Tag: nuclear weapons

Did the Atomic Bombs End World War II?

On September 2, it marked 80 years since Japan signed the Instrument of Surrender, formally ending hostilities with the Allied powers. In 1945, Emperor Shōwa decided to surrender on August 14. Why did Japan choose to accept defeat at that moment? The United States had dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9. As a result, many claim that these bombings brought the war to an end. This past June, U.S. President Donald Trump compared American strikes on Iran to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, stating, “That hit ended the war.” But did the atomic bombs truly end World War II?

To explore this question, we must consider two perspectives: how the Japanese government perceived the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and whether the United States intended to use them specifically to force Japan’s surrender.

What was the Japanese government’s response to the atomic bombings?

To begin, let us examine this first question. Experts have pointed out that the role of the Soviet Union’s entry into the war is often underestimated. While many believe that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought the war to an end, another perspective holds that the Soviet declaration of war was the decisive factor. The Soviet Union declared war on Japan on August 8 – two days after the bombing of Hiroshima – and launched an invasion of Manchuria on August 9.

On June 22, 1945, Japanese leaders convened a conference in which Emperor Shōwa urged peace negotiations through Soviet mediation. This was despite the fact that, back in April, the Soviet Union had formally notified Japan of its intention to terminate the Neutrality Pact. Yet Japan continued to pin its hopes on Soviet goodwill, reasoning that the pact remained legally valid until April 1946. The Soviets, for their part, offered no clear response, leaving Japan to wait in vain for a gesture that was never likely to come.

Japan had come to recognize that it could not defeat the United States and the United Kingdom on its own. The Imperial Japanese Army’s plan for a decisive mainland battle would be rendered impossible if the Soviets joined the conflict. Thus, Japan placed its hopes on Soviet mediation, aiming to secure favorable terms for peace – most importantly, the preservation of the Emperor’s position.

Yasuaki Chijiwa, Director of the Department of International Conflict History at the National Institute for Defense Studies, notes that Japanese leaders continued to await a response from the Soviets even after the bombing of Hiroshima. It took two days to assess the devastation in Hiroshima, but once the Soviets entered the war, Japan acted swiftly. Just six hours after the Soviet invasion began, Japanese leaders convened to discuss surrender terms.

Emperor Shōwa stated, “Now that we are at war with the Soviets, it is imperative to bring the conflict to a swift conclusion.” Foreign Minister Shigenori Tōgō echoed this urgency: “We must end the war immediately.” Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki declared, “I have decided to accept the Potsdam Declaration in order to end the war.”

Although the Army continued to insist that a mainland battle could inflict significant damage on the enemy and strengthen Japan’s negotiating position, Emperor Shōwa expressed growing distrust toward the military. He had been informed as early as June 1945 that Japan’s forces lacked the capacity to sustain such a campaign, and this realization is believed to have shifted his stance toward seeking an early peace. He resolved to accept the Potsdam Declaration, provided that the Emperor’s position would be maintained.

The Byrnes Note – a diplomatic reply issued by U.S. Secretary of State James Byrnes on August 11 – did not explicitly guarantee the continuation of the Japanese monarchy. Nevertheless, despite resistance from factions within the military, Emperor Shōwa accepted the terms of the declaration on August 14.

In summary, the two atomic bombs were not the sole or decisive factor in Japan’s decision to surrender. Japanese leaders referred to so-called “new-type bombs,” yet they struggled to comprehend the full extent of their impact in such a short time. Moreover, by that point, roughly 60 Japanese cities had already suffered catastrophic damage from large-scale incendiary bombing campaigns targeting urban populations.

A 1946 report by the United States Strategic Bombing Survey – commissioned by the U.S. military to assess the impact of aerial bombardment during World War II – concluded:

“Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.”

Keep reading

Construction intensifies at site linked to Israel’s suspected nuclear program, satellite photos show

Construction work has intensified on a major new structure at a facility key to Israel’s long-suspected atomic weapons program, according to satellite images analyzed by experts. They say it could be a new reactor or a facility to assemble nuclear arms — but secrecy shrouding the program makes it difficult to know for sure.

The work at the Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center near the city of Dimona will renew questions about Israel’s widely believed status as the Mideast’s only nuclear-armed state.

It could also draw international criticism, especially since it comes after Israel and the United States bombed nuclear sites across Iran in June over their fears that the Islamic Republic could use its enrichment facilities to pursue an atomic weapon. Among the sites attacked was Iran’s heavy water reactor at Arak.

Seven experts who examined the images all said they believed the construction was related to Israel’s long-suspected nuclear weapons program, given its proximity to the reactor at Dimona, where no civilian power plant exists. However, they split on what the new construction could be.

Three said the location and size of the area under construction and the fact that it appeared to have multiple floors meant the most likely explanation for the work was the construction of a new heavy water reactor. Such reactors can produce plutonium and another material key to nuclear weapons.

The other four acknowledged it could be a heavy water reactor but also suggested the work could be related to a new facility for assembling nuclear weapons. They declined to be definitive given the construction was still in an early stage.

Keep reading

The Case for an Interim Agreement With North Korea

Striking a nuclear deal with North Korea is the most courageous foreign policy project left unfinished from President Donald Trump’s first term. The arc from war scare and “fire and fury” to détente and “love letters” stretched over three years until its engagement phase was derailed by the failed Hanoi summit and the onset of Covid-19. Six years on, statements by the White House and the Kim regime indicate a willingness to return to talks. That is welcome, because progress toward establishing a stable U.S.–DPRK relationship remains in the interests of both sides, even accounting for the dramatic improvement in the North’s international position since 2021. 

The South Korean president Lee Jae Myung’s visit to Washington last week would have been a good opportunity for the White House to begin to adopt a new approach. Frontloading heavy demands on denuclearization foreclosed progress on other worthy issues in 2018–2019. To make headway in 2025, the U.S. must shift from “denuclearization first” to “regular engagement first,” and accept that complete denuclearization is a long-run aspiration. Trump should pitch the North on an interim deal that couples three public unilateral U.S. concessions with a private offer of sanctions relief calibrated to verifiable limits on the North’s fissile material production.

Kim Jong Un’s reciprocation is never guaranteed, but it is in America’s interests to broaden his horizons beyond fighting Russia’s war against Ukraine, international cybercrime, and untrammeled development of nuclear missiles that can strike the United States.

The 2019 Hanoi summit, the last substantive high-level U.S.–DPRK meeting, was meant to implement the four aspirations of the 2018 Singapore Joint Statement: establishing a new U.S.–DPRK relationship, building a peace regime on the Korean Peninsula, working toward the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, and repatriating the remains of American soldiers who died in the Korean War. Pending a leader-level accord on denuclearization, both sides were reportedly ready to make unprecedented progress on the other three goals by signing agreements declaring a symbolic end to the Korean War, establishing liaison offices in each other’s capitals, facilitating economic investment, and repatriating remains of more U.S. soldiers.

But talks on denuclearization quickly collapsed. Trump walked away from a DPRK offer to dismantle at least part of its Yongbyon plutonium and enriched uranium facility and formally halt nuclear and missile testing in exchange for the lifting of all post-2016 UN sanctions on its civilian economy. The U.S. position began with a demand for the North to freeze and dismantle all its nuclear production facilities—not only Yongbyon—in a definite period in exchange for relief from the UN sanctions. At some point the U.S. side reportedly increased its demand to include total relinquishment of North Korea’s nuclear program, including all facilities and all weapons. This “Libya model” offer bore the imprint of John Bolton, Trump’s then-National Security Advisor, and was probably designed to sabotage the talks, since Kim certainly knew of Muammar Gaddafi’s grisly death less than a decade after he relinquished his nuclear program.

Trump and Kim both gambled that the magic of a leader-level summit would allow them to achieve sweeping goals. Each devalued pre-summit talks that could have produced a more incremental, more achievable deal. Kim refused to even authorize his working level diplomats to discuss denuclearization. And the White House went ahead with the summit knowing a viable deal was not on the table. 

What is unclear from the public record is the extent to which either side, facing maximalist requests, toned down their own position to try bridge the gap. That incremental approach, which tends to de-emphasize the goal of complete denuclearization, is the best path forward.

North Korea’s willingness and capacity to harm U.S. interests is now greater than ever. Its arsenal of warheads has reportedly grown from 15 to 50 since 2016 and it is estimated to have sufficient fissile material for 40 more. It continues to test and refine ICBM designs that can strike the continental U.S., including solid-fueled models that can be dispersed and launched at short notice. North Korea’s geopolitical ambit has also spread to Europe. It has sold Russia billions of dollars’ worth of ammunition to support its war effort in Ukraine. In June 2024 Russia and North Korea signed a mutual defense treaty, and 15,000 North Korean soldiers were sent to fight in Russia’s Kursk region. In return, Russia has granted the country access to advanced missile and reconnaissance technologies. At the same time, Russia and China have relaxed their enforcement of the post-2016 UN sanctions, reducing pressure on the North’s civilian economy.

Keep reading

When the Russia ‘Experts’ Get It Wrong

The Western punditariat’s commentary on Russia is spectacularly ill-informed. This should be expected from mainstream journalists whose employment relies on the very ignorance they so readily espouse, but there is no excuse for those who promote themselves as “experts” and use this alleged expertise to help craft Western policy towards Russia.

A case in point is Michael McFaul, the Stanford Professor whose claim to fame is serving as Obama’s ambassador to Moscow. In a recent post on his Twitter account, McFaul linked to a Foreign Affairs article he penned in December of last year, outlining how he believed the incoming Trump administration could end the war in Ukraine. As is no surprise, the ambassador and NATO enthusiast recommended the suicidal strategy of admitting Ukraine into the alliance. Yet this is far from the most egregious misstep McFaul made in this piece, as he committed several factual errors that are inexcusable for someone of his experience and purported expertise.

It has become an article of faith in the West that Ukraine made a catastrophic folly in the mid-1990s by surrendering its nuclear weapons stockpile in exchange for security guarantees in the form of the Budapest Memorandum. McFaul repeats this conventional wisdom, stating that “the United States offered Ukraine security assurances in exchange for Kyiv’s handing over its nuclear arsenal to Moscow.”

There is, however, just one problem with this piece of commentary: it isn’t true. Kiev couldn’t hand over its nuclear arsenal to Moscow because it didn’t have a nuclear arsenal to begin with. Ukraine’s much-vaunted nuclear deterrent was, in actual fact, Soviet nuclear weapons that happened to be stationed on Ukrainian soil. Even post-independence, Moscow retained full control of these systems. Ukraine’s nuclear arsenal, then, was as much Ukrainian as American nuclear systems stationed throughout Europe are European. All debates about whether Kiev could have deterred the Russian invasion had it not signed the Budapest Memorandum are, therefore, redundant. As someone who’s bragged about making close to a million dollars a year for his supposed insights on Russia, McFaul should know better than to entertain these debates.

In fairness to McFaul, he did at least get one thing right when he said Washington offered Ukraine security assurances. Often used synonymously with guarantees, the word assurances was very carefully and deliberately selected language by Washington to ensure they would not be legally-bound to come to Ukraine’s defense, as the then-U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Steven Pifer has explained:

“American officials decided the assurances would have to be packaged in a document that was not legally-binding. Neither the Bush nor Clinton administrations wanted a legal treaty that would have to be submitted to the Senate for advice and consent to ratification. State Department lawyers thus took careful interest in the actual language, in order to keep the commitments of a political nature. U.S. officials also continually used the term “assurances” instead of “guarantees,” as the latter implied a deeper, even legally-binding commitment of the kind that the United States extended to its NATO allies”

So, when former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Wesley Clark said on a recent appearance on Piers Morgan Uncensored that the U.S. is essentially “giving up” on the Budapest Memorandum by failing to come to Ukraine’s aid, he is demonstrating quite a fundamental ignorance of the nature of the agreement. Clark additionally fails to mention that Washington had made their desire to “give up” on the Budapest Memorandum very clear long before the 2022 invasion. A key component of the memorandum is for the signatories of Russia, the U.S., and U.K. to refrain from exercising “economic coercion” against Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan (the latter two also had Soviet nuclear weapons that they agreed to transfer, and signed their own separate versions of the memorandum to do so).

As early as 2006, the United States and its British partners acted in complete defiance of this commitment, sanctioning the government of Belarus. Washington placed further sanctions on Minsk in 2013, justifying this on the grounds that their pledges in the Budapest Memorandum were “not legally binding.” Feeling liberated from any legal constraints, Washington also imposed sanctions against the government of Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine, which complemented their blatant interference in the country’s internal affairs during the Maidan revolution. Such a move was a clear violation of  the Budapest pledge to respect Ukraine’s “independence and sovereignty.”

Clark may profit from studying this and much else of the post-Soviet record. In addition to peddling mainstream dogma about the Budapest Memorandum, the general also repeated the Western media favourite that Putin wants to reconstitute the borders of the Soviet Union. As he put it, “From the time Vladimir Putin became prime minister and later president, he wanted to restore the Soviet Union’s space and territory.”

Keep reading

UK discloses ‘serious nuclear incident’ at Navy base

A “serious nuclear incident” occurred at a Navy base in Scotland earlier this year, the UK Ministry of Defence has admitted, prompting concerns over poor maintenance of Britain’s nuclear weapons and a lack of transparency.

The Category A event – the most serious classification for nuclear site incidents – took place between January and April at HMNB Clyde in Faslane, which houses all Royal Navy submarines, including Vanguard-class vessels armed with Trident nuclear missiles. Such events carry “actual or high potential for radioactive release to the environment.” The ministry has refused to provide details, leaving it unclear whether radioactive material actually escaped.

The disclosure was made by procurement minister Maria Eagle in response to a parliamentary question about Nuclear Site Event Reports (NSERs) at Faslane and the nearby Coulport naval base. Eagle said Faslane recorded one Category A event in that period, along with two Category B, seven Category C and four Category D incidents, according to media reports on Thursday. Coulport, which stores nuclear missiles and warheads, reported four Category C and nine Category D events.

Category B incidents involve a contained release or unplanned radiation exposure, Category C entails moderate release potential, while a category D incident is unlikely to cause a release but may show negative trends.

Keep reading

The ‘Miss Atom Bomb’ Beauty Pageant in Nagasaki, After the A-Bomb Fell

As you probably know by now, my current PBS film (see links above) revolves around the January 1, 1946 all-star U.S. military football game played in, of all places, Nagasaki less than five months after one of our new weapons destroyed half the city and killed at least 75,000, overwhelmingly civilians.

Beyond the Atomic Bowl, there was a second highly revealing (of American occupation attitudes) episode a few months after that.

By the summer of 1946, most of the Marine occupiers of Nagasaki had been sent home. Before departing, some helped promote and/or served as judges for a Miss Nagasaki beauty pageant, which they took to calling the “Miss Atom Bomb” contest. The contestants, whose ages ranged from 17 to 25, were young Japanese women, surely some of them widows or daughters of men killed in the Pacific war or in the atomic bombing. They had entered by responding to ads in the three leading local newspapers calling for young women who symbolized “Nagasaki rising from the ruins.”

Three U.S. Marines were among the ten judges in a competition that somehow took three days to complete (April 29-May 1). It was staged in a dance hall in the southern part of the city, well outside the zone of worst destruction. (Remember, the bomb exploded more than a mile off target, so “only” half the city was wiped out.) The hall had become slightly notorious as it was a prime site for occupying troops to pay money to dance with and maybe woo local women.

Presenting roses to the winner (above) was Marine Sgt. Robert McMenimen, who had earlier served as one of the referees at the Atomic Bowl.

Here is a clipping from Pacific Stars & Stripes, covering it at the time, and more photos that my research team found in U.S. archives.

Keep reading

Disinformation & The Dropping Of The Atomic Bombs

Legitimate disagreement about the wisdom of dropping two bombs on Japan to end World War II in 1945 persists even 80 years later, as reflected in discussions this past week.

But recently, there has often been no real effort even to present the facts, much less to consider the lose-lose choices involved in using such destructive weapons. In an age of revisionist history—when Churchill is deemed a “terrorist,” Germany did not really mean to starve millions of Jews and Ukrainians in summer and fall 1941, the British forced Hitler to continue the war, and World War II was not worth the cost—so too are Hiroshima and Nagasaki judged as either war crimes or colossal and unnecessary follies.

For today’s generation, it seems so easy to declare one’s 21st-century moral superiority over our ancestors. So we damn them as war criminals, given that they supposedly dropped the bombs without legitimate cause or reason.

What follows are some of the most common critiques of President Truman’s decision to use two nuclear weapons against wartime Japan, with an explanation of why his decision to use the bombs proved, at the time and in hindsight, the correct one.

Keep reading

ATOMIC BOMBINGS AT 80: The Mystery of the Nagasaki Bomb

“The rights and wrongs of Hiroshima are debatable,” Telford Taylor, the chief prosecutor at Nuremberg, once said, “but I have never heard a plausible justification of Nagasaki” — which he labeled a war crime.

In his 2011 book Atomic Cover-Up, Greg Mitchell says, “If Hiroshima suggests how cheap life had become in the atomic age, Nagasaki shows that it could be judged to have no value whatsoever.” Mitchell notes that the U.S. writer Dwight MacDonald cited in 1945 America’s “decline to barbarism” for dropping “half-understood poisons” on a civilian population.

The New York Herald Tribune editorialized there was “no satisfaction in the thought that an American air crew had produced what must without doubt be the greatest simultaneous slaughter in the whole history of mankind.”

Mitchell reports that the novelist Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. — who experienced the firebombing of Dresden first hand and described it in Slaughterhouse Five — said, “The most racist, nastiest act by this country, after human slavery, was the bombing of Nagasaki.”

On Aug. 17, 1945, David Lawrence, the conservative columnist and editor of US News, put it this way:

“Last week we destroyed hundreds of thousands of civilians in Japanese cities with the new atomic bomb. We shall not soon purge ourselves of the feeling of guilt. We did not hesitate to employ the most destructive weapon of all times indiscriminately against men, women and children. Surely we cannot be proud of what we have done. If we state our inner thoughts honestly, we are ashamed of it.”

If shame is the natural response to Hiroshima, how is one to respond to Nagasaki, especially in view of all the declassified government papers on the subject? According to Dr. Joseph Gerson’s With Hiroshima Eye, some 74,000 were killed instantly at Nagasaki, another 75,000 were injured and 120,000 were poisoned.

If Hiroshima was unnecessary, how to justify Nagasaki?

Keep reading

ATOMIC BOMBINGS AT 80: The Very Un-Christian Nagasaki Bomb

Eighty years ago today, an all-Christian bomber crew dropped “Fat Man,” a plutonium bomb, on Nagasaki, Japan, instantly annihilating tens of thousands of innocent civilians, a disproportionate number of them Japanese Christians, and wounding uncountable numbers of others.

For targeting purposes, the bombing crew used St. Mary’s Urakami Cathedral, the largest Christian church in East Asia. At 11:02 a.m., on Aug. 9, 1945, when the bomb was dropped over the cathedral, Nagasaki was the most Christian city in Japan.

At the time, the United States was arguably the most Christian nation in the world (that is, if you can label as Christian a nation whose churches overwhelmingly have failed to sincerely teach or adhere to the peaceful ethics of Jesus as taught in the Sermon on the Mount).

The baptized and confirmed Christian airmen, following their wartime orders to the letter, did their job efficiently, and they accomplished the mission with military pride, albeit with a number of near-fatal glitches.

Most Americans in 1945 would have done exactly the same if they had been in the shoes of the Bock’s Car crew, and there would have been very little mental anguish later if they had also been treated as heroes.

Nevertheless, the use of that monstrous weapon of mass destruction to destroy a mainly civilian city like Nagasaki was an international war crime and a crime against humanity as defined later by the Nuremberg Tribunal.

Of course, there was no way that the crew members could have known that at the time. Some of the crew did admit that they had had some doubts about what they had participated in when the bomb actually detonated. Of course, none of them actually saw the horrific suffering of the victims up close and personal.

“Orders are orders” and, in wartime, disobedience can be, and has been, legally punishable by summary execution of the soldier who might have had a conscience strong enough to convince him that killing another human, especially an unarmed one, was morally wrong.

Keep reading