Military Consequences of Atomic Energy

Abstract

T o BE, OR NOT TO BE? That's the question before mankind. Is the that we have just won to be the last or next to the last? The coming of victorious peace should not permit us to divert our most earnest attention from the problems created by the release of atomic energy. The atomic bomb has already rendered obsolete some of the measures we have taken for our own and the world's security. The reason is the revolution which the atomic bomb has already created in the realm of military strategy. If we are to be in a position to undertake the proper steps for our protection, we must understand the nature of the revolution, not in generalities, but in specific terms. It is only through such understanding that we shall be prepared to formulate adequate policies to deal with such immediate problems as the size, nature, and structure of our military forces and above all the international and domestic control of atomic energy. Even the organization of peace machinery for the international control of atomic energy depends on the proper implementation of strategic principles. If we want peace, we must understand war. The problem of maintaining the peace is not dissimilar in kind from that of winning the war. If Clausewitz was right in maintaining that war is nothing else than the continuation of state policy by different means, it must also be true that state policy in time of peace must be ever cognizant of the means used for its continuation in time of war. The genesis of power politics resides in the nature of as a violent contest for supremacy between two national power or energy units. Despite its striking character this definition of is not oversimplified and is wholly adequate to evaluate the place of atomic energy in military strategy. When reference is made to the term energy in the definition, this is not meant in the figurative sense but in the actual physical sense. The blow of the club, the thrust of the spear, the shot from the cannon,