History of Nuclear Weapons

The appearance on Russian TV stations Channel One and NTV of the plans for a nuclear torpedo/unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) has prompted much interest among observers.  Among other aspects, its probably salted warhead attracted much attention, the addition of Cobalt-59 ensuring long-lasting radiation designed to render a wide area uninhabitable for years. The July 1948 Baker test in Bikini Atoll illustrated the effects of a shallow underwater explosion. Missile defence experts have noted how, in line with Russian commentary, the system seems to be designed to bypass Western progress in this field. There’s another significant aspect of the possible construction of this weapon: its impact on the international law of the sea.

From this perspective, there are at least three issues that need to be discussed: whether a submarine carrying nuclear torpedoes may carry out innocent passage through another country’s territorial waters, the 1971 treaty banning nuclear weapons on the seabed, and whether a coastal state may restrict the presence of submarines carrying nuclear torpedoes in its EEZ. This paper examines the three.

This paper was submitted as a requirement for the History Extension course in the 2006 Higher School Certificate, part of the secondary school curriculum in the state of New South Wales, Australia.

My research of these events is the result of a passion for Australian history and the belief that not enough is known, or acknowledged, by the public about events within our nation’s past: including many during the nuclear testing conducted at the Monte Bello Islands, Emu Field, and Maralinga between 1952 and 1967 by Great Britain. These produced such a number of issues relevant to the study of the philosophy behind historiography, that it would be a difficult to cover all in such a limited period. This led to a focus upon what the 1985 Royal Commission dubbed the “Marston Controversy.”

Throughout my research on this event, I explored the influence of the respective agendas and paradigms of ‘historians’ upon their research as well as the parallels between the natural and social sciences. Rather than merely studying the remaining written material, I consulted sources from a variety of other mediums, such as oral history and audiovisual material. In order to maintain a balanced perspective, sources from both the British and Australian perspectives were obtained, and individual participants, as well as relevant government departments, such as Australian Radiation Protection And Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA), Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST), and British Defence Research and Support Staff (BDRSS), were consulted.

The central concerns of this essay concentrate on the reliability of ‘scientific’ data as a historical source, and the extents to which personal influences or agendas of individuals (be they historians or researchers) affect the resultant historiographies. In addressing these issues, this essay presents the prominent events during Australia’s nuclear testing era and the ‘Marston controversy’, analyses the background of the ‘historians’ to present possible reasons for their opinion, and makes comparisons between the perspectives. Scientific data is also treated in a similar manner to the historical sources, thus making a connection between the methodologies and the subjectivity of the natural and social sciences.

This paper was added to the source selection list of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) on Maralinga for some ten years, and although based on pre-University work serves at the very least as a sound resource list for the topic in question.

Straddling the genres of travelogue and critical essay, As We Used to Float explores Bikini Atoll as a space of fantasy and trauma. Situated in a remote region of the Pacific Ocean, between 1946 and 1958 its ‘paradise’ islands were subjected to twenty-three of the most powerful explosions in history—during Operation Crossroads, the U.S. nuclear testing program. Since then, their fate has been largely ignored. While toggling between a personal account of a sea journey, above and below water, and a critical investigation of postcolonial geography, As We Used to Float develops broader reflections on place and subjectivity. These spring from a series of narrative immersions, variously, taking on the psychological and aesthetic parameters of ultra-deep scuba diving, the abject poetics of sea craft, and the stakes of subaquatic image-making. Through its vivid account of concrete bunkers on white sand beaches, the decaying "Ghost Fleet" of World War II battleships, irradiated coconuts, and more, As We Used to Float is a sea-story for our times.

The course examines the hidden nuclear history of the Bay Area, focusing primarily on Hunters Point Shipyard, a Navy base in San Francisco where ships used in the Marshall Islands atomic tests were returned to be “decontaminated,” a process that ended up spreading radiological contamination into neighborhoods and waterways. Students learn about how these legacies are connected to histories of the nuclear age elsewhere in the world, such as nuclear test sites in the Pacific, uranium mines in Africa, and more. The course guides students through an original research project on an aspect of Bay Area nuclear history, based on primary sources that range from archives to oral histories. An important aspect of the course is its collaboration with the Bayview Hunters Point Community Advocates (BVHPCA), a group that works to address the toxic legacy of the shipyard – and other industrial activities – for Bayview residents.

In 1946, in the Southern Urals, construction of the USSR’s first plutonium plant fell to the GULAG-NKVD. The chief officers in charge of the program—Lavrentii Beria, Sergei Kruglov, and Ivan Tkachenko—had been pivotal figures in the deportation and political and ethnic cleansing of territories re-taken from Axis forces during WWII.  These men were charged with building a nuclear weapons complex to defend the Soviet Union from the American nuclear monopoly. In part thanks to the criminalization and deportation of ethnic minorities, Gulag territories grew crowded with foreign nationals and ethnic minorities in the postwar years. The NKVD generals were appalled to find that masses of forced laborers employed at the plutonium construction site were members of enemy nations. Beria issued orders to cleanse the ranks of foreign enemies, but construction managers could not spare a single healthy body as they raced to complete their deadlines. To solve this problem they created two zones: an interior, affluent zone for plutonium workers made up of almost exclusively of Russians; and anterior zones of prisoners, soldiers, ex-cons and local farmers, many of whom were non-Russian. The selective quality of Soviet ‘nuclearity’ meant that many people who were exposed to the plant’s secret plutonium disasters were ethnic minorities, people whose exposures went unrecorded or under-recorded because of their invisibility and low social value.

CONTENTS
Landmarks of American History from the Columbian Exchange to the U.S. Civil War
Landmarks of American History from Reconstruction to Obama
Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: U.S. Foreign Relations from the Spanish American War to Hiroshima
Uneasy Colossus: U.S. Foreign Relations, 1945-Present
Seminar: Paradox: War and Peace in the Age of the Atom
Graduate Seminar: Coming Together, or Coming Apart?: Colonialism, Decolonization, and Neocolonialism in the 20th Century
Seminar: Upsetting the Balance: An Environmental History of Globalization (not included)
Seminar: The Vietnam Wars (not included)

Beginning in the late 1980s and early 1990s a general belief gained ground that India was a de facto nuclear weapons power. The consensual understanding in Washington was that hurdles that prevented India from transforming its latent capability into an operational one were normative and not technical or organizational. New evidence shows that India lacked technical means to deliver nuclear weapons reliably and safely until 1994-95. Further, until the outbreak of the Kargil War in the summer of 1999, India lacked coordinating protocols to organizationally deploy nuclear weapons militarily. The causes of India’s lack of technical operational capabilities well into the 1990s are traceable to organizational dysfunction that grew out of a regime of secrecy that prevented information sharing and coordination among the relevant actors. The absence of an operational capability to launch a nuclear strike, on the other hand, was the consequence of risk-aversion among Indian decision-makers who feared the negative fallout of this potential discovery by the United States.

Is nuclear strategic reason rational? Barack Obama’s April 2009 speech looking towards a world free of nuclear weapons appeared to promise positive new directions in global disarmament and non-proliferation. Yet it came on the heels of one of the most destabilising periods in global nuclear security since the early 1980s. This article argues that the growing interpenetration of nuclear and conventional conflict, and the dangers of nuclear terrorism, provide disarmament with compelling security logic. However, progress will hinge on key states adopting nuclear postures that reduce nuclear dangers and can acknowledge the fundamental impossibility of nuclear strategy as a system of reason: one that has never been able to connect nuclear means and security ends in a way that is either viable or legitimate. In an era of radically asymmetric conflict and competition, disarmament is an imperative, but to succeed it must find a rational way through strategic irrationality.

I just can't fathom it", he mused. "They were doing so well before the war, and even until 1942, why haven't they put more effort into it? It would seem the natural thing for a crew like that, what with Hitler's unalterable resolves and thousand-year empire and all the rest. Pierce swung back from the window and glared at McLennand. "Doesn't it seem peculiar to you?" 1

For nearly fifty years after the end of World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union engaged in an ideological standoff that at times seemed to threaten the very future of the planet. This volume not only looks at the political and military strategies used by both sides during this lengthy confrontation but also at the after-effects that these strategies had on the culture of the world as a whole.

Phronetic organizational research is an approach to the study of management and organizations focusing on ethics and power. It is based on a contemporary interpretation of the Aristotelian concept phronesis, usually as ‘prudence’. Phronesis is the ability to think and act in relation to values, to deliberate about ‘things that are good or bad for humans’ in the words of Aristotle (1976:1140a24–b12). Phronetic organizational research effectively provides answers to the following four value-rational questions, for specific problematics in management and organization studies: 1. Where are we going with this specific management problematic? 2. Who gains and who loses, and by which mechanisms of power? 3. Is this development desirable? 4. What, if anything, should we do about it?

In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States and the subsequent war against the Taleban and al-Qaeda in Afganistan, United States leaders turned their attention toward Iraq, specifically its dictatorial leader, Saddam Hussein. Although Iraq was not as powerful a military threat as it was during the Persian Gulf War of 1990-1991, U.S. officials asserted that Iraq's proven development and use of weapons of mass destruction made Iraq a potential source of those weapons for terrorists who could then use them against U.S. or other Western targets.

During the 1980s Iran-Iraq War, Hussein ordered the use of chemical weapons against Iranian forces, and additionally used chemical weapons against civilians in rebellious areas of Iraq.

After Iraqi forces were expelled by U.S. led western coalition forces during the Persian Gulf War, as a part of the agreements that prevented the occupation of Iraq and allowed Hussein to remain in power, Hussein agreed to destroy all weapons of mass destruction and forsake the future development of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.

Over a period of twelve years, 17 specific United Nations Security Council resolutions, weapons inspection programs, and economic sanctions against Iraq failed to secure Hussein's full compliance with U.N. resolutions and assure the international community that Iraq had indeed disposed of weapons of mass destruction and abandoned programs to develop new weapons of mass destruction.

Hussein, in an effort to bolster his strong-man image that helped maintain his power in Iraq and influence in the region, played cat and mouse with international inspection teams. Fearing it would make him weak and vulnerable, Hussein refused to give up the appearance that his regime still might control weapons of mass destruction.
 
Despite U.N. resolutions, in 1998 Iraq expelled U.N. weapons inspectors and no meaningful inspections took place between 1998 and 2002.

Hussein's obstruction, pretense, and posturing resulted in highly polarized Western intelligence assessments of his warfare capacity and willingness to use WMD's.  Especially in light of the barrage of bellicose threats issued by Hussein and his official spokesman, intelligence agencies in the West scrambled to make an accurate assessment of Hussein's warfare --and specifically WMD -- capacity.

Iraqi defiance of U.N. resolutions continued throughout the 1990s. Confounding the threats from Hussein was the fact that while older weapons were subsequently discovered and destroyed by U.N. inspection teams in Iraq, there was no direct evidence -- and only weak or conflicting evidence --  that Hussein's threats were backed by the acquisition or development of either replacement or new weapons of mass destruction.

Hussein played a dangerous bluff -- bet on the lives of the Iraqi people -- that was ultimately called when the United States invaded and deposed him from power.

As of July 2003, no new weapons of mass destruction -- or significant infrastructure to indicate programs to build same -- had been found by U.S. or other Coalition forces in control of Iraq.  By the end of May 2003, both British and American intelligence agencies began to downplay the possibility of finding large stores of such weapons. Although both U.S. and British officials continued to assert prior claims about the extent of Iraq's arsenal, questions arose as to whether the weapons had been removed, destroyed, or whether intelligence reports regarding the weapons had been mishandled, exaggerated, or falsified.

Although some seized upon the growing controversy regarding the lack of WMD finds as a partisan political issue, the record was clear that all Western intelligence agencies, including those of war dissenter nations France and Germany, agreed before the war that Hussein's regime possessed weapons of mass destruction.

At the end of July 2003, several inquires were underway into the formulation and use by Coalition governments of intelligence related to Iraqi possession development of weapons of mass destruction.

Author's note: This article contains two Addendum sections:

Addendum I: U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair's "Iraq War speech" to Parliament that resulted in the government voting to use 'all means necessary to ensure the disarmament of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction" on March 18, 2003.

ADDENDUM II:  A brief overview of the immediate aftermath of the invasion of Iraq.
(Author's note subsequently edited in August 2003 to be a separate article in EEIS.)
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Ce qu’on lit dans la grande presse
est vrai - la recherche et le
développement de l’utilisation de
l’énergie nucléaire constituent
le tournant de l’histoire de
l’humanité - mais, comme souvent
hélas, cela est vrai pour des raisons
complètement différentes de celles
qui sont mises en avant. En effet, le
nucléaire est, constitutivement, une
industrie funeste. Trois arguments
doivent être repris à cet égard.

This Research Project draws on Herman Kahn’s classic work on nuclear strategic
thinking to evaluate the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s nuclear weapons
program. Kahn’s re-evaluation by Bruce-Biggs, Ghamari-Tabrizi and Helsel suggests
a more nuanced strategic thinker than popular stereotypes and received truths. In
particular, Kahn’s reflections on deterrence, scenario planning, escalation and
perceptions offer insights into why the Clinton and Bush Administrations have
misjudged the DPRK’s motivations under leader Kim Jong-Il. Further research
possibilities include the development of a “genius modelling” tool for strategic
thinkers, a new escalation framework for black market proliferation, and in-depth
cross-comparison of Kahn with contemporaries such as Thomas Schelling and Robert McNamara.

Research Questions

· How have contemporary analysts used the post-positivist turn in Strategic Studies,
and its critique of defence intellectuals, to re-evaluate the contemporary relevance of
Herman Kahn’s On Thermonuclear War (1960), Thinking About The Unthinkable
(1962) and On Escalation (1965)?
· In what ways do the fears of neoconservative strategists about North Korea ‘going
nuclear’ parallel Kahn’s analysis of irrationality and ‘unknown unknowns’? Does
Kahn’s body of work justify the Bush Administration’s pre-emption calculus in North
Korea’s case, or is this threat inflation?

Published by the University Press of Florida, this book is a comprehensive and compelling account of the evolution and current state of the archaeological study of the Cold War. Providing in-depth discussions of the field’s theoretical frameworks, historic landscapes and past research, the book offers archaeology students and practicing professionals new to the field a candid look at the field’s methods, challenges, and opportunities. Presenting case studies of archaeological investigations at the Cuban sites of the Soviet Missile Crisis, Bikini Atoll, the Nevada Test Site, and elsewhere, the author’s intent is to inspire increased interest in the study of North America’s Cold War material culture before the best opportunities to do so are gone.

Few realise that amid rising international tensions, inter alia over Ukraine, Taiwan of China, Iran and AUKUS (Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States), nuclear arms control is today almost entirely dismantled and a manifestly declining and desperate US has launched a new nuclear arms, now also targeting China, making war and even nuclear war seem increasingly possible. The political and geopolitical economy of nuclear proliferation and control here highlights the singular role of the US in driving the arms race, arguing that the US desire to dominate the world economy, not the Cold War, caused the nuclear arms race; that the only surviving arms control treaty, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), has become more a channel for proliferation than a dam against it; and that the US used the NPT to justify its post-Cold War international aggression against some countries while violating it to aid allies.

Dans l’immédiat après-guerre, la prise de conscience de la puissance annihilatrice des technologies militaires amène une réflexion sur la possibilité d’une destruction totale du monde. L’imaginaire de la menace, alimentée par les images de l’explosion des bombes atomiques au Japon, se diffuse dans l’art des années 1950 et 1960 ainsi que dans la philosophie contemporaine. L’étude croise les propositions plastiques de Gustav Metzger et ses nombreux écrits sur ce qu’il appelle l’« Auto-Destructive Art », un principe paradoxal de la création artistique, avec les textes du philosophe Günther Anders sur le développement du nucléaire civil et militaire : L’Obsolescence de l’homme (t.I 1956, t. II 1980), Hiroshima est partout (1982) et Violence, oui ou non (1987). L’étude s’articule autour de plusieurs réflexions communes qui inaugurent une culture survivaliste. Elle envisage d’abord la nécessité de détruire les instruments de destruction, puis aborde la question de la désensibilisation du sujet moderne dans la société capitaliste et sa faible perception de la menace globale qui pèse sur l’humanité et s’ouvre enfin sur une perspective écologique. Leur trajectoire de pensée lie donc l’extermination à l’extinction et anticipe le courant de la collapsologie en situant la civilisation industrielle dans « le temps de la fin ».

Title
The Flight of the Hog Wild / by Bill Streifer and Irek Sabitov

Summary
Webpage providing commentary and background information to the authors' book Flight of the Hog Wild. The Hog Wild was a U.S. B-29 shot down over Japanese-occupied Korea during the closing stages of World War II. Ostensibly on a mission to drop humanitarian relief supplies to prisoners held in the P.O.W. camp at Konan, the authors argue the aircraft was shot down by the Soviet Union in order to prevent the Americans from identifying the production facilities supporting Japan’s World War II atomic bomb program.