see Sagan and Waltz ( 2003 , pp. 109–124). Also see Basrur ( 2007–2008 ) and Diehl, Goertz, and Saeedi ( 2005 ) for analyses suggesting, like Waltz, that caution was imposed in the conduct of the Kargil War by nuclear weapons. For a sophisticated model of the effects of various levels of nuclear war between India and Pakistan, see Batcher ( 2004 ).

6. Major works, many using formal mathematical models, that explore the factors associated with deterrence, brinkmanship and the manipulation of risk, crisis stability, threat credibility, and the consequences of nuclear proliferation include those by Ellsberg (1959[ 1968 ], 1960 ), Brams and Kilgour ( 1985 ), Powell ( 1987 , 1988 ), Kugler ( 1987 ), Nalebuff ( 1988 ), Langlois ( 1991 ), Wagner ( 1991 ), Carlson ( 1995 ), Brito and Intriligator ( 1996 ), Zagare and Kilgour ( 2000 ), Danilovic ( 2002 ), Morgan ( 1977 , 2003 ), and Zagare ( 2007 ).

7. For example, see Bundy and Blight ( 1987–1988 , pp. 30–92). Glaser and Fetter ( 2016 ), in a sophisticated analysis of potential United States damage-limitation strategies and forces vis-à-vis China, conclude that such an effort would most likely fail and would undermine a stable deterrence relationship. Indeed, Mueller ( 1988 , 1989 ) presents an argument that, among developed countries, major war (nuclear or conventional) is no longer considered a realistic foreign policy option due to the massive destructive effects. But Mueller ( 1988 , p. 56) also contends that nuclear weapons have not fundamentally affected the crisis behavior of major powers. For a response to this argument, see Jervis ( 1988 ).

8. Escalation theory is a subset of the more general body of theory on strategic interaction in international politics (e.g., Singer, 1963 ).

9. Strategic theorists fully recognize, however, that escalation of conflict can occur irrespective of the desires of the participants due to factors of miscalculation or momentum. This possibility—and an appreciation of it—forms a key element in the work of some theorists in this school (e.g., Schelling, 1966 , ch. 3).

10. Other early works with sections on escalation that touch on the subject of risk are Kahn ( 1962 , ch. 6), Snyder ( 1961 , pp. 252–258), Schelling ( 1966 , pp. 99–116, 166–168), Schelling ( 1960 , appendix A), and Halperin ( 1963 , chs. 1–2, 4). The issue of “costly signals” with regard to the credibility of threats and commitments are elaborations on the themes of these early studies on escalation (e.g., Fearon, 1994a , 1994b , 1997 ; Schultz, 1998 ). For example, Fearon ( 1997 , p. 82) discusses the relative merits of the “tie-hands” and “sink-cost” signaling strategies. Fearon demonstrates (using formal methods) that costly signals are more successful if they involve a tie-hands strategy (create costs that would be paid ex post if they fail to uphold the commitment) rather than if a sink-cost strategy is pursued (which is only costly to the actor ex ante). The tie-hands strategy is connected to ex post domestic audience costs. The model also indicates that decision makers will not bluff with either type of costly signal; they will not incur or create costs and then fail to carry out the threat.

11. Rauchhaus notes that the analysis performed on the second data set covering only the years 1946 through 2000 (when nuclear weapons were available) did not produce different statistical or substantive results in comparisons between patterns of nuclear and nonnuclear disputes using the 1885–2000 database.

12. In an interesting study at the monadic level, Grieco ( 2012 ) conducts a comparative analysis of the conflict behavior of states before and after the acquisition of nuclear weapons. His principal finding is that states do not become more prone to the initiation of military crises after acquiring nuclear weapons.

13. In a more recent work, Vasquez (Senese & Vasquez, 2008 ) allows that nuclear weapons have raised the provocation threshold for total war: “What would have provoked a war between major states in the pre-nuclear era no longer does so” (Senese & Vasquez, 2008 , p. 62). Nevertheless, Vasquez ( 2009 ) continues to maintain that a proper evaluation of the effects of nuclear weapons on war is within the context of the “steps to war” model (e.g., Senese & Vasquez, 2008 ; Vasquez, 1993 ). For an alternative explanation of war based on a process of complex conjunctive causation see Geller and Singer ( 1998 ) and Geller ( 2000b , 2004 , 2005 ).

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Christopher F. Chyba , Robert Legvold; Conclusion: Strategic Stability & Nuclear War. Daedalus 2020; 149 (2): 222–237. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/daed_a_01799

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If the fear of nuclear war has faded as the Cold War recedes into the misty past, we may need to remind ourselves of what these weapons can do. At least five of the nine countries that currently possess nuclear weapons can deliver thermonuclear warheads, each with the explosive equivalent of several hundred thousand tons of TNT, nearly halfway around the Earth. 1 The intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) that would deliver them at this range are called “strategic” because they can reach into an adversary's homeland to destroy leadership, military, infrastructure, or civilian targets. Warheads on different missiles are characterized by their yield (explosive energy) and their accuracy. Estimates in the open literature suggest that the United States, for example, can deliver a 455 kiloton warhead launched from a Trident ballistic missile submarine over six thousand miles to detonate within the length of a football field of its target. 2 The yield of 455 kilotons means that the energy released would equal the explosive energy of 455,000 kilograms (about one million pounds) of high explosive (TNT), which would be more than thirty times the energy released by the nuclear weapon detonated by the United States over Hiroshima during World War II. Depending on the relative location of the submarine launching the SLBM and its intended target, the time between the launch and the detonation of the warhead could be as short as six to ten minutes. 3 An adversary might have only that much warning time to recognize that an attack was underway and react.

Some Russian and Chinese strategic missiles are thought to carry warheads of even larger explosive yields. For example, the Russian SS-19 Mod 3 ICBM carries six independently targetable warheads (MIRVs) that reportedly have a yield as high as 750 kilotons. 4 Figure 1 shows the effects of one such 750-kiloton warhead exploding 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) above New York City, centered on Midtown Manhattan. 5 The four concentric rings in the figure illustrate the effects of the explosion. Moving outward from the point of detonation: Within the first ring (radius 2.5 kilometers) the blast is so strong that even heavily built concrete buildings are demolished. Virtually every person within this area is killed in the blast. This ring extends entirely across the island of Manhattan from the East River to the Hudson. The second ring (radius 5.7 kilometers) reaches into New Jersey and the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens. It marks the distance out to which residential buildings collapse. At this distance, “injuries are universal and fatalities are widespread.” The third ring (radius 11 kilometers) shows the effects of the immediate thermal radiation (high intensity ultraviolet, visible, and infrared light emitted by the explosion). Out to this distance, anyone with a line of sight to the detonation suffers third-degree burns to exposed skin. Finally, the fourth ring (radius 15 kilometers) marks the distance out to which windows shatter, with resulting injuries from flying glass. Overall, more than 1.8 million people would be killed nearly instantly, and over 2 million more immediately wounded. These numbers ignore the effects of frestorms–massive urban fires driven by hurricane-force winds that may result from the nuclear detonation 6 –as well as longer-term radiation and fallout. Of course, many hospitals and firehouses would be destroyed, and many medical personnel immediately killed, limiting the life-saving potential of first-responders.

Nuclear Blast above Midtown Manhattan

These results are for a single large strategic warhead. Under the 2011 New START arms control treaty, Russia and the United States agreed to reduce their numbers of deployed strategic warheads to 1,550 on each side. 7 China, France, and the United Kingdom have smaller numbers of warheads on missiles, estimated at about 290, 300, and 225 warheads, respectively. 8 In a nuclear war, or a conventional war that escalated to the use of strategic nuclear weapons, many–perhaps hundreds or more–such detonations might take place.

This must never be allowed to happen. One way to try to ensure that it never does is to threaten nuclear-armed adversaries with nuclear retaliation from forces that would credibly survive an initial attack (the “first strike”). Potential attackers would then presumably be deterred from launching a first strike because they would feel certain to suffer devastating nuclear retaliation. 9 Yet this deterrent posture carries with it an inescapable, perhaps small but difficult to quantify, possibility of inadvertent or mistaken nuclear war. 10

Another way to try to ensure that the worst never happens is to eliminate all nuclear weapons worldwide. But this approach raises its own challenges. One is how to reduce and then eliminate nuclear weapons with sufficient verification that all countries could feel confident that no weapons were hidden in violation of the disarmament agreements. A second is that weapons know-how cannot be unlearned and relevant capabilities fully undone, so that in a major war or political crisis, there could be pressure to recreate rapidly and perhaps preemptively use nuclear weapons. That is, a world of zero nuclear weapons could prove dangerously unstable. Experts have dedicated much attention to these challenges, but they are far from solved. 11 At the same time, as this volume of Dædalus has highlighted, a future world in which stability is preserved through nuclear deterrence also faces considerable known and unknown challenges.

But there are other possible security catastrophes that states also wish to prevent: for example, full-scale conventional war among the major powers. World War II resulted in the deaths of over sixty million people. 12 The major powers have not waged total war against one another since 1945, even if many other smaller conflicts have been fought. There is more than one reason for this “Long Peace,” but it is likely that the existence of nuclear weapons has induced caution on the part of the major powers over being drawn into major war. 13 The successful mating of fusion warheads to ICBMs or SLBMs has for this reason been termed the “nuclear revolution,” because the likelihood of major war among states equipped with these weapons has been, some argue, greatly reduced by removing any doubt in the minds of national leaders about the horrific outcome of such a war. 14 Ballistic missile defense systems remain all but useless against more than a small number of incoming strategic warheads, so there is no reliable defense. 15 Therefore, in a face-off among nuclear-armed states, rational leaders provided with competent technical information must recognize that their country lies open to destruction. There is no denying the devastating consequences of thermonuclear war. Since full-scale conventional war could escalate to nuclear war, rational leaders would not risk waging full-scale war on another ICBM- or SLBM-wielding thermonuclear power. 16 And so, as some have argued, peace at this level has endured.

Various countries at various times have claimed other vital uses for nuclear weapons. Before it gave up its small, indigenous nuclear weapons arsenal, apartheid South Africa imagined that threatening the use of its weapons would force the great powers to negotiate an end to any conflict that menaced it. 17 Pakistan's senior generals have been clear that Pakistan would use nuclear weapons first if needed to repel a purely conventional Indian invasion. 18 It seems likely that North Korea's Kim Jong-un views the threat to use his country's nuclear weapons as his ultimate guarantor of regime and personal survival. 19 Finally, some countries, at least under certain leaders, may have pursued nuclear superiority (more nuclear missiles, with more nuclear warheads, say, than one's adversary) under the belief that this putative superiority in itself would confer other advantages or intimidate adversaries away from certain courses of action. 20 Not unrelatedly, some countries may pursue nuclear weapons to protect themselves against the possibility of nuclear blackmail or coercion. 21

And so, we find ourselves in our current dilemma. Countries desire the security afforded by their own or their allies' nuclear weapons, but as long as these weapons exist, there remains a chance that they could be used in limited or even vast numbers. This could result from escalation in the context of an ongoing conventional war, with one side concluding it had no choice but to strike first; or it might result from an erroneous conclusion made under time pressure that another state has launched a nuclear attack; or from a miscalculation by a leader who is not realistically informed or who has rebuffed efforts to be so informed; or even via an irrational leader coming to power and making heinous decisions. It is sobering that since the end of World War II, nuclear adversaries have considered the use of nuclear weapons in preventive war, have explicitly or implicitly threatened the use of nuclear weapons, and, in the Cuban missile crisis, have come close to misjudgments that would have led to nuclear war. 22 Concerns over escalation to the use of nuclear weapons are therefore justified by the historical record. At the same time, there has been no wartime use of nuclear weapons and no full-scale war between major powers since 1945.

Nuclear-armed states have aimed to reduce the likelihood of the various pathways to nuclear weapons use by seeking to create conditions of strategic stability . Strategic stability is usually taken to include both crisis stability and arms race stability. Crisis stability means that even in a conventional war or faced with a possible nuclear attack, states would not use nuclear weapons for fear that such escalation would bring certain disaster. Crisis stability must be robust even against inadvertent or mistaken nuclear escalation. Arms race stability means that nuclear powers do not have incentives to pursue weapons or weapon deployments resulting in action-reaction cycles that undermine crisis stability.

The goal of this volume has been to examine whether current directions in international affairs and a concomitant technological evolution are eroding strategic stability and placing the world at greater risk of nuclear weapons use–and if so, what might be done about it. In particular, this volume had its genesis in three particular concerns that appear to threaten strategic stability: the increasing complexity of nuclear relationships in a world of multiple and increasingly capable nuclear powers; the near-collapse of bilateral strategic arms control between the United States and Russia; and the development and possible deployment of new technologies whose characteristics overall seem likely to be destabilizing. Separately or combined, each of these trends could make escalation to nuclear weapons use more likely. These are wide-ranging multilateral challenges, but this volume has focused primarily on the triangular relationship among China, Russia, and the United States, with only occasional discussion of other nuclear powers. This reflects a practical decision to begin with these core relationships, not a belief that only those relationships matter. Subsequent work will expand this focus. 23

During the Cold War, countries looked to a variety of means to prevent escalation to nuclear war, without forsaking what they perceived as the security benefits of their nuclear arsenals. The dream of a successful defense against a large-scale nuclear attack never ended, but the technical reality remained that warheads launched from ICBMs and SLBMs were extremely difficult to intercept, and that an attacker's countermeasures were technically simpler and less expensive than a defender's interceptors. 24 Absent a credible defense against strategic missiles, other approaches came to the fore.

The least subtle of these was deterrence. In broad terms, deterrence in the nuclear context seeks to alter an adversary's cost-benefit calculation with respect to the use of nuclear weapons. 25 Its most stark realization was in the condition of mutual assured destruction (MAD) between the United States and the Soviet Union. Once secure second-strike systems were in place, each side understood that full-scale nuclear war would mean mutual annihilation, regardless of who struck first. Each country was deterred, they hoped, from reaching for the nuclear trigger by a recognition that no conceivable benefit was worth this level of “assured destruction.”

In less stark manifestations of deterrence, countries sought to supplement the threat of punishment with steps that would deny an adversary's efforts to achieve their goals in launching an attack: so-called deterrence by denial. For example, an adversary might imagine that small-scale nuclear weapons could be employed in limited fashion to secure a desired objective without leading to unacceptable further escalation. Deterrence by denial meant fashioning capabilities that would dissuade an adversary from trying, thus cutting off a dangerous path to even greater nuclear weapons use. If nuclear weapons were nevertheless used in a limited way, some theorists argued that adversaries, faced with an opponent whose escalatory options were superior, might still be deterred from moving to higher levels of nuclear destruction. 26

Beyond deterrence, the United States and the Soviet Union, and then Russia, engaged in a variety of arms control measures that were intended to reduce the incentives either side might have for escalating to nuclear weapons use. 27 Arms control sought to improve the adversaries' knowledge of one another, both through technical transparency into each other's military capabilities and by enhancing leadership communication in crisis. Consequently, escalation through fear, misunderstanding, or worst-case analyses would be less likely. Jon Wolfsthal, in his essay for this volume, highlights several major U.S.-Soviet arms control treaties that embodied these objectives. 28 The 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty sought to limit strategic missile defense deployments to spare each side a costly defensive arms race that could, at its worst, provide the false impression that launching a first nuclear strike was credible due to an effective defense against an adversary's reply. The 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces Agreement (INF) stabilized the U.S. Russian nuclear relationship by eliminating the two countries' intermediate- range nuclear missiles in Europe and elsewhere, thereby freeing Moscow and European capitals from the fear of nuclear destruction from a nonstrategic missile that, because of the shorter ranges involved, could eliminate leadership, command and control, or other targets with warning times much shorter than those of ICBMs. The second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START II), signed by the United States and the Russian Federation in 1993, required the removal of MIRVed warheads from ICBMs. This would have reduced incentives for a first strike against vulnerable land-based missiles hosting multiple warheads. (The treaty, however, never entered into force.) All these agreements instantiate a view of arms control motivated by the desire to enhance strategic stability, rather than the intention to reduce the size of nuclear arsenals as such. Yet there were also arms control agreements that seemed more concerned with simple measures of parity than with enhancing stability. 29

As the archives open, we are learning that the impulses prompting leadership in the two countries to turn to arms control were as broadly political as they were an effort to manage nuclear risks. James Cameron, in his essay in this volume, stresses this larger geopolitical context for arms control. Perhaps this should be unsurprising, since such a long-lasting foreign policy tool might be expected to serve many constituencies in order to survive over many decades. Cameron argues in particular that arms control, including the 1970 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), was used by the United States and the Soviet Union “to preserve their dominance of global politics at the expense of their allies' military options.” 30 Similarly, as he and other historians have shown, bringing U.S. allies under the protection of its nuclear umbrella was a powerful way to avert nuclear proliferation among those allies. In particular, both the United States and the Soviet Union valued the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty as a barrier to Germany pursuing a nuclear option. The crucial interplay between deterrent practices and arms control in the pursuit of broader objectives did not cease with the end of the Cold War. Looking ahead, if nuclear arms control is to have a future not only between the United States and Russia but among the other major nuclear powers, it will only be if leaders see it as a way to achieve larger geopolitical objectives as well as a safer nuclear world.

Another view of the nuclear threat, one whose roots reach back to some of the scientists who produced the first atomic bomb, was that measures such as deterrence and arms control could not guarantee strategic stability in perpetuity, and that international security ultimately would require the elimination of nuclear weapons. 31 The recognition that nuclear weapons bring peril as well as stability was one motive behind Article VI of the NPT, which calls for their ultimate elimination. 32 Throughout the Cold War, there was an ebb and flow of efforts by elements of civil society or on the part of non-nuclear-weapon states to pursue international security though nuclear disarmament. 33 The focus in this volume on relations among and strategic approaches of the three leading nuclear-weapon states–the United States, Russia, and China–risks paying too little attention to the views of non-nuclear-weapon states who find the continuing strategic face-off (claims for the efficacy of deterrence or no) to be deeply troubling. Harald Müller and Carmen Wunderlich, in their essay discussing the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, trace the ways in which the apparent lack of attention on the part of the nuclear-weapon states to their Article VI NPT commitments and their backtracking on past commitments have encouraged 122 nations to negotiate–though not yet bring into force–a treaty to ban nuclear weapons altogether. 34

All these approaches to maintaining strategic stability have been affected by the transition from the largely bilateral nuclear rivalry of the Cold War to today's more complicated nuclear world. Disturbingly, the trends we identify here–increasingly complex relations among increasingly capable nuclear-armed states, the collapse of formal arms control, destabilizing technological advances–are not merely moving in parallel, but may reinforce one another in powerful ways. Steven Miller, in his lead essay for this volume, argues that the effects of the transition from a predominantly U.S.-Russian nuclear weapons relationship to a Chinese-Russian-U.S. nuclear triangle can already be seen in important outcomes. 35 Miller argues that while accusations of treaty noncompliance were the proximate cause of U.S. withdrawal from the INF, strategic calculations reflecting the more complicated three-way Chinese-Russian-U.S. relationship undergirded this decision: because of the bilateral INF treaty, neither Russia nor the United States could match China's growing missile capabilities in the 500–5,500 kilometer range. A bilateral treaty was no longer well suited for a trilateral military relationship.

Miller gives a second example of increasing complexity due to multilateral nuclear decision-making. In the case of ballistic missile defense, steps taken by the United States to defend itself against small numbers of North Korean ICBMs or (possible future) Iranian ICBMs are seen by China and Russia as laying the groundwork for a more extensive and effective system to counter their own strategic nuclear forces. (And, Miller argues, the Trump administration has given them additional cause for this interpretation.) Steps taken in response by China will potentially affect India's decisions about its own nuclear forces. Beijing sits at an apex of two nuclear triangles, one with the United States and Russia, the other with India and Pakistan. At a minimum, as Miller approvingly quotes former Ambassador Steven Pifer, “Strategic stability appears increasingly a multilateral and multi-domain construct.” 36 Miller is doubtless correct when he concludes that formal treaty-based bilateral arms control, a classic tool for managing strategic stability, is less and less suited for the world in which we now live. Nor is multilateral arms control likely to fill the void. As Miller warns: “Bilateral arms control is collapsing but seems in any case insufficient; trilateral arms control seems necessary but so far remains impossible; multilateral arms control is comatose; and regional arms control is desirable but is as yet nonexistent.” 37

Any successful path forward will depend on the United States, Russia, and China finding some measure of common ground. If the essays in this volume by Anya Loukianova Fink and Olga Oliker, Li Bin, and Brad Roberts make one thing clear, that will not be easy. Reconstructing the perspectives of Russia, China, and the United States, respectively, the authors each describe a set of concerns fundamentally at odds with those of at least one of the other two. For Roberts, striving to pursue an approach to nuclear deterrence that lowers the risk of nuclear war remains key for the United States, but the context in which the United States must conduct this pursuit is altogether different. Russia, he argues, is no longer a potential partner in seeking to reduce nuclear risks, but a dangerous adversary striving to create a nuclear posture serving its aggressive foreign policy agenda. 38 The risk to be averted, therefore, is first and foremost that U.S. deterrence will fall short. By Fink and Oliker's retelling, Russia, in contrast, sees the situation in reverse: Russia's nuclear forces are designed to deter the primary threat posed by the United States. As its once dominant role in a shifting global setting fades, Russia's leadership contends, the United States counts on its military power, underpinned by nuclear weapons, to threaten and coerce others. It seeks nuclear superiority and now focuses on new technologies and weapons systems intended to degrade the Russian nuclear deterrent and make nuclear weapons more usable. 39

Not only have U.S. and Russian views on what threatens strategic stability sharply diverged, making preserving, let alone extending, the nuclear arms control process a fading prospect, but the way each side now both defines the specific threat that it sees in the other side's weapons programs and doctrinal shifts and prepares to counter them seems likely to increase the chance of inadvertent escalation across the nuclear threshold. In the meantime, Li argues, the disparity between the size of the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals and those of all other countries means that the numerical aspects of U.S.-Russian arms control treaties “cannot apply to China.” 40 In other words, formal multilateral arms control is, as Miller suggested, not currently an available option. As the United States begins to treat China as a rising geopolitical threat and its enhanced nuclear forces as a source of concern, China's changing perceptions of global trends, the nature of the nuclear world, and the challenges it faces, according to Li, widens the gulf.

Complicating all issues of mutual understanding and potential escalation is the arrival–likely in the absence of any related arms control measures–of a set of new technologies that overall will probably make nuclear forces and their associated command and control appear more vulnerable. The most immediate of these is cyberspace operations. In his essay, James Acton systematically describes the ways in which cyber weapons differ from traditional weapons and, in particular, those aspects of cyber operations that seem especially destabilizing. 41 He acknowledges, however, that credible approaches to mitigate this threat are inadequate to the need. Christopher Chyba, in his essay, examines a wide range of new technologies, and proposes a framework to think through a given technology's impact on strategic stability. The intent of his framework is to help ensure that consideration (by any country) of new technologies systematically confronts the variety of ways in which destabilizing effects may result, so that possible mitigating steps can at least be considered. 42

How, then, are we to work within this world to lessen the chances of escalation to the use of nuclear weapons? Most of our authors propose elements of a response, but Linton Brooks, James Timbie, and Nina Tannenwald, in their essays, take this question as their primary focus. There is consensus that the United States and Russia should take advantage of New START's provision that allows the two parties to extend the treaty by five years beyond its looming 2021 expiration deadline. Brooks emphasizes that the transparency and predictability measures implemented in New START benefit the United States more than Russia because the United States is inherently the more open of the two countries. Moreover, while much of the information exchanged between the two sides could be obtained by national intelligence, this would require the diversion of these resources away from other intelligence requirements. And still, some of the information provided by New START, Brooks warns, “cannot be obtained in any other way.” 43

Yet Brooks–in agreement with other authors in this volume–acknowledges that a replacement treaty is nevertheless unlikely. 44 Timbie is clear about why further arms control treaties of any kind between Russia and the United States seem improbable. “Russia,” he notes, “has taken the position that further agreements must address third-country forces, missile defense, and precision conventional systems.” 45 But it is unlikely that China will agree to enter a formal treaty process, and the United States is unlikely to negotiate treaty commitments limiting missile defense. To this, one might add the seeming unwillingness of the current U.S. Senate to ratify treaties of nearly any kind, and arms control treaties in particular.

With the end of New START, bilateral arms control between the United States and Russia in the sense of formal legally binding treaties comes to an end. Brooks emphasizes that it is important to analyze carefully what the consequences of this loss of information and restraint will be, and to understand what mitigating steps may be taken to compensate for at least some of what will be lost. To this end, Timbie proposes an extensive list of transparency measures, numerical limits, and constraints on behavior that could be agreed upon as political, rather than legal, agreements. Verification would of necessity be weaker than with New START, but perhaps some limited verification measures could nevertheless be put in place. This would circumvent the U.S. treaty-ratification problem, even if the agreements are more fragile, more easily repudiated by incoming presidential administrations, and less well verified. Given the Russian concerns that Timbie himself identifies, it is unclear how realistic these proposals may be. But at the least, they should be vigorously explored.

With the decline of treaty-based arms control among the nuclear-weapon powers, Tannenwald calls for all nuclear-armed states to move toward a “regime of nuclear restraint and responsibility.” 46 Restraint, in her view, should “primarily take the form of reciprocal commitments and unilateral measures to avoid an arms race and reduce nuclear dangers.” And responsibility means committing to “responsible deterrence,” which not only prioritizes strategic stability and the immediate goal of preventing nuclear war but retains the ultimate goal of disarmament. Nuclear disarmament is, after all, a treaty requirement that the United States accepted when it ratified the NPT for, as Article VI of the U.S. Constitution states, ratified treaties are “the supreme law of the land.” 47 Nevertheless, the willingness of the United States publicly to embrace this obligation has varied greatly from administration to administration, and in the current state of affairs, this “ultimate” goal may seem very distant indeed. In the meantime, Tannenwald suggests a series of measures that could be pursued absent formal treaties, some by all nuclear-armed states, some by the United States, Russia, and China, and some unilaterally by the United States. One challenge is to ensure that unilateral measures would be effective beyond just the United States, France, and the United Kingdom. We see Tannenwald's suggestions as reinforcing the calls by Müller and Wunderlich for the advocates of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and the advocates of deterrence to work harder to find common ground to prevent the worst outcomes from coming to pass.

The authors of this volume bring a diversity of views to the issue of strategic stability in this new multipolar world. Nevertheless, there is broad, albeit not universal, agreement on several points:

Russia and the United States should extend New START's expiration date from 2021 to 2026. They should then use that time to pursue a successor treaty that would further extend the transparency, predictability, and numerical limits (and ideally, lower limits) that New START provides. Yet most authors of this volume fear that extension is not likely, and that even if the treaty were extended, a formal successor treaty is unlikely to be realized.

If formal bilateral arms control treaties prove impossible, Russia and the United States should work to put in place politically binding agreements to capture much of the security and stability benefits that will be lost with the formal treaty process. However challenging such agreements may prove to be, the two states should vigorously explore these options.

On a bilateral or a multilateral basis, the United States, Russia, and China should pursue discussions intended to improve understanding of one another's strategic concerns and views on which actions by an adversary would be especially concerning or dangerous. Until that happens, the widening gap in the outlook and actions of these three major actors will only make this new nuclear environment less manageable and more dangerous.

China, Russia, and the United States should also actively work to see whether and where common ground can be found concerning efforts to mitigate arms spirals and restrain the development, deployment, or use of destabilizing technologies. They should then pursue politically binding agreements to advance these goals, albeit with a clear eye to the limits of verification that would exist in this format.

In addition, we embrace certain recommendations that were made by individual or a few authors:

The United States should strengthen resilience in its many forms–including to early warning, command and control, and communications–as a key mechanism both for deterrence (by denial) and for mitigating the risk of escalation of nonconventional attacks (such as cyber- or bio-attacks) or conventional warfare (including attacks in space) to the use of nuclear weapons. 48

While military intelligence and operations will increasingly incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) into the interpretation of large amounts of empirical data, AI should nevertheless not be allowed, either intentionally or inadvertently, to enter or creep into actual decision-making for nuclear weapons use.

Little is to be gained, and perhaps much lost, by insisting on the opposition between those who emphasize deterrence as the central element of strategic stability and those who see a necessity for nuclear disarmament. In the U.S.-Russian-Chinese context, steps that would enhance stability by constraining weapons numbers or deployment of specific destabilizing technologies, or by improving communication regarding concerns about, and likely responses to, an adversary's possible strategic or tactical actions, could serve both causes.

The world has lived with nuclear weapons for seventy-five years. Although the number of states with nuclear weapons has grown slowly, the weapons themselves, while being used for many purposes, have not been detonated in war since the end of World War II. But the new era we have entered is more complex, both politically and technically, and seems likely to be less constrained by treaty, and therefore less transparent and less predictable, than any time in the past half-century.

It remains possible that New START can be extended and continue to serve as one basis for bilateral stability between the United States and Russia. In this future, there would remain many dangers, and the United States, Russia, and China would still need to engage in extensive dialogue to mitigate and manage them. Absent New START, the challenges would prove much greater. This volume has attempted, first, to help us understand what this coming world may look like and, second, to present recommendations that may provide a modest beginning to avoiding the worst outcomes in these possible futures.

First-generation nuclear weapons split the nuclei of either high-enriched uranium or plutonium to produce a million times more energy per kilogram than is the case for chemical high explosives. These are called fission weapons. Even greater amounts of energy per kilogram, by perhaps another factor of one hundred, is produced in fusion weapons. These weapons (also called hydrogen or thermonuclear weapons) use a fission weapon trigger (or “primary”) to create the pressures and temperatures needed to fuse hydrogen nuclei together (in the “secondary”) to produce helium, releasing even greater amounts of energy and typically driving additional fission as well. See, for example, Kosta Tsipis, Arsenal: Understanding Weapons in the Nuclear Age (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983).

Hans M. Kristensen and Matt Korda, “United States Nuclear Forces, 2020,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 76 (1) (2020): 46–60.

See Tsipis, Arsenal , chap. 7.

See ibid., chap. 5; and Center for Strategic and International Studies Missile Defense Project, “SS-19 ‘Stiletto,‘” Missile Threat, August 10, 2016, https://missilethreat.csis.org/missile/ss-19/ (last modified June 15, 2018); compare to Hans M. Kristensen and Matt Korda, “Russian Nuclear Forces, 2019,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 75 (2) (2019): 73–84.

Alex Wellerstein, NUKEMAP, https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/. Nuclear weapons effects based on E. Royce Fletcher, Ray W. Albright, Robert F. D. Perret, et al., Nuclear Bomb Effects Computer (Including Slide-Rule Design and Curve Fits for Weapons Effects) , CEX-62.2 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Atomic Energy Commission Civil Effects Test Operations, 1963); and Samuel Glasstone and Philip J. Dolan, The Effects of Nuclear Weapons (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. Department of Energy, 1977).

Such as was created at Hiroshima, and also by conventional bombing of cities such as Dresden, Hamburg, and Tokyo. See Lynn Eden, Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge, and Nuclear Weapons Devastation (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2006).

The actual numbers are somewhat higher, since the counting rules under New START treat each strategic bomber as delivering only one warhead. See The Treaty between the United States of America and the Russian Federation on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (New START Treaty), Article III, https://2009–2017.state.gov/t/avc/newstart/c44126.htm .

Hans M. Kristensen and Matt Korda, “Chinese Nuclear Forces, 2019,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 75 (4) (2019); Hans M. Kristensen and Matt Korda, “French Nuclear Forces, 2019,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 75 (1) (2019): 51–55; and Robert S. Norris and Hans M. Kristensen, “The British Nuclear Stockpile, 1953–2013,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 69 (4) (2013): 69–75.

The essays in this volume have focused (albeit not exclusively) on nuclear deterrence among the United States, Russia, and China. Not every nuclear power has adopted a posture of assured retaliation. See Vipin Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era: Regional Powers and International Conflict (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2014).

Barry R. Posen, Inadvertent Escalation: Conventional War and Nuclear Risks (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991).

See, for example, Joseph Rotblat, Jack Steinberger, and Bhalchandra Udgaonkar, A Nuclear-Weapon-Free World: Desirable? Feasible? (San Francisco: Westview Press, 1993); George Perkovich and James M. Acton, eds., Abolishing Nuclear Weapons: A Debate (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2009); and George P. Shultz, Sidney D. Drell, and James E. Goodby, eds., Deterrence: Its Past and Future (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 2011).

Antony Beevor, The Second World War (New York: Little, Brown & Co., 2012).

John Lewis Gaddis concludes: “It seems inescapable that what has really made the difference in inducing this unaccustomed caution has been the workings of the nuclear deterrent.” See John Lewis Gaddis, “The Long Peace: Elements of Stability in the Postwar International System,” International Security 10 (4) (1986): 99–142, and references therein. Ward Wilson is skeptical of this conclusion; see Ward Wilson, “The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence,” Nonproliferation Review 15 (3) (2008): 421–439. See also Robert Rauchhaus, “Evaluating the Nuclear Peace Hypothesis: A Quantitative Approach,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 53 (2) (2009): 258–277.

Robert Jervis, The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution: Statecraft and the Prospect of Armageddon (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989).

Dietrich Schroeer, Science, Technology, and the Nuclear Arms Race (Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, 1984), chap. 10.

Confidence in the unwillingness of nuclear powers to go to full-scale war might, however, encourage these same powers to risk lower levels of conflict or violence: the “stability-instability paradox.” See Glenn Snyder, “The Balance of Power and the Balance of Terror,” in Balance of Power , ed. Paul Seabury (San Francisco: Chandler, 1965); and Rauchhaus, “Evaluating the Nuclear Peace Hypothesis.”

Anthony Liberman, “The Rise and Fall of the South African Bomb,” International Security 26 (2) (2001): 45–86.

Sadia Tasleem, Pakistan's Nuclear Use Doctrine (Washington, D.C: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2016), https://carnegieendowment.org/2016/06/30/pakistan-s-nuclear-use-doctrine-pub-63913 .

Scott D. Sagan, “The Korean Missile Crisis: Why Deterrence Is Still the Best Option,” Foreign Affairs 96 (6) (2017): 72–82; and Patrick McEachern, “More than Regime Survival,” North Korea Review 14 (1) (2018): 115–118.

See Matthew Kroenig, “Nuclear Superiority and the Balance of Resolve: Explaining Nuclear Crisis Outcomes,” International Organization 67 (1) (2013): 141–171. For a contrary argument, compare with Todd Sechser and Matthew Fuhrmann, Nuclear Weapons and Coercive Diplomacy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).

Major General Yang Huon, former deputy commander of China's strategic rocket forces, has written that “China's strategic nuclear weapons were developed because of the belief that hegemonic power will continue to use nuclear threats and nuclear blackmail.” Yang Huon, “China's Strategic Nuclear Weapons,” https://fas.org/nuke/guide/china/doctrine/huan.htm .

See, for example, Lyle J. Goldstein, Preventive Attack and Weapons of Mass Destruction (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2006). See also William Perry, “The Risk of ‘Blundering’ into Nuclear War: Lessons from the Cuban Missile Crisis,” Arms Control Today , December 2017, https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2017–12/features/risk-‘blundering‘-into-nuclear-war-lessons-cuban-missile-crisis ; and Graham Allison, “The Cuban Missile Crisis at 50: Lessons for U.S. Foreign Policy Today,” Foreign Affairs 91 (4) (2012): 11–16, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/cuba/2012–07–01/cuban-missile-crisis-50 .

American Academy of Arts and Sciences, “Deterrence and the New Nuclear States,” project chairs Scott D. Sagan and Vipin Narang, https://www.amacad.org/project/deterrence-and-new-nuclear-states .

Schroeer, Science, Technology, and the Nuclear Arms Race ; and David Hafemeister, Physics of Societal Issues: Calculations on National Security, Environment, and Energy (New York: Springer, 2007), chap. 3.

Glenn H. Snyder, “Deterrence and Defense,” in The Use of Force: Military Power and International Politics , 3rd ed., ed. Robert J. Art and Kenneth N. Waltz (New York: University Press of America, 1983), 25–43.

Herman Kahn, On Escalation: Metaphors and Scenarios (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1965).

Thomas C. Schelling and Morton H. Halperin, Strategy and Arms Control (New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1961); and “Arms Control,” Dædalus 89 (4) (Fall 1960)

Jon Brook Wolfsthal, “Why Arms Control?” Dædalus 149 (2) (Spring 2020).

Thomas C. Schelling, “What Went Wrong with Arms Control?” Foreign Affairs 64 (2) (1985): 219–233.

James Cameron, “What History Can Teach,” Dædalus 149 (2) (Spring 2020).

See, for example, Dexter Masters and Katherine Way, eds., One World or None: A Report to the Public on the Full Meaning of the Atomic Bomb (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1946).

Article VI of the NPT reads, in its entirety, “Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.” See “Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT),” https://www.un.org/disarmament/wmd/nuclear/npt/text .

Matthew Evangelista, Unarmed Forces: The Transnational Movement to End the Cold War (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999).

Harald Müller and Carmen Wunderlich, “Nuclear Disarmament without the Nuclear-Weapon States: The Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty,” Dædalus 149 (2) (Spring 2020).

Steven E. Miller, “A Nuclear World Transformed: The Rise of Multilateral Disorder,” Dædalus 149 (2) (Spring 2020).

As quoted in ibid.

Brad Roberts, “On Adapting Nuclear Deterrence to Reduce Nuclear Risk,” Dædalus 149 (2) (Spring 2020).

Anya Loukianova Fink and Olga Oliker, “Russia's Nuclear Weapons in a Multipolar World: Guarantors of Sovereignty, Great Power Status & More,” Dædalus 149 (2) (Spring 2020).

Li Bin, “The Revival of Nuclear Competition in an Altered Geopolitical Context: A Chinese Perspective,” Dædalus 149 (2) (Spring 2020).

James M. Acton, “Cyber Warfare & Inadvertent Escalation,” Dædalus 149 (2) (Spring 2020).

Christopher F. Chyba, “New Technologies & Strategic Stability,” Dædalus 149 (2) (Spring 2020).

Linton F. Brooks, “The End of Arms Control?” Dædalus 149 (2) (Spring 2020).

James Timbie, “A Way Forward,” Dædalus 149 (2) (Spring 2020).

Nina Tannenwald, “Life beyond Arms Control: Moving toward a Global Regime of Nuclear Restraint & Responsibility,” Dædalus 149 (2) (Spring 2020).

“This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land.” Constitution of the United States of America, Article VI, https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript#toc-article-vi- .

The U.S. Department of Defense has defined resilience as “The ability of an architecture to support the functions necessary for mission success with higher probability, shorter periods of reduced capability, and across a wider range of scenarios, conditions, and threats, in spite of hostile action or adverse conditions.” A recent study suggests that the resilience of potentially targeted systems can be improved in many ways, including disaggregation, distribution, diversification, protection, proliferation, and deception. See Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense & Global Security, Space Domain Mission Assurance: A Resilience Taxonomy (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense & Global Security, 2015), https://fas.org/man/eprint/resilience.pdf .

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The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II

A Collection of Primary Sources

Updated National Security Archive Posting Marks 75th Anniversary of the Atomic Bombings of Japan and the End of World War II

Extensive Compilation of Primary Source Documents Explores Manhattan Project, Eisenhower’s Early Misgivings about First Nuclear Use, Curtis LeMay and the Firebombing of Tokyo, Debates over Japanese Surrender Terms, Atomic Targeting Decisions, and Lagging Awareness of Radiation Effects

Washington, D.C., August 4, 2020 –  To mark the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, the National Security Archive is updating and reposting one of its most popular e-books of the past 25 years. 

While U.S. leaders hailed the bombings at the time and for many years afterwards for bringing the Pacific war to an end and saving untold thousands of American lives, that interpretation has since been seriously challenged.  Moreover, ethical questions have shrouded the bombings which caused terrible human losses and in succeeding decades fed a nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union and now Russia and others.

Three-quarters of a century on, Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain emblematic of the dangers and human costs of warfare, specifically the use of nuclear weapons.  Since these issues will be subjects of hot debate for many more years, the Archive has once again refreshed its compilation of declassified U.S. government documents and translated Japanese records that first appeared on these pages in 2005.

*    *    *    *    *

Introduction

By William Burr

The 75th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 is an occasion for sober reflection. In Japan and elsewhere around the world, each anniversary is observed with great solemnity. The bombings were the first time that nuclear weapons had been detonated in combat operations.  They caused terrible human losses and destruction at the time and more deaths and sickness in the years ahead from the radiation effects. And the U.S. bombings hastened the Soviet Union’s atomic bomb project and have fed a big-power nuclear arms race to this day. Thankfully, nuclear weapons have not been exploded in war since 1945, perhaps owing to the taboo against their use shaped by the dropping of the bombs on Japan. 

Along with the ethical issues involved in the use of atomic and other mass casualty weapons, why the bombs were dropped in the first place has been the subject of sometimes heated debate. As with all events in human history, interpretations vary and readings of primary sources can lead to different conclusions.  Thus, the extent to which the bombings contributed to the end of World War II or the beginning of the Cold War remain live issues.  A significant contested question is whether, under the weight of a U.S. blockade and massive conventional bombing, the Japanese were ready to surrender before the bombs were dropped.  Also still debated is the impact of the Soviet declaration of war and invasion of Manchuria, compared to the atomic bombings, on the Japanese decision to surrender. Counterfactual issues are also disputed, for example whether there were alternatives to the atomic bombings, or would the Japanese have surrendered had a demonstration of the bomb been used to produced shock and awe. Moreover, the role of an invasion of Japan in U.S. planning remains a matter of debate, with some arguing that the bombings spared many thousands of American lives that otherwise would have been lost in an invasion.

Those and other questions will be subjects of discussion well into the indefinite future. Interested readers will continue to absorb the fascinating historical literature on the subject.  Some will want to read declassified primary sources so they can further develop their own thinking about the issues. Toward that end, in 2005, at the time of the 60th anniversary of the bombings, staff at the National Security Archive compiled and scanned a significant number of declassified U.S. government documents to make them more widely available. The documents cover multiple aspects of the bombings and their context.  Also included, to give a wider perspective, were translations of Japanese documents not widely available before.  Since 2005, the collection has been updated. This latest iteration of the collection includes corrections, a few minor revisions, and updated footnotes to take into account recently published secondary literature.

2015 Update

August 4, 2015 – A few months after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, General Dwight D.  Eisenhower commented during a social occasion “how he had hoped that the war might have ended without our having to use the atomic bomb.” This virtually unknown evidence from the diary of Robert P. Meiklejohn, an assistant to Ambassador W. Averell Harriman, published for the first time today by the National Security Archive, confirms that the future President Eisenhower had early misgivings about the first use of atomic weapons by the United States. General George C. Marshall is the only high-level official whose contemporaneous (pre-Hiroshima) doubts about using the weapons against cities are on record.

On the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, the National Security Archive updates its 2005 publication of the most comprehensive on-line collection of declassified U.S. government documents on the first use of the atomic bomb and the end of the war in the Pacific. This update presents previously unpublished material and translations of difficult-to-find records. Included are documents on the early stages of the U.S. atomic bomb project, Army Air Force General  Curtis LeMay’s report  on the firebombing of Tokyo (March 1945), Secretary of War Henry  Stimson’s requests  for modification of unconditional surrender terms,  Soviet documents  relating to the events, excerpts from the Robert P. Meiklejohn diaries mentioned above, and selections from the diaries of Walter J. Brown, special assistant to Secretary of State James Byrnes.

The original 2005 posting included a wide range of material, including formerly top secret "Magic" summaries of intercepted Japanese communications and the first-ever full translations from the Japanese of accounts of high level meetings and discussions in Tokyo leading to the Emperor’s decision to surrender. Also documented are U.S. decisions to target Japanese cities, pre-Hiroshima petitions by scientists questioning the military use of the A-bomb, proposals for demonstrating the effects of the bomb, debates over whether to modify unconditional surrender terms, reports from the bombing missions of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and belated top-level awareness of the radiation effects of atomic weapons.

The documents can help readers to make up their own minds about long-standing controversies such as whether the first use of atomic weapons was justified, whether President Harry S. Truman had alternatives to atomic attacks for ending the war, and what the impact of the Soviet declaration of war on Japan was. Since the 1960s, when the declassification of important sources began, historians have engaged in vigorous debate over the bomb and the end of World War II. Drawing on sources at the National Archives and the Library of Congress as well as Japanese materials, this electronic briefing book includes key documents that historians of the events have relied upon to present their findings and advance their interpretations.

The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II: A Collection of Primary Sources

Seventy years ago this month, the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, and the Japanese government surrendered to the United States and its allies. The nuclear age had truly begun with the first military use of atomic weapons. With the material that follows, the National Security Archive publishes the most comprehensive on-line collection to date of declassified U.S. government documents on the atomic bomb and the end of the war in the Pacific. Besides material from the files of the Manhattan Project, this collection includes formerly “Top Secret Ultra” summaries and translations of Japanese diplomatic cable traffic intercepted under the “Magic” program. Moreover, the collection includes for the first time translations from Japanese sources of high level meetings and discussions in Tokyo, including the conferences when Emperor Hirohito authorized the final decision to surrender. [1]

Ever since the atomic bombs were exploded over Japanese cities, historians, social scientists, journalists, World War II veterans, and ordinary citizens have engaged in intense controversy about the events of August 1945. John Hersey’s  Hiroshima , first published in the New Yorker  in 1946 encouraged unsettled readers to question the bombings while church groups and some commentators, most prominently Norman Cousins, explicitly criticized them. Former Secretary of War Henry Stimson found the criticisms troubling and published an influential justification for the attacks in  Harper’s . [2] During the 1960s the availability of primary sources made historical research and writing possible and the debate became more vigorous. Historians Herbert Feis and Gar Alperovitz raised searching questions about the first use of nuclear weapons and their broader political and diplomatic implications. The controversy, especially the arguments made by Alperovitz and others about “atomic diplomacy” quickly became caught up in heated debates over Cold War “revisionism.” The controversy simmered over the years with major contributions by Martin Sherwin and Barton J. Bernstein but it became explosive during the mid-1990s when curators at the National Air and Space Museum met the wrath of the Air Force Association over a proposed historical exhibit on the Enola Gay. [3] The NASM exhibit was drastically scaled-down but historians and journalist continued to engage in the debate. Alperovitz, Bernstein, and Sherwin made new contributions as did other historians, social scientists, and journalists including Richard B. Frank, Herbert Bix, Sadao Asada, Kai Bird, Robert James Maddox, Sean Malloy, Robert P. Newman, Robert S. Norris, Tsuyoshi Hagesawa, and J. Samuel Walker. [4]

The continued controversy has revolved around the following, among other, questions:

• were the atomic strikes necessary primarily to avert an invasion of Japan in November 1945?
• Did Truman authorize the use of atomic bombs for diplomatic-political reasons-- to intimidate the Soviets--or was his major goal to force Japan to surrender and bring the war to an early end?
• If ending the war quickly was the most important motivation of Truman and his advisers to what extent did they see an “atomic diplomacy” capability as a “bonus”?
• To what extent did subsequent justification for the atomic bomb exaggerate or misuse wartime estimates for U.S. casualties stemming from an invasion of Japan?
• Were there alternatives to the use of the weapons? If there were, what were they and how plausible are they in retrospect? Why were alternatives not pursued?
• How did the U.S. government plan to use the bombs? What concepts did war planners use to select targets? To what extent were senior officials interested in looking at alternatives to urban targets? How familiar was President Truman with the concepts that led target planners chose major cities as targets?
• What did senior officials know about the effects of atomic bombs before they were first used. How much did top officials know about the radiation effects of the weapons?
• Did President Truman make a decision, in a robust sense, to use the bomb or did he inherit a decision that had already been made?
• Were the Japanese ready to surrender before the bombs were dropped? To what extent had Emperor Hirohito prolonged the war unnecessarily by not seizing opportunities for surrender?
• If the United States had been more flexible about the demand for “unconditional surrender” by explicitly or implicitly guaranteeing a constitutional monarchy would Japan have surrendered earlier than it did?
• How decisive was the atomic bombings to the Japanese decision to surrender?
• Was the bombing of Nagasaki unnecessary? To the extent that the atomic bombing was critically important to the Japanese decision to surrender would it have been enough to destroy one city?
• Would the Soviet declaration of war have been enough to compel Tokyo to admit defeat?
• Was the dropping of the atomic bombs morally justifiable?

This compilation will not attempt to answer these questions or use primary sources to stake out positions on any of them. Nor is it an attempt to substitute for the extraordinary rich literature on the atomic bombings and the end of World War II. Nor does it include any of the interviews, documents prepared after the events, and post-World War II correspondence, etc. that participants in the debate have brought to bear in framing their arguments. Originally this collection did not include documents on the origins and development of the Manhattan Project, although this updated posting includes some significant records for context. By providing access to a broad range of U.S. and Japanese documents, mainly from the spring and summer of 1945, interested readers can see for themselves the crucial source material that scholars have used to shape narrative accounts of the historical developments and to frame their arguments about the questions that have provoked controversy over the years. To help readers who are less familiar with the debates, commentary on some of the documents will point out, although far from comprehensively, some of the ways in which they have been interpreted. With direct access to the documents, readers may develop their own answers to the questions raised above. The documents may even provoke new questions.

Contributors to the historical controversy have deployed the documents selected here to support their arguments about the first use of nuclear weapons and the end of World War II. The editor has closely reviewed the footnotes and endnotes in a variety of articles and books and selected documents cited by participants on the various sides of the controversy. [5] While the editor has a point of view on the issues, to the greatest extent possible he has tried to not let that influence document selection, e.g., by selectively withholding or including documents that may buttress one point of view or the other. The task of compilation involved consultation of primary sources at the National Archives, mainly in Manhattan Project files held in the records of the Army Corps of Engineers, Record Group 77, but also in the archival records of the National Security Agency. Private collections were also important, such as the Henry L. Stimson Papers held at Yale University (although available on microfilm, for example, at the Library of Congress) and the papers of W. Averell Harriman at the Library of Congress. To a great extent the documents selected for this compilation have been declassified for years, even decades; the most recent declassifications were in the 1990s.

The U.S. documents cited here will be familiar to many knowledgeable readers on the Hiroshima-Nagasaki controversy and the history of the Manhattan Project. To provide a fuller picture of the transition from U.S.-Japanese antagonism to reconciliation, the editor has done what could be done within time and resource constraints to present information on the activities and points of view of Japanese policymakers and diplomats. This includes a number of formerly top secret summaries of intercepted Japanese diplomatic communications, which enable interested readers to form their own judgments about the direction of Japanese diplomacy in the weeks before the atomic bombings. Moreover, to shed light on the considerations that induced Japan’s surrender, this briefing book includes new translations of Japanese primary sources on crucial events, including accounts of the conferences on August 9 and 14, where Emperor Hirohito made decisions to accept Allied terms of surrender.

[ Editor’s Note: Originally prepared in July 2005 this posting has been updated, with new documents, changes in organization, and other editorial changes. As noted, some documents relating to the origins of the Manhattan Project have been included in addition to entries from the Robert P. Meiklejohn diaries and translations of a few Soviet documents, among other items. Moreover, recent significant contributions to the scholarly literature have been taken into account.]

I. Background on the U.S. Atomic Project

Documents 1A-C: Report of the Uranium Committee

1A . Arthur H. Compton, National Academy of Sciences Committee on Atomic Fission, to Frank Jewett, President, National Academy of Sciences, 17 May 1941, Secret

1B . Report to the President of the National Academy of Sciences by the Academy Committee on Uranium, 6 November 1941, Secret

1C . Vannevar Bush, Director, Office of Scientific Research and Development, to President Roosevelt, 27 November 1941, Secret

Source: National Archives, Records of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, Record Group 227 (hereinafter RG 227), Bush-Conant papers microfilm collection, Roll 1, Target 2, Folder 1, "S-1 Historical File, Section A (1940-1941)."

This set of documents concerns the work of the Uranium Committee of the National Academy of Sciences, an exploratory project that was the lead-up to the actual production effort undertaken by the Manhattan Project. The initial report, May 1941, showed how leading American scientists grappled with the potential of nuclear energy for military purposes. At the outset, three possibilities were envisioned: radiological warfare, a power source for submarines and ships, and explosives. To produce material for any of those purposes required a capability to separate uranium isotopes in order to produce fissionable U-235. Also necessary for those capabilities was the production of a nuclear chain reaction. At the time of the first report, various methods for producing a chain reaction were envisioned and money was being budgeted to try them out.

Later that year, the Uranium Committee completed its report and OSRD Chairman Vannevar Bush reported the findings to President Roosevelt: As Bush emphasized, the U.S. findings were more conservative than those in the British MAUD report: the bomb would be somewhat “less effective,” would take longer to produce, and at a higher cost. One of the report’s key findings was that a fission bomb of superlatively destructive power will result from bringing quickly together a sufficient mass of element U235.” That was a certainty, “as sure as any untried prediction based upon theory and experiment can be.” The critically important task was to develop ways and means to separate highly enriched uranium from uranium-238. To get production going, Bush wanted to establish a “carefully chosen engineering group to study plans for possible production.” This was the basis of the Top Policy Group, or the S-1 Committee, which Bush and James B. Conant quickly established. [6]

In its discussion of the effects of an atomic weapon, the committee considered both blast and radiological damage. With respect to the latter, “It is possible that the destructive effects on life caused by the intense radioactivity of the products of the explosion may be as important as those of the explosion itself.” This insight was overlooked when top officials of the Manhattan Project considered the targeting of Japan during 1945. [7]

Documents 2A-B: Going Ahead with the Bomb

2A : Vannevar Bush to President Roosevelt, 9 March 1942, with memo from Roosevelt attached, 11 March 1942, Secret

2B : Vannevar Bush to President Roosevelt, 16 December 1942, Secret (report not attached)

Sources: 2A: RG 227, Bush-Conant papers microfilm collection, Roll 1, Target 2, Folder 1, "S-1 Historical File, Section II (1941-1942): 2B: Bush-Conant papers, S-1 Historical File, Reports to and Conferences with the President (1942-1944)

The Manhattan Project never had an official charter establishing it and defining its mission, but these two documents are the functional equivalent of a charter, in terms of presidential approvals for the mission, not to mention for a huge budget. In a progress report, Bush told President Roosevelt that the bomb project was on a pilot plant basis, but not yet at the production stage. By the summer, once “production plants” would be at work, he proposed that the War Department take over the project. In reply, Roosevelt wrote a short memo endorsing Bush’s ideas as long as absolute secrecy could be maintained. According to Robert S. Norris, this was “the fateful decision” to turn over the atomic project to military control. [8]

Some months later, with the Manhattan Project already underway and under the direction of General Leslie Grove, Bush outlined to Roosevelt the effort necessary to produce six fission bombs. With the goal of having enough fissile material by the first half of 1945 to produce the bombs, Bush was worried that the Germans might get there first. Thus, he wanted Roosevelt’s instructions as to whether the project should be “vigorously pushed throughout.” Unlike the pilot plant proposal described above, Bush described a real production order for the bomb, at an estimated cost of a “serious figure”: $400 million, which was an optimistic projection given the eventual cost of $1.9 billion. To keep the secret, Bush wanted to avoid a “ruinous” appropriations request to Congress and asked Roosevelt to ask Congress for the necessary discretionary funds. Initialed by President Roosevelt (“VB OK FDR”), this may have been the closest that he came to a formal approval of the Manhattan Project.

Document 3 : Memorandum by Leslie R. Grove, “Policy Meeting, 5/5/43,” Top Secret

Source:  National Archives, Record Group 77, Records of the Army Corps of Engineers (hereinafter RG 77), Manhattan Engineering District (MED), Minutes of the Military Policy Meeting (5 May 1943), Correspondence (“Top Secret”) of the Manhattan Engineer District, 1942-1946, microfilm publication M1109 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1980), Roll 3, Target 6, Folder 23, “Military Policy Committee, Minutes of Meetings”

Before the Manhattan Project had produced any weapons, senior U.S. government officials had Japanese targets in mind. Besides discussing programmatic matters (e.g., status of gaseous diffusion plants, heavy water production for reactors, and staffing at Las Alamos), the participants agreed that the first use could be Japanese naval forces concentrated at Truk Harbor, an atoll in the Caroline Islands. If there was a misfire the weapon would be difficult for the Japanese to recover, which would not be the case if Tokyo was targeted. Targeting Germany was rejected because the Germans were considered more likely to “secure knowledge” from a defective weapon than the Japanese. That is, the United States could possibly be in danger if the Nazis acquired more knowledge about how to build a bomb. [9]

Document 4 :   Memo from General Groves to the Chief of Staff [Marshall], “Atomic Fission Bombs – Present Status and Expected Progress,” 7 August 1944, Top Secret, excised copy

Source: RG 77, Correspondence ("Top Secret") of the Manhattan Engineer District, 1942-1946, file 25M

This memorandum from General Groves to General Marshall captured how far the Manhattan Project had come in less than two years since Bush’s December 1942 report to President Roosevelt .  Groves did not mention this but around the time he wrote this the Manhattan Project had working at its far-flung installations over  125,000 people  ; taking into account high labor turnover some 485,000 people worked on the project (1 out of every 250 people in the country at that time). What these people were laboring to construct, directly or indirectly, were two types of weapons—a gun-type weapon using U-235 and an implosion weapon using plutonium (although the possibility of U-235 was also under consideration). As the scientists had learned, a gun-type weapon based on plutonium was “impossible” because that element had an “unexpected property”: spontaneous neutron emissions would cause the weapon to “fizzle.” [10]  For both the gun-type and the implosion weapons, a production schedule had been established and both would be available during 1945. The discussion of weapons effects centered on blast damage models; radiation and other effects were overlooked.

Document 5 : Memorandum from Vannevar Bush and James B. Conant, Office of Scientific Research and Development, to Secretary of War, September 30, 1944, Top Secret

Source: RG 77, Harrison-Bundy Files (H-B Files), folder 69 (copy from microfilm)

While Groves worried about the engineering and production problems, key War Department advisers were becoming troubled over the diplomatic and political implications of these enormously powerful weapons and the dangers of a global nuclear arms race. Concerned that President Roosevelt had an overly “cavalier” belief about the possibility of maintaining a post-war Anglo-American atomic monopoly, Bush and Conant recognized the limits of secrecy and wanted to disabuse senior officials of the notion that an atomic monopoly was possible. To suggest alternatives, they drafted this memorandum about the importance of the international exchange of information and international inspection to stem dangerous nuclear competition. [11]

Documents 6A-D: President Truman Learns the Secret:

6A : Memorandum for the Secretary of War from General L. R. Groves, “Atomic Fission Bombs,” April 23, 1945

6B : Memorandum discussed with the President, April 25, 1945

6C : [Untitled memorandum by General L.R. Groves, April 25, 1945

6D : Diary Entry, April 25, 1945

Sources: A: RG 77, Commanding General’s file no. 24, tab D; B: Henry Stimson Diary, Sterling Library, Yale University (microfilm at Library of Congress); C: Source: Record Group 200, Papers of General Leslie R. Groves, Correspondence 1941-1970, box 3, “F”; D: Henry Stimson Diary, Sterling Library, Yale University (microfilm at Library of Congress)

Soon after he was sworn in as president following President Roosevelt’s death, Harry Truman learned about the top secret Manhattan Project from a briefing from Secretary of War Stimson and Manhattan Project chief General Groves, who went through the “back door” to escape the watchful press. Stimson, who later wrote up the meeting in his diary, also prepared a discussion paper, which raised broader policy issues associated with the imminent possession of “the most terrible weapon ever known in human history.” In a background report prepared for the meeting, Groves provided a detailed overview of the bomb project from the raw materials to processing nuclear fuel to assembling the weapons to plans for using them, which were starting to crystallize.

With respect to the point about assembling the weapons, the first gun-type weapon “should be ready about 1 August 1945” while an implosion weapon would also be available that month. “The target is and was always expected to be Japan.” The question whether Truman “inherited assumptions” from the Roosevelt administration that that the bomb would be used has been a controversial one. Alperovitz and Sherwin have argued that Truman made “a real decision” to use the bomb on Japan by choosing “between various forms of diplomacy and warfare.” In contrast, Bernstein found that Truman “never questioned [the] assumption” that the bomb would and should be used. Norris also noted that “Truman’s `decision’ was a decision not to override previous plans to use the bomb.” [12]

II. Targeting Japan

Document 7 : Commander F. L. Ashworth to Major General L.R. Groves, “The Base of Operations of the 509 th  Composite Group,” February 24, 1945, Top Secret

Source: RG 77, MED Records, Top Secret Documents, File no. 5g

The force of B-29 nuclear delivery vehicles that was being readied for first nuclear use—the Army Air Force’s 509 th  Composite Group—required an operational base in the Western Pacific. In late February 1945, months before atomic bombs were ready for use, the high command selected Tinian, an island in the Northern Marianas Islands, for that base.

Document 8 : Headquarters XXI Bomber Command, “Tactical Mission Report, Mission No. 40 Flown 10 March 1945,”n.d., Secret

Source: Library of Congress, Curtis LeMay Papers, Box B-36

As part of the war with Japan, the Army Air Force waged a campaign to destroy major industrial centers with incendiary bombs. This document is General Curtis LeMay’s report on the firebombing of Tokyo--“the most destructive air raid in history”--which burned down over 16 square miles of the city, killed up to 100,000 civilians (the official figure was 83,793), injured more than 40,000, and made over 1 million homeless.  [13]  According to the “Foreword,” the purpose of the raid, which dropped 1,665 tons of incendiary bombs, was to destroy industrial and strategic targets “ not  to bomb indiscriminately civilian populations.” Air Force planners, however, did not distinguish civilian workers from the industrial and strategic structures that they were trying to destroy.

The killing of workers in the urban-industrial sector was one of the explicit goals of the air campaign against Japanese cities. According to a Joint Chiefs of Staff report on Japanese target systems, expected results from the bombing campaign included: “The absorption of man-hours in repair and relief; the dislocation of labor by casualty; the interruption of public services necessary to production, and above all the destruction of factories engaged in war industry.” While Stimson would later raise questions about the bombing of Japanese cities, he was largely disengaged from the details (as he was with atomic targeting). [14]

Firebombing raids on other cities followed Tokyo, including Osaka, Kobe, Yokahama, and Nagoya, but with fewer casualties (many civilians had fled the cities). For some historians, the urban fire-bombing strategy facilitated atomic targeting by creating a “new moral context,” in which earlier proscriptions against intentional targeting of civilians had eroded. [15]

Document 9 : Notes on Initial Meeting of Target Committee, May 2, 1945, Top Secret

Source: RG 77, MED Records, Top Secret Documents, File no. 5d (copy from microfilm)

On 27 April, military officers and nuclear scientists met to discuss bombing techniques, criteria for target selection, and overall mission requirements. The discussion of “available targets” included Hiroshima, the “largest untouched target not on the 21 st  Bomber Command priority list.” But other targets were under consideration, including Yawata (northern Kyushu), Yokohama, and Tokyo (even though it was practically “rubble.”) The problem was that the Air Force had a policy of “laying waste” to Japan’s cities which created tension with the objective of reserving some urban targets for nuclear destruction.  [16]

Document 10 : Memorandum from J. R. Oppenheimer to Brigadier General Farrell, May 11, 1945

Source: RG 77, MED Records, Top Secret Documents, File no. 5g (copy from microfilm)

As director of Los Alamos Laboratory, Oppenheimer’s priority was producing a deliverable bomb, but not so much the effects of the weapon on the people at the target. In keeping with General Groves’ emphasis on compartmentalization, the Manhattan Project experts on the effects of radiation on human biology were at the MetLab and other offices and had no interaction with the production and targeting units. In this short memorandum to Groves’ deputy, General Farrell, Oppenheimer explained the need for precautions because of the radiological dangers of a nuclear detonation. The initial radiation from the detonation would be fatal within a radius of about 6/10ths of a mile and “injurious” within a radius of a mile. The point was to keep the bombing mission crew safe; concern about radiation effects had no impact on targeting decisions.  [17]

Document 11 : Memorandum from Major J. A. Derry and Dr. N.F. Ramsey to General L.R. Groves, “Summary of Target Committee Meetings on 10 and 11 May 1945,” May 12, 1945, Top Secret

Scientists and officers held further discussion of bombing mission requirements, including height of detonation, weather, radiation effects (Oppenheimer’s memo), plans for possible mission abort, and the various aspects of target selection, including priority cities (“a large urban area of more than three miles diameter”) and psychological dimension. As for target cities, the committee agreed that the following should be exempt from Army Air Force bombing so they would be available for nuclear targeting: Kyoto, Hiroshima, Yokohama, and Kokura Arsenal. Japan’s cultural capital, Kyoto, would not stay on the list. Pressure from Secretary of War Stimson had already taken Kyoto off the list of targets for incendiary bombings and he would successfully object to the atomic bombing of that city.  [18]

Document 12 : Stimson Diary Entries, May 14 and 15, 1945

Source: Henry Stimson Diary, Sterling Library, Yale University (microfilm at Library of Congress)

On May 14 and 15, Stimson had several conversations involving S-1 (the atomic bomb); during a talk with Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy, he estimated that possession of the bomb gave Washington a tremendous advantage—“held all the cards,” a “royal straight flush”-- in dealing with Moscow on post-war problems: “They can’t get along without our help and industries and we have coming into action a weapon which will be unique.” The next day a discussion of divergences with Moscow over the Far East made Stimson wonder whether the atomic bomb would be ready when Truman met with Stalin in July. If it was, he believed that the bomb would be the “master card” in U.S. diplomacy. This and other entries from the Stimson diary (as well as the entry from the Davies diary that follows) are important to arguments developed by Gar Alperovitz and Barton J. Bernstein, among others, although with significantly different emphases, that in light of controversies with the Soviet Union over Eastern Europe and other areas, top officials in the Truman administration believed that possessing the atomic bomb would provide them with significant leverage for inducing Moscow’s acquiescence in U.S. objectives. [19]

Document 13 : Davies Diary entry for May 21, 1945

Source: Joseph E. Davies Papers, Library of Congress, box 17, 21 May 1945

While officials at the Pentagon continued to look closely at the problem of atomic targets, President Truman, like Stimson, was thinking about the diplomatic implications of the bomb. During a conversation with Joseph E. Davies, a prominent Washington lawyer and former ambassador to the Soviet Union, Truman said that he wanted to delay talks with Stalin and Churchill until July when the first atomic device had been tested. Alperovitz treated this entry as evidence in support of the atomic diplomacy argument, but other historians, ranging from Robert Maddox to Gabriel Kolko, have denied that the timing of the Potsdam conference had anything to do with the goal of using the bomb to intimidate the Soviets. [20]

Document 14 : Letter, O. C. Brewster to President Truman, 24 May 1945, with note from Stimson to Marshall, 30 May 1945, attached, secret

Source: Harrison-Bundy Files relating to the Development of the Atomic Bomb, 1942-1946, microfilm publication M1108 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1980), File 77: "Interim Committee - International Control."

In what Stimson called the “letter of an honest man,” Oswald C. Brewster sent President Truman a profound analysis of the danger and unfeasibility of a U.S. atomic monopoly.  [21]  An engineer for the Kellex Corporation, which was involved in the gas diffusion project to enrich uranium, Brewster recognized that the objective was fissile material for a weapon. That goal, he feared, raised terrifying prospects with implications for the “inevitable destruction of our present day civilization.” Once the U.S. had used the bomb in combat other great powers would not tolerate a monopoly by any nation and the sole possessor would be “be the most hated and feared nation on earth.” Even the U.S.’s closest allies would want the bomb because “how could they know where our friendship might be five, ten, or twenty years hence.” Nuclear proliferation and arms races would be certain unless the U.S. worked toward international supervision and inspection of nuclear plants.

Brewster suggested that Japan could be used as a “target” for a “demonstration” of the bomb, which he did not further define. His implicit preference, however, was for non-use; he wrote that it would be better to take U.S. casualties in “conquering Japan” than “to bring upon the world the tragedy of unrestrained competitive production of this material.”

Document 15 : Minutes of Third Target Committee Meeting – Washington, May 28, 1945, Top Secret

More updates on training missions, target selection, and conditions required for successful detonation over the target. The target would be a city--either Hiroshima, Kyoto (still on the list), or Niigata--but specific “aiming points” would not be specified at that time nor would industrial “pin point” targets because they were likely to be on the “fringes” a city. The bomb would be dropped in the city’s center. “Pumpkins” referred to bright orange, pumpkin-shaped high explosive bombs—shaped like the “Fat Man” implosion weapon--used for bombing run test missions.

Document 16 : General Lauris Norstad to Commanding General, XXI Bomber Command, “509 th  Composite Group; Special Functions,” May 29, 1945, Top Secret

The 509 th  Composite Group’s cover story for its secret mission was the preparation of “Pumpkins” for use in battle. In this memorandum, Norstad reviewed the complex requirements for preparing B-29s and their crew for successful nuclear strikes.

Document 17 : Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy, “Memorandum of Conversation with General Marshal May 29, 1945 – 11:45 p.m.,” Top Secret

Source: Record Group 107, Office of the Secretary of War, Formerly Top Secret Correspondence of Secretary of War Stimson (“Safe File”), July 1940-September 1945, box 12, S-1

Tacitly dissenting from the Targeting Committee’s recommendations, Army Chief of Staff George Marshall argued for initial nuclear use against a clear-cut military target such as a “large naval installation.” If that did not work, manufacturing areas could be targeted, but only after warning their inhabitants. Marshall noted the “opprobrium which might follow from an ill considered employment of such force.” This document has played a role in arguments developed by Barton J. Bernstein that figures such as Marshall and Stimson were “caught between an older morality that opposed the intentional killing of non-combatants and a newer one that stressed virtually total war.” [22]  

Document 18 : “Notes of the Interim Committee Meeting Thursday, 31 May 1945, 10:00 A.M. to 1:15 P.M. – 2:15 P.M. to 4:15 P.M., ” n.d., Top Secret

Source: RG 77, MED Records, H-B files, folder no. 100 (copy from microfilm)

With Secretary of War Stimson presiding, members of the committee heard reports on a variety of Manhattan Project issues, including the stages of development of the atomic project, problems of secrecy, the possibility of informing the Soviet Union, cooperation with “like-minded” powers, the military impact of the bomb on Japan, and the problem of “undesirable scientists.” Interested in producing the “greatest psychological effect,” the Committee members agreed that the “most desirable target would be a vital war plant employing a large number of workers and closely surrounded by workers’ houses.” Exactly how the mass deaths of civilians would persuade Japanese rulers to surrender was not discussed. Bernstein has argued that this target choice represented an uneasy endorsement of “terror bombing”--the target was not exclusively military or civilian; nevertheless, worker’s housing would include non-combatant men, women, and children. [23]  It is possible that Truman was informed of such discussions and their conclusions, although he clung to a belief that the prospective targets were strictly military.

Document 19 : General George A. Lincoln to General Hull, June 4, 1945, enclosing draft, Top Secret

Source: Record Group 165, Records of the War Department General and Special Staffs, American-British-Canadian Top Secret Correspondence, Box 504, “ABC 387 Japan (15 Feb. 45)

George A. Lincoln, chief of the Strategy and Policy Group at U.S. Army’s Operations Department, commented on a memorandum by former President Herbert Hoover that Stimson had passed on for analysis. Hoover proposed a compromise solution with Japan that would allow Tokyo to retain part of its empire in East Asia (including Korea and Japan) as a way to head off Soviet influence in the region. While Lincoln believed that the proposed peace teams were militarily acceptable he doubted that they were workable or that they could check Soviet “expansion” which he saw as an inescapable result of World War II. As to how the war with Japan would end, he saw it as “unpredictable,” but speculated that “it will take Russian entry into the war, combined with a landing, or imminent threat of a landing, on Japan proper by us, to convince them of the hopelessness of their situation.” Lincoln derided Hoover’s casualty estimate of 500,000. J. Samuel Walker has cited this document to make the point that “contrary to revisionist assertions, American policymakers in the summer of 1945 were far from certain that the Soviet invasion of Manchuria would be enough in itself to force a Japanese surrender.”  [24]

Document 20 : Memorandum from R. Gordon Arneson, Interim Committee Secretary, to Mr. Harrison, June 6, 1945, Top Secret

In a memorandum to George Harrison, Stimson’s special assistant on Manhattan Project matters, Arneson noted actions taken at the recent Interim Committee meetings, including target criterion and an attack “without prior warning.”

Document 21 : Memorandum of Conference with the President, June 6, 1945, Top Secret

Source: Henry Stimson Papers, Sterling Library, Yale University (microfilm at Library of Congress)

Stimson and Truman began this meeting by discussing how they should handle a conflict with French President DeGaulle over the movement by French forces into Italian territory. (Truman finally cut off military aid to France to compel the French to pull back).  [25]  As evident from the discussion, Stimson strongly disliked de Gaulle whom he regarded as “psychopathic.” The conversation soon turned to the atomic bomb, with some discussion about plans to inform the Soviets but only after a successful test. Both agreed that the possibility of a nuclear “partnership” with Moscow would depend on “quid pro quos”: “the settlement of the Polish, Rumanian, Yugoslavian, and Manchurian problems.”

At the end, Stimson shared his doubts about targeting cities and killing civilians through area bombing because of its impact on the U.S.’s reputation as well as on the problem of finding targets for the atomic bomb. Barton Bernstein has also pointed to this as additional evidence of the influence on Stimson of an “an older morality.” While concerned about the U.S.’s reputation, Stimson did not want the Air Force to bomb Japanese cities so thoroughly that the “new weapon would not have a fair background to show its strength,” a comment that made Truman laugh.  The discussion of “area bombing” may have reminded him that Japanese civilians remained at risk from U.S. bombing operations.

III. Debates on Alternatives to First Use and Unconditional Surrender

Document 22 : Memorandum from Arthur B. Compton to the Secretary of War, enclosing “Memorandum on `Political and Social Problems,’ from Members of the `Metallurgical Laboratory’ of the University of Chicago,” June 12, 1945, Secret

Source: RG 77, MED Records, H-B files, folder no. 76 (copy from microfilm)

Physicists Leo Szilard and James Franck, a Nobel Prize winner, were on the staff of the “Metallurgical Laboratory” at the University of Chicago, a cover for the Manhattan Project program to produce fuel for the bomb. The outspoken Szilard was not involved in operational work on the bomb and General Groves kept him under surveillance but Met Lab director Arthur Compton found Szilard useful to have around. Concerned with the long-run implications of the bomb, Franck chaired a committee, in which Szilard and Eugene Rabinowitch were major contributors, that produced a report rejecting a surprise attack on Japan and recommended instead a demonstration of the bomb on the “desert or a barren island.” Arguing that a nuclear arms race “will be on in earnest not later than the morning after our first demonstration of the existence of nuclear weapons,” the committee saw international control as the alternative. That possibility would be difficult if the United States made first military use of the weapon. Compton raised doubts about the recommendations but urged Stimson to study the report. Martin Sherwin has argued that the Franck committee shared an important assumption with Truman et al.--that an “atomic attack against Japan would `shock’ the Russians”--but drew entirely different conclusions about the import of such a shock.  [26]

Document 23 : Memorandum from Acting Secretary of State Joseph Grew to the President, “Analysis of Memorandum Presented by Mr. Hoover,” June 13, 1945

Source: Record Group 107, Office of the Secretary of War, Formerly Top Secret Correspondence of Secretary of War Stimson (“Safe File”), July 1940-September 1945, box 8, Japan (After December 7/41)

A former ambassador to Japan, Joseph Grew’s extensive knowledge of Japanese politics and culture informed his stance toward the concept of unconditional surrender. He believed it essential that the United States declare its intention to preserve the institution of the emperor. As he argued in this memorandum to President Truman, “failure on our part to clarify our intentions” on the status of the emperor “will insure prolongation of the war and cost a large number of human lives.” Documents like this have played a role in arguments developed by Alperovitz that Truman and his advisers had alternatives to using the bomb such as modifying unconditional surrender and that anti-Soviet considerations weighed most heavily in their thinking. By contrast, Herbert P. Bix has suggested that the Japanese leadership would “probably not” have surrendered if the Truman administration had spelled out the status of the emperor. [27]

Document 24 : Memorandum from Chief of Staff Marshall to the Secretary of War, 15 June 1945, enclosing “Memorandum of Comments on `Ending the Japanese War,’” prepared by George A. Lincoln, June 14, 1945, Top Secret

Commenting on another memorandum by Herbert Hoover, George A. Lincoln discussed war aims, face-saving proposals for Japan, and the nature of the proposed declaration to the Japanese government, including the problem of defining “unconditional surrender.” Lincoln argued against modifying the concept of unconditional surrender: if it is “phrased so as to invite negotiation” he saw risks of prolonging the war or a “compromise peace.” J. Samuel Walker has observed that those risks help explain why senior officials were unwilling to modify the demand for unconditional surrender. [28]

Document 25 : Memorandum by J. R. Oppenheimer, “Recommendations on the Immediate Use of Nuclear Weapons,” June 16, 1945, Top Secret

In a report to Stimson, Oppenheimer and colleagues on the scientific advisory panel--Arthur Compton, Ernest O. Lawrence, and Enrico Fermi—tacitly disagreed with the report of the “Met Lab” scientists. The panel argued for early military use but not before informing key allies about the atomic project to open a dialogue on “how we can cooperate in making this development contribute to improved international relations.”

Document 26 : “Minutes of Meeting Held at the White House on Monday, 18 June 1945 at 1530,” Top Secret

Source: Record Group 218, Records of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Central Decimal Files, 1942-1945, box 198 334 JCS (2-2-45) Mtg 186 th -194 th

With the devastating battle for Okinawa winding up, Truman and the Joint Chiefs stepped back and considered what it would take to secure Japan’s surrender. The discussion depicted a Japan that, by 1 November, would be close to defeat, with great destruction and economic losses produced by aerial bombing and naval blockade, but not ready to capitulate. Marshall believed that the latter required Soviet entry and an invasion of Kyushu, even suggesting that Soviet entry might be the “decisive action levering them into capitulation.” Truman and the Chiefs reviewed plans to land troops on Kyushu on 1 November, which Marshall believed was essential because air power was not decisive. He believed that casualties would not be more than those produced by the battle for Luzon, some 31,000. This account hints at discussion of the atomic bomb (“certain other matters”), but no documents disclose that part of the meeting.

The record of this meeting has figured in the complex debate over the estimates of casualties stemming from a possible invasion of Japan. While post-war justifications for the bomb suggested that an invasion of Japan could have produced very high levels of casualties (dead, wounded, or missing), from hundreds of thousands to a million, historians have vigorously debated the extent to which the estimates were inflated.  [29]

According to accounts based on post-war recollections and interviews, during the meeting McCloy raised the possibility of winding up the war by guaranteeing the preservation of the emperor albeit as a constitutional monarch. If that failed to persuade Tokyo, he proposed that the United States disclose the secret of the atomic bomb to secure Japan’s unconditional surrender. While McCloy later recalled that Truman expressed interest, he said that Secretary of State Byrnes squashed the proposal because of his opposition to any “deals” with Japan. Yet, according to Forrest Pogue’s account, when Truman asked McCloy if he had any comments, the latter opened up a discussion of nuclear weapons use by asking “Why not use the bomb?” [30]

Document 27 : Memorandum from R. Gordon Arneson, Interim Committee Secretary, to Mr. Harrison, June 25, 1945, Top Secret

For Harrison’s convenience, Arneson summarized key decisions made at the 21 June meeting of the Interim Committee, including a recommendation that President Truman use the forthcoming conference of allied leaders to inform Stalin about the atomic project. The Committee also reaffirmed earlier recommendations about the use of the bomb at the “earliest opportunity” against “dual targets.” In addition, Arneson included the Committee’s recommendation for revoking part two of the 1944 Quebec agreement which stipulated that the neither the United States nor Great Britain would use the bomb “against third parties without each other’s consent.” Thus, an impulse for unilateral control of nuclear use decisions predated the first use of the bomb.

Document 28 : Memorandum from George L. Harrison to Secretary of War, June 26, 1945, Top Secret

Source: RG 77, MED, H-B files, folder no. 77 (copy from microfilm)

Reminding Stimson about the objections of some Manhattan project scientists to military use of the bomb, Harrison summarized the basic arguments of the Franck report. One recommendation shared by many of the scientists, whether they supported the report or not, was that the United States inform Stalin of the bomb before it was used. This proposal had been the subject of positive discussion by the Interim Committee on the grounds that Soviet confidence was necessary to make possible post-war cooperation on atomic energy.

Document 29 : Memorandum from George L. Harrison to Secretary of War, June 28, 1945, Top Secret, enclosing Ralph Bard’s “Memorandum on the Use of S-1 Bomb,” June 27, 1945

Under Secretary of the Navy Ralph Bard joined those scientists who sought to avoid military use of the bomb; he proposed a “preliminary warning” so that the United States would retain its position as a “great humanitarian nation.” Alperovitz cites evidence that Bard discussed his proposal with Truman who told him that he had already thoroughly examined the problem of advanced warning. This document has also figured in the argument framed by Barton Bernstein that Truman and his advisers took it for granted that the bomb was a legitimate weapon and that there was no reason to explore alternatives to military use. Bernstein, however, notes that Bard later denied that he had a meeting with Truman and that White House appointment logs support that claim. [31]

Document 30 : Memorandum for Mr. McCloy, “Comments re: Proposed Program for Japan,” June 28, 1945, Draft, Top Secret

Source: RG 107, Office of Assistant Secretary of War Formerly Classified Correspondence of John J. McCloy, 1941-1945, box 38, ASW 387 Japan

Despite the interest of some senior officials such as Joseph Grew, Henry Stimson, and John J. McCloy in modifying the concept of unconditional surrender so that the Japanese could be sure that the emperor would be preserved, it remained a highly contentious subject. For example, one of McCloy’s aides, Colonel Fahey, argued against modification of unconditional surrender (see “Appendix ‘C`”).

Document 31 : Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy to Colonel Stimson, June 29, 1945, Top Secret

McCloy was part of a drafting committee at work on the text of a proclamation to Japan to be signed by heads of state at the forthcoming Potsdam conference. As McCloy observed the most contentious issue was whether the proclamation should include language about the preservation of the emperor: “This may cause repercussions at home but without it those who seem to know the most about Japan feel there would be very little likelihood of acceptance.”

Document 32 : Memorandum, “Timing of Proposed Demand for Japanese Surrender,” June 29, 1945, Top Secret

Probably the work of General George A. Lincoln at Army Operations, this document was prepared a few weeks before the Potsdam conference when senior officials were starting to finalize the text of the declaration that Truman, Churchill, and Chiang would issue there. The author recommended issuing the declaration “just before the bombardment program [against Japan] reaches its peak.” Next to that suggestion, Stimson or someone in his immediate office, wrote “S1”, implying that the atomic bombing of Japanese cities was highly relevant to the timing issue. Also relevant to Japanese thinking about surrender, the author speculated, was the Soviet attack on their forces after a declaration of war.

Document 33 : Stimson memorandum to The President, “Proposed Program for Japan,” 2 July 1945, Top Secret

Source: Naval Aide to the President Files, box 4, Berlin Conference File, Volume XI - Miscellaneous papers: Japan, Harry S. Truman Presidential Library

On 2 July Stimson presented to President Truman a proposal that he had worked up with colleagues in the War Department, including McCloy, Marshall, and Grew. The proposal has been characterized as “the most comprehensive attempt by any American policymaker to leverage diplomacy” in order to shorten the Pacific War. Stimson had in mind a “carefully timed warning” delivered before the invasion of Japan. Some of the key elements of Stimson’s argument were his assumption that “Japan is susceptible to reason” and that Japanese might be even more inclined to surrender if “we do not exclude a constitutional monarchy under her present dynasty.” The possibility of a Soviet attack would be part of the “threat.” As part of the threat message, Stimson alluded to the “inevitability and completeness of the destruction” which Japan could suffer, but he did not make it clear whether unconditional surrender terms should be clarified before using the atomic bomb. Truman read Stimson’s proposal, which he said was “powerful,” but made no commitments to the details, e.g., the position of the emperor.  [32]

Document 34 : Minutes, Secretary’s Staff Committee, Saturday Morning, July 7, 1945, 133d Meeting, Top Secret

Source: Record Group 353, Records of Interdepartmental and Intradepartmental Committees, Secretary’s Staff Meetings Minutes, 1944-1947 (copy from microfilm)

The possibility of modifying the concept of unconditional surrender so that it guaranteed the continuation of the emperor remained hotly contested within the U.S. government. Here senior State Department officials, Under Secretary Joseph Grew on one side, and Assistant Secretary Dean Acheson and Archibald MacLeish on the other, engaged in hot debate.

Document 35 : Combined Chiefs of Staff, “Estimate of the Enemy Situation (as of 6 July 1945, C.C.S 643/3, July 8, 1945, Secret (Appendices Not Included)

Source: RG 218, Central Decimal Files, 1943-1945, CCS 381 (6-4-45), Sec. 2 Pt. 5

This review of Japanese capabilities and intentions portrays an economy and society under “tremendous strain”; nevertheless, “the ground component of the Japanese armed forces remains Japan’s greatest military asset.” Alperovitz sees statements in this estimate about the impact of Soviet entry into the war and the possibility of a conditional surrender involving survival of the emperor as an institution as more evidence that the policymakers saw alternatives to nuclear weapons use. By contrast, Richard Frank takes note of the estimate’s depiction of the Japanese army’s terms for peace: “for surrender to be acceptable to the Japanese army it would be necessary for the military leaders to believe that it would not entail discrediting the warrior tradition and that it would permit the ultimate resurgence of a military in Japan.” That, Frank argues, would have been “unacceptable to any Allied policy maker.” [33]

Document 36 : Cable to Secretary of State from Acting Secretary Joseph Grew, July 16, 1945, Top Secret

Source: Record Group 59, Decimal Files 1945-1949, 740.0011 PW (PE)/7-1645

On the eve of the Potsdam Conference, a State Department draft of the proclamation to Japan contained language which modified unconditional surrender by promising to retain the emperor. When former Secretary of State Cordell Hull learned about it he outlined his objections to Byrnes, arguing that it might be better to wait “the climax of allied bombing and Russia’s entry into the war.” Byrnes was already inclined to reject that part of the draft, but Hull’s argument may have reinforced his decision.

Document 37 : Letter from Stimson to Byrnes, enclosing memorandum to the President, “The Conduct of the War with Japan,” 16 July 1945, Top Secret

Source: Henry L. Stimson Papers (MS 465), Sterling Library, Yale University (reel 113) (microfilm at Library of Congress)

Still interested in trying to find ways to “warn Japan into surrender,” this represents an attempt by Stimson before the Potsdam conference, to persuade Truman and Byrnes to agree to issue warnings to Japan prior to the use of the bomb. The warning would draw on the draft State-War proclamation to Japan; presumably, the one criticized by Hull (above) which included language about the emperor .  Presumably the clarified warning would be issued prior to the use of the bomb; if the Japanese persisted in fighting then “the full force of our new weapons should be brought to bear” and a “heavier” warning would be issued backed by the “actual entrance of the Russians in the war.” Possibly, as Malloy has argued, Stimson was motivated by concerns about using the bomb against civilians and cities, but his latest proposal would meet resistance at Potsdam from Byrnes and other. [34]

Document 38 : R. E. Lapp, Leo Szilard et al., “A Petition to the President of the United States,” July 17, 1945

On the eve of the Potsdam conference, Leo Szilard circulated a petition as part of a final effort to discourage military use of the bomb. Signed by about 68 Manhattan Project scientists, mainly physicists and biologists (copies with the remaining signatures are in the archival file), the petition did not explicitly reject military use, but raised questions about an arms race that military use could instigate and requested Truman to publicize detailed terms for Japanese surrender. Truman, already on his way to Europe, never saw the petition. [35]

IV. The Japanese Search for Soviet Mediation

Documents 39A-B: Magic

39A : William F. Friedman, Consultant (Armed Forces Security Agency), “A Short History of U.S. COMINT Activities,” 19 February 1952, Top Secret

39B :“Magic” – Diplomatic Summary, War Department, Office of Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, No. 1204 – July 12, 1945, Top Secret Ultra

Sources: A: National Security Agency Mandatory declassification review release; B: Record Group 457, Records of the National Security Agency/Central Security Service, “Magic” Diplomatic Summaries 1942-1945, box 18

Beginning in September 1940, U.S. military intelligence began to decrypt routinely, under the “Purple” code-name, the intercepted cable traffic of the Japanese Foreign Ministry. Collectively the decoded messages were known as “Magic.” How this came about is explained in an internal history of pre-war and World War II Army and Navy code-breaking activities prepared by  William F. Friedman , a central figure in the development of U.S. government cryptology during the 20 th  century. The National Security Agency kept the ‘Magic” diplomatic and military summaries classified for many years and did not release the entire series for 1942 through August 1945 until the early 1990s. [36]

The 12 July 1945 “Magic” summary includes a report on a cable from Japanese Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo to Ambassador Naotake Sato in Moscow concerning the Emperor’s decision to seek Soviet help in ending the war. Not knowing that the Soviets had already made a commitment to their Allies to declare war on Japan, Tokyo fruitlessly pursued this option for several weeks. The “Magic” intercepts from mid-July have figured in Gar Alperovitz’s argument that Truman and his advisers recognized that the Emperor was ready to capitulate if the Allies showed more flexibility on the demand for unconditional surrender. This point is central to Alperovitz’s thesis that top U.S. officials recognized a “two-step logic”: relaxing unconditional surrender and a Soviet declaration of war would have been enough to induce Japan’s surrender without the use of the bomb. [37]

Document 40 : John Weckerling, Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, July 12, 1945, to Deputy Chief of Staff, “Japanese Peace Offer,” 13 July 1945, Top Secret Ultra

Source: RG 165, Army Operations OPD Executive File #17, Item 13 (copy courtesy of J. Samuel Walker)

The day after the Togo message was reported, Army intelligence chief Weckerling proposed several possible explanations of the Japanese diplomatic initiative. Robert J. Maddox has cited this document to support his argument that top U.S. officials recognized that Japan was not close to surrender because Japan was trying to “stave off defeat.” In a close analysis of this document, Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, who is also skeptical of claims that the Japanese had decided to surrender, argues that each of the three possibilities proposed by Weckerling “contained an element of truth, but none was entirely correct”. For example, the “governing clique” that supported the peace moves was not trying to “stave off defeat” but was seeking Soviet help to end the war. [38]

Document 41 : “Magic” – Diplomatic Summary, War Department, Office of Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, No. 1205 – July 13, 1945, Top Secret Ultra

Source: Record Group 457, Records of the National Security Agency/Central Security Service, “Magic” Diplomatic Summaries 1942-1945, box 18

The day after he told Sato about the current thinking on Soviet mediation, Togo requested the Ambassador to see Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and tell him of the Emperor’s “private intention to send Prince Konoye as a Special Envoy” to Moscow. Before he received Togo’s message, Sato had already met with Molotov on another matter.

Document 42 : “Magic” – Diplomatic Summary, War Department, Office of Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, No. 1210 – July 17, 1945, Top Secret Ultra

Source: Record Group 457, Records of the National Security Agency/Central Security Service, “Magic” Diplomatic Summaries 1942-1945, box 18.

Another intercept of a cable from Togo to Sato shows that the Foreign Minister rejected unconditional surrender and that the Emperor was not “asking the Russian’s mediation in anything like unconditional surrender.” Incidentally, this “`Magic’ Diplomatic Summary” indicates the broad scope and capabilities of the program; for example, it includes translations of intercepted French messages (see pages 8-9).

Document 43 : Admiral Tagaki Diary Entry for July 20, 1945

Source: Takashi Itoh, ed.,  Sokichi Takagi: Nikki to Joho  [Sokichi Takagi: Diary and Documents] (Tokyo, Japan: Misuzu-Shobo, 2000), 916-917 [Translation by Hikaru Tajima]

In 1944 Navy minister Mitsumasa Yonai ordered rear admiral Sokichi Takagi to go on sick leave so that he could undertake a secret mission to find a way to end the war. Tagaki was soon at the center of a cabal of Japanese defense officials, civil servants, and academics, which concluded that, in the end, the emperor would have to “impose his decision on the military and the government.” Takagi kept a detailed account of his activities, part of which was in diary form, the other part of which he kept on index cards. The material reproduced here gives a sense of the state of play of Foreign Minister Togo’s attempt to secure Soviet mediation. Hasegawa cited it and other documents to make a larger point about the inability of the Japanese government to agree on “concrete” proposals to negotiate an end to the war. [39]

The last item discusses Japanese contacts with representatives of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in Switzerland. The reference to “our contact” may refer to Bank of International Settlements economist Pers Jacobbson who was in touch with Japanese representatives to the Bank as well as Gero von Gävernitz, then on the staff, but with non-official cover, of OSS station chief Allen Dulles. The contacts never went far and Dulles never received encouragement to pursue them. [40]

V. The Trinity Test

Document 44 : Letter from Commissar of State Security First Rank, V. Merkulov, to People’s Commissar for Internal Affairs L. P. Beria, 10 July 1945, Number 4305/m, Top Secret (translation by Anna Melyaskova)

Source:  L.D. Riabev, ed.,  Atomnyi Proekt SSSR  (Moscow: izd MFTI, 2002), Volume 1, Part 2, 335-336

This 10 July 1945 letter from NKVD director V. N. Merkulov to Beria is an example of Soviet efforts to collect inside information on the Manhattan Project, although not all the detail was accurate. Merkulov reported that the United States had scheduled the test of a nuclear device for that same day, although the actual test took place 6 days later. According to Merkulov, two fissile materials were being produced: element-49 (plutonium), and U-235; the test device was fueled by plutonium. The Soviet source reported that the weight of the device was 3 tons (which was in the ball park) and forecast an explosive yield of 5 kilotons. That figure was based on underestimates by Manhattan Project scientists: the actual yield of the test device was 20 kilotons.

As indicated by the L.D. Riabev’s notes, it is possible that Beria’s copy of this letter ended up in Stalin’s papers. That the original copy is missing from Beria’s papers suggests that he may have passed it on to Stalin before the latter left for the Potsdam conference. [41]

Document 45 : Telegram War [Department] 33556, from Harrison to Secretary of War, July 17, 1945, Top Secret

Source: RG 77, MED Records, Top Secret Documents, File 5e (copy from microfilm)

An elated message from Harrison to Stimson reported the success of the  Trinity Test  of a plutonium implosion weapon. The light from the explosion could been seen “from here [Washington, D.C.] to “high hold” [Stimson’s estate on Long Island—250 miles away]” and it was so loud that Harrison could have heard the “screams” from Washington, D.C. to “my farm” [in Upperville, VA, 50 miles away] [42]

Document 46 : Memorandum from General L. R. Groves to Secretary of War, “The Test,” July 18, 1945, Top Secret, Excised Copy

Source: RG 77, MED Records, Top Secret Documents, File no. 4 (copy from microfilm)

General Groves prepared for Stimson, then at Potsdam, a detailed account of the Trinity test. [43]

VI. The Potsdam Conference

Document 47 : Truman’s Potsdam Diary

Source: Barton J. Bernstein, “Truman at Potsdam: His Secret Diary,”  Foreign Service Journal , July/August 1980, excerpts, used with author’s permission. [44]

Some years after Truman’s death, a hand-written diary that he kept during the Potsdam conference surfaced in his personal papers. For convenience, Barton Bernstein’s rendition is provided here but linked here are the scanned versions of Truman’s handwriting on the National Archives’ website (for 15-30 July).

The diary entries cover July 16, 17, 18, 20, 25, 26, and 30 and include Truman’s thinking about a number of issues and developments, including his reactions to Churchill and Stalin, the atomic bomb and how it should be targeted, the possible impact of the bomb and a Soviet declaration of war on Japan, and his decision to tell Stalin about the bomb. Receptive to pressure from Stimson, Truman recorded his decision to take Japan’s “old capital” (Kyoto) off the atomic bomb target list. Barton Bernstein and Richard Frank, among others, have argued that Truman’s assertion that the atomic targets were “military objectives” suggested that either he did not understand the power of the new weapons or had simply deceived himself about the nature of the targets. Another statement—“Fini Japs when that [Soviet entry] comes about”—has also been the subject of controversy over whether it meant that Truman thought it possible that the war could end without an invasion of Japan. [45]

Document 48 : Stimson Diary entries for July 16 through 25, 1945

Stimson did not always have Truman’s ear, but historians have frequently cited his diary when he was at the Potsdam conference. There Stimson kept track of S-1 developments, including news of the successful first test (see entry for July 16) and the ongoing deployments for nuclear use against Japan. When Truman received a detailed account of the test, Stimson reported that the “President was tremendously pepped up by it” and that “it gave him an entirely new feeling of confidence” (see entry for July 21). Whether this meant that Truman was getting ready for a confrontation with Stalin over Eastern Europe and other matters has also been the subject of debate.

An important question that Stimson discussed with Marshall, at Truman’s request, was whether Soviet entry into the war remained necessary to secure Tokyo’s surrender. Marshall was not sure whether that was so although Stimson privately believed that the atomic bomb would provide enough to force surrender (see entry for July 23). This entry has been cited by all sides of the controversy over whether Truman was trying to keep the Soviets out of the war. [46]  During the meeting on August 24, discussed above, Stimson gave his reasons for taking Kyoto off the atomic target list: destroying that city would have caused such “bitterness” that it could have become impossible “to reconcile the Japanese to us in that area rather than to the Russians.” Stimson vainly tried to preserve language in the Potsdam Declaration designed to assure the Japanese about “the continuance of their dynasty” but received Truman’s assurance that such a consideration could be conveyed later through diplomatic channels (see entry for July 24). Hasegawa argues that Truman realized that the Japanese would refuse a demand for unconditional surrender without a proviso on a constitutional monarchy and that “he needed Japan’s refusal to justify the use of the atomic bomb.” [47]

Document 49 : Walter Brown Diaries, July 10-August 3, 1945

Source: Clemson University Libraries, Special Collections, Clemson, SC; Mss 243, Walter J. Brown Papers, box 10, folder 12, Byrnes, James F.: Potsdam, Minutes, July-August 1945

Walter Brown, who served as special assistant to Secretary of State Byrnes, kept a diary which provided considerable detail on the Potsdam conference and the growing concerns about Soviet policy among top U.S. officials. This document is a typed-up version of the hand-written original (which Brown’s family has provided to Clemson University). That there may be a difference between the two sources becomes evident from some of the entries; for example, in the entry for July 18, 1945 Brown wrote: "Although I knew about the atomic bomb when I wrote these notes, I dared not place it in writing in my book.”

The degree to which the typed-up version reflects the original is worth investigating. In any event, historians have used information from the diary to support various interpretations. For example, Bernstein cites the entries for 20 and 24 July to argue that “American leaders did not view Soviet entry as a substitute for the bomb” but that the latter “would be so powerful, and the Soviet presence in Manchuria so militarily significant, that there was no need for actual Soviet intervention in the war.” For  Brown's diary entry of 3 August 9 1945 historians have developed conflicting interpretations (See discussion of document 57). [48]

Document 50 : “Magic” – Diplomatic Summary, War Department, Office of Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, No. 1214 – July 22, 1945, Top Secret Ultra

This “Magic” summary includes messages from both Togo and Sato. In a long and impassioned message, the latter argued why Japan must accept defeat: “it is meaningless to prove one’s devotion [to the Emperor] by wrecking the State.” Togo rejected Sato’s advice that Japan could accept unconditional surrender with one qualification: the “preservation of the Imperial House.” Probably unable or unwilling to take a soft position in an official cable, Togo declared that “the whole country … will pit itself against the enemy in accordance with the Imperial Will as long as the enemy demands unconditional surrender.”

Document 51 : Forrestal Diary Entry, July 24, 1945, “Japanese Peace Feelers”

Source: Naval Historical Center, Operational Archives, James Forrestal Diaries

Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal was a regular recipient of “Magic” intercept reports; this substantial entry reviews the dramatic Sato-Togo exchanges covered in the 22 July “Magic” summary (although Forrestal misdated Sato’s cable as “first of July” instead of the 21 st ). In contrast to Alperovitz’s argument that Forrestal tried to modify the terms of unconditional surrender to give the Japanese an out, Frank sees Forrestal’s account of the Sato-Togo exchange as additional evidence that senior U.S. officials understood that Tokyo was not on the “cusp of surrender.”  [49]

Document 52 : Davies Diary entry for July 29, 1945

S ource: Joseph E. Davies Papers, Library of Congress, Manuscripts Division, box 19, 29 July 1945

Having been asked by Truman to join the delegation to the Potsdam conference, former-Ambassador Davies sat at the table with the Big Three throughout the discussions. This diary entry has figured in the argument that Byrnes believed that the atomic bomb gave the United States a significant advantage in negotiations with the Soviet Union. Plainly Davies thought otherwise. [50]

VII. Debates among the Japanese – Late July/Early August 1945

Document 53 : “Magic” – Diplomatic Summary, War Department, Office of Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, No. 1221- July 29, 1945, Top Secret Ultra

In the  Potsdam Declaration  the governments of China, Great Britain, and the United States) demanded the “unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces. “The alternative is prompt and utter destruction.” The next day, in response to questions from journalists about the government’s reaction to the ultimatum, Prime Minister Suzuki apparently said that “We can only ignore [ mokusatsu ] it. We will do our utmost to complete the war to the bitter end.” That, Bix argues, represents a “missed opportunity” to end the war and spare the Japanese from continued U.S. aerial attacks. [51]  Togo’s private position was more nuanced than Suzuki’s; he told Sato that “we are adopting a policy of careful study.” That Stalin had not signed the declaration (Truman and Churchill did not ask him to) led to questions about the Soviet attitude. Togo asked Sato to try to meet with Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov as soon as possible to “sound out the Russian attitude” on the declaration as well as Japan’s end-the-war initiative. Sato cabled Togo earlier that he saw no point in approaching the Soviets on ending the war until Tokyo had “concrete proposals.” “Any aid from the Soviets has now become extremely doubtful.”

Document 54 : “Magic” – Diplomatic Summary, War Department, Office of Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, No. 1222 – July 30, 1945, Top Secret Ultra

This report included an intercept of a message from Sato reporting that it was impossible to see Molotov and that unless the Togo had a “concrete and definite plan for terminating the war” he saw no point in attempting to meet with him.

Document 55 : “Magic” – Diplomatic Summary, War Department, Office of Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, No. 1225 – August 2, 1945, Top Secret Ultra

An intercepted message from Togo to Sato showed that Tokyo remained interested in securing Moscow’s good office but that it “is difficult to decide on concrete peace conditions here at home all at once.” “[W]e are exerting ourselves to collect the views of all quarters on the matter of concrete terms.” Barton Bernstein, Richard Frank, and Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, among others, have argued that the “Magic” intercepts from the end of July and early August show that the Japanese were far from ready to surrender. According to Herbert Bix, for months Hirohito had believed that the “outlook for a negotiated peace could be improved if Japan fought and won one last decisive battle,” thus, he delayed surrender, continuing to “procrastinate until the bomb was dropped and the Soviets attacked.” [52]

Document 56 : “Magic” – Diplomatic Summary, War Department, Office of Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, No. 1226 - August 3, 1945, Top Secret Ultra

This summary included intercepts of Japanese diplomatic reporting on the Soviet buildup in the Far East as well as a naval intelligence report on Anglo-American discussions of U.S. plans for the invasion of Japan. Part II of the summary includes the rest of Togo’s 2 August cable which instructed Sato to do what he could to arrange an interview with Molotov.

Document 57 : Walter Brown Meeting Notes, August 3, 1945

Historians have used this item in the papers of Byrne’s aide, Walter Brown, to make a variety of points. Richard Frank sees this brief discussion of Japan’s interest in Soviet diplomatic assistance as crucial evidence that Admiral Leahy had been sharing “MAGIC” information with President Truman. He also points out that Truman and his colleagues had no idea what was behind Japanese peace moves, only that Suzuki had declared that he would “ignore” the Potsdam Declaration. Alperovitz, however, treats it as additional evidence that “strongly suggests” that Truman saw alternatives to using the bomb. [53]

Document 58 : “Magic” – Far East Summary, War Department, Office of Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, no. 502, 4 August 1945

Source: RG 457, Summaries of Intercepted Japanese Messages (“Magic” Far East Summary, March 20, 1942 – October 2, 1945), box 7, SRS 491-547

This “Far East Summary” included reports on the Japanese Army’s plans to disperse fuel stocks to reduce vulnerability to bombing attacks, the text of a directive by the commander of naval forces on “Operation Homeland,” the preparations and planning to repel a U.S. invasion of Honshu, and the specific identification of army divisions located in, or moving into, Kyushu. Both Richard Frank and Barton Bernstein have used intelligence reporting and analysis of the major buildup of Japanese forces on southern Kyushu to argue that U.S. military planners were so concerned about this development that by early August 1945 they were reconsidering their invasion plans. [54]

Document 59 : “Magic” – Diplomatic Summary, War Department, Office of Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, No. 1228 – August 5, 1945, Top Secret Ultra

This summary included several intercepted messages from Sato, who conveyed his despair and exasperation over what he saw as Tokyo’s inability to develop terms for ending the war: “[I]f the Government and the Military dilly-dally in bringing this resolution to fruition, then all Japan will be reduced to ashes.” Sato remained skeptical that the Soviets would have any interest in discussions with Tokyo: “it is absolutely unthinkable that Russia would ignore the Three Power Proclamation and then engage in conversations with our special envoy.”

VIII. The Execution Order

Documents 60a-d: Framing the Directive for Nuclear Strikes:

60A . Cable VICTORY 213 from Marshall to Handy, July 22, 1945, Top Secret

60B . Memorandum from Colonel John Stone to General Arnold, “Groves Project,” 24 July 1945, Top Secret

60C . Cable WAR 37683 from General Handy to General Marshal, enclosing directive to General Spatz, July 24, 1945, Top Secret

60D . Cable VICTORY 261 from Marshall to General Handy, July 25, 1945, 25 July 1945, Top Secret

60E . General Thomas T. Handy to General Carl Spaatz, July 26, 1945, Top Secret

Source: RG 77, MED Records, Top Secret Documents, Files no. 5b and 5e ((copies from microfilm)

Top Army Air Force commanders may not have wanted to take responsibility for the first use of nuclear weapons on urban targets and sought formal authorization from Chief of Staff Marshall who was then in Potsdam. [55]  On 22 July Marshall asked Deputy Chief of Staff Thomas Handy to prepare a draft; General Groves wrote one which went to Potsdam for Marshall’s approval. Colonel John Stone, an assistant to commanding General of the Army Air Forces Henry H. “Hap” Arnold, had just returned from Potsdam and updated his boss on the plans as they had developed. On 25 July Marshall informed Handy that Secretary of War Stimson had approved the text; that same day, Handy signed off on a directive which ordered the use of atomic weapons on Japan, with the first weapon assigned to one of four possible targets—Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata, or Nagasaki. “Additional bombs will be delivery on the [targets] as soon as made ready by the project staff.”

Document 61 : Memorandum from Major General L. R. Groves to Chief of Staff, July 30, 1945, Top Secret, Sanitized Copy

Source: RG 77, MED Records, Top Secret Documents, File no. 5

With more information on the Alamogordo test available, Groves provided Marshall with detail on the destructive power of atomic weapons. Barton J. Bernstein has observed that Groves’ recommendation that troops could move into the “immediate explosion area” within a half hour demonstrates the prevalent lack of top-level knowledge of the dangers of nuclear weapons effects. [56]  Groves also provided the schedule for the delivery of the weapons: the components of the gun-type bomb to be used on Hiroshima had arrived on Tinian, while the parts of the second weapon to be dropped were leaving San Francisco. By the end of November over ten weapons would be available, presumably in the event the war had continued.

Documents 62A-C: Weather delays

62A . CG 313 th  Bomb Wing, Tinian cable APCOM 5112 to War Department, August 3, 1945, Top Secret

62B . CG 313 th  Bomb Wing, Tinian cable APCOM 5130 to War Department, August 4, 1945, Top Secret

62C . CG 313 th  Bomb Wing, Tinian cable APCOM 5155 to War Department, August 4, 1945, Top Secret

Source: RG 77, Tinian Files, April-December 1945, box 21 (copies courtesy of Barton Bernstein)

The Hiroshima “operation” was originally slated to begin in early August depending on local conditions. As these cables indicate, reports of unfavorable weather delayed the plan. The second cable on 4 August shows that the schedule advanced to late in the evening of 5 August. The handwritten transcriptions are on the original archival copies.

IX. The First Nuclear Strikes and their Impact

Document 63 : Memorandum from General L. R. Groves to the Chief of Staff, August 6, 1945, Top Secret

Source: RG 77, MED Records, Top Secret Documents, File no. 5b (copy from microfilm)

Two days after the bombing of Hiroshima, Groves provided Chief of Staff Marshall with a report which included messages from Captain William S. Parsons and others about the impact of the detonation which, through prompt radiation effects, fire storms, and blast effects, immediately killed at least 70,000, with many dying later from radiation sickness and other causes. [57]

How influential the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and later Nagasaki compared to the impact of the Soviet declaration of war were to the Japanese decision to surrender has been the subject of controversy among historians. Sadao Asada emphasizes the shock of the atomic bombs, while Herbert Bix has suggested that Hiroshima and the Soviet declaration of war made Hirohito and his court believe that failure to end the war could lead to the destruction of the imperial house. Frank and Hasegawa divide over the impact of the Soviet declaration of war, with Frank declaring that the Soviet intervention was “significant but not decisive” and Hasegawa arguing that the two atomic bombs “were not sufficient to change the direction of Japanese diplomacy. The Soviet invasion was.” [58]

Document 64 : Walter Brown Diary Entry, 6 August 1945

Source:  Clemson University Libraries, Special Collections, Clemson, SC; Mss 243, Walter J. Brown Papers, box 68, folder 13, “Transcript/Draft B

Returning from the Potsdam Conference, sailing on the  U.S.S. Augusta , Truman learned about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and announced it twice, first to those in the wardroom (socializing/dining area for commissioned officers), and then to the sailors’ mess. Still unaware of radiation effects, Truman emphasized the explosive yield. Later, he met with Secretary of State Byrnes and they discussed the Manhattan Project’s secrecy and the huge expenditures. Truman, who had been chair of the Senate Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program, said that “only on the appeal of Secretary of War Stimson did he refrain and let the War Department continue with the experiment unmolested.”

Document 65 : Directive from the Supreme Command Headquarters to the Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Forces in the Far East on the Start of Combat Operations, No. 11122, Signed by [Communist Party General Secretary Joseph] Stalin and [Chief of General Staff A.I.] Antonov, 7 August 1945 (translation by Anna Melyakova)

Source: V. A. Zolotarev, ed.,  Sovetsko-Iaponskaia Voina 1945 Goda: Istoriia Voenno-Politicheskogo Protivoborstva Dvukh Derzhav v 30–40e Gody ( Moscow: Terra, 1997 and 2000), Vol. 7 (1), 340-341.

To keep his pledge at Yalta to enter the war against Japan and to secure the territorial concessions promised at the conference (e.g., Soviet annexation of the Kuriles and southern Sakhalin and a Soviet naval base at Port Arthur, etc.) Stalin considered various dates to schedule an attack. By early August he decided that 9-10 August 1945 would be the best dates for striking Japanese forces in Manchuria. In light of Japan’s efforts to seek Soviet mediation, Stalin wanted to enter the war quickly lest Tokyo reach a compromise peace with the Americans and the British at Moscow’s expense. But on 7 August, Stalin changed the instructions: the attack was to begin the next day. According to David Holloway, “it seems likely that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima the day before that impelled [Stalin] to speed up Soviet entry into the war” and “secure the gains promised at Yalta.” [59]

Document 66 : Memorandum of Conversation, “Atomic Bomb,” August 7, 1945

Source: Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Papers of W. Averell Harriman, box 181, Chron File Aug 5-9, 1945.

The Soviets already knew about the U.S. atomic project from espionage sources in the United States and Britain so Molotov’s comment to Ambassador Harriman about the secrecy surrounding the U.S. atomic project can be taken with a grain of salt, although the Soviets were probably unaware of specific plans for nuclear use.

Documents 67A-B:  Early High-level Reactions to the Hiroshima Bombing

67A : Cabinet Meeting and Togo's Meeting with the Emperor, August 7-8, 1945 Source: Gaimusho (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) ed.  Shusen Shiroku  (The Historical Records of the End of the War), annotated by Jun Eto, volume 4, 57-60 [Excerpts] [Translation by Toshihiro Higuchi]

67B : Admiral Tagaki Diary Entry for Wednesday, August 8 , 1945

Source: Takashi Itoh, ed.,  Sokichi Takagi: Nikki to Joho  [Sokichi Takagi: Diary and Documents] (Tokyo, Japan: Misuzu-Shobo, 2000), 923-924 [Translation by Hikaru Tajima]

Excerpts from the Foreign Ministry's compilation about the end of the war show how news of the bombing reached Tokyo as well as how Foreign Minister's Togo initially reacted to reports about Hiroshima. When he learned of the atomic bombing from the Domei News Agency, Togo believed that it was time to give up and advised the cabinet that the atomic attack provided the occasion for Japan to surrender on the basis of the Potsdam Declaration. Togo could not persuade the cabinet, however, and the Army wanted to delay any decisions until it had learned what had happened to Hiroshima. When the Foreign Minister met with the Emperor, Hirohito agreed with him; he declared that the top priority was an early end to the war, although it would be acceptable to seek better surrender terms--probably U.S. acceptance of a figure-head emperor--if it did not interfere with that goal. In light of those instructions, Togo and Prime Minister Suzuki agreed that the Supreme War Council should meet the next day.  [59a]

An entry from Admiral Tagaki's diary for August 8 conveys more information on the mood in elite Japanese circles after Hiroshima, but before the Soviet declaration of war and the bombing of Nagasaki. Seeing the bombing of Hiroshima as a sign of a worsening situation at home, Tagaki worried about further deterioration. Nevertheless, his diary suggests that military hard-liners were very much in charge and that Prime Minister Suzuki was talking tough against surrender, by evoking last ditch moments in Japanese history and warning of the danger that subordinate commanders might not obey surrender orders. The last remark aggravated Navy Minister Yonai who saw it as irresponsible. That the Soviets had made no responses to Sato's request for a meeting was understood as a bad sign; Yonai realized that the government had to prepare for the possibility that Moscow might not help. One of the visitors mentioned at the beginning of the entry was Iwao Yamazaki who became Minister of the Interior in the next cabinet.

Document 68 : Navy Secretary James Forrestal to President Truman, August 8, 1945

General Douglas MacArthur had been slated as commander for military operations against Japan’s mainland, this letter to Truman from Forrestal shows that the latter believed that the matter was not settled. Richard Frank sees this as evidence of the uncertainty felt by senior officials about the situation in early August; Forrestal would not have been so “audacious” to take an action that could ignite a “political firestorm” if he “seriously thought the end of the war was near.”

Document 69 : Memorandum of Conversation, “Far Eastern War and General Situation,” August 8, 1945, Top Secret

Source: Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Papers of W. Averell Harriman, box 181, Chron File Aug 5-9, 1945

Shortly after the Soviets declared war on Japan, in line with commitments made at the Yalta and Potsdam conferences, Ambassador Harriman met with Stalin, with George Kennan keeping the U.S. record of the meeting. After Stalin reviewed in considerable detail, Soviet military gains in the Far East, they discussed the possible impact of the atomic bombing on Japan’s position (Nagasaki had not yet been attacked) and the dangers and difficulty of an atomic weapons program. According to Hasegawa, this was an important, even “startling,” conversation: it showed that Stalin “took the atomic bomb seriously”; moreover, he disclosed that the Soviets were working on their own atomic program. [60]

Document 70 : Entries for 8-9 August, Robert P. Meiklejohn Diary

Source: W.A. Harriman Papers, Library of Congress, box 211 , Robert Pickens Meiklejohn World War II Diary At London and Moscow March 10, 1941-February 14, 1946 , Volume II (Privately printed, 1980 [Printed from hand-written originals]) (Reproduced with permission)

Robert P. Meiklejohn, who worked as Ambassador W. A. Harriman’s administrative assistant at the U.S. Embassies in Moscow and London during and after World War II, kept a detailed diary of his experiences and observations. The entries for 8 and 9 August, prepared in light of the bombing of Hiroshima, include discussion of the British contribution to the Manhattan Project, Harriman (“his nibs’”) report on his meeting with Molotov about the Soviet declaration of war, and speculation about the impact of the bombing of Hiroshima on the Soviet decision. According to Meiklejohn, “None of us doubt that the atomic bomb speeded up the Soviets’ declaration of war.”

Document 71 : Memorandum of Conference with the President, August 8, 1945 at 10:45 AM

At their first meeting after the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima, Stimson briefed Truman on the scale of the destruction, with Truman recognizing the “terrible responsibility” that was on his shoulders. Consistent with his earlier attempts, Stimson encouraged Truman to find ways to expedite Japan’s surrender by using “kindness and tact” and not treating them in the same way as the Germans. They also discussed postwar legislation on the atom and the pending Henry D. Smyth report on the scientific work underlying the Manhattan project and postwar domestic controls of the atom.

Documents 72A-C: The Attack on Nagasaki:

72A . Cable APCOM 5445 from General Farrell to O’Leary [Groves assistant], August 9, 1945, Top Secret

72B . COMGENAAF 8 cable CMDW 576 to COMGENUSASTAF, for General Farrell, August 9, 1945, Top secret

72C . COMGENAAF 20 Guam cable AIMCCR 5532 to COMGENUSASTAF Guam, August 10, 1945, Top Secret

Source: RG 77, Tinian Files, April-December 1945, box 20, Envelope G Tinian Files, Top Secret

The prime target for the second atomic attack was Kokura, which had a large army arsenal and ordnance works, but various problems ruled that city out; instead, the crew of the B-29 that carried “Fat Man” flew to an alternate target at Nagasaki. These cables are the earliest reports of the mission; the bombing of Nagasaki killed immediately at least 39,000 people, with more dying later. According to Frank, the “actual total of deaths due to the atomic bombs will never be known,” but the “huge number” ranges somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 people. Barton J. Bernstein and Martin Sherwin have argued that if top Washington policymakers had kept tight control of the delivery of the bomb instead of delegating it to Groves the attack on Nagasaki could have been avoided. The combination of the first bomb and the Soviet declaration of war would have been enough to induce Tokyo’s surrender. By contrast, Maddox argues that Nagasaki was necessary so that Japanese “hardliners” could not “minimize the first explosion” or otherwise explain it away. [61]

Documents 73A-B: Ramsey Letter from Tinian Island

73A : Letter from Norman Ramsey to J. Robert Oppenheimer, undated [mid-August 1945], Secret, excerpts Source: Library of Congress, J. Robert Oppenheimer Papers, box 60, Ramsey, Norman

73B : Transcript of the letter prepared by editor.

Ramsey, a physicist, served as deputy director of the bomb delivery group, Project Alberta. This personal account, written on Tinian, reports his fears about the danger of a nuclear accident, the confusion surrounding the Nagasaki attack, and early Air Force thinking about a nuclear strike force.

X. Toward Surrender

Document 74 : “Magic” – Far East Summary, War Department, Office of Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, no. 507, August 9, 1945

Within days after the bombing of Hiroshima, U.S. military intelligence intercepted Japanese reports on the destruction of the city. According to an “Eyewitness Account (and Estimates Heard) … In Regard to the Bombing of Hiroshima”: “Casualties have been estimated at 100,000 persons.”

Document 75 : “Hoshina Memorandum” on the Emperor’s “Sacred Decision [ go-seidan] ,” 9-10 August, 1945

Source: Zenshiro Hoshina,  Daitoa Senso Hishi: Hoshina Zenshiro Kaiso-roku  [Secret History of the Greater East Asia War: Memoir of Zenshiro Hoshina] (Tokyo, Japan: Hara-Shobo, 1975), excerpts from Section 5, “The Emperor made  go-seidan  [= the sacred decision] – the decision to terminate the war,” 139-149 [translation by Hikaru Tajima]

Despite the bombing of Hiroshima, the Soviet declaration of war, and growing worry about domestic instability, the Japanese cabinet (whose decisions required unanimity) could not form a consensus to accept the Potsdam Declaration. Members of the Supreme War Council—“the Big Six” [62] —wanted the reply to Potsdam to include at least four conditions (e.g., no occupation, voluntary disarmament); they were willing to fight to the finish. The peace party, however, deftly maneuvered to break the stalemate by persuading a reluctant emperor to intervene. According to Hasegawa, Hirohito had become convinced that the preservation of the monarchy was at stake. Late in the evening of 9 August, the emperor and his advisers met in the bomb shelter of the Imperial Palace.

Zenshiro Hoshina, a senior naval official, attended the conference and prepared a detailed account. With Prime Minister Suzuki presiding, each of the ministers had a chance to state their views directly to Hirohito. While Army Minister Anami tacitly threatened a coup (“civil war”), the emperor accepted the majority view that the reply to the Potsdam declaration should include only one condition not the four urged by “Big Six.” Nevertheless, the condition that Hirohito accepted was not the one that foreign minister Togo had brought to the conference. What was at stake was the definition of the  kokutai  (national policy). Togo’s proposal would have been generally consistent with a constitutional monarchy because it defined the  kokutai  narrowly as the emperor and the imperial household. What Hirohito accepted, however, was a proposal by the extreme nationalist Kiichiro Hiranuma which drew upon prevailing understandings of the  kokutai : the “mythical notion” that the emperor was a living god. “This was the affirmation of the emperor’s theocratic powers, unencumbered by any law, based on Shinto gods in antiquity, and totally incompatible with a constitutional monarchy.” Thus, the Japanese response to the Potsdam declaration opposed “any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of his Majesty as a sovereign ruler.” This proved to be unacceptable to the Truman administration. [63]

Document 76 :“Magic’ – Far East Summary, War Department, Office of Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, no. 508, August 10, 1945

More intercepted messages on the bombing of Hiroshima.

Documents 77A-B: The First Japanese Offer Intercepted

77A . “Magic” – Diplomatic Summary, War Department, Office of Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, No. 1233 – August 10, 1945, Top Secret Ultra

77B . Translation of intercepted Japanese messages, circa 10 August 10, 1945, Top Secret Ultra

The first Japanese surrender offer was intercepted shortly before Tokyo broadcast it. This issue of the diplomatic summary also includes Togo’s account of his notification of the Soviet declaration of war, reports of Soviet military operations in the Far East, and intercepts of French diplomatic traffic. A full translation of the surrender offer was circulated separately. The translations differ but they convey the sticking point that prevented U.S. acceptance: Tokyo’s condition that the allies not make any “demand which prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty as a sovereign ruler.”

Document 78 : Diary Entry, Friday, August 10, 1945, Henry Wallace Diary

Source: Papers of Henry A. Wallace, Special Collections Department, University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City, Iowa (copy courtesy of Special Collections Department)

Note: The second page of the diary entry includes a newspaper clipping of the Associated Press’s transmission of the Byrnes note. Unfortunately, AP would not authorize the Archive to reproduce this item without payment. Therefore, we are publishing an excised version of the entry, with a link to the  Byrnes note .

Secretary of Commerce (and former Vice President) Henry Wallace provided a detailed report on the cabinet meeting where Truman and his advisers discussed the Japanese surrender offer, Russian moves into Manchuria, and public opinion on “hard” surrender terms. With Japan close to capitulation, Truman asserted presidential control and ordered a halt to atomic bombings. Barton J. Bernstein has suggested that Truman’s comment about “all those kids” showed his belated recognition that the bomb caused mass casualties and that the target was not purely a military one. [64]

Document 79 : Entries for 10-11 August, Robert P. Meiklejohn Diary

In these entries, Meiklejohn discussed how he and others in the Moscow Embassy learned about the bombing of Nagasaki from the “OWI Bulletin.” Entries for 10 and 11 August cover discussion at the Embassy about the radio broadcast announcing that Japan would surrender as long the Emperor’s status was not affected. Harriman opined that “surrender is in the bag” because of the Potsdam Declaration’s provision that the Japanese could “choose their own form of government, which would probably include the Emperor.” Further, “the only alternative to the Emperor is Communism,” implying that an official role for the Emperor was necessary to preserve social stability and prevent social revolution.

Document 80 : Stimson Diary Entries, Friday and Saturday, August 10 and 11, 1945

Stimson’s account of the events of 10 August focused on the debate over the reply to the Japanese note, especially the question of the Emperor’s status.  The U.S. reply , drafted during the course of the day, did not explicitly reject the note but suggested that any notion about the “prerogatives” of the Emperor would be superceded by the concept that all Japanese would be “Subject to the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers.” The language was ambiguous enough to enable Japanese readers, upon Hirohito’s urging, to believe that they could decide for themselves the Emperor’s future role. Stimson accepted the language believing that a speedy reply to the Japanese would allow the United States to “get the homeland into our hands before the Russians could put in any substantial claim to occupy and help rule it.” If the note had included specific provision for a constitutional monarchy, Hasegawa argues, it would have “taken the wind out of the sails” of the military faction and Japan might have surrendered several days earlier, on August 11 or 12 instead of August 14. [65]

Document 81 : Entries from Walter Brown Diary, 10-11 August 1945

Source:  Clemson University Libraries, Special Collections, Clemson, SC; Mss 243, Walter Brown Papers, box 68, folder 13, “Transcript/Draft B

Brown recounted Byrnes’ debriefing of the 10 August White House meeting on the Japanese peace offer, an account which differed somewhat from that in the Stimson diary .  According to what Byrnes told Brown, Truman, Stimson, and Leahy favored accepting the Japanese note, but Byrnes objected that the United States should “go [no] further than we were willing to go at Potsdam.” Stimson’s account of the meeting noted Byrnes’ concerns (“troubled and anxious”) about the Japanese note and implied that he (Stimson) favored accepting it, but did not picture the debate as starkly as Browns's did.

Document 82 : General L. R. Groves to Chief of Staff George C. Marshall,  August 10, 1945, Top Secret, with a hand-written note by General Marshall

Source: George C. Marshall Papers, George C. Marshall Library, Lexington, VA (copy courtesy of Barton J. Bernstein)

Groves informed General Marshall that he was making plans for the use of a third atomic weapon sometime after 17 August, depending on the weather. With Truman having ordered a halt to the atomic bombings [See document 78], Marshall wrote on Grove's memo that the bomb was “not to be released over Japan without express authority from the President.”

Document 83 : Memorandum of Conversation, “Japanese Surrender Negotiations,” August 10, 1945, Top Secret

Source: Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Papers of W. Averell Harriman, box 181, Chron File Aug 10-12, 1945

Japan’s prospective surrender was the subject of detailed discussion between Harriman, British Ambassador Kerr, and Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov during the evening of August 10 (with a follow-up meeting occurring at 2 a.m.). In the course of the conversation, Harriman received a message from Washington that included the proposed U.S. reply and a request for Soviet support of the reply. After considerable pressure from Harriman, the Soviets signed off on the reply but not before tensions surfaced over the control of Japan--whether Moscow would have a Supreme Commander there as well. This marked the beginning of a U.S.-Soviet “tug of war” over occupation arrangements for Japan. [66]

Document 84 : Admiral Tagaki Diary Entry for 12 August [1945] Source: Takashi Itoh, ed.,  Sokichi Takagi: Nikki to Joho  [Sokichi Takagi: Diary and Documents] (Tokyo, Japan: Misuzu-Shobo, 2000), 926-927 [Translation by Hikaru Tajima]

As various factions in the government maneuvered on how to respond to the Byrnes note, Navy Minister Yonai and Admiral Tagaki discussed the latest developments. Yonai was upset that Chief of Staff Yoshijiro Umezu and naval chief Suemu Toyada had sent the emperor a memorandum arguing that acceptance of the Brynes note would “desecrate the emperor’s dignity” and turn Japan into virtually a “slave nation.” The emperor chided Umezu and Toyoda for drawing hasty conclusions; in this he had the support of Yonai, who also dressed them down. As Yonai explained to Tagaki, he had also confronted naval vice Chief Takijiro Onishi to make sure that he obeyed any decision by the Emperor. Yonai made sure that Takagi understood his reasons for bringing the war to an end and why he believed that the atomic bomb and the Soviet declaration of war had made it easier for Japan to surrender. [67]

Document 85 : Memorandum from Major General Clayton Bissell, Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, for the Chief of Staff, “Estimate of Japanese Situation for Next 30 Days,” August 12, 1945, Top Secret

Source: National Archives, RG 165, Army Operations OPD, Executive Files 1940-1945, box 12, Exec #2

Not altogether certain that surrender was imminent, Army intelligence did not rule out the possibility that Tokyo would try to “drag out the negotiations” or reject the Byrnes proposal and continue fighting. If the Japanese decided to keep fighting, G-2 opined that “Atomic bombs will not have a decisive effect in the next 30 days.” Richard Frank has pointed out that this and other documents indicate that high level military figures remained unsure as to how close Japan really was to surrender.

Document 86 : The Cabinet Meeting over the Reply to the Four Powers (August 13)

Source:  Gaimusho [Ministry of Foreign Affairs], ed., Shusen Shiroku [Historical Record of the End of the War] (Tokyo: Hokuyosha, 1977-1978), vol. 5, 27-35 [Translated by Toshihiro Higuchi]

The Byrnes Note did not break the stalemate at the cabinet level. An account of the cabinet debates on August 13 prepared by Information Minister Toshiro Shimamura showed the same divisions as before; Anami and a few other ministers continued to argue that the Allies threatened the  kokutai  and that setting the four conditions (no occupation, etc.) did not mean that the war would continue. Nevertheless, Anami argued, “We are still left with some power to fight.” Suzuki, who was working quietly with the peace party, declared that the Allied terms were acceptable because they gave a “dim hope in the dark” of preserving the emperor. At the end of the meeting, he announced that he would report to Hirohito and ask him to make another “Sacred Judgment”. Meanwhile, junior Army officers plotted a coup to thwart the plans for surrender. [68]

Document 87 : Telephone conversation transcript, General Hull and Colonel Seaman [sic] – 1325 – 13 Aug 45, Top Secret

Source: George C. Marshall Library, Lexington, VA, George C. Marshall Papers (copy courtesy of Barton J. Bernstein)

While Truman had rescinded the order to drop nuclear bombs, the war was not yet over and uncertainty about Japan’s next step motivated war planner General John E. Hull (assistant chief of staff for the War Department’s Operations Division), and one of Groves’ associates, Colonel L. E. Seeman, to continue thinking about further nuclear use and its relationship to a possible invasion of Japan. As Hull explained, “should we not concentrate on targets that will be of greatest assistance to an invasion rather than industry, morale, psychology, etc.” “Nearer the tactical use”, Seaman agreed and they discussed the tactics that could be used for beach landings. In 1991 articles, Barton Bernstein and Marc Gallicchio used this and other evidence to develop the argument that concepts of tactical nuclear weapons use first came to light at the close of World War II. [69]

Document 88 : “Magic” – Diplomatic Summary, War Department, Office of Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, No. 1236 – August 13, 1945, Top Secret Ultra

The dropping of two atomic bombs, the tremendous destruction caused by U.S. bombing, and the Soviet declaration of war notwithstanding, important elements of the Japanese Army were unwilling to yield, as was evident from intercepted messages dated 12 and 13 August. Willingness to accept even the “destruction of the Army and Navy” rather than surrender inspired the military coup that unfolded and failed during the night of 14 August.

Document 89 : “The Second  Sacred Judgment”, August 14, 1945

Source :   Hiroshi [Kaian) Shimomura, S husenki [Account of the End of the War]  (Tokyo, Kamakura Bunko, [1948], 148-152 [Translated by Toshihiro Higuchi]

Frightened by the rapid movement of Soviet forces into Manchuria and worried that the army might launch a coup, the peace party set in motion a plan to persuade Hirohito to meet with the cabinet and the “Big Six” to resolve the stalemate over the response to the Allies. Japan was already a day late in responding to the Byrnes Note and Hirohito agreed to move quickly. At 10:50 a.m., he met with the leadership at the bomb shelter in his palace. This account, prepared by Director of Information Shimomura, conveys the drama of the occasion (as well as his interest in shifting the blame for the debacle to the Army). After Suzuki gave the war party--Umeda, Toyoda, and Anami--an opportunity to present their arguments against accepting the Byrnes Note, he asked the emperor to speak. 

  Hirohito asked the leadership to accept the Note, which he believed was “well intentioned” on the matter of the “national polity” (by leaving open a possible role for the Emperor).  Arguing that continuing the war would reduce the nation “to ashes,” his words about “bearing the unbearable” and sadness over wartime losses and suffering prefigured the language that Hirohito would use in his public announcement the next day. According to Bix, “Hirohito's language helped to transform him from a war to a peace leader, from a cold, aloof monarch to a human being who cared for his people” but “what chiefly motivated him … was his desire to save a politically empowered throne with himself on it.” [70]

Hirohito said that he would make a recording of the surrender announcement so that the nation could hear it. That evening army officers tried to seize the palace and find Hirohito’s recording, but the coup failed. Early the next day, General Anami committed suicide. On the morning of August 15, Hirohito broadcast the message to the nation (although he never used the word “surrender”). A few weeks later, on September 2, 1945 Japanese representatives signed surrender documents on the USS  Missouri , in Tokyo harbor. [71]

Document 90 : “Magic” – Far East Summary, War Department, Office of Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, no. 515, August 18, 1945

This summary includes an intercepted account of the destruction of Nagasaki.

Document 91 :Washington Embassy Telegram 5599 to Foreign Office, 14 August 1945, Top Secret [72]

Source: The British National Archives, Records of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office,  FO 800/461

With the Japanese surrender announcement not yet in, President Truman believed that another atomic bombing might become necessary. After a White House meeting on 14 August, British Minister John Balfour reported that Truman had “remarked sadly that he now had no alternative but to order an atomic bomb to be dropped on Tokyo.” This was likely emotional thinking spurred by anxiety and uncertainty. Truman was apparently not considering the fact that Tokyo was already devastated by fire bombing and that an atomic bombing would have killed the Emperor, which would have greatly complicated the process of surrender. Moreover, he may not have known that the third bomb was still in the United States and would not be available for use for nearly another week. [73]  As it turned out, a few hours later, at 4:05 p.m., the White House received the Japanese surrender announcement.

XI. Confronting the Problem of Radiation Poisoning

Document 92 : P.L. Henshaw and R.R. Coveyou to H.J. Curtis and K. Z. Morgan, “Death from Radiation Burns,” 24 August 1945, Confidential

Source: Department of Energy Open-Net

Two scientists at Oak Ridge’s Health Division, Henshaw and Coveyou, saw a United Press report in the Knoxville  News Sentinel  about radiation sickness caused by the bombings. Victims who looked healthy weakened, “for unknown reasons” and many died. Lacking direct knowledge of conditions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Henshaw and Coveyou had their own data on the biological effects of radiation and could make educated guesses. After reviewing the impact of various atomic bomb effects--blast, heat, flash radiation (prompt effects from gamma waves), and radiation from radioactive substances--they concluded that “it seems highly plausible that a great many persons were subjected to lethal and sub-lethal dosages of radiation in areas where direct blast effects were possibly non-lethal.” It was “probable,” therefore, that radiation “would produce increments to the death rate and “even more probable” that a “great number of cases of sub-lethal exposures to radiation have been suffered.” [74]

Document 93 : Memorandum of Telephone Conversation Between General Groves and Lt. Col. Rea, Oak Ridge Hospital, 9:00 a.m., August 28, 1945, Top Secret

Source: RG 77, MED Records, Top Secret Documents, File no. 5b

Despite the reports pouring in from Japan about radiation sickness among the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, General Groves and Dr. Charles Rea, a surgeon who was head of the base hospital at Oak Ridge (and had no specialized knowledge about the biological effects of radiation) dismissed the reports as “propaganda”. Unaware of the findings of Health Division scientists, Groves and Rhea saw the injuries as nothing more than “good thermal burns.” [75]

Documents 94A-B: General Farrell Surveys the Destruction

94A . Cable CAX 51813 from  USS Teton  to Commander in Chief Army Forces Pacific Administration, From Farrell to Groves, September 10, 1945, Secret

94B . Cable CAX 51948 from Commander in Chief Army Forces Pacific Advance Yokohoma Japan to Commander in Chief Army Forces Pacific Administration, September 14, 1945, Secret

Source: RG 77, Tinian Files, April-December 1945, box 17, Envelope B

A month after the attacks Groves’ deputy, General Farrell, traveled to Japan to see for himself the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. His vivid account shows that senior military officials in the Manhattan Project were no longer dismissive of reports of radiation poisoning. As Farrell observed in his discussion of Hiroshima, “Summaries of Japanese reports previously sent are essentially correct, as to clinical effects from single gamma radiation dose.” Such findings dismayed Groves, who worried that the bomb would fall into a taboo category like chemical weapons, with all the fear and horror surrounding them. Thus, Groves and others would try to suppress findings about radioactive effects, although that was a losing proposition. [76]

XII. Eisenhower and McCloy’s Views on the Bombings and Atomic Weapons

Document 95 : Entry for 4 October 1945, Robert P. Meiklejohn Diary

In this entry written several months later, Meiklejohn shed light on what much later became an element of the controversy over the Hiroshima-Nagasaki bombings: whether any high level civilian or military officials objected to nuclear use. Meiklejohn recounted Harriman’s visit in early October 1945 to the Frankfurt-area residence of General Dwight Eisenhower, who was finishing up his service as Commanding General, U.S. Army, European Theater. It was Meiklejohn’s birthday and during the dinner party, Eisenhower and McCloy had an interesting discussion of atomic weapons, which included comments alluding to scientists’ statements about what appears to be the H-bomb project (a 20 megaton weapon), recollection of the early fear that an atomic detonation could burn up the atmosphere, and the Navy’s reluctance to use its battleships to test atomic weapons. At the beginning of the discussion, Eisenhower made a significant statement: he “mentioned how he had hoped that the war might have ended without our having to use the atomic bomb.” The general implication was that prior to Hiroshima-Nagasaki, he had wanted to avoid using the bomb.

Some may associate this statement with one that Eisenhower later recalled making to Stimson. In his 1948 memoirs (further amplified in his 1963 memoirs), Eisenhower claimed that he had “expressed the hope [to Stimson] that we would never have to use such a thing against an enemy because I disliked seeing the United States take the lead in introducing into war something as horrible and destructive as this new weapon was described to be.” That language may reflect the underlying thinking behind Eisenhower’s statement during the dinner party, but whether Eisenhower used such language when speaking with Stimson has been a matter of controversy. In later years, those who knew both thought it unlikely that the general would have expressed misgivings about using the bomb to a civilian superior. Eisenhower’s son John cast doubts about the memoir statements, although he attested that when the general first learned about the bomb he was downcast.

Stimson’s diary mentions meetings with Eisenhower twice in the weeks before Hiroshima, but without any mention of a dissenting Eisenhower statement (and Stimson’s diaries are quite detailed on atomic matters). The entry from Meiklejohn’s diary does not prove or disprove Eisenhower’s recollection, but it does confirm that he had doubts which he expressed only a few months after the bombings. Whether Eisenhower expressed such reservations prior to Hiroshima will remain a matter of controversy. [77]

Document 96:  President Harry S. Truman, Handwritten Remarks for Gridiron Dinner, circa 15 December 1945 [78]

Source: Harry S. Truman Library,  President's Secretary's Files,  Speech Files, 1945-1953,  copy on U.S. National Archives Web Site

On 15 December, President Truman spoke about the atomic bombings in his speech at the annual dinner of the Gridiron Club, organized by bureau chiefs and other leading figures of print media organizations. Besides Truman, guests included New York Governor Thomas Dewey (Republican presidential candidate in 1944 and 1948), foreign ambassadors, members of the cabinet and the Supreme Court, the military high command, and various senators and representatives. The U.S. Marine Band provided music for the dinner and for the variety show that was performed by members of the press.  [79]

In accordance with the dinner’s rules that “reporters are never present,” Truman’s remarks were off-the record. The president, however, wrote in long-hand a text that that might approximate what he said that evening. Pages 12 through 15 of those notes refer to the atomic bombing of Japan:

“You know the most terrible decision a man ever had to make was made by me at Potsdam. It had nothing to do with Russia or Britain or Germany. It was a decision to loose the most terrible of all destructive forces for the wholesale slaughter of human beings. The Secretary of War, Mr. Stimson, and I weighed that decision most prayerfully. But the President had to decide. It occurred to me that a quarter of a million of the flower of our young manhood was worth a couple of Japanese cities, and I still think that they were and are. But I couldn’t help but think of the necessity of blotting out women and children and non-combatants. We gave them fair warning and asked them to quit. We picked a couple of cities where war work was the principle industry, and dropped bombs. Russia hurried in and the war ended.”

Truman characterized the Potsdam Declaration as a “fair warning,” but it was an ultimatum. Plainly he was troubled by the devastation and suffering caused by the bombings, but he found it justifiable because it saved the lives of U.S. troops. His estimate of 250,000 U.S. soldiers spared far exceeded that made by General Marshall in June 1945, which was in the range of 31,000 (comparable to the Battle of Luzon) [See Document 26]. By citing an inflated casualty figure, the president was giving a trial run for the rationale that would become central to official and semi-official discourse about the bombings during the decades ahead. [80]  

Despite Truman’s claim that he made “the most terrible” decision at Potsdam, he assigned himself more responsibility than the historical record supports. On the basic decision, he had simply concurred with the judgments of Stimson, Groves, and others that the bomb would be used as soon as it was available for military use. As for targeting, however, he had a more significant role. At Potsdam, Stimson raised his objections to targeting Japan’s cultural capital, Kyoto, and Truman supported the secretary’s efforts to drop that city from the target list [See Documents 47 and 48].  [81]

Where he had taken significant responsibility was by making a decision to stop the atomic bombings just before the Japanese surrender, thereby asserting presidential control over nuclear weapons

The editor thanks Barton J. Bernstein, J. Samuel Walker, Gar Alperovitz, David Holloway, and Alex Wellerstein for their advice and assistance, and Tsuyoshi Hasegawa for kindly providing copies of some of the Japanese sources that were translated for this compilation. Hasegawa’s book,  Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan  (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2005), includes invaluable information on Japanese sources. David Clark, an archivist at the Harry S. Truman Library, and James Cross, Manuscripts Archivist at Clemson University Library’s Special Collections, kindly provided material from their collections. The editor also thanks Kyle Hammond and Gregory Graves for research assistance and Toshihiro Higuchi and Hikaru Tajima (who then were graduate students in history at Georgetown University and the University of Tokyo respectively), for translating documents and answering questions on the Japanese sources. The editor thanks Anna Melyakova (National Security Archive) for translating Russian language material.

Read the documents

I. background on the u.s. atomic project   documents 1a-c: report of the uranium committee.

Document 1A

National Archives, Records of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, Record Group 227 (hereinafter RG 227), Bush-Conant papers microfilm collection, Roll 1, Target 2, Folder 1, "S-1 Historical File, Section A (1940-1941)."

Document 1B

See description of document 1A.

Document 1C

Document 2A

RG 227, Bush-Conant papers microfilm collection, Roll 1, Target 2, Folder 1, "S-1 Historical File, Section II (1941-1942)

Document 2B

Bush-Conant papers, S-1 Historical File, Reports to and Conferences with the President (1942-1944)

See description of document 2A.

National Archives, Record Group 77, Records of the Army Corps of Engineers (hereinafter RG 77), Manhattan Engineering District (MED), Minutes of the Military Policy Meeting (5 May 1943), Correspondence (“Top Secret”) of the Manhattan Engineer District, 1942-1946, microfilm publication M1109 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1980), Roll 3, Target 6, Folder 23, “Military Policy Committee, Minutes of Meetings”

Before the Manhattan Project had produced any weapons, senior U.S. government officials had Japanese targets in mind. Besides discussing programmatic matters (e.g., status of gaseous diffusion plants, heavy water production for reactors, and staffing at Las Alamos), the participants agreed that the first use could be Japanese naval forces concentrated at Truk Harbor, an atoll in the Caroline Islands. If there was a misfire the weapon would be difficult for the Japanese to recover, which would not be the case if Tokyo was targeted. Targeting Germany was rejected because the Germans were considered more likely to “secure knowledge” from a defective weapon than the Japanese. That is, the United States could possibly be in danger if the Nazis acquired more knowledge about how to build a bomb. [9]

RG 77, Correspondence ("Top Secret") of the Manhattan Engineer District, 1942-1946, file 25M

This memorandum from General Groves to General Marshall captured how far the Manhattan Project had come in less than two years since Bush’s December 1942 report to President Roosevelt. Groves did not mention this but around the time he wrote this the Manhattan Project had working at its far-flung installations over 125,000 people ; taking into account high labor turnover some 485,000 people worked on the project (1 out of every 250 people in the country at that time). What these people were laboring to construct, directly or indirectly, were two types of weapons—a gun-type weapon using U-235 and an implosion weapon using plutonium (although the possibility of U-235 was also under consideration). As the scientists had learned, a gun-type weapon based on plutonium was “impossible” because that element had an “unexpected property”: spontaneous neutron emissions would cause the weapon to “fizzle.” [10] For both the gun-type and the implosion weapons, a production schedule had been established and both would be available during 1945. The discussion of weapons effects centered on blast damage models; radiation and other effects were overlooked.

RG 77, Harrison-Bundy Files (H-B Files), folder 69 (copy from microfilm)

Documents 6A-D: President Truman Learns the Secret

Document 6A

G 77, Commanding General’s file no. 24, tab D

Soon after he was sworn in as president following President Roosevelt’s death, Harry Truman learned about the top secret Manhattan Project from briefings by  Secretary of War Stimson and Manhattan Project chief General Groves (who went through the “back door” to escape the watchful press). Stimson, who later wrote up the meeting in his diary, also prepared a discussion paper, which raised broader policy issues associated with the imminent possession of “the most terrible weapon ever known in human history.”

In a background report prepared for the meeting, Groves provided a detailed overview of the bomb project from the raw materials to processing nuclear fuel to assembling the weapons to plans for using them, which were starting to crystallize. With respect to the point about assembling the weapons, Groves and Stimson informed Truman that the first gun-type weapon “should be ready about 1 August 1945” while an implosion weapon would also be available that month. “The target is and was always expected to be Japan.”  

These documents have important implications for the perennial debate over whether Truman “inherited assumptions” from the Roosevelt administration that the bomb would be used when available or that he made  the  decision to do so.  Alperovitz and Sherwin have argued that Truman made “a real decision” to use the bomb on Japan by choosing “between various forms of diplomacy and warfare.” In contrast, Bernstein found that Truman “never questioned [the] assumption” that the bomb would and should be used. Norris also noted that “Truman’s ”decision” amounted to a decision not to override previous plans to use the bomb.” [12]

Document 6B

Henry Stimson Diary, Sterling Library, Yale University (microfilm at Library of Congress)

See description of document 6A.

Document 6C

Record Group 200, Papers of General Leslie R. Groves, Correspondence 1941-1970, box 3, “F”

Document 6D

RG 77, MED Records, Top Secret Documents, File no. 5g

The force of B-29 nuclear delivery vehicles that was being readied for first nuclear use—the Army Air Force’s 509 th Composite Group—required an operational base in the Western Pacific. In late February 1945, months before atomic bombs were ready for use, the high command selected Tinian, an island in the Northern Marianas Islands, for that base.

Library of Congress, Curtis LeMay Papers, Box B-36

As part of the war with Japan, the Army Air Force waged a campaign to destroy major industrial centers with incendiary bombs. This document is General Curtis LeMay’s report on the firebombing of Tokyo--“the most destructive air raid in history”--which burned down over 16 square miles of the city, killed up to 100,000 civilians (the official figure was 83,793), injured more than 40,000, and made over 1 million homeless. [13] According to the “Foreword,” the purpose of the raid, which dropped 1,665 tons of incendiary bombs, was to destroy industrial and strategic targets “ not to bomb indiscriminately civilian populations.” Air Force planners, however, did not distinguish civilian workers from the industrial and strategic structures that they were trying to destroy.

RG 77, MED Records, Top Secret Documents, File no. 5d (copy from microfilm)

On 27 April, military officers and nuclear scientists met to discuss bombing techniques, criteria for target selection, and overall mission requirements. The discussion of “available targets” included Hiroshima, the “largest untouched target not on the 21 st Bomber Command priority list.” But other targets were under consideration, including Yawata (northern Kyushu), Yokohama, and Tokyo (even though it was practically “rubble.”) The problem was that the Air Force had a policy of “laying waste” to Japan’s cities which created tension with the objective of reserving some urban targets for nuclear destruction. [16]

Document 10

RG 77, MED Records, Top Secret Documents, File no. 5g (copy from microfilm)

As director of Los Alamos Laboratory, Oppenheimer’s priority was producing a deliverable bomb, but not so much the effects of the weapon on the people at the target. In keeping with General Groves’ emphasis on compartmentalization, the Manhattan Project experts on the effects of radiation on human biology were at the MetLab and other offices and had no interaction with the production and targeting units. In this short memorandum to Groves’ deputy, General Farrell, Oppenheimer explained the need for precautions because of the radiological dangers of a nuclear detonation. The initial radiation from the detonation would be fatal within a radius of about 6/10ths of a mile and “injurious” within a radius of a mile. The point was to keep the bombing mission crew safe; concern about radiation effects had no impact on targeting decisions. [17]

Document 11

Scientists and officers held further discussion of bombing mission requirements, including height of detonation, weather, radiation effects (Oppenheimer’s memo), plans for possible mission abort, and the various aspects of target selection, including priority cities (“a large urban area of more than three miles diameter”) and psychological dimension. As for target cities, the committee agreed that the following should be exempt from Army Air Force bombing so they would be available for nuclear targeting: Kyoto, Hiroshima, Yokohama, and Kokura Arsenal. Japan’s cultural capital, Kyoto, would not stay on the list. Pressure from Secretary of War Stimson had already taken Kyoto off the list of targets for incendiary bombings and he would successfully object to the atomic bombing of that city. [18]

Document 12

Document 13

Joseph E. Davies Papers, Library of Congress, box 17, 21 May 1945

Document 14

Harrison-Bundy Files relating to the Development of the Atomic Bomb, 1942-1946, microfilm publication M1108 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1980), File 77: "Interim Committee - International Control."

In what Stimson called the “letter of an honest man,” Oswald C. Brewster sent President Truman a profound analysis of the danger and unfeasibility of a U.S. atomic monopoly. [21] An engineer for the Kellex Corporation, which was involved in the gas diffusion project to enrich uranium, Brewster recognized that the objective was fissile material for a weapon. That goal, he feared, raised terrifying prospects with implications for the “inevitable destruction of our present day civilization.” Once the U.S. had used the bomb in combat other great powers would not tolerate a monopoly by any nation and the sole possessor would be “be the most hated and feared nation on earth.” Even the U.S.’s closest allies would want the bomb because “how could they know where our friendship might be five, ten, or twenty years hence.” Nuclear proliferation and arms races would be certain unless the U.S. worked toward international supervision and inspection of nuclear plants.

Document 15

Document 16

At the end of May General Groves forwarded to Army Chief of Staff Marshall a “Plan of Operations” for the atomic bombings. While that plan has not surfaced, apparently its major features were incorporated in this 29 May 1945 message on the “special functions” of the 509th Composite Group sent from Chief of Staff General Lauris Norstad to General Curtis LeMay, chief of the XXI Bomber Command, headquartered in the Marianas Islands. [21A] The Norstad message reviewed the complex requirements for preparing B-29s and their crew for delivering nuclear weapons.  He detailed the mission of the specially modified B-29s that comprised the  509th Composite Group, the “tactical factors” that applied,  training and rehearsal issues, and the functions of “special personnel” and the Operational Studies Group.  The targets listed—Hiroshima, Kyoto, and Niigato—were those that had been discussed at the Target Committee meeting on 28 May, but Kyoto would be dropped when Secretary Stimson objected (although that would remain a contested matter) and Kokura would eventually be substituted.   As part of the Composite Group’s training to drop “special bombs,” it would practice with facsimiles—the conventionally-armed “Pumpkins.” The 509th Composite Group’s cover story for its secret mission was the preparation for the use of “Pumpkins” in battle.

Document 17

Record Group 107, Office of the Secretary of War, Formerly Top Secret Correspondence of Secretary of War Stimson (“Safe File”), July 1940-September 1945, box 12, S-1

Tacitly dissenting from the Targeting Committee’s recommendations, Army Chief of Staff George Marshall argued for initial nuclear use against a clear-cut military target such as a “large naval installation.” If that did not work, manufacturing areas could be targeted, but only after warning their inhabitants. Marshall noted the “opprobrium which might follow from an ill considered employment of such force.” This document has played a role in arguments developed by Barton J. Bernstein that figures such as Marshall and Stimson were “caught between an older morality that opposed the intentional killing of non-combatants and a newer one that stressed virtually total war.” [22]

Document 18

RG 77, MED Records, H-B files, folder no. 100 (copy from microfilm)

With Secretary of War Stimson presiding, members of the committee heard reports on a variety of Manhattan Project issues, including the stages of development of the atomic project,  problems of secrecy, the possibility of informing the Soviet Union, cooperation with “like-minded” powers, the military impact of the bomb on Japan, and the problem of “undesirable scientists.”  In his comments on a detonation over Japanese targets, Oppenheimer mentioned that the “neutron effect would be dangerous to life for a radius of at least two-thirds of a mile,” but did not mention that the radiation could cause prolonged sickness.

Interested in producing the “greatest psychological effect,” the Committee members agreed that the “most desirable target would be a vital war plant employing a large number of workers and closely surrounded by workers’ houses.”  Bernstein argues that this target choice represented an uneasy endorsement of “terror bombing”-the target was not exclusively military or civilian; nevertheless, worker’s housing would include non-combatant men, women, and children. [23] It is possible that Truman was informed of such discussions and their conclusions, although he clung to a belief that the prospective targets were strictly military.

Document 19

Record Group 165, Records of the War Department General and Special Staffs, American-British-Canadian Top Secret Correspondence, Box 504, “ABC 387 Japan (15 Feb. 45)

George A. Lincoln, chief of the Strategy and Policy Group at U.S. Army’s Operations Department, commented on a memorandum by former President Herbert Hoover that Stimson had passed on for analysis. Hoover proposed a compromise solution with Japan that would allow Tokyo to retain part of its empire in East Asia (including Korea and Japan) as a way to head off Soviet influence in the region. While Lincoln believed that the proposed peace teams were militarily acceptable he doubted that they were workable or that they could check Soviet “expansion” which he saw as an inescapable result of World War II. As to how the war with Japan would end, he saw it as “unpredictable,” but speculated that “it will take Russian entry into the war, combined with a landing, or imminent threat of a landing, on Japan proper by us, to convince them of the hopelessness of their situation.” Lincoln derided Hoover’s casualty estimate of 500,000. J. Samuel Walker has cited this document to make the point that “contrary to revisionist assertions, American policymakers in the summer of 1945 were far from certain that the Soviet invasion of Manchuria would be enough in itself to force a Japanese surrender.” [24]

Document 20

Document 21

Henry Stimson Papers, Sterling Library, Yale University (microfilm at Library of Congress)

Stimson and Truman began this meeting by discussing how they should handle a conflict with French President DeGaulle over the movement by French forces into Italian territory. (Truman finally cut off military aid to France to compel the French to pull back). [25] As evident from the discussion, Stimson strongly disliked de Gaulle whom he regarded as “psychopathic.” The conversation soon turned to the atomic bomb, with some discussion about plans to inform the Soviets but only after a successful test. Both agreed that the possibility of a nuclear “partnership” with Moscow would depend on “quid pro quos”: “the settlement of the Polish, Rumanian, Yugoslavian, and Manchurian problems.”

At the end, Stimson shared his doubts about targeting cities and killing civilians through area bombing because of its impact on the U.S.’s reputation as well as on the problem of finding targets for the atomic bomb. Barton Bernstein has also pointed to this as additional evidence of the influence on Stimson of an “an older morality.” While concerned about the U.S.’s reputation, Stimson did not want the Air Force to bomb Japanese cities so thoroughly that the “new weapon would not have a fair background to show its strength,” a comment that made Truman laugh. The discussion of “area bombing” may have reminded him that Japanese civilians remained at risk from U.S. bombing operations.

Document 22

RG 77, MED Records, H-B files, folder no. 76 (copy from microfilm)

Physicists Leo Szilard and James Franck, a Nobel Prize winner, were on the staff of the “Metallurgical Laboratory” at the University of Chicago, a cover for the Manhattan Project program to produce fuel for the bomb. The outspoken Szilard was not involved in operational work on the bomb and General Groves kept him under surveillance but Met Lab director Arthur Compton found Szilard useful to have around. Concerned with the long-run implications of the bomb, Franck chaired a committee, in which Szilard and Eugene Rabinowitch were major contributors, that produced a report rejecting a surprise attack on Japan and recommended instead a demonstration of the bomb on the “desert or a barren island.” Arguing that a nuclear arms race “will be on in earnest not later than the morning after our first demonstration of the existence of nuclear weapons,” the committee saw international control as the alternative. That possibility would be difficult if the United States made first military use of the weapon. Compton raised doubts about the recommendations but urged Stimson to study the report. Martin Sherwin has argued that the Franck committee shared an important assumption with Truman et al.--that an “atomic attack against Japan would `shock’ the Russians”--but drew entirely different conclusions about the import of such a shock. [26]

Document 23

Record Group 107, Office of the Secretary of War, Formerly Top Secret Correspondence of Secretary of War Stimson (“Safe File”), July 1940-September 1945, box 8, Japan (After December 7/41)

Document 24

Document 25

Document 26

Record Group 218, Records of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Central Decimal Files, 1942-1945, box 198 334 JCS (2-2-45) Mtg 186th-194th

The record of this meeting has figured in the complex debate over the estimates of casualties stemming from a possible invasion of Japan. While post-war justifications for the bomb suggested that an invasion of Japan could have produced very high levels of casualties (dead, wounded, or missing), from hundreds of thousands to a million, historians have vigorously debated the extent to which the estimates were inflated. [29]

Document 27

Document 28

RG 77, MED, H-B files, folder no. 77 (copy from microfilm)

Document 29

Document 30

RG 107, Office of Assistant Secretary of War Formerly Classified Correspondence of John J. McCloy, 1941-1945, box 38, ASW 387 Japan

Document 31

Document 32

Document 33

Naval Aide to the President Files, box 4, Berlin Conference File, Volume XI - Miscellaneous papers: Japan, Harry S. Truman Presidential Library

On 2 July Stimson presented to President Truman a proposal that he had worked up with colleagues in the War Department, including McCloy, Marshall, and Grew. The proposal has been characterized as “the most comprehensive attempt by any American policymaker to leverage diplomacy” in order to shorten the Pacific War. Stimson had in mind a “carefully timed warning” delivered before the invasion of Japan. Some of the key elements of Stimson’s argument were his assumption that “Japan is susceptible to reason” and that Japanese might be even more inclined to surrender if “we do not exclude a constitutional monarchy under her present dynasty.” The possibility of a Soviet attack would be part of the “threat.” As part of the threat message, Stimson alluded to the “inevitability and completeness of the destruction” which Japan could suffer, but he did not make it clear whether unconditional surrender terms should be clarified before using the atomic bomb. Truman read Stimson’s proposal, which he said was “powerful,” but made no commitments to the details, e.g., the position of the emperor. [32]

Document 34

Record Group 353, Records of Interdepartmental and Intradepartmental Committees, Secretary’s Staff Meetings Minutes, 1944-1947 (copy from microfilm)

Document 35

RG 218, Central Decimal Files, 1943-1945, CCS 381 (6-4-45), Sec. 2 Pt. 5

Document 36

Record Group 59, Decimal Files 1945-1949, 740.0011 PW (PE)/7-1645

Document 37

Henry L. Stimson Papers (MS 465), Sterling Library, Yale University (reel 113) (microfilm at Library of Congress)

Still interested in trying to find ways to “warn Japan into surrender,” this represents an attempt by Stimson before the Potsdam conference, to persuade Truman and Byrnes to agree to issue warnings to Japan prior to the use of the bomb. The warning would draw on the draft State-War proclamation to Japan; presumably, the one criticized by Hull (above) which included language about the emperor. Presumably the clarified warning would be issued prior to the use of the bomb; if the Japanese persisted in fighting then “the full force of our new weapons should be brought to bear” and a “heavier” warning would be issued backed by the “actual entrance of the Russians in the war.” Possibly, as Malloy has argued, Stimson was motivated by concerns about using the bomb against civilians and cities, but his latest proposal would meet resistance at Potsdam from Byrnes and other. [34]

Document 38

IV. The Japanese Search for Soviet Mediation   Documents 39A-B: Magic

Document 39A

National Security Agency Mandatory declassification review release.

Beginning in September 1940, U.S. military intelligence began to decrypt routinely, under the “Purple” code-name, the intercepted cable traffic of the Japanese Foreign Ministry. Collectively the decoded messages were known as “Magic.” How this came about is explained in an internal history of pre-war and World War II Army and Navy code-breaking activities prepared by William F. Friedman , a central figure in the development of U.S. government cryptology during the 20 th century. The National Security Agency kept the ‘Magic” diplomatic and military summaries classified for many years and did not release the entire series for 1942 through August 1945 until the early 1990s. [36]

Document 39B

Record Group 457, Records of the National Security Agency/Central Security Service, “Magic” Diplomatic Summaries 1942-1945, box 18.

Document 40

RG 165, Army Operations OPD Executive File #17, Item 13 (copy courtesy of J. Samuel Walker)

Document 41

Record Group 457, Records of the National Security Agency/Central Security Service, “Magic” Diplomatic Summaries 1942-1945, box 18

Document 42

Document 43

Takashi Itoh, ed., Sokichi Takagi: Nikki to Joho [Sokichi Takagi: Diary and Documents] (Tokyo, Japan: Misuzu-Shobo, 2000), 916-917 [Translation by Hikaru Tajima]

Document 44

L.D. Riabev, ed., Atomnyi Proekt SSSR (Moscow: izd MFTI, 2002), Volume 1, Part 2, 335-336

This 10 July 1945 letter from NKVD director V. N. Merkulov to Beria is an example of Soviet efforts to collect inside information on the Manhattan Project, although not all the detail was accurate. Merkulov reported that the United States had scheduled the test of a nuclear device for that same day, although the actual test took place 6 days later. According to Merkulov, two fissile materials were being produced: element-49 (plutonium), and U-235; the test device was fueled by plutonium. The Soviet source reported that the weight of the device was 3 tons (which was in the ball park) and forecast an explosive yield of 5 kilotons. That figure was based on underestimates by Manhattan Project scientists: the actual yield of the test device was 20 kilotons.

Document 45

RG 77, MED Records, Top Secret Documents, File 5e (copy from microfilm)

An elated message from Harrison to Stimson reported the success of the Trinity Test of a plutonium implosion weapon. The light from the explosion could been seen “from here [Washington, D.C.] to “high hold” [Stimson’s estate on Long Island—250 miles away]” and it was so loud that Harrison could have heard the “screams” from Washington, D.C. to “my farm” [in Upperville, VA, 50 miles away] [42]

Document 46

RG 77, MED Records, Top Secret Documents, File no. 4 (copy from microfilm)

Document 47

Barton J. Bernstein, “Truman at Potsdam: His Secret Diary,” Foreign Service Journal, July/August 1980, excerpts, used with author’s permission. [44]

Some years after Truman’s death, a hand-written diary that he kept during the Potsdam conference surfaced in his personal papers. For convenience, Barton Bernstein’s rendition is provided here but linked here are the scanned versions of Truman’s handwriting on the National Archives’ website (for 15-30 July).

Document 48

An important question that Stimson discussed with Marshall, at Truman’s request, was whether Soviet entry into the war remained necessary to secure Tokyo’s surrender. Marshall was not sure whether that was so although Stimson privately believed that the atomic bomb would provide enough to force surrender (see entry for July 23). This entry has been cited by all sides of the controversy over whether Truman was trying to keep the Soviets out of the war. [46] During the meeting on August 24, discussed above, Stimson gave his reasons for taking Kyoto off the atomic target list: destroying that city would have caused such “bitterness” that it could have become impossible “to reconcile the Japanese to us in that area rather than to the Russians.” Stimson vainly tried to preserve language in the Potsdam Declaration designed to assure the Japanese about “the continuance of their dynasty” but received Truman’s assurance that such a consideration could be conveyed later through diplomatic channels (see entry for July 24). Hasegawa argues that Truman realized that the Japanese would refuse a demand for unconditional surrender without a proviso on a constitutional monarchy and that “he needed Japan’s refusal to justify the use of the atomic bomb.” [47]

Document 49

Clemson University Libraries, Special Collections, Clemson, SC; Mss 243, Walter J. Brown Papers, box 10, folder 12, Byrnes, James F.: Potsdam, Minutes, July-August 1945

The degree to which the typed-up version reflects the original is worth investigating. In any event, historians have used information from the diary to support various interpretations. For example, Bernstein cites the entries for 20 and 24 July to argue that “American leaders did not view Soviet entry as a substitute for the bomb” but that the latter “would be so powerful, and the Soviet presence in Manchuria so militarily significant, that there was no need for actual Soviet intervention in the war.” For Brown's diary entry of 3 August 9 1945 historians have developed conflicting interpretations (See discussion of document 57). [48]

Document 50

Document 51

Naval Historical Center, Operational Archives, James Forrestal Diaries

Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal was a regular recipient of “Magic” intercept reports; this substantial entry reviews the dramatic Sato-Togo exchanges covered in the 22 July “Magic” summary (although Forrestal misdated Sato’s cable as “first of July” instead of the 21 st ). In contrast to Alperovitz’s argument that Forrestal tried to modify the terms of unconditional surrender to give the Japanese an out, Frank sees Forrestal’s account of the Sato-Togo exchange as additional evidence that senior U.S. officials understood that Tokyo was not on the “cusp of surrender.” [49]

Document 52

Joseph E. Davies Papers, Library of Congress, Manuscripts Division, box 19, 29 July 1945

VII. Debates among the Japanese – Late July/Early August 1945

Document 53

In the Potsdam Declaration the governments of China, Great Britain, and the United States) demanded the “unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces. “The alternative is prompt and utter destruction.” The next day, in response to questions from journalists about the government’s reaction to the ultimatum, Prime Minister Suzuki apparently said that “We can only ignore [ mokusatsu ] it. We will do our utmost to complete the war to the bitter end.” That, Bix argues, represents a “missed opportunity” to end the war and spare the Japanese from continued U.S. aerial attacks. [51] Togo’s private position was more nuanced than Suzuki’s; he told Sato that “we are adopting a policy of careful study.” That Stalin had not signed the declaration (Truman and Churchill did not ask him to) led to questions about the Soviet attitude. Togo asked Sato to try to meet with Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov as soon as possible to “sound out the Russian attitude” on the declaration as well as Japan’s end-the-war initiative. Sato cabled Togo earlier that he saw no point in approaching the Soviets on ending the war until Tokyo had “concrete proposals.” “Any aid from the Soviets has now become extremely doubtful.”

Document 54

Document 55

Document 56

Document 57

Document 58

RG 457, Summaries of Intercepted Japanese Messages (“Magic” Far East Summary, March 20, 1942 – October 2, 1945), box 7, SRS 491-547

Document 59

VIII. The Execution Order   Documents 60A-D: These messages convey the process of creating and transmitting the execution order to bomb Hiroshima. Possibly not wanting to take responsibility for the first use of nuclear weapons, Army Air Force commanders sought formal authorization from Chief of Staff Marshall who was then in Potsdam

Document 60A

RG 77, MED Records, Top Secret Documents, Files no. 5b and 5e (copies from microfilm)

These messages convey the process of creating and transmitting the execution order to bomb Hiroshima.  Possibly not wanting to take responsibility for the first use of nuclear weapons, Army Air Force commanders sought formal authorization from Chief of Staff Marshall who was then in Potsdam. [55] On 22 July Marshall asked Deputy Chief of Staff Thomas Handy to prepare a draft; General Groves wrote one which went to Potsdam for Marshall’s approval. Colonel John Stone, an assistant to commanding General of the Army Air Forces Henry H. “Hap” Arnold, had just returned from Potsdam and updated his boss on the plans as they had developed. On 25 July Marshall informed Handy that Secretary of War Stimson had approved the text; that same day, Handy signed off on a directive which ordered the use of atomic weapons on Japan, with the first weapon assigned to one of four possible targets—Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata, or Nagasaki. “Additional bombs will be delivery on the [targets] as soon as made ready by the project staff.”

Document 60B

See description of document 60A.

Document 60C

Document 60D

Document 60E

Document 61

RG 77, MED Records, Top Secret Documents, File no. 5

With more information on the Alamogordo test available, Groves provided Marshall with detail on the destructive power of atomic weapons. Barton J. Bernstein has observed that Groves’ recommendation that troops could move into the “immediate explosion area” within a half hour demonstrates the prevalent lack of top-level knowledge of the dangers of nuclear weapons effects. [56] Groves also provided the schedule for the delivery of the weapons: the components of the gun-type bomb to be used on Hiroshima had arrived on Tinian, while the parts of the second weapon to be dropped were leaving San Francisco. By the end of November over ten weapons would be available, presumably in the event the war had continued.

Document 62A

RG 77, Tinian Files, April-December 1945, box 21 (copies courtesy of Barton Bernstein)

Document 62B

See description of document 62A.

Document 62C

Document 63

RG 77, MED Records, Top Secret Documents, File no. 5b (copy from microfilm)

Document 64

Clemson University Libraries, Special Collections, Clemson, SC; Mss 243, Walter J. Brown Papers, box 68, folder 13, “Transcript/Draft B

Returning from the Potsdam Conference, sailing on the U.S.S. Augusta , Truman learned about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and announced it twice, first to those in the wardroom (socializing/dining area for commissioned officers), and then to the sailors’ mess. Still unaware of radiation effects, Truman emphasized the explosive yield. Later, he met with Secretary of State Byrnes and they discussed the Manhattan Project’s secrecy and the huge expenditures. Truman, who had been chair of the Senate Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program, said that “only on the appeal of Secretary of War Stimson did he refrain and let the War Department continue with the experiment unmolested.”

Document 65

A. Zolotarev, ed., Sovetsko-Iaponskaia Voina 1945 Goda: Istoriia Voenno-Politicheskogo Protivoborstva Dvukh Derzhav v 30–40e Gody (Moscow: Terra, 1997 and 2000), Vol. 7 (1), 340-341.

Document 66

Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Papers of W. Averell Harriman, box 181, Chron File Aug 5-9, 1945.

Documents 67A-B: Early High-level Reactions to the Hiroshima Bombing

Document 67A

Gaimusho (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) ed. Shusen Shiroku (The Historical Records of the End of the War), annotated by Jun Eto, volume 4, 57-60 [Excerpts] [Translation by Toshihiro Higuchi]

Excerpts from the Foreign Ministry's compilation about the end of the war show how news of the bombing reached Tokyo as well as how Foreign Minister's Togo initially reacted to reports about Hiroshima. When he learned of the atomic bombing from the Domei News Agency, Togo believed that it was time to give up and advised the cabinet that the atomic attack provided the occasion for Japan to surrender on the basis of the Potsdam Declaration. Togo could not persuade the cabinet, however, and the Army wanted to delay any decisions until it had learned what had happened to Hiroshima. When the Foreign Minister met with the Emperor, Hirohito agreed with him; he declared that the top priority was an early end to the war, although it would be acceptable to seek better surrender terms--probably U.S. acceptance of a figure-head emperor--if it did not interfere with that goal. In light of those instructions, Togo and Prime Minister Suzuki agreed that the Supreme War Council should meet the next day. [59a]

Document 67B

Takashi Itoh, ed., Sokichi Takagi: Nikki to Joho [Sokichi Takagi: Diary and Documents] (Tokyo, Japan: Misuzu-Shobo, 2000), 923-924 [Translation by Hikaru Tajima]

Document 68

Document 69

Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Papers of W. Averell Harriman, box 181, Chron File Aug 5-9, 1945

Document 70

W.A. Harriman Papers, Library of Congress, box 211, Robert Pickens Meiklejohn World War II Diary At London and Moscow March 10, 1941-February 14, 1946, Volume II (Privately printed, 1980 [Printed from hand-written originals]) (Reproduced with permission)

Document 71

Documents 72A-C: The Attack on Nagasaki

Document 72A

RG 77, Tinian Files, April-December 1945, box 20, Envelope G Tinian Files, Top Secret

Document 72B

See description of document 72A.

Document 72C

Document 73A

Library of Congress, J. Robert Oppenheimer Papers, box 60, Ramsey, Norman

Document 73B

See description of document 73A.

Document 74

Document 75

Zenshiro Hoshina, Daitoa Senso Hishi: Hoshina Zenshiro Kaiso-roku [Secret History of the Greater East Asia War: Memoir of Zenshiro Hoshina] (Tokyo, Japan: Hara-Shobo, 1975), excerpts from Section 5, “The Emperor made go-seidan [= the sacred decision] – the decision to terminate the war,” 139-149 [translation by Hikaru Tajima]

Zenshiro Hoshina, a senior naval official, attended the conference and prepared a detailed account. With Prime Minister Suzuki presiding, each of the ministers had a chance to state their views directly to Hirohito. While Army Minister Anami tacitly threatened a coup (“civil war”), the emperor accepted the majority view that the reply to the Potsdam declaration should include only one condition not the four urged by “Big Six.” Nevertheless, the condition that Hirohito accepted was not the one that foreign minister Togo had brought to the conference. What was at stake was the definition of the kokutai (national policy). Togo’s proposal would have been generally consistent with a constitutional monarchy because it defined the kokutai narrowly as the emperor and the imperial household. What Hirohito accepted, however, was a proposal by the extreme nationalist Kiichiro Hiranuma which drew upon prevailing understandings of the kokutai : the “mythical notion” that the emperor was a living god. “This was the affirmation of the emperor’s theocratic powers, unencumbered by any law, based on Shinto gods in antiquity, and totally incompatible with a constitutional monarchy.” Thus, the Japanese response to the Potsdam declaration opposed “any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of his Majesty as a sovereign ruler.” This proved to be unacceptable to the Truman administration. [63]

Document 76

Document 77A

The first Japanese surrender offer was intercepted shortly before Tokyo broadcast it. This issue of the diplomatic summary also includes Togo’s account of his notification of the Soviet declaration of war, reports of Soviet military operations in the Far East, and intercepts of French diplomatic traffic.

Document 77B

A full translation of the surrender offer was circulated separately. The translations differ but they convey the sticking point that prevented U.S. acceptance: Tokyo’s condition that the allies not make any “demand which prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty as a sovereign ruler.”

Document 78

Papers of Henry A. Wallace, Special Collections Department, University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City, Iowa (copy courtesy of Special Collections Department)

Note: The second page of the diary entry includes a newspaper clipping of the Associated Press’s transmission of the Byrnes note. Unfortunately, AP would not authorize the Archive to reproduce this item without payment. Therefore, we are publishing an excised version of the entry, with a link to the Byrnes note .

Document 79

Document 80

Stimson’s account of the events of 10 August focused on the debate over the reply to the Japanese note, especially the question of the Emperor’s status. The U.S. reply , drafted during the course of the day, did not explicitly reject the note but suggested that any notion about the “prerogatives” of the Emperor would be superceded by the concept that all Japanese would be “Subject to the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers.” The language was ambiguous enough to enable Japanese readers, upon Hirohito’s urging, to believe that they could decide for themselves the Emperor’s future role. Stimson accepted the language believing that a speedy reply to the Japanese would allow the United States to “get the homeland into our hands before the Russians could put in any substantial claim to occupy and help rule it.” If the note had included specific provision for a constitutional monarchy, Hasegawa argues, it would have “taken the wind out of the sails” of the military faction and Japan might have surrendered several days earlier, on August 11 or 12 instead of August 14. [65]

Document 81

Clemson University Libraries, Special Collections, Clemson, SC; Mss 243, Walter Brown Papers, box 68, folder 13, “Transcript/Draft B

Brown recounted Byrnes’ debriefing of the 10 August White House meeting on the Japanese peace offer, an account which differed somewhat from that in the Stimson diary. According to what Byrnes told Brown, Truman, Stimson, and Leahy favored accepting the Japanese note, but Byrnes objected that the United States should “go [no] further than we were willing to go at Potsdam.” Stimson’s account of the meeting noted Byrnes’ concerns (“troubled and anxious”) about the Japanese note and implied that he (Stimson) favored accepting it, but did not picture the debate as starkly as Browns's did.

Document 82

George C. Marshall Papers, George C. Marshall Library, Lexington, VA (copy courtesy of Barton J. Bernstein)

Groves informed General Marshall that he was making plans for the use of a third atomic weapon sometime after 17 August, depending on the weather. With Truman having ordered a halt to the atomic bombings [See document 78], Marshall wrote on Grove's memo that the bomb was “not to be released over Japan without express authority from the President.”

Document 83

Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Papers of W. Averell Harriman, box 181, Chron File Aug 10-12, 1945

Document 84

Takashi Itoh, ed., Sokichi Takagi: Nikki to Joho [Sokichi Takagi: Diary and Documents] (Tokyo, Japan: Misuzu-Shobo, 2000), 926-927 [Translation by Hikaru Tajima]

Document 85

National Archives, RG 165, Army Operations OPD, Executive Files 1940-1945, box 12, Exec #2

Document 86

Gaimusho [Ministry of Foreign Affairs], ed., Shusen Shiroku [Historical Record of the End of the War] (Tokyo: Hokuyosha, 1977-1978), vol. 5, 27-35 [Translated by Toshihiro Higuchi]

The Byrnes Note did not break the stalemate at the cabinet level. An account of the cabinet debates on August 13 prepared by Information Minister Toshiro Shimamura showed the same divisions as before; Anami and a few other ministers continued to argue that the Allies threatened the kokutai and that setting the four conditions (no occupation, etc.) did not mean that the war would continue. Nevertheless, Anami argued, “We are still left with some power to fight.” Suzuki, who was working quietly with the peace party, declared that the Allied terms were acceptable because they gave a “dim hope in the dark” of preserving the emperor. At the end of the meeting, he announced that he would report to Hirohito and ask him to make another “Sacred Judgment”. Meanwhile, junior Army officers plotted a coup to thwart the plans for surrender. [68]

Document 87

George C. Marshall Library, Lexington, VA, George C. Marshall Papers (copy courtesy of Barton J. Bernstein)

Document 88

Document 89

Hiroshi [Kaian) Shimomura, Shusenki [Account of the End of the War] (Tokyo, Kamakura Bunko, [1948], 148-152 [Translated by Toshihiro Higuchi]

Frightened by the rapid movement of Soviet forces into Manchuria and worried that the army might launch a coup, the peace party set in motion a plan to persuade Hirohito to meet with the cabinet and the “Big Six” to resolve the stalemate over the response to the Allies. Japan was already a day late in responding to the Byrnes Note and Hirohito agreed to move quickly. At 10:50 a.m., he met with the leadership at the bomb shelter in his palace. This account, prepared by Director of Information Shimomura, conveys the drama of the occasion (as well as his interest in shifting the blame for the debacle to the Army). After Suzuki gave the war party--Umeda, Toyoda, and Anami--an opportunity to present their arguments against accepting the Byrnes Note, he asked the emperor to speak.

Hirohito asked the leadership to accept the Note, which he believed was “well intentioned” on the matter of the “national polity” (by leaving open a possible role for the Emperor). Arguing that continuing the war would reduce the nation “to ashes,” his words about “bearing the unbearable” and sadness over wartime losses and suffering prefigured the language that Hirohito would use in his public announcement the next day. According to Bix, “Hirohito's language helped to transform him from a war to a peace leader, from a cold, aloof monarch to a human being who cared for his people” but “what chiefly motivated him … was his desire to save a politically empowered throne with himself on it.” [70]

Hirohito said that he would make a recording of the surrender announcement so that the nation could hear it. That evening army officers tried to seize the palace and find Hirohito’s recording, but the coup failed. Early the next day, General Anami committed suicide. On the morning of August 15, Hirohito broadcast the message to the nation (although he never used the word “surrender”). A few weeks later, on September 2, 1945 Japanese representatives signed surrender documents on the USS Missouri , in Tokyo harbor. [71]

Document 90

Document 91

The British National Archives, Records of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, FO 800/461

With the Japanese surrender announcement not yet in, President Truman believed that another atomic bombing might become necessary. After a White House meeting on 14 August, British Minister John Balfour reported that Truman had “remarked sadly that he now had no alternative but to order an atomic bomb to be dropped on Tokyo.” This was likely emotional thinking spurred by anxiety and uncertainty. Truman was apparently not considering the fact that Tokyo was already devastated by fire bombing and that an atomic bombing would have killed the Emperor, which would have greatly complicated the process of surrender. Moreover, he may not have known that the third bomb was still in the United States and would not be available for use for nearly another week. [73] As it turned out, a few hours later, at 4:05 p.m., the White House received the Japanese surrender announcement.

Document 92

Department of Energy Open-Net

Two scientists at Oak Ridge’s Health Division, Henshaw and Coveyou, saw a United Press report in the Knoxville News Sentinel about radiation sickness caused by the bombings. Victims who looked healthy weakened, “for unknown reasons” and many died. Lacking direct knowledge of conditions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Henshaw and Coveyou had their own data on the biological effects of radiation and could make educated guesses. After reviewing the impact of various atomic bomb effects--blast, heat, flash radiation (prompt effects from gamma and neutron radiation), and radiation from radioactive substances--they concluded that “it seems highly plausible that a great many persons were subjected to lethal and sub-lethal dosages of radiation in areas where direct blast effects were possibly non-lethal.” It was “probable,” therefore, that radiation “would produce increments to the death rate and “even more probable” that a “great number of cases of sub-lethal exposures to radiation have been suffered.” [74]

Document 93

RG 77, MED Records, Top Secret Documents, File no. 5b

Document 94A

RG 77, Tinian Files, April-December 1945, box 17, Envelope B

See description of document 94B

Document 94B

XII. Eisenhower and McCloy’s Views on the Bombings and Atomic Weapons

Document 95

Document 96

Harry S. Truman Library, President's Secretary's Files, Speech Files, 1945-1953, copy on U.S. National Archives Web Site

On 15 December, President Truman spoke about the atomic bombings in his speech at the annual dinner of the Gridiron Club, organized by bureau chiefs and other leading figures of print media organizations. Besides Truman, guests included New York Governor Thomas Dewey (Republican presidential candidate in 1944 and 1948), foreign ambassadors, members of the cabinet and the Supreme Court, the military high command, and various senators and representatives. The U.S. Marine Band provided music for the dinner and for the variety show that was performed by members of the press. [79]

Truman characterized the Potsdam Declaration as a “fair warning,” but it was an ultimatum. Plainly he was troubled by the devastation and suffering caused by the bombings, but he found it justifiable because it saved the lives of U.S. troops. His estimate of 250,000 U.S. soldiers spared far exceeded that made by General Marshall in June 1945, which was in the range of 31,000 (comparable to the Battle of Luzon) [See Document 26]. By citing an inflated casualty figure, the president was giving a trial run for the rationale that would become central to official and semi-official discourse about the bombings during the decades ahead. [80]

Despite Truman’s claim that he made “the most terrible” decision at Potsdam, he assigned himself more responsibility than the historical record supports. On the basic decision, he had simply concurred with the judgments of Stimson, Groves, and others that the bomb would be used as soon as it was available for military use. As for targeting, however, he had a more significant role. At Potsdam, Stimson raised his objections to targeting Japan’s cultural capital, Kyoto, and Truman supported the secretary’s efforts to drop that city from the target list [See Documents 47 and 48]. [81]

[1] . The World Wide Web includes significant documentary resources on these events. The Truman Library has published a helpful collection of archival documents , some of which are included in the present collection. A collection of transcribed documents is Gene Dannen’s “ Atomic Bomb: Decision .” For a print collection of documents, see Dennis Merrill ed.,  Documentary History of the Truman Presidency: Volume I: The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb on Japan  (University Publications of America, 1995). A more recent collection of documents, along with a bibliography, narrative, and chronology, is Michael Kort’s  The Columbia Guide to Hiroshima and the Bomb  (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007). An important  on-line collection focuses on the air-raids of Japanese cities and bases, providing valuable context for the atomic attacks.

[2] . For the early criticisms and their impact on Stimson and other former officials, see Barton J. Bernstein, “Seizing the Contested Terrain of Early Nuclear History: Stimson, Conant, and Their Allies Explain the Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb,”  Diplomatic History  17 (1993): 35-72, and James Hershberg,  James B. Conant: Harvard to Hiroshima and the Making of the Nuclear Age  (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1995), 291-301.

For Stimson’s article, see “The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb,”  Harper’s  194 (February 1947): 97-107. Social critic Dwight MacDonald published trenchant criticisms immediately after Hiroshima-Nagasaki; see  Politics Past: Essays in Political Criticism  (New York: Viking, 1972), 169-180.

[3] . The proposed script for the Smithsonian exhibition can be seen at Philipe Nobile,

Judgment at the Smithsonian  (New York: Matthews and Company, 1995), pp. 1-127. For reviews of the controversy, see Barton J. Bernstein, “The Struggle Over History: Defining the Hiroshima Narrative,” ibid., 128-256, and Charles T. O’Reilly and William A. Rooney,  The Enola Gay and The Smithsonian  (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2005).

[4] . For the extensive literature, see the references in J. Samuel Walker , Prompt and Utter Destruction: Truman and the Use of Atomic Bombs against Japan,  Third Edition (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016) at 131-136, as well as Walker’s, “Recent Literature on Truman’s Atomic Bomb Decision: A Search for Middle Ground,”  Diplomatic History  29 (April 2005): 311-334. For more recent contributions, see Sean Malloy,  Atomic Tragedy: Henry L. Stimson and the Decision to Use the Bomb Against Japan  (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008), Andrew Rotter,  Hiroshima: The World's Bomb  (New York: Oxford, 2008), Campbell Craig and Sergey Radchenko,  The Atomic Bomb and the Origins of the Cold War  (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2008), Wilson D. Miscamble,  The Most Controversial Decision: Truman, the Atomic Bombs, and the Defeat of Japan  (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011). Also important to take into account is John Dower’s extensive discussion of Hiroshima/Nagasaki in context of the U.S. fire-bombings of Japanese cities in  Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor/Hiroshima/9-11/Iraq  (New York, W. Norton, 2010), 163-285.

[5] . The editor particularly benefited from the source material cited in the following works: Robert S. Norris,  Racing for the Bomb: General Leslie S. Groves, The Manhattan Project’s Indispensable Man  (South Royalton, VT: Steerforth Press, 2002); Gar Alperovitz,  The Decision to Use the Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth  (New York: Alfred E. Knopf, 1995); Richard B. Frank , Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire  (New York: Random House, 1999), Martin Sherwin,  A World Destroyed: Hiroshima and the Origins of the Arm Race  (New York, Vintage Books, 1987), and as already mentioned, Hasegawa’s  Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan  (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2005 ).  Barton J. Bernstein’s numerous articles in scholarly publications (many of them are listed in Walker’s assessment of the literature) constitute an invaluable guide to primary sources. An article that Bernstein published in 1995, “The Atomic Bombings Reconsidered,”  Foreign Affairs  74 (1995), 135-152, nicely summarizes his thinking on the key issues.   Noteworthy publications since 2015 include Michael D. Gordin and G. John Ikenberry, eds., The Age of Hiroshim a (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019); Sheldon Garon, “On the Transnational Destruction of Cities: What Japan and the United States Learned from the Bombing of Britain and Germany in the Second World War,” Past and Present 247 (2020): 235-271; Katherine E. McKinney, Scott Sagan, and Allen S. Weiner, “Why the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima Would Be Illegal Today,” The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist s 76 (2020); Gregg Mitchell, The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood and America Learned  to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (New York: The New Press, 2020); Steve Olson, The Apocalypse Factory: Plutonium and the Making of the Atomic Age (New York: W.W. Norton, 2020); Neil J. Sullivan, The Prometheus Bomb: The Manhattan Project and Government in the Dark  (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press/Potomac Books, 2016); Alex Wellerstein; Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States,  (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, forthcoming, 2020), a memoir by a Hiroshima survivor, Taniguchi Sumitero, The Atomic  Bomb on My Back: A Life Story of Survival and Activism (Montpelier, VT: Rootstock Publishing, 2020), and a collection of interviews, Cynthia C. Kelly, ed., The Manhattan Project: The Birth of the Atomic Bomb in the Words of Its Creators, Eyewitnesses, and Historians (Black Dog & Leventhal, 2020).

[6] . Malloy (2008), 49-50. For more on the Uranium Committee, the decision to establish the S-1 Committee, and the overall context, see James G. Hershberg , James B. Conant: Harvard to Hiroshima and the Making of the Nuclear Age  (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1995), 140-154.

[7] . Sean Malloy, “`A Very Pleasant Way to Die’: Radiation Effects and the Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb against Japan,”  Diplomatic History  36 (2012), especially 523. For an important study of how contemporary officials and scientists looked at the atomic bomb prior to first use in Japan, see Michael D. Gordin,  Five Days in August: How World War II Became a Nuclear War  (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007).

[8] . Norris, 169.

[9] . Malloy (2008), 57-58.

[10] . See also Norris, 362.

[11] . For discussion of the importance of this memorandum, see Sherwin, 126-127, and Hershberg , James B. Conant , 203-207.

[12] . Alperovitz, 662; Bernstein (1995), 139; Norris, 377.

[13] . Quotation and statistics from Thomas R. Searle, “`It Made a Lot of Sense to Kill Skilled Workers’: The Firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945,  The Journal of Military History  55 (2002):103. More statistics and a detailed account of the raid is in Ronald Schaffer,  Wings of Judgment: American Bombing in World War II  (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 130-137.

[14] . Searle, “`It Made a Lot of Sense to Kill Skilled Workers,’” 118. For detailed background on the Army Air Force’s incendiary bombing planning, see Schaffer (1985) 107-127. On Stimson, see Schaffer (1985), 179-180 and Malloy (2008), 54. For a useful discussion of the firebombing of Tokyo and the atomic bombings, see Alex Wellerstein, “Tokyo vs. Hiroshima,”  Restricted Data: The Nuclear Secrecy Blog ,  22 September 2014

[15] . See for example, Bernstein (1995), 140-141.

[16] . For useful discussion of this meeting and the other Target Committee meetings, see Norris, 382-386.

[17] . Malloy, “A Very Pleasant Way to Die,” 531-534.

[18] . Schaffer,  Wings of Judgment , 143-146.

[19] . Alperovitz argues that the possibility of atomic diplomacy was central to the thinking of Truman and his advisers, while Bernstein, who argues that Truman’s primary objective was to end the war quickly, suggests that the ability to “cow other nations, notably the Soviet Union” was a “bonus” effect. See Bernstein (1995), 142.

[20] . Alperovitz, 147; Robert James Maddox,  Weapons for Victory: The Hiroshima Decision Fifty Years Later  (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1995), 52; Gabiel Kolko,  The Politics of War: The World and United States Foreign Policy, 1943-1945  (New York: Pantheon Books, 1990), 421-422. As Alperovitz notes, the Davies papers include variant diary entries and it is difficult to know which are the most accurate.

[21] . Malloy (2008), 112

[21A] . Vincent Jones, Manhattan: The Army and the Atomic Bomb (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1985), 529.

[22] . Bernstein (1995), 146. See also Barton J. Bernstein, “Looking Back: Gen. Marshall and the Atomic Bombing of Japanese Cities,” Arms Control Today , November 2015.

[23] . Bernstein (1995), 144. See also Malloy (2008), at 116-117, including the argument that 1) Stimson was deceiving himself by accepting the notion that a “vital war plant …surrounded by workers’ houses” was a legitimate military target, and 2) that Groves was misleading Stimson by withholding the Target Committee’s conclusions that the target would be a city center.

[24] . Walker (2005), 320.

[25] . Frank Costigliola,  France and the United States: The Cold Alliance Since World War II  (New York, Twayne, 1992), 38-39.

[26] . Barton J. Bernstein, Introduction to Helen S. Hawkins et al. editors,  Toward a Livable World: Leo Szilard and the Crusade for Nuclear Arms Control  (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987), xxx-xxv; Sherwin, 210-215.

[27] . Herbert P. Bix,  Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan  (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2000), 523.

[28] . Walker (2005), 319-320.

[29] . For a review of the debate on casualty estimates, see Walker (2005), 315, 317-318, 321, 323, and 324-325.

[30] . Hasegawa, 105; Alperovitz, 67-72; Forrest Pogue,  George C. Marshall: Statesman, 1945-1959  (New York: Viking, 1987), 18. Pogue only cites the JCS transcript of the meeting; presumably, an interview with a participant was the source of the McCloy quote.

[31] . Alperovitz, 226; Bernstein, “Understanding the Atomic Bomb and the Japanese Surrender,”  Diplomatic History  19 (1995), 237, note 22.

[32] . Malloy (2008), 123-124.

[33] . Alperovitz, 242, 245; Frank, 219.

[34] . Malloy (2008), 125-127.

[35] . Bernstein, introduction,  Toward a Livable World , xxxvii-xxxviii.

[36] . “Magic” summaries for post-August 1945 remain classified at the National Security Agency. Information from the late John Taylor, National Archives. For background on Magic and the “Purple” code, see John Prados,  Combined Fleet Decoded: The Secret History of American Intelligence and the Japanese Navy in World War II (  New York: Random House, 1995), 161-172 and David Kahn,  The Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing  (New York: Scribner, 1996), 1-67.

[37] . Alperovitz, 232-238.

[38] . Maddox, 83-84; Hasegawa, 126-128. See also Walker (2005), 316-317.

[39] . Hasegawa, 28, 121-122.

[40] . Peter Grose,  Gentleman Spy: The Life of Allen Dulles  (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994), 170-174, 248-249.

[41] . David Holloway, “Barbarossa and the Bomb: Two Cases of Soviet Intelligence in World War II,” in Jonathan Haslam and Karina Urbach, eds.,  Secret Intelligence in the European States System, 1918-1989  (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014), 63-64. For the inception of the Soviet nuclear program and the role of espionage in facilitating it, see Holloway,  Stalin and the Bomb  (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1994).

[42] . For the distances, see Norris, 407.

[43] . For on-line resources on the first atomic test .

[44] . Bernstein’s detailed commentary on Truman’s diary has not been reproduced here except for the opening pages where he provides context and background.

[45] . Frank, 258; Bernstein (1995), 147; Walker (2005), 322. See also Alex Wellerstein’s “ The Kyoto Misconception ”

[46] . Maddox, 102; Alperovitz, 269-270; Hasegawa, 152-153.

[47] . Hasegawa, 292.

[48] . Bernstein, “Understanding the Atomic Bomb and the Japanese Surrender,”  Diplomatic History  19 (1995), 146-147; Alperovitz, 415; Frank, 246.

[49] . Alperovitz, 392; Frank, 148.

[50] . Alperovitz, 281-282. For Davies at Potsdam, see Elizabeth Kimball MacLean,  Joseph E. Davies: Envoy to the Soviets  (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1992), 151-166

[51] . Hasegawa, 168; Bix, 518.

[52] . Bix, 490, 521.

[53] . Alperovitz, 415; Frank, 246.

[54] . Frank, 273-274; Bernstein, “The Alarming Japanese Buildup on Southern Kyushu, Growing U.S. Fears and Counterfactual Analysis: Would the Planned November 1945 Invasion of Southern Kyushu Have Occurred?”  Pacific Historical Review  68 (1999): 561-609.

[55] . Maddox, 105.

[56] . Barton J. Bernstein, "'Reconsidering the 'Atomic General': Leslie R. Groves,"  The Journal of Military History  67 (July 2003): 883-920. See also Malloy, “A Very Pleasant Way to Die,” 539-540.

[57] . For casualty figures and the experience of people on the ground, see Frank, 264-268 and 285-286, among many other sources. Drawing on contemporary documents and journals, Masuji Ibuse’s novel  Black Rain  (Tokyo, Kodansha, 1982) provides an unforgettable account of the bombing of Hiroshima and its aftermath. For early U.S. planning to detonate the weapon at a height designed to maximize destruction from mass fires and other effects, see Alex Wellerstein, “ The Height of the Bomb .”

[58] . Sadao Asada, “The Shock of the Atomic Bomb and Japan’s Decision to Surrender: A Reconsideration,”  Pacific Historical Review  67 (1998): 101-148; Bix, 523; Frank, 348; Hasegawa, 298. Bix appears to have moved toward a position close to Hasegawa’s; see Bix, “Japan's Surrender Decision and the Monarchy: Staying the Course in an Unwinnable War,”  Japan Focus  . For emphasis on the “shock” of the atomic bomb, see also Lawrence Freedman and Saki Dockrill, “Hiroshima: A Strategy of Shock,” in Saki Dockrill, ed.,  From Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima : the Second World War in Asia and the Pacific, 1941-1945  (New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1994), 191-214. For more on the debate over Japan’s surrender, see Hasegawa’s important edited book,  The End of the Pacific War: A Reappraisal  (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), with major contributions by Hasegawa, Holloway, Bernstein, and Hatano.

[59] . Melvyn P. Leffler, “Adherence to Agreements: Yalta and the Experiences of the Early Cold War,”  International Security  11 (1986): 107; Holloway, “Barbarossa and the Bomb,” 65.

[59a] . For more on these developments, see Asada, "The Shock of the Atomic Bomb and Japan's Decision to Surrender: A Reconsideration," 486-488.

[60] . Hasegawa, 191-192.

[61] . Frank, 286-287; Sherwin, 233-237; Bernstein (1995), 150; Maddox, 148.

[62] . The Supreme War Council comprised the prime minister, foreign minister, army and navy ministers, and army and navy chiefs of staff; see Hasegawa, 72 .

[63] . For the maneuverings on August 9 and the role of the  kokutai , see Hasegawa, 3-4, 205-214

[64] . For Truman’s recognition of mass civilian casualties, see also his  letter to Senator Richard Russell, 9 August 1945.

[65] . Hasegawa, 295.

[66] . For “tug of war,” see Hasegawa, 226-227.

[67] . Hasegawa, 228-229, 232.

[68] . Hasegawa, 235-238.

[69] . Barton J. Bernstein, “Eclipsed by Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Early Thinking about Tactical Nuclear Weapons,”  International Security  15 (Spring 1991): 149-173; Marc Gallicchio, “After Nagasaki: General Marshall’s Plans for Tactical Nuclear Weapons in Japan,”  Prologue  23 (Winter 1991): 396-404. Letters from Robert Messer and Gar Alperovitz, with Bernstein’s response, provide insight into some of the interpretative issues. “Correspondence,”  International Security  16 (Winter 1991/1992): 214-221.

[70] . Bix, “Japan's Surrender Decision and the Monarchy: Staying the Course in an Unwinnable War,”  Japan Focus .

[71] . For Hirohito' surrender speech--the actual broadcast and a translation--see  Japan Times , August 2015.

[72] . Cited by Barton J. Bernstein, “Eclipsed by Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Early Thinking About Tactical Nuclear Weapons,”  International Security  15 (1991) at page 167. Thanks to Alex Wellerstein for the suggestion and the archival link.

[73] . For further consideration of Tokyo and more likely targets at the time, see Alex Wellerstein, “Neglected Niigata,”  Restricted Data: The Nuclear Secrecy Blog, 9 October 2015.

[74] . See Malloy, “A Very Pleasant Way to Die,” 541-542.

[75] . For Groves and the problem of radiation sickness, see Norris, 339-441, Bernstein, “Reconsidering the ‘Atomic General’: Leslie R. Groves,”  Journal of Military History  67 (2003), 907-908, and Malloy, “A Very Pleasant Way to Die,” 513-518 and 539-542

[76] . See Janet Farrell Brodie, “Radiation Secrecy and Censorship after Hiroshima and Nagasaki,”  The Journal of Social History  48 (2015): 842-864.

[77] . For Eisenhower’s statements, see  Crusade in Europe  (Garden City: Doubleday, 1948), 443, and  Mandate for Change  (Garden City: Doubleday, 1963), 312-313. Barton J. Bernstein’s 1987 article, “Ike and Hiroshima: Did He Oppose It?”  The Journal of Strategic Studies  10 (1987): 377-389, makes a case against relying on Eisenhower’s memoirs and points to relevant circumstantial evidence. For a slightly different perspective, see Malloy (2007), 138

[78] . Cited in Barton J. Bernstein, “Truman and the A-Bomb: Targeting Noncombatants, Using the Bomb, and His Defending the "Decision,”  The Journal of Military History  62 (1998), at page 559. Thanks to Alex Wellerstein for the suggestion and the archival link.

[79] . “Truman Plays Part of Himself in Skit at Gridiron Dinner,” and “List of Members and Guests at the Gridiron Show,”  The Washington Post , 16 December 1945.

[80] . For varied casualty figures cited by Truman and others after the war, see Walker,  Prompt and Utter Destruction: Truman and the Use of Atomic Bombs Against Japan , 101-102.

[81] . See also ibid., 59.

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Ending nuclear weapons before they end us: current challenges and paths to avoiding a public health catastrophe

Tilman a. ruff.

School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, PO Box 2285, Brighton North, VIC 3186 Australia

The United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW)—an important planetary health good—entered into legal force in January 2021. Evidence of the consequences of nuclear war, particularly the global climatic and nutritional effects of the abrupt ice age conditions from even a relatively small regional nuclear war, indicates that these are more severe than previously thought. None of the nine nuclear-armed states is disarming; instead, all invest enormously in new and more hazardous nuclear weapons. Nor has any of the 32 states claiming reliance on another state's nuclear weapons yet ended such reliance. These factors, abrogation of existing nuclear arms control agreements, policies of first nuclear use and war fighting, growing armed conflicts worldwide, and increasing use of information and cyberwarfare, exacerbate dangers of nuclear war. Evidence-based advocacy by health professionals on the planetary health imperative to eliminate nuclear weapons has never been more urgent.

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) is now in legal force

This article reviews current evidence, challenges, and opportunities towards controlling the most acute existential threat facing humankind and the biosphere: growing danger of nuclear war. During the years 2020 and 2021, dramatic explosion of the COVID-19 pandemic and rapidly accelerating severity and frequency of extreme weather and disasters caused by global heating have painfully underscored the necessity for public policies to be firmly grounded in evidence, especially those related to catastrophic and existential risks. Sadly, in many jurisdictions this is inadequately the case, exacerbating adverse health effects and risks. For nuclear weapons, the gap between government policy and the evidence on consequences and risks is a gaping chasm in 41 nations that claim some unique right to threaten people worldwide with indiscriminate nuclear violence; or to assist others to do so. While the climate emergency from global heating is finally receiving substantial government, professional, and public attention worldwide, the more acute existential risk to the stable and hospitable climate needed for human and planetary health posed by nuclear weapons is not. Both demand urgent attention.

An article in these pages in 2018 titled: "The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons: a planetary health good of the highest order" [ 1 ] described this new United Nations treaty, adopted in 2017 [ 2 ], the first to comprehensively and categorically prohibit the worst weapons of mass destruction. It discussed the role of public health evidence-based advocacy in its development. When Honduras ratified the treaty (hereinafter, TPNW) on 24 October 2020, the world achieved a milestone of 50 state ratifications, signalling their readiness to be legally bound by its provisions. This triggered the treaty's formal legal entry into force 90 days later, on 22 January 2021. From this date, nations are required to fulfil their obligations under the treaty, starting 90 days after each completed its procedure for joining the treaty, thereby becoming a "State Party" to it.

By 14 December 2021, 86 countries had signed the treaty and 57 had ratified it [ 3 ]. From 2014, 127 states joined the Austrian-initiated Humanitarian Pledge [ 4 ], committing to work collaboratively to fill a legal gap: nuclear weapons as the last and only weapon of mass destruction not prohibited by an international treaty. In 2016, more than 120 states supported the development and negotiation of the treaty at each step in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) that required voting, and adoption of the treaty in 2017, then again for subsequent UNGA resolutions supporting the treaty [ 5 ]. Despite many competing priorities and fierce opposition to the TPNW from states deploying nuclear weapons, many of the supportive but not yet signatory states are likely to sign. The 31 signatory states which have not yet ratified the treaty are very likely to do so. Thus, the number of States Parties will continue to grow, and with them the legal, political, and moral force of the treaty.

The regularly scheduled at least biennial meetings of States Parties, including review conferences at least every 6 years, to further implementation, promotion, and development of the treaty will begin with the first meeting currently planned for 22–24 March 2022 in Vienna, Austria. A one-day intergovernmental humanitarian conference will precede it to review research updates on the impacts of nuclear weapons and the risks of nuclear war.

Current evidence on the consequences of nuclear war

First who assessment, 1983.

In 1983, the World Health Assembly considered the first report of an international committee of experts on the effects of nuclear war on health and health services. It endorsed the committee's conclusion: "that it is impossible to prepare health services to deal in any systematic way with the catastrophe resulting from nuclear warfare, and that nuclear weapons constitute the greatest immediate threat to the health and welfare of mankind" [ 6 ]. The committee's report states: “It is obvious that no health service in any area of the world would be capable of dealing adequately with the hundreds of thousands of people seriously injured by blast, heat or radiation from even a single 1-megaton bomb.” The committee concluded: “… the only approach to the treatment of the health effects of nuclear explosions is primary prevention of such explosions, that is, the primary prevention of atomic war” [ 7 ].

New evidence of climate impacts

In the decades since 1983 we have learned much about the multiplicity of impacts of nuclear explosions and war. The evidence grows ever clearer as to the catastrophic effects. The most important new evidence relates to climate impacts. Nuclear weapons are extremely efficient at igniting vast numbers of simultaneous fires over large areas. These would consume all flammable materials and coalesce into massive confluent fires within which no one could survive the > 800 °C heat, intense smoke, and oxygen depletion. Atmospheric scientists estimated that even the relatively small tactical size nuclear weapon exploded on Hiroshima (15 kilotonnes of high explosive equivalent) released about 1000 times as much energy in the fires it ignited as in the explosion itself [ 8 ]. In Hiroshima approximately 13 km 2 of the city burned completely. Detonation of the largest currently deployed nuclear weapons, up to five megatonnes in size, would result in a confluent megafire more than 45 km in diameter, 1600 km 2 in area [ 9 ].

Atmosphere and climate effects of regional nuclear war: the example of India–Pakistan

The scenario for regional nuclear war most often studied by atmospheric scientists is a war between India and Pakistan. This possibility is all too realistic, as the two nations have waged war four times since their independence in 1949, and mobilised up to 1,000,000 troops on two other occasions. They possess two of the world's three most rapidly growing nuclear arsenals. Both have policies which create high risks of nuclear escalation in a war between them. Violence erupts across their disputed border in Kashmir almost daily. The most recently updated scenario involves use of 250 nuclear weapons of 15, 50, or 100 kt in size [ 10 ]. These constitute less than 2% of the number of nuclear weapons worldwide; and amount to less than 1% of their explosive yield, because the average size of the 13,150 nuclear weapons is 200 kt [ 11 ].

Such a war would produce between 83 and 183 million acute casualties in cities across both nations, including 52 to 127 million deaths (depending on the size of the weapons used) [ 10 ]. Radioactive contamination, severe social and economic disruption, and people attempting to flee on an unprecedented scale would extend across South Asia and beyond. Such a war would also produce between 16 and 36 million tonnes of black carbon in sooty smoke from burning cities [ 10 ]. This smoke would loft quickly into the upper stratosphere and mesosphere, beyond the reach of clouds and precipitation in the lower atmosphere (troposphere). The sun would heat the rising smoke by 50 to 80 °C. The carbon would blanket the Earth for over a decade. It would also reduce global average surface temperatures by 3 to 6 °C, well within the range of minimum temperatures during the peak of the last ice age 20,000 years ago, 3 to 8 °C colder than present. Unevenly distributed temperature declines of 8 to 15 °C would cover much of the large North American and Eurasian land masses.

Global precipitation would also decline by up to 35%, with particular disruption of the South Asian monsoon on which food production for 1.5 billion people critically depends. Scientists expect these drier conditions and colder temperatures to be associated with cold spells and shortened frost-free growing seasons in temperate regions. An unprecedented increase in ultraviolet flux (30–100% increases during summer outside the tropics) would exacerbate these changes [ 12 ]. Stratospheric ozone would be extensively depleted, with harmful effects on plant and animal development and health in both aquatic and terrestrial environments. Even a smaller India-Pakistan nuclear war releasing 5 million tonnes of soot would produce peak global ozone loss of 25%, and up to 55% loss at higher latitudes, with recovery taking 12 years and peak increase of 40% in the ultraviolet B wavelengths associated with DNA damage [ 13 ]. Most agricultural production would cease in higher latitude regions including Canada, northern areas of Europe, Russia, China, Korea, and Japan [ 14 ].

Radioactive fallout and toxic chemical contamination from destroyed pipelines and industrial and storage sites would affect large areas of agricultural land. Social, economic, transport and trade turmoil would disrupt global distribution of fertiliser, fuel, machinery and equipment, seeds, pesticides, food storage facilities, and transport on which modern agriculture, food stocks, and distribution depend. And the consequence? The climatic changes alone would cause a decline in net primary productivity (NPP) of between 10 and 20% in the oceans and between 15 and 40% on land over multiple years [ 10 ]. NPP is the net amount of carbon per square metre per year converted into plant matter after accounting for what plants use for their own respiration. This loss would be comparable to the total current annual human use of food and fibre. Scientists continue to discover new effects that would exacerbate the harm. Recent findings indicate that various nuclear war scenarios could induce an El Niño-like pattern of unprecedented magnitude across the Pacific, with associated reductions in equatorial Pacific phytoplankton productivity of about 40% [ 15 ]. Researchers recently identified large and abrupt exacerbations in global ocean acidification as consequences of nuclear conflict including potential inability for marine calcifying organisms like shellfish and corals to maintain their shells or skeletons in a corrosive environment [ 16 ].

Devastation of food production

The world is not well prepared to withstand sustained decline in food production of such magnitude. In July 2021, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations estimated between 720 and 811 million people to be chronically malnourished in 2020, 118 million more than in 2019 [ 17 ]. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, FAO estimated the number of people experiencing moderate or severe food insecurity in 2020 at 2.37 billion, 318 million more than the previous year. Their November 2021 forecast for the 2021–22 year for global cereal stocks is equivalent to 104 days of consumption [ 18 ]. We expect more detailed country specific estimates of impacts on food production to be published in coming months. Sustained declines in global food production of such magnitude threaten over 2 billion people with starvation [ 19 ]. Epidemics of various infectious diseases would inevitably accompany famine of such unprecedented magnitude, as well as conflict within and between nations over inadequate and diminishing food reserves. The combination would likely exacerbate the human toll substantially.

Human health effects and implications

Immediate localised destruction would cause catastrophic local health impacts. Widespread health impacts would be caused by dispersed radioactive fallout and potentially an electromagnetic pulse from a high-altitude nuclear explosion that would incapacitate all civilian electrical and electronic infrastructure on a continental scale. But the major cause of casualties worldwide from a nuclear war would be from an abrupt onset of a nuclear ice age and resultant mass starvation. The ice age induced starvation findings from even a localised regional nuclear war do not support the commonly claimed theoretical basis for nuclear deterrence of mutually assured destruction . Instead, they characterise nuclear weapons as risking self-assured destruction from what amount to global suicide bombs. Nuclear weapons overwhelmingly endanger the security of all peoples and render meaningless any concept of winning a nuclear war [ 20 ]. They have no legitimate or legal military purpose.

The current risk of nuclear war

Risks of a nuclear war are growing [ 21 , 22 ]. No nuclear-armed state is currently disarming, nor engaged in nuclear disarmament negotiations. First the US, followed by Russia, abrogated hard-won treaties negotiated between them which were fruits of the end of the first Cold War, and which constrained nuclear weapons numbers and types. Together these two countries hold 90% of all nuclear weapons [ 11 ]. The treaties include the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty (eliminated short and medium-range nuclear missiles from the Soviet, then from Russian and US arsenals), the Open Skies Treaty (increased nuclear transparency), and the more recent Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (Iran nuclear deal that provided effective constraints on Iran's nuclear program until the Trump administration abrogated it). Were it not for the incoming Biden administration's quick agreement to extend the New START treaty just two days before it would otherwise have expired, there would be no treaty restraints in force in 2021 on US and Russian nuclear weapons despite an effectively resurgent Cold War.

Modernising and expanding nuclear arsenals at enormous and escalating cost

All nine nuclear-armed states are investing massively in modernising and expanding their nuclear arsenals. Modernisation means new, faster, stealthier, more flexible and accurate capacities. A number can be armed with either conventional or nuclear warheads, indistinguishable until point of impact. These changes lower the overall threshold for use of nuclear weapons [ 23 ]. Both Russia and the USA, owning between them 90% of all nuclear weapons, are comprehensively replacing and modernising their warheads, missiles and launch platforms. They are also increasing the role of nuclear weapons in their military policies, and the range of circumstances in which they might be used, including against conventional and cyber attacks [ 24 , 25 ]. Russia is testing and deploying entirely new types of nuclear weapons including nuclear-powered cruise missiles, hypersonic delivery vehicles atop ballistic missiles, and long-range nuclear torpedoes designed to explode in waters close to cities [ 25 ]. The US is producing new nuclear warheads for the first time in three decades, modernising all types of nuclear weapons—ballistic and cruise missiles, bombs delivered by aircraft, and the submarines, ships and aircraft that carry them [ 24 ]. It is also upgrading the nuclear weapons it provides to the UK and the nuclear bombs it stations in Belgium, Germany, Italy, Netherlands and Turkey [ 24 ].

Current estimates of global spending on development and production of nuclear weapons reached US$72.6 billion in 2020, an increase of $1.4 billion from 2019, even given constraints of the pandemic [ 26 ]. The total cost of nuclear weapons programs, including environmental clean-up and legacy costs, is far greater. The US spends the most on military and nuclear weapons: in FY 2021 its nuclear weapons-related costs reached US$74.75 billion [ 27 ]. Military spending consumes half of all discretionary US government spending. In the US, nuclear warhead spending is currently at an all-time record high, with projected expenditures over the next three decades of over US$2 trillion to comprehensively refurbish the nuclear arsenal and the facilities that produce nuclear weapons [ 23 ]. While Russia's military spending in 2020 ($61.7 billion) was estimated to be only 8% of that of the US ($778 billion) [ 26 ], the proportion it spends on nuclear weapons is more than 2.5 times as great as the US [ 28 ].

Opportunity costs: weapons versus United Nations and related programs

Such vast expenditures on weapons that create a hazardous legacy even in their production have enormous social, environmental, and public health opportunity costs. Estimates by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network place average total annual investment required between 2019 and 2030 to fully finance achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agreed by all nations at US$1011 billion [ 29 ]. That amounts to about half of annual military expenditures, US$1981 billion in 2020—2.6% higher than in 2019 [ 26 ]. That increase occurred despite the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated severe economic downturn, increase in poverty and food insecurity. The combined annual budgets of the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF, the United Nations itself, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the UN Office of Disarmament Affairs amount to less than 30% of direct spending on nuclear weapons [ 30 ]. Operating an F-35 nuclear-capable combat aircraft for one-hour costs as much as a nurse earns in a year (OECD average); the cost of one Virginia Class nuclear submarine could fund 9180 fully equipped ambulances; the cost of one Trident II nuclear missile could buy 17 million facemasks [ 30 ]. By September 2021, at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine had reached fewer than 3% of people in low-income countries and the WHO fell short by US$900 million in funds they needed to cover the period till March 2022 for their essential role in ending the acute phase of the pandemic—1.2% of annual direct nuclear weapons spending [ 31 ].

Doomsday clock reflects growing insecurity

Leaders of all nuclear-armed states have, in recent years, issued specific nuclear threats, with military leaders confirming their active planning to fight nuclear war [ 32 ]. In 2020, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved its authoritative Doomsday Clock to 100 s to midnight, further forward than it has ever been before, explaining that: "the international security situation is now more dangerous than it has ever been, even at the height of the Cold War." [ 33 ] In 2021 the clock hands remained in the same position, as: "the potential to stumble into nuclear war—ever present—has grown." [ 22 ] In 2019, the United States intelligence community's annual assessment to Congress of worldwide threats warned that the effects of climate change and environmental degradation increase stress on communities around the world and intensify global instability and the likelihood of conflict, increasing the danger of nuclear war [ 34 ]. Over the last decade, the number of armed conflicts has steadily grown, particularly the number of "internationalised intrastate" conflicts—within a state but involving at least one nation (disproportionately nuclear-armed nations) outside the state in conflict [ 35 ].

Cyberwarfare increases vulnerability of nuclear arms systems

Another major area of increasing risk of use of nuclear weapons is growing use of cyberwarfare by both states and non-state actors. Attacks on civilian and military nuclear facilities included extensive hacking in December 2020 of the US National Nuclear Security Administration which maintains US nuclear weapons [ 36 ]. Complex global systems of early warning, command, control, communications, and intelligence are related to nuclear weapons. They are complex, dispersed, and interlinked—and vulnerable to cyberattack. As General James Cartwright, former head of US Strategic Command stated, it: "might be possible for terrorists to hack into Russian or American command and control systems and launch nuclear missiles, with a high probability of triggering a wider nuclear conflict."[ 37 ]

British, French, Russian, and US authorities keep 2000 nuclear warheads on high alert, all mounted on delivery vehicles and ready for use within minutes of a launch order [ 11 ]. These warheads are particularly vulnerable to digital sabotage and inadvertent or unauthorised launch. Many states, including China, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Russia, and the US, engage in offensive cyber operations [ 38 ]. Buyers may include governments, government proxies, and terrorist organisations. Frequently buyers find tools in a lucrative global black and grey market offering hacking tools, especially 'Zero-day exploits'. These tools exploit software or hardware flaws and vulnerabilities for which no corrective patch yet exists [ 38 ]. Government staff, as part of their work, or moonlighting staff, or government contractors can develop offensive digital tools. Individual or organised hackers and cybercriminals, or private for-profit companies can also produce them almost anywhere. Targets of hacking and digital sabotage to date include banking and health systems, Sony Corporation, electricity grids, water treatment facilities, airports, electoral systems, oil company computer systems, uranium enrichment centrifuges, and nuclear power plants. Increasing digital sophistication of nuclear weapons and delivery systems may increase their vulnerability to digital sabotage [ 38 ].

Source materials for nuclear weapons are not under adequate control

Vast stocks of fissile materials, the highly enriched uranium and plutonium from which nuclear weapons can be built, persist in civilian and military stockpiles in tens of countries. There are no effective international constraints on the production of these materials. Every state with a civilian nuclear industry is also capable of producing fissile materials; and any state that can enrich uranium to reactor grade can enrich it to weapons grade. Nuclear reactors inevitably convert some of the uranium in the fuel into plutonium. The average modern nuclear weapon contains around 4 kg of plutonium and/or 15 kg of highly enriched uranium (HEU) [ 39 ]. With the global fissile material stockpile at the start of 2020 estimated by the International Panel on Fissile Materials to contain 1330 tonnes of HEU and 540 tonnes of separated plutonium, [ 40 ] this equates to more than 225,000 nuclear weapon equivalents of material [ 39 ]. Apart from removal of relatively modest quantities of highly enriched uranium from civilian stockpiles in 34 countries plus Taiwan [ 41 ], the challenges of ceasing production of these materials, eliminating them where possible, and keeping the remaining quantities in consolidated storage in the safest possible form at the highest possible levels of security, remain largely unaddressed.

The TPNW provides our best path to control our worst weapons

The importance and urgency to eliminate nuclear weapons and to reduce the constant risk of their deliberate, inadvertent, or accidental use has never been greater. The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons provides the most substantial positive development. It is firmly rooted in evidence of real consequences, costs, and dangers of nuclear weapons; it categorically and comprehensively prohibits these weapons; it contains the first treaty-based obligations for states to assist victims of nuclear weapons use and testing; and it obligates them to assist in remediation of environments so contaminated. This treaty is helping to drive divestment by responsible financial institutions from companies that profit from manufacturing the worst, and now illegal, weapons of mass destruction [ 42 ].

The treaty also contains the only internationally agreed and codified framework for the elimination of nuclear weapons. The treaty provides flexible pathways for nuclear-armed states to disarm before or after joining the treaty. It specifies plans for time-bound dismantlement of the weapons and the facilities that produce and maintain them. It is subject to verification by a competent international authority. Thus, the treaty provides the most promising pathway for all states to fulfil their obligations to negotiate in good faith to achieve nuclear disarmament. Many health and humanitarian organisations, including the World Federation of Public Health Associations, the Red Cross and Red Crescent movement, the World Medical Association, the International Council of Nurses, and the International Federation of Medical Student Associations have joined with International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) to welcome the entry into force of the treaty. These organisations urge all nations to join and faithfully implement it [ 43 ].

The role of scientists and health professionals

Escalating urgency to eliminate nuclear weapons.

Fundamental questions shadow everyone alive in our nuclear era: Will humanity eradicate weapons that pose the most acute existential threat to human and biosphere health and survival? And will we do so in time—before anyone uses them again, setting off indiscriminate nuclear violence that will bring about the end of us? Too few citizens and leaders worldwide realise and act on this recognition: the stable and hospitable climate needed for our living world requires protection from rampant global heating and from an abrupt nuclear ice age. Planetary health depends on both.

Health evidence and advocacy can be powerful

Effective evidence-based advocacy by expert custodians of scientific and health evidence has enabled much of the progress towards constraining the nuclear arms race. Prominent, respected figures including Dr. Albert Schweitzer and paediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock drew attention to evidence of markedly increasing levels of strontium-90 in children's deciduous teeth from atmospheric nuclear weapons testing in the 1950s and 60s. Their efforts played an important role in the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963 that ended Soviet and US atmospheric nuclear testing [ 19 ]. Soviet general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev and US president Ronald Reagan understood the catastrophic effects of nuclear war. Their attention to growing evidence of the cataclysmic consequences of a nuclear winter led them to declare jointly in 1985 that "A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought". In 1986 they came tantalisingly close to agreeing to eliminate their nuclear arsenals entirely over 15 years [ 44 ].

Partnerships and coalitions are vital

What played the decisive role in the Humanitarian Initiative on nuclear weapons? It was evidence of the catastrophic consequences of any use of nuclear weapons, the impossibility of any effective health or humanitarian response, growing dangers of nuclear war, and severe global impacts likely from even a relatively small scale regional nuclear war—coupled with the powerful testimony of the hibakusha and nuclear test survivors who experienced ongoing devastation of nuclear weapons firsthand [ 1 , 45 ]. This project of governments and global civil society, from 2010, led to adoption of the TPNW. It was an organisation of health professionals, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, that established the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). This campaign coalition became the major civil society partner with governments in development of the TPNW, a role resulting in award of the Nobel Peace Prize to ICAN in 2017.

Scientific and health evidence-based communication and advocacy on impacts and risks of nuclear war continue to play vital roles for citizens, leaders, and governments. Key factors that have prevented nuclear war to date include informed understanding of nuclear weapons dangers by key leaders, widespread revulsion by citizens worldwide of indiscriminate radioactive violence that nuclear war would unleash, and pressure from mobilised citizens [ 46 ]. Policies that justify nuclear weapons flow from primitive thinking, not facts and evidence. Evidence shows that nuclear weapons cannot make anyone more secure; instead, they pose an existential threat to the security of all people. If not eliminated before being used again, a nuclear war with catastrophic consequences will be inevitable. As growth in divestment from nuclear weapons producers encouraged by the TPNW demonstrates, powerful military, government, and corporate inertia and vested interests that drive the massive nuclear weapons enterprise are formidable, but not immovable [ 42 ].

Treaties work

Experience with treaties prohibiting other types of inhumane and indiscriminate weapons shows that they often influence even states that oppose and have not signed on to the treaty. Biological and chemical weapons, landmines and cluster munitions are now less often justified, produced, sold, deployed, and used after their prohibition—even by states not having joined the respective bans [ 45 ].

Lessons from COVID

The worst global pandemic in a century challenged leaders to learn and effectively apply lessons of this pandemic. We must find the silver linings in a dark cloud and build on them. COVID-19 should puncture any delusions of mastery of the natural world or complacent omnipotence about pathogens. COVID-19 has caught even the wealthiest nations inadequately prepared. Some that invest obscene sums in nuclear weapons that must never be used proved unable to provide the most basic of protective equipment for many frontline health professionals. COVID-19 is a timely reminder of threats to security for the world's people for which massive military arsenals and the worst weapons of mass destruction offer only a useless distraction.

COVID-19 highlights our highly interconnected vulnerabilities, ones requiring cooperative solutions. The pandemic has shown how quickly ideology, exceptionalist hubris, and arrogant leaders cause monumental failures of leadership and vast numbers of readily preventable deaths. The pandemic has laid bare a vital lesson: effective policy and governance depend on respect for truth and evidence and deference to its expert custodians. Measures previously deemed unthinkable, including rapid vaccine development and large-scale social support, can rapidly come to fruition. And the pandemic has confirmed that female leaders are generally more sensible and reliable in a crisis; we need more of such leadership.

Enormous investments by many countries in economic stimulus and support during the pandemic provide a tremendous if still poorly used opportunity to achieve greater social equity and capital with more equitable access to renewable energy. All of these can promote healthier and less polluting cities and infrastructure and prepare us much better for the next pandemic. COVID-19 should motivate leaders and citizens to take an evidence-based, preventive approach and work assiduously to eliminate the global health threats that are within our control, foremost among them nuclear weapons. An increasingly climate-stressed world is even more dangerous and unsustainable for arsenals of doomsday weapons. Effective and coordinated evidence-based advocacy by scientists and public health professionals on the planetary health imperative to eliminate nuclear weapons has never been more urgent.

AO, MB, BS (Hons), FRACP is Co-President, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War; Founding Chair and Australian Board member for the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons; Honorary Principal Fellow of the School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia.

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The Rising Nuclear Threat

Readers respond to the “At the Brink” series of Opinion articles.

It’s Time to Protest Nuclear War Again

A new series from Times Opinion about the threat of nuclear weapons in an unstable world.

To the Editor:

Re the “At the Brink” series (Opinion, March 10):

Thank you for highlighting the existential threat of nuclear weapons.

President Ronald Reagan and the last Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev, issued a joint statement in 1985 saying “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” But we squandered the opportunity at the end of the Cold War to abolish these weapons.

Today we are entering an extremely dangerous new arms race and risking direct military confrontation with a revanchist Russia, while other nuclear conflicts loom around the world.

The United States, as you report, is expected to spend up to $2 trillion to “modernize” the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal. More modern weapons are more likely to be used and to take the world over the fateful nuclear threshold.

A group of citizens and experts has proposed an alternative: “Back From the Brink,” a program to reduce nuclear risk. It calls on the United States to 1) declare it will never be the first to use nuclear weapons in a conflict and invite other nations to make similar pledges; 2) take nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert; 3) end the president’s sole, unchecked authority to launch a nuclear attack; 4) cancel plans to “modernize” its nuclear arsenal; and 5) enter negotiations with other nuclear powers toward the verifiable global elimination of nuclear weapons.

An awakened citizenry must demand that our leaders work to end the nuclear threat.

David Keppel Bloomington, Ind.

The “At the Brink” series offers a much-needed reminder of the continuing grave danger of nuclear war. Yet it understates that danger in some respects.

The International Court of Justice warned in 1996 that nuclear weapons “have the potential to destroy all civilization and the entire ecosystem of the planet.” Aside from the death of millions by fire, blast and radioactive fallout, it is now estimated that even in a limited nuclear conflict, the resulting clouds of soot would linger in the atmosphere for years, killing at least two billion people worldwide because of crop failures caused by cold and reduced light.

With both the U.S. and Russia poised to launch a retaliatory nuclear strike on the mere warning of an incoming enemy missile, such a conflict could begin by accident or miscalculation.

We’ve been lucky so far, as when nuclear forces were put on alert by the moon rising over Norway , a bear climbing a perimeter fence at a Minnesota defense installation, a faulty computer chip , a solar storm , and, more than once, computer operators incorrectly reading training programs as depicting real attacks.

The risk of nuclear war will disappear only if the U.S. and other nuclear states join the 2017 U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons . Despite the opposition of defense industry officials and some in the military, the treaty provides a clear, verifiable means of gradually reducing, then eliminating, this abiding threat to all of humankind.

Stephen Dycus New York The writer, professor emeritus at Vermont Law and Graduate School, has written extensively about nuclear weapons.

After reading the terrifying “At the Brink” series, I could feel my stomach turn whenever the words “American president” were used because Donald Trump was at one time, and could once again, be that president.

It is horrifying to think our fate could be in this man’s hands once again. God help us.

Mike Aguilar Costa Mesa, Calif.

I was astonished to read the first installment in The Times’s series on nuclear war and find just a passing mention of the fact that it was the United States that first used nuclear weapons not once but twice to vaporize two civilian population centers, ostensibly to avoid the massive military casualties that would have resulted from a conventional invasion of Japan in World War II.

This series is unquestionably an important and long overdue piece of opinion and journalistic analysis. But The Times would be gravely irresponsible if it were to fail to educate its younger readers about the significance of our own actions, not just in developing but being the first nation to actually use nuclear weapons — and in the most horrific manner imaginable.

Indeed, not just historical integrity but also the dictates of conscience demanded that an extended piece on our nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki should have been the first installment in this hugely consequential series.

Joel M. Young Placitas, N.M. The writer is a historian and the author of a political thriller about international terrorism.

I would like to thank The Times for publishing the series on the threat of nuclear war.

In the fall of 2022 I and a few other people organized a march and rally in downtown Seattle calling for the universal abolition of nuclear weapons. I poured much energy and well over $10,000 of my own money into this event. We advertised widely in local newspapers.

I didn’t expect to see thousands of people show up, but I had hoped at least 400 or 500 people might take part. Instead about 100 people turned out. I was devastated by the low turnout.

I believe that the only thing that will eliminate nuclear weapons from this earth — and they must be eliminated — is significant numbers of people across the world calling for the universal abolition of nuclear weapons. But people don’t seem to care. If and when a nuclear exchange does happen, they will care intensely, but it will be too late.

Tom Krebsbach Brier, Wash.

The current crisis concerning nuclear weapons is directly related to past events. In 1994 Ukraine voluntarily gave up its nuclear weapons in exchange for the Budapest Memorandum, in which Russia, the U.S. and the U.K. guaranteed Ukraine’s territorial integrity. But agreements between nations are only as good as the willingness to abide by and enforce their terms.

Had Ukraine not given up its nukes, Vladimir Putin would probably not have taken Crimea, much less invaded Ukraine in 2022.

It is probable that Iran and other nations will also acquire nuclear weapons in the near future to deter western and eastern powers from invading their territory. The genie is now out of the bottle, never to return.

Ken Ross Dearborn Heights, Mich.

Naval Postgraduate School

Where Science Meets the Art of Warfare

Student Thesis Explores Russian Tactics to Influence U.S. Nuclear Perceptions

Rebecca Hoag   |  April 21, 2020

U.S. Army Maj. Trisha Wyman prepares to present her master’s thesis research during the annual Defense Analysis Research Week. Wyman, a December 2019 graduate of the university, performed a detailed analysis of a Russian disinformation campaign designed to shape U.S. perceptions of nuclear capabilities.

Russian meddling in the United States’ affairs gained media attention in the U.S. following the 2016 presidential election, but the superpower has been manipulating foreign media for decades, says U.S. Army Maj. Trisha Wyman, a recent graduate of the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS). Her thesis, through the university’s Department of Defense Analysis, thesis focused on Russia’s calculated dissemination of nuclear strategy propaganda via Twitter to strike fear and encourage conflicting viewpoints in Americans. It’s difficult to definitely say U.S. residents have fallen for Russian bots and trolls, says Wyman, but they may be successfully confusing the facts surrounding U.S. and Russian nuclear capabilities.

Wyman has been fascinated by Russia and Soviet Union history for a long time, but she never did any formal research on it until her undergraduate thesis which focused on the Soviet-Afghan War. She then was assigned to the U.S. Army’s Security Force Assistance Foreign Weapons Course, which naturally involved understanding at Russia’s weaponry. 

Adversarial threats are not just in physical weapons anymore, of course, so for her NPS master’s thesis, Wyman additionally chose to examine open source information of Russia’s use of social media to infiltrate organizations, as Russia has historically done.

“Here, my studies focused not just on data analysis but also on counterproliferation,” she explains. “So basically, the nexus of my interests fell into this research topic.”

In her thesis, Wyman dove into the history of Soviet Union and Russian use of media manipulation to persuade policy and public opinion in other countries. She found India was a susceptible playground for Russia's media and internet organizations to try different propaganda techniques and bot technologies. Because of the invention of the Internet and Wild West social media channels, Moscow has poured money into their “cybernetic” strategies. 

Wyman specifically looks at how Russia strategized the media attention around their Status-6 (also called Poseidon or Kanyon) -- an autonomous, nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed underwater vehicle under development. Information on Status-6 was “accidently” leaked by Russian media on Twitter in 2015, and Russia used methods and principles of authority, scarcity, channeled attention, threats and sexual lures to create a larger-than-life image of the weapon. 

Information spread by Russian media, bots and trolls suggested Status-6 would soon have the capability to blow up the whole U.S. East Coast. While U.S. policy statements of Status-6 prior to the leak suggested the weapon was still many years away from being effective, Wyman says, this information didn’t circulate as seemingly well as Russia’s misinformation.) Wyman says Russia’s goal was to give the impression that Russia was a nuclear powerhouse Americans should fear. They want Americans to think that the cost of going to war with Russia would be too high to consider.

The reveal of Status-6 flared up the pro- versus anti-nuclear weapons conversation in the U.S. and made the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty between the U.S. and Russia appear weak to some Americans. When the Trump Administration pulled out of the treaty last year, it not clear whether or not the Russians’ campaign influenced the choice. But, as Wyman notes, it is a potential indicator of Russia’s cybernetics being successful in swaying a populace’s perceptions.

Russia has focused its effort and resources into this net-warfare, Wyman reports. In her thesis, Wyman tracked reach of different Twitter accounts believed to be run by either potential Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) bots Russian media itself or trolls.

Although gaining large amounts of Twitter data proved difficult, the data Wyman did gain via the NPS Common Operational Research Environment (CORE) Lab informed her research on the topic. She found Russia’s methods to stir up trouble via Twitter concerningly effective. Surprisingly, she says, research on this topic was few and far between. 

“I think studying what they’re doing in the information space is extremely important to understand what they’re trying to achieve,” Wyman urges.

She found that it’s easier for Russia to spread a narrative because of their media censorship and their authoritarian nationalism. While she emphasizes the importance of America’s freedom of speech, she says it makes it hard for the U.S. to develop a centralized message throughout its social media platforms. A lack of centralized image along with a lack of social media laws can make it difficult for the U.S. to get on top of the netwar.

“Whoever is going to maximize synchronizing and having a common narrative that’s consistent and persistent, I think is really going to dominate and win [the netwar],” Wyman says.

Wyman plans to keep an eye on this research field as she continues her Army service. She’s currently a visiting scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Lab until she begins her next assignment in the summer. She hopes more people will take up this research topic for the sake of national security. Personally, she intends to use what she’s learned to educate her future soldiers and teams about Russian information warfare.

“I will be able to apply what I’ve learned with social media, data analytics and social network analysis...really everything from my research,” Wyman says. “I’ll be able to look at my research methodology and apply that to problem sets in the future and, of course, enable my soldiers and my teams to do the same thing.”

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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Nuclear weapons (International law)'

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Laing, Jessica. "The use of nuclear weapons under the doctrine of self-defence." Master's thesis, Faculty of Law, 2019. https://hdl.handle.net/11427/31606.

Itene, Moses Akpofure. "Problems of nuclear weapons disarmament in international law : legal challenges and political considerations." Thesis, University of Huddersfield, 2018. http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/id/eprint/34780/.

Mhone, Peggy S. "Africa's contribution to the humanitarian approach of nuclear weapons disarmament : Pelindaba Treaty." University of the Western Cape, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/11394/5269.

Gouin, Margaret E. "Nuclear law: The applicability of Canadian and related international public law principles to litigating the issue of nuclear weapons in Canadian courts." Thesis, University of Ottawa (Canada), 1990. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/5597.

Terry, Patrick. "US-Iran relations in international law since 1979 hostages, oil platforms, nuclear weapons and the use of force." Rangendingen (Hechingen) Libertas, 2008. http://d-nb.info/993662307/04.

Schaefer, Agnes Gereben Lambright W. Henry. "The role of transnational non-governmental organizations in the disposition of chemical and nuclear weapons in the United States: a comparative analysis." Related Electronic Resource: Current Research at SU : database of SU dissertations, recent titles available full text, 2003. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/syr/main.

Naidoo, Ramola. "The legal relationship between the United States of America and the United Kingdom with regard to nuclear weapons." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1994. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.319476.

El, Jadie Amna. "L'énergie nucléaire et le droit international public." Thesis, Tours, 2017. http://www.theses.fr/2017TOUR1006/document.

Estoch, Christopher. "Nuclear deterrence : insecurity and the proliferation of nuclear weapons." Honors in the Major Thesis, University of Central Florida, 2009. http://digital.library.ucf.edu/cdm/ref/collection/ETH/id/1258.

Polser, Brian G. "Theater nuclear weapons in Europe : the contemporary debate /." Thesis, Monterey, Calif. : Springfield, Va. : Naval Postgraduate School ; Available from National Technical Information Service, 2004. http://library.nps.navy.mil/uhtbin/hyperion/04Sep%5FPolser.pdf.

Miranda, Cristobal M., and Cristobal M. Miranda. "Towards A Balanced U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy." Thesis, The University of Arizona, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/620870.

Athanasopulos, Haralambos. "Nuclear disarmament in international law." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1998. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/tape15/PQDD_0024/NQ36567.pdf.

Horsburgh, Nicola Ann. "China's engagement with global nuclear order since 1949." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2012. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:fa12baba-7ec6-4ae3-84c9-f41b88f9da96.

Peck, Caroline. "After Syria: Potential and Prospects of Chemical Weapons." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2018. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/1858.

Street, Tim. "The politics of nuclear disarmament : obstacles to, and opportunities for, eliminating nuclear weapons in and between the nuclear weapon states." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2017. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/110300/.

Lefevre, Peggy. "'Can International Law Achieve the Effective Disarmament of Chemical Weapons?'." University of Canterbury. School of Law, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10092/850.

Scully, Kevin. "The Iranian nuclear standoff those who can help, won't." Thesis, Monterey, Calif. : Springfield, Va. : Naval Postgraduate School ; Available from National Technical Information Service, 2006. http://library.nps.navy.mil/uhtbin/hyperion/06Jun%5FScully.pdf.

Wangwhite, Sherry W. "China's reactions to the India deal implications for the United States." Thesis, Monterey, Calif. : Naval Postgraduate School, 2007. http://bosun.nps.edu/uhtbin/hyperion-image.exe/07Dec%5FWangwhite.pdf.

Valdez, John. "Building More Bombs: The Discursive Emergence of US Nuclear Weapons Policy." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/23776.

Parrish, Olina. "Autonomous Lethality: Regime type, international law, and lethal autonomy in weapons." Thesis, The University of Sydney, 2021. https://hdl.handle.net/2123/25466.

Minamide, Alyssa M. "Deterring Nuclear Attacks on Japan: An Examination of the U.S.-Japan Relationship and Nuclear Modernization." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2015. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/1165.

Jefferson, Catherine. "The Taboo of Chemical and Biological Weapons : Nature, Norms and International Law." Thesis, University of Sussex, 2009. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.506941.

Smeets, Max. "Going cyber : the dynamics of cyber proliferation and international security." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2017. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:ab28f9fc-dd21-4b34-809e-e0d100125e84.

Welty, Tyler. "Nukes and Niceties: North Korea’s Warming Tensions and Growing Nuclear Power." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2019. https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/2035.

Busuttil, James J. "Naval weapons systems and the contemporary law of war /." Oxford : Clarendon press, 1998. http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb37552708d.

Kim, Su-kwang. "Nuclear options for a unified Korea : prospects and impacts /." Thesis, Monterey, Calif. : Springfield, Va. : Naval Postgraduate School ; Available from National Technical Information Service, 2000. http://edocs.nps.edu/npspubs/scholarly/theses/2000/Dec/00Dec_Kim.pdf.

Watzlawick, Annatina. "An analysis of the choice and use of weapons by Russia and Georgia in the 2008 South Ossetia conflict." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/20804.

Zak, Chen. ""Neither illusion nor despair" : strengthening the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) effectiveness in deterring and detecting non-compliance followng the adoption of "Program 93+2" /." Thesis, Connect to Dissertations & Theses @ Tufts University, 2004.

Apolevič, Jolanta. "The Impact of the Principles of International Environmental Law on Nuclear Law." Doctoral thesis, Lithuanian Academic Libraries Network (LABT), 2014. http://vddb.library.lt/obj/LT-eLABa-0001:E.02~2014~D_20140922_141136-97141.

Jabbari, Gharabagh Mansour. "Use of weapons against civil aircraft : case study of IR655 in the light of international law." Thesis, McGill University, 1992. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=69534.

Kumari, Deepshikha. "Evaluating India's possession of nuclear weapons : a study of India's legitimation strategies and the international responses between 1998-2008." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:85bdfbac-4bb5-4d6b-a0cf-0981b3c0277c.

Baillie, Robbie W. "The utility of Jakobsen's ideal policy as a strategy of coercive diplomacy to prevent states attaining nuclear weapons." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2016. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/80879/.

Okowa, Phoebe Nyawade. "State responsibility for transboundary air pollution in international law." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1994. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.359957.

Ejzenberg, Wolf. "Desarmamento nuclear." Universidade de São Paulo, 2015. http://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/2/2135/tde-10092015-163652/.

Nash, Arnold W. "Intelligence reform and implications for North Korea's Weapons of Mass Destruction Program." Thesis, Monterey, Calif. : Springfield, Va. : Naval Postgraduate School ; Available from National Technical Information Service, 2005. http://library.nps.navy.mil/uhtbin/hyperion/05Sep%5FNash.pdf.

Powell, Maria Elena. "The evolution of international restraints on chemical weapons and land mines : the interplay between international humanitarian law and arms control." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 1997. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/15359.

Farmer, Michael L. "Why Iran proliferates." Thesis, Monterey, Calif. : Springfield, Va. : Naval Postgraduate School ; Available from National Technical Information Service, 2005. http://library.nps.navy.mil/uhtbin/hyperion/05Sep%5FFarmer.pdf.

Kötter, Wolfgang. "Anwendung oder Nichtanwendung von Kernwaffen? : Ein Streit mit weit reichenden Konsequenzen." Universität Potsdam, 2002. http://opus.kobv.de/ubp/volltexte/2006/947/.

Holloway, Joshua T. "Help, Hinder, or Hesitate: American Nuclear Policy Toward the French and Chinese Nuclear Weapons Programs, 1961-1976." Bowling Green State University / OhioLINK, 2019. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1555692933625691.

Boelaert-Suominen, Sonja Ann Jozef. "International environmental law and naval war : the effect of marine safety and pollution conventions during international armed conflict." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 1998. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/2608/.

Wood, John Randolph. "Mitigating proliferation : an assessment of nonproliferation institutions, international law, and preemptive counterproliferation intervention /." Thesis, Connect to Dissertations & Theses @ Tufts University, 2004.

Hubbard, Christopher. "From ambivalence to activism: Australia and the negotiation of the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty." Thesis, Edith Cowan University, Research Online, Perth, Western Australia, 2001. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/1517.

Mirzaei, Yengejeh Saeid. "Law-Making by the Security Council in Areas of Counter-Terrorism and Non-Proliferation of Weapons of Mass-Destruction." Thesis, Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/35536.

Negm, Namira Nabil. "Transfer of nuclear technology under international law : case study : Iraq, Iran and Israel." Thesis, University of London, 2006. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.435472.

Madson, Peter N. "The sky is not falling regional reaction to a nuclear-armed Iran." Thesis, Monterey, Calif. : Springfield, Va. : Naval Postgraduate School ; Available from National Technical Information Service, 2006. http://handle.dtic.mil/100.2/ADA445779.

O'Neil, Kimberly. "Nuclear fusion: The political economy of technology in France and Germany." Thesis, University of Ottawa (Canada), 1993. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/6737.

Rajashekaran, Dhruv. "Is Pursuing Nuclear Energy in India's Strategic Interest?" Thesis, Webster University, 2015. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=1526151.

As a developing country with the second largest population in the world, India's energy needs will continue to grow steadily in the coming decades. A significant proportion of India's oil, coal and natural gas are imported because of a dearth of indigenous energy resources. This creates a situation of energy dependence and is a potential national security issue. As a result, the government is embarking on an ambitious plan to have nuclear power generate 25% of electricity in 2050 – up from 3.7% in 2012. The aim is to be running on thorium fast-breeder reactors, that are currently in development, by that time. India's vast reserves of thorium would mean that this would improve energy security, while also improving access to energy for the large part of its population that remains without it.

However, nuclear energy is controversial. Issues of safety and viability must be addressed adequately if nuclear energy is to be pursued. Civil-society concerns about the displacement of people and the degradation or changes in environment around plants and its consequences must also be appropriately addressed. The aim of this paper is to ascertain if it is indeed in India's strategic interest to invest in nuclear energy. Within a theoretical framework of energy security the paper will seek to identify what changes should be made in the sector to guide and manage the process of expanding nuclear-power generation is also important if prescribing this course of action.

Ohlendorf, Alex Kenchi. ""Do as I say, not as I Do": An Examination of the Impact the United States has on Nuclear Weapons Norms." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2018. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/1796.

Seo, Hyunjin. "Media coverage of six-party talks a comparative study on media content and journalists' perceptions /." Diss., Columbia, Mo. : University of Missouri-Columbia, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10355/5005.

Shefloe, Scott. "The proliferation security initiative and United Nations Security Resolution 1540: international law and the world's recent efforts to combat proliferation of weapons of mass destruction." Thesis, McGill University, 2008. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=21991.

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CPND can provide accurate and precise measure of both the neutron spectrum and dose equivalent for ten neutron fields as well as five radio-isotopic environments. These results can also be improved by few adjustments of the CPND. These modifications or adjustment comprises of checking the CPND TLD-600 elements and evaluating their thermal neutron sensitivity. Further modifications include further definition of energy intervals and the development of a matrix based spectrum deconvolution algorithm.

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How Silicon Valley’s ‘Oppenheimer’ found lucrative trade in AI weapons

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From below, the ALTIUS-600M looks like a black cross sailing through the sky. It has a slender fuselage and a stretched wingspan that makes it twice as wide as it is long. Up close, it’s a blend of metal and circuitry, a sleek and ominous testament to human ambition. It is also one of the first artificially intelligent weapons to be deployed by the US in a real war. Shot from a tube like a missile, first its wings telescope outwards, then it identifies its target, flying for up to 280 miles. It circles high in the sky, for as long as four hours, and then strikes on the ground. The “M” is for munitions; on impact it explodes in a ball of flames.

The attack drone is made by Anduril Industries, a defence company founded by a 31-year-old Californian inventor called Palmer Luckey. The US government has bought hundreds of ALTIUS-600Ms as part of its military aid packages to Ukraine. It is one of more than a dozen autonomous defence and weapons systems Anduril has built and sold to the Pentagon since it was founded in 2017. In that time, Luckey’s company has become one of the largest of only a handful of start-ups that have infiltrated the US government’s trillion-dollar war machine. The industry has been dominated for decades by an oligopoly of century-old contractors, known as “primes”, such as Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.

As conflicts multiply overseas, Anduril’s business is accelerating: annual revenues are projected to reach $1bn by 2026. “The first page of our first pitch deck said that Anduril will save western civilisation and save taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars a year as we make tens and tens of billions of dollars a year,” Luckey says. “The intent is to go toe to toe with the major primes and try and fight our way to an equal footing.”

It is a braggadocious claim delivered with the conviction of someone who has predicted the future before. Anduril is Luckey’s second big venture. In 2014, when he was 21, he sold Oculus, the virtual reality headset business he started in his parents’ garage, to Facebook for $2bn. The next year, he was on the cover of Time magazine. Oculus was a technological turning point, the first time anyone had created a viable consumer VR product. It changed the trajectory of Facebook, one of the world’s largest companies, as it reoriented towards the “metaverse”. And Luckey’s invention was the foundational model that spurred headsets like Apple’s recently released Vision Pro . He represented a classic Silicon Valley fantasy: the dishevelled nerd destined for greatness.

But by the time Luckey started Anduril — named after the “Flame of the West” sword in JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings — he had gone from wunderkind to pariah. After revelations that he donated to an anti-Hillary Clinton group online, he was fired from Facebook, and his support for Donald Trump alienated him from a liberal tech industry still reeling from the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. The money to incubate Anduril came from Peter Thiel , the controversial co-founder of PayPal, who had also been disavowed by parts of Silicon Valley for his donations to the Trump campaign and for driving Gawker Media into bankruptcy. “I’m a big Peter fan,” says Luckey. “He understood what it was like to get into business trouble for political reasons.”

Anduril’s first big win, when it was just a few months old, was a contract with the Trump administration to supply AI-powered surveillance towers along the Mexican border. It was a triple whammy of anathema to the high-tech elite, who were scrambling to define their ethical position on AI and retreating from selling software to the military to stave off employee protests. And yet, seven years later, Luckey has arguably become the most crucial figure bringing Silicon Valley to the front lines of American national security.

Wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and a growing threat from China and Russia have accelerated urgently needed modernisation of military capability in the west. In 2021, China started testing hypersonic weapons — projectiles capable of travelling five times the speed of sound — a significant threat demonstrating technological advances that have left the US far behind. This month, Vladimir Putin warned that western support of Ukraine risks triggering a global nuclear war .

So Silicon Valley has been dragged back to the heart of a military industrial complex that has lost its edge — and Luckey is positioning Anduril as its saviour. Advanced weapons systems that sounded like science fiction a few years ago are now being built at Anduril’s headquarters in the suburbs of Los Angeles, and a new generation of defence technology companies is emerging in its orbit. At the top of Anduril’s mission statement, Luckey poses the question: “Xi Jinping thinks he can out-innovate American defence. Is he right?”

On the February day I meet Palmer Luckey at Anduril’s sprawling campus in Costa Mesa, Orange County, there has been an escalation in the Middle East. Overnight, three American soldiers have been killed in Jordan by an Iranian drone, the latest sign that the Israel-Hamas war threatens to boil over into a larger conflict. Details are scant, but early reports suggest the drone was able to drop into the US base undetected by counter-drone technology.

Luckey, in his trademark Hawaiian shirt, shorts and flip flops, runs his hands through his mullet in exasperation. Anduril’s technology is more advanced, faster and cheaper to make, he says, than the stuff built by the leading suppliers to the US armed forces. Its biggest competitor in the counter-drone space is defence prime Raytheon’s “Coyote”. Luckey named Anduril’s system “RoadRunner” after the classic Looney Tunes bit in which the bird is always quicker than the coyote trying to catch it. “What if we had counter-drone technology deployed to all our US footprints that made that attack totally futile?” he says. “You could send a hundred times more drones and they would just get swatted out of the sky, and your adversary would spend tens or hundreds of millions of dollars attacking the site for absolutely no tactical gain.”

A grandiose and unwavering belief in the power of deterrence infuses Anduril’s mission. Essentially, Luckey’s aim is to make the US and its allies almost impossible to harm — “a prickly porcupine” in his words — as well as to supply weapons powerful enough to put adversaries off attacking in the first place. “We want to build the capabilities that give us the ability to swiftly win any war we are forced to enter,” he says.

The thesis is not original. It’s the same idea that led to Robert Oppenheimer’s development of the atomic bomb. America’s attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the second world war, killing more than 100,000 people, and nuclear weapons have not been deployed in conflict since. The problem is that, 80 years later, to truly determine the outcome of a war, the US would not only need to have war-ending technology but also convince its adversaries it is willing to use it.

That is where artificial intelligence, often referred to in defence circles by the less ominous-sounding “autonomy”, comes in. “The thing that’s so powerful about autonomy is that you can clearly show your adversaries that you have weapons that do not cost all that much money and that don’t cost human life,” Luckey says. “It’s a powerful part of deterrence that the US has lost over time as our willingness for death has gone down and the cost of our systems has gone up.”

All of Anduril’s tech is capable of operating almost entirely unmanned (discretion as to how autonomous it is when deployed is down to users and policymakers). The products all run on the same machine learning software — an operating system called “Lattice” — that means they can communicate with each other and be updated like any smartphone to keep pace with advances in enemy technology and intelligence. This is part of the reason Luckey says his systems are better than, say, Raytheon’s.

The sales pitch is clear: commercial technology develops at breakneck speed amid the competition of the free market; defence doesn’t. There is better AI in a Tesla than in US military vehicles, Anduril claims, and far greater computing power in an iPhone than the systems regularly used by the Department of Defense. Until 2019, America’s nuclear arsenal still operated off floppy disks. Compared to that, Anduril’s autonomous fighter jet, Fury, and its “undersea battlespace” submarine, Dive-LD, seem as improbable as something lifted from the pages of a Jules Verne novel.

Now that pitch has a fresh sense of urgency, says Luckey: “I’ve been joking that the past few years have been the ‘Palmer Luckey I told you so’ tour. This was the thesis of the whole company . . . Our first pitch deck to investors specifically included what Russia was going to be doing, what China was going to be doing . . . how Iran would use proxies to try to suck us into a fight. It’s exactly as we predicted.”

On a summer evening in San Francisco in 2019, General Catalyst’s 40 partners were summoned to a meeting at the venture capital firm’s downtown office. Anduril was doing its first big fundraising, did General Catalyst want in? The atmosphere was tense. The partners had cut a tiny, $1.5mn cheque to the fledgling company two years before, but now they were divided over the ethics of giving tens of millions of dollars to what was by then an all-out arms manufacturer. “It was contentious,” says one of the partners, who didn’t want to be named. “Palmer was, to put it mildly, not a popular figure at the time.”

Silicon Valley’s early history might have been lost on those naysayers. The legacy of the weapons developed to help win the second world war — the atomic bomb, jet power, radar — was a profound awareness that science and technology would determine dominance on future battlefields.

As the US raced for ideological and military superiority over the Soviet Union, it poured billions of dollars into research. In 1948, Project Rand (a contraction of “research and development”) was born to connect military planning with American scientific discovery. Rand’s ranks of consultants and big thinkers produced the building blocks of everything from the personal computer to today’s AI revolution.

A decade later, the Soviet Union’s launch of the world’s first satellite, Sputnik, sent shockwaves through America. In 1958, President Dwight Eisenhower set up Arpa, the Advanced Research Projects Agency, to provide money to develop technologies for military use and make sure the US would never be out-innovated again. Darpa (the “D” for defence was added later) funded 70 per cent of all US computer research in the early 1960s, much of it coming from labs in the Californian hills around Stanford University. That research led to the invention of most of the tech we use today — the internet, touch screens, GPS, self-driving cars — and ushered in a new era of American technological supremacy.

When foreign leaders have, over the years, vowed to foster their own Silicon Valleys, they were not merely talking about consumer-facing tech companies like Twitter and Airbnb. What they really want to replicate is the American framework of government and private companies working in concert to maintain national economic and military dominance. Even so, it is hard to overstate how unlikely a proposition a Silicon Valley defence company would have sounded to many tech investors even five years ago.

Silicon Valley began drifting away from its roots in the late-1990s and 2000s, with tech companies adopting mottos such as “Don’t Be Evil” and telling investors, employees and customers they existed to make the world a better place. By 2019, memories were still fresh of Google and Microsoft’s embarrassing retreat from some military work, when employees staged walkouts over contracts with the Pentagon.

Three years into the Trump presidency, the tech industry was suffering from near-constant reactionary spasms to Washington’s policies, its progressive ideals clashing with Trump’s executive order on Muslim immigration, his equivocation on white supremacy, his ban on transgender troops. In return, DC was picking fights with Big Tech, accusing companies of stifling conservative viewpoints on their sites and hauling executives like Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey into Congress to defend themselves.

All of which meant almost no one in the Valley was doing anything like Anduril. Elon Musk’s rocket-building, satellite-launching SpaceX and Peter Thiel’s data intelligence business, Palantir Technologies, were making a killing on government contracts, including with the defence department. Anduril wanted to go a step further by building the hardware for waging war, including weapons. Its founders were warning about future conflicts with China, Iran, Russia.

Luckey was the boy-genius who had invented the Oculus headset, and Anduril’s founding team included several of the people who had helped take Palantir — also named after a piece of kit from The Lord of the Rings — from a California start-up to its then $20bn valuation. These included its chairman, Trae Stephens, chief executive Brian Schimpf and chief operating officer Matt Grimm.

One of Anduril’s early champions was Katherine Boyle, a former Florida pageant queen and ex-Washington Post reporter who became a rising star at General Catalyst. In 2017, she’d introduced her bosses to Stephens and persuaded them to write Anduril a cheque — a coup for someone so junior. Then suddenly she found she was a social pariah: “I was called a warmonger and worse,” she says. “There were times when I would get yelled at at venture capital cocktail parties.” It was not a happy time for defence tech. Anduril decided to locate its headquarters hundreds of miles south of Silicon Valley in 2017; in 2020 Palantir packed up its Palo Alto offices and relocated to Denver, Colorado.

Yet there were already signs that a shift was taking place in Silicon Valley. For some, the Google and Microsoft protests felt like tech company culture was under siege by activist employees. Provocateurs like Musk were garnering more attention. Big tech companies including Facebook, which had previously encouraged its employees to speak out on issues involving the company, started restricting spaces for political discussions. Increasingly, important figures in the tech industry were adopting a more conservative position. Among them was Marc Andreessen .

As tech veterans go, Andreessen is a beast. In the 1990s, he created the most popular web browser of the early internet age, Netscape Navigator. Now he runs a venture capital firm with his partner, Ben Horowitz. He is a commanding, often belligerent, evangelist for technology, whose confrontational exchanges on social media and outspoken criticism of government and taxes have made him controversial. But his influence in Big Tech, including at Facebook where he sits on the board, has kept him in a power position in Silicon Valley. When he speaks, people tend to listen.

After Andreessen Horowitz invested in Anduril in 2019, the mood changed fast. When he wrote on his website, “I believe in the United States of America. I believe in a strong national defence. And I believe in Anduril,” it was the first full-throated statement from an authoritative insider that investing in defence technology was permissible. It was a game-changer for VCs who had been prevaricating on the sidelines, wondering how they would justify defence investing to backers and staff. “Silicon Valley has a huge culture of following the latest trend,” says Luckey. “All it takes is a few people to stand up and say, ‘Attention everyone, the acceptable set of beliefs has changed,’ for things to change for everybody. The pendulum swings back and forth, and I think there’s a lot of people who think the pendulum swung too far in one direction on a whole variety of social and political issues.”

Since then, Anduril has raised about $2.8bn. Thiel’s venture firm, Founders Fund, put in $400mn, its single largest cash investment into any company. General Catalyst eventually decided to invest, too, handing over $30mn in 2019. Since then, there has been a gold rush for start-ups making defence technologies; VC investment into defence tech doubled to $33bn between 2019 and 2023. Confidence is growing that defence tech start-ups will eventually take a significant share of the US’s defence budget, which stands at a hefty $842bn this year.

Planning for your start-up to make tech for military use is now firmly in vogue in Silicon Valley. Earlier this year, OpenAI — the maker of generative AI bot ChatGPT — quietly changed its terms of service to allow military applications of its technology, deleting its previous policy that prohibited use for the purposes of “military and warfare”.

Luckey’s politics remain unchanged. He self-describes as a “big R” Republican and a “little L” libertarian. He’s non-interventionist, but this is not as counterintuitive as it sounds. He is developing autonomous military systems to keep America from being caught up in foreign wars, he maintains. “I don’t want boots on the ground. I’m tired of the US getting dragged into fights that our allies really should have the tools to fight with themselves.” Luckey implies he will vote for Trump again this year, noting that he is a longtime supporter. In 2011, he wrote to the then reality-TV star asking him to run for president. In 2020, he hosted a fundraiser for Trump at his home, which the then president attended. “I talk with him from time to time,” Luckey says of Trump. “I like to think he thinks I’m a competent guy, but I don’t think I’m Trump’s defence whisperer. That would be fantastic if it was true, I’d love to have that level of influence in US policy.”

Seto Kaiba is the anti-hero of the Japanese manga series Yu-Gi-Oh! — an intelligent and Machiavellian orphan who inherits a weapons empire and pivots it into virtual reality technology. He is also Luckey’s personal hero. When he was seven, Luckey became obsessed with one of the character’s lines: “You said tech has limits. Wrong.” (As Luckey puts it, Seto Kaiba then proceeds to “kick everyone’s ass using his incredible technology”.) “Sometimes I wonder, how much free will do I actually have over my life?” Luckey tells me, after animatedly recounting this scene. “Is it possible that I actually had no choice at any point but to pursue VR and weapons development?”

Luckey’s interests have guided him down a highly specific path. His grandfather, a pilot who was interested in military aviation, started passing down history books when Luckey was eight or nine. Then he got into science fiction. “Most of the stuff Anduril is working on is stuff that has existed for decades in the realm of science fiction,” he says. He cites Verne, who predicted plausible future technologies like electric submarines and the Taser when he was writing in the mid-1800s.

Homeschooled by his mother when he was a teenager, Luckey also devoured video games and manga. He grew up in Long Beach, California, with his father, a car salesman, and three sisters, one of whom, Ginger Luckey, is married to Florida Republican congressman and Maga diehard Matt Gaetz. By the time he was 11, Luckey was experimenting with electronics, first in his parents’ garage, then in an old trailer in the driveway, fashioning lasers and an electromagnetic coil gun from copper wire and high-voltage capacitors.

Once, when he was working on a Tesla coil, he touched a grounded metal bed frame and blew himself across the garage. He also burnt a grey spot into his vision while he was cleaning an infrared laser. Later, he started modifying gaming equipment and fixing broken iPhones, tinkering with old military VR headsets that he bought through government auctions. Diving deeper, he got into the habit of reading declassified Pentagon research papers. First anything ever written on head-mounted displays and virtual reality, then vast quantities of technical reports from government-funded labs, going back to the second world war. They are the “most fascinating reads you could find because it was a time in history where you could think without limitation or regard for regulation or precedent”, he says. “They were living in the atomic age, this new Americana-driven world. Anything was on the table.”

This hyper-techno-optimism consumes Luckey’s personal life too. He drives a Tesla model S (with the paint stripped off to reveal the bare metal) and sails an 82ft Mark V special operations craft, a $3mn camouflaged Navy Seal vessel mounted with decommissioned machine guns, which he keeps docked at his Newport Beach, California, home. In 2022, as a side project to commemorate the anime series Sword Art Online , he invented a VR gaming headset that actually kills the player if they die in the game, by mounting explosive charge modules to the headset aimed at their brain. (He says he has never put it on.)

Luckey and his wife Nicole Edelmann, a professional gamer he met at debate camp when they were teenagers, have been photographed wearing bikinis and combat boots, both cosplaying as Quiet, the heroine of Metal Gear Solid . In that video game, players uncover the existence of an AI-controlled nuclear weapon whose villainous creator built it out of the belief that human unwillingness to launch a nuke is the flaw in deterrence theory.

“I genuinely think this guy is a genius,” says Chris Brose, Anduril’s chief strategy officer, who was Senator John McCain’s principal adviser on national security, and is the company’s most senior hire from Washington DC. “He comes up with a solution to a problem and understands immediately technically how to do it — and 80 or 90 per cent of the time he is right, right out of the gate.” When they were designing Anduril’s first counter-drone interceptor, Anvil, Luckey envisioned a quadcopter that could knock other quadcopters out of the sky, says Brose. “He had a prototype in a week . . . He has ideas constantly. Some of those ideas are going to be wrong or unworkable. Others are going to be Oculus.”

A few weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Luckey flew to Kyiv and met with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, for the second time. They first talked in New York three years earlier, after the Ukrainian president read an article in Wired magazine about Anduril’s sensor towers on the US-Mexico border. Zelenskyy had wanted to deploy the same tech on Ukraine’s eastern border, according to Luckey. “People will try to paint him as just a comedian,” he says, “but the reality is years before Russia invaded it was one of his top priorities to the point where he was visiting foreign companies to figure out how to stop it.”

The US government blocked Anduril from selling the technology to Ukraine. The official American position was that Russia was merely sabre-rattling and that a build-up of technology on the border, particularly supplied from the US, would be provocative. “I actually believed [Zelenskyy’s] assessment was right. But we have to play by the rules, so we weren’t able to do anything about that,” Luckey says. When the two met again in Kyiv at the start of the war “there was a little bit of sourness” from Zelenskyy about that decision. (Zelenskyy did not respond to requests for comment.)

The Ukraine war has been a useful test-ground for Anduril to hone its systems in a real-life scenario. More importantly, the conflict shows how the characteristics of war are changing. More commercial technology, like satellite imagery and autonomous drones, is being used than ever before. When Musk deployed his Starlink service to Ukraine, providing internet despite Russian jamming efforts, it was the first time a commercial company had provided the backbone for a country’s military capability during wartime. That gave weight to an argument that has been brewing in DC for years that the US needs to get better at buying technology from outside traditional procurement. The sheer quantity of munitions needed for the fighting happening in Ukraine — which is currently going through 10,000 drones a month — exposed the vulnerabilities with US defence production. The need for the US to acquire new technologies quickly and at scale turned from an academic point to consensus overnight.

SpaceX and Palantir have both complained about how contracts are awarded going back as far as 2005, including suing the US Air Force and the US Army respectively over processes they claimed unfairly favoured legacy providers over newcomers. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US slashed defence spending, kicking off a frenzy of consolidation in the early 1990s, when dozens of companies folded into just five. Now, as defence spending surges, about 80 per cent of the industry’s revenue is produced by just 10 companies, founded decades ago. Nearly two-thirds of major weapons systems in the US have a single bidder.

At the heart of the SpaceX and Palantir lawsuits was consternation over the defence department’s buying model known as “cost-plus”, in which it awards contracts to companies that offer to build at the cost of production plus a percentage fee. This typically leads to big cost-overruns and long delays as contractors are incentivised to allow costs to stack up. It also means that systems are refreshed on a generational basis, far too slowly to keep up with technological innovation. For example, the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor introduced in 2005 was the first jet fighter to incorporate advancements in digital computation and mobile networking in the 1990s. The next generation of the jet is not expected until the 2030s.

Unlike traditional prime contractors, SpaceX, Palantir and Anduril use private funding to build their products before selling them to the government. As each company began to win billions of dollars’ worth of contracts, it’s started to look like the defence department’s buying model is slowly becoming more commercial. But a level playing field is still far off.

There are certain parts of Anduril’s headquarters where Luckey has to wear proper shoes. In 2021, Anduril moved into the former Los Angeles Times printing press, taking over the nearly 650,000 sq ft site, about the size of 11 American football fields. Its roughly $200mn redevelopment has created a vast engine of research, development and manufacturing. It has the same hum that imbued the postwar research labs of the San Francisco Bay Area.

From the outside, the buildings are slate grey and discreet. Security guards are posted at each of its street entrances (my taxi driver guesses the company has “something to do with the government”). Anduril has a dotcom-era bring-your-dog-to-work policy, and employees walk their pets around the campus in the southern Californian sun. Inside, the latest experiments are being worked on in aircraft hangar-sized warehouses — a blast-proof, satellite-clad shipping container and a desert-camouflage all-terrain vehicle, covered in sensors. Black screens on wheels shield secret projects at one end of the room. The dogs are in here too, dozing under workbenches and peering out of meeting rooms. A sign with crossed-out flip flops is aimed squarely at Luckey. On the manufacturing floor, only real shoes will do.

When Facebook and Google built their palatial office compounds in Silicon Valley, they were multibillion-dollar symbols of Big Tech’s immense power and status. Anduril’s campus is equally a testament to the shift in attitudes in the Valley since then. Whereas a decade ago, Anduril would have found it impossible to recruit from the same pool of developers and engineers that were destined for commercial tech companies, now it is pulling employees from those rivals. Anduril’s staff has tripled in size to more than 2,500 in three years.

New recruits arrive with zero ambiguity in their minds about the technology they will be working on. Every new hire sits through a three-hour presentation by Luckey about Anduril’s story and its plans for the future. The message is: if you are not comfortable, you should not work here. There’s something else here too, a different answer to the question of what Silicon Valley is for. The golden age of Netflix and Apple brought life-changing consumer technologies. But by the 18th version of the iPhone, the gains seem marginal compared to marketing copy promising magic. Even the new Apple headset, which is light years ahead of anything Luckey was tinkering with in his garage, seems, well, kind of mid. If Silicon Valley is a country of its own, it seems to be one that is running out of significant ideas. But if, as it seems on Anduril’s campus, Silicon Valley is an asset of American power, then Luckey will have been right a third time.

His ideas are only going to get more ambitious as AI unlocks new generations of weapons systems, and as Anduril raises billions of dollars more capital. “If you are so incredibly strong that you can fight with one hand tied behind your back and still easily win, you can actually afford to say, ‘I’m not going to accept civilian collateral damage to nearly as great of an extent, I’m not going to accept massive damage to the US economic machine,’” Luckey says. “The way to frame it would be that I want to give ourselves a technology that turns the world stage, as it pertains to warfare, into the United States being an adult in a room full of toddler-sized dictators.”

In his mind, Luckey already is Seto Kaiba, capable of kicking everyone’s ass with his incredible technology. So will Anduril create the AI weaponry that will be as decisive to the outcome of war as the atomic bomb? “We have ideas for what they are,” Luckey says. “We are working on them.”

Tabby Kinder is the FT’s West Coast financial editor

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