By Peter Huessy, Senior Warrior Nuclear Weapons Analyst
For most of the nuclear age nuclear weapons were thought by the West to be instruments of deterrence, to prevent war. Today, over time, the criminal enterprises such as Russia, China, and North Korea, that masquerade as legitimate nation-states, see nuclear weapons as instruments of coercion and blackmail. This unnerving point was underscored by the unanimous October 2023 Strategic Posture Commission report and echoed by another new Congressionally initiated report on the National Security Strategy of the United States just issued in July 2024.
On the anniversary of the use of two nuclear weapons against Japan at the end of World War II, it’s appropriate to examine again whether President Truman made the right decision. Most analysis treats Truman’s decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki as unnecessary at best and even criminal at worst, as solely a political move to intimidate the USSR, detract from Moscow’s role in defeating the Japanese and to show folks who was boss. On top of which, it is often claimed the Japanese government was ready to surrender, primarily as it anticipated a coming blockade of the homeland. In short, no such use of nuclear weapons was necessary.
As part of the almost ritualistic assessment of Truman’s decision, this year saw a slight twist in the assessments. A new poll was taken using word for word the same questions Roper polls used in 1945 to test American attitudes toward the use of nuclear weapons. One analysis led by Scott Sagan was disappointed most Americans actually support a strong and robust deterrent, as well as generally supporting the Truman decision to end WW2 by using nuclear weapons.
Such polls also show a public resistant to accepting the idea of lessening the salience of nuclear deterrence in US security policy. And that any such policy would also have to persuade Russia and China to lessen the role of nuclear weapons in their security strategies, a prospect not even far over the horizon let alone possible in the near-term.
In fact, the very opposite is occurring. Over two decades ago, Russia issued a 1999 directive to develop low-yield, highly accurate, battlefield nuclear weapons, a plan implemented by Russian President Putin. China also has built over 300 new ICBM silos just in the past few years and is now beginning to fill the silos with two types of missiles—which can each carry 3-10 warheads.
Projections by James Howe are that around 2035-45, Russia could have 7000+ deployed strategic long-range nuclear warheads, while Chris Yeaw of the University of Nebraska projects China and Russia together could easily have 10,000 deployed nuclear weapons by 2035-40.
In the face of such numbers, what sense does it make to assume nuclear US restraint will be mirrored by China and Russia when the two latter countries have been building new nuclear weapon systems for between 10-20 years? And have even accelerated the pace of their acquisition to where the recently retired commander of the US Strategic Command described China’s nuclear growth as “breathtaking.”
The critics of US nuclear modernization continue to complain the US is accelerating or initiating an arms race when in fact the very opposite is the case. In 2002-3 and 2010, the US reduced its nuclear forces from six thousand down to one thousand five hundred and fifty and limited its theater or regional nuclear forces to around two hundred gravity bombs in Europe. The US nuclear modernization plan now moving forward replaces only the force structure allowed by the New START treaty. And even if we uploaded all our current SLBM and ICBM forces with more warheads, we might be able to deploy somewhere around an additional 1000 warheads over the next 3-4 years but probably not considerably more, hardly an example of the US leading an arms race.
While Russia joined the US in both nuclear arms deals in 2002 and 2010, the theater systems they already had measured in the multiple thousands of warheads and were not under any arms limits. And Russia also has long-range systems that are also not under an any arms limits such as the Backfire bomber, while their ability to buildup far beyond the START limits continues to grow.
The question on the table is thus how reckless Xi and Putin will be with their projected very large arsenals, and will they use nuclear weapons not only for coercion but actually employ such weapons? To say nothing of the rulers in Iran and North Korea who are top state sponsors of terror and are allied closely with China and Russia and each other.
Unless the US builds a deterrent second to none, we may find out the hard way when nuclear weapons are used, as both Russia and China have both threatened to do on a serial basis.
Some global zero advocates minimize China’s buildup and still try and characterize the nuclear strategy of China as reflecting a “minimal deterrent” which is often described as a simple plan to retaliate only with limited nuclear weapons. And not use nuclear weapons first nor use nuclear weapons for coercive purposes or against nations that were non-nuclear powers.
But when Chinese government officials were cited threatening Japan with nuclear strikes should Japan come to the defense of Taiwan, the whitewash of Chinese nuclear strategy disappeared. And just so everyone understood, China emphasized “just as happened in WWII” Japan would be defeated.
So, is the US justified in building a better deterrent in the face of China and Russia building up?
A new assessment of the bombing in Japan at the end of WWII reveals that using the evidence in radio communications of the Japanese which the US was intercepting reveals the central role played by the nuclear strikes in Japan, especially the second nuclear bomb, in persuading the Japanese emperor to break the deadlock in his war cabinet and agree to an unconditional surrender.
Secondary but in the mix was the threat of a naval blockade of the islands. But of no special importance was the Russian presence in Northeast China and NE Asia with respect to the Japanese decision to adopt unconditional surrender, although the Russian presence may have impacted the regional decisions of some Japanese forces on the Asian mainland to stop fighting.
The end of the war and the Japanese surrender was not just a relief from the prospects of an island invasion and more than one million American and allied soldier casualties. While one million Japanese civilians tragically were lost in the war, often left unmentioned are the eighteen million civilians killed in China, Burma (now Myanmar), Indonesia, Malaysia, and Korea at the hands of Imperial Japan. The end of the war ended the continued awful loss of civilian life throughout East Asia, a development that must also be weighed in the mix.
And the end of the near half century of brutal Japanese occupation of Korea finally freed the Korean people to create the ROK as a beacon of economic prosperity and freedom—despite a terrible war in 1950-53 brought about by North Korea, China, and the USSR.
The lessons of August1945 over Japan are that deterrence works. Especially when demonstrated as the US did on August 6th and August 9th. The incredible damage done to the two cities just with the use of two bombs seared into the world’s memory the nature of atomic warfare, especially when weapons some 20 or 50-fold bigger than the two weapons used against Hiroshima and Nagasaki became parts of the nuclear forces around the world.
That may be one reason no such weapons have been used since, over a period of 79 years.
