calcharacter. On both sides, the means of mass-destruction are perfected with feverish haste . . . The H-bombappears on the public horizon as a probably attainable goal. Its accelerated development has been solemnlyproclaimed by the president." In short, according to Hiroshima Plus 20, by now, the military has at least 50, 000 nuclear warheads in storageand ready with a handful of people in charge of them. In the words of James Conant, President of Harvard, "Theextreme dangers to mankind inherent in the proposal wholly outweigh any military advantage." Has the atomic bomb introduced "the fear of total annihilation ...that has forever changed world politics"? Thatseems to be the main point of the argument against dropping the atomic bomb on Japanese cities in August,1945. Yet this judgment completely abstracts from the concrete circumstances in which the decision wasmade-a world exhausted by war; an implacable, cunning and ruthless enemy; hundreds of thousands ofcasualties in an allied invasion of Japan; permanent strategic considerations; and the like. In other words, thereply fails to meet the argument for dropping the bomb and changes the subject from "the immediate decision tothe long-term consequences of the decision. But even if one grants the point about fear of annihilation, it is not clear that the world has fundamentally changednor that the whole world is always in danger of nations from time immemorial. For example, ancient Romesacked Carthage, plowed it under and salted the earth. Medieval and modern religious wars have annihilatedmillions. More recently, there was Hitler's genocidal six-million-death "final solution to the Jewish problem," andthe Communists' ten of millions of mass murders continue to this day. All this has been done without benefit ofnuclear power. Gen. MacArthur's comments came at the beginning of the atomic or nuclear age, and while the source and thejudgment deserve respect, experience has shown that nuc...
