Abstract
Sixty-seven years after the decision to use the atomic bomb in World War II, controversy remains whether the United States was justified in using fission bombs in combat. Gar Alperovitz, the great revisionist historian, in his Atomic Diplomacy and The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb transformed our knowledge of the geopolitical motives behind the atomic attack against Japan at the end of World War II. These uranium and plutonium-core bombs were political, not primarily military in purpose and motive behind their deployment. His analysis will be compared to realists such as Hans Morgenthau, Kenneth Waltz, Henry Kissinger and George Kennan who for the most part questioned unrestrained violence and offered nuanced views on the wisdom of using such indiscriminate, savage weapons of war. The paper will explore Alperovitz’s classic argument that out of the ashes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the A-bomb drove the incipient Cold War conflict. American national-security elites construed the bomb as a political-diplomatic lever to contain Soviet power as much as a military weapon to subdue Japan. The views of various political and military leaders, President Truman, Henry Stimson, James Byrnes, General George C. Marshall, Admiral William Leahy and General Dwight Eisenhower are assessed.
Highlights
At 8:15 in the morning on August 6, 1945 the world changed forever when the United States launched the nuclear age with an air-burst atomic bomb that exploded in the skies over Hiroshima, Japan
Realism is not a monolithic ideology and one may glean a broad spectrum of analysis that can be applied as a counter argument against the decision to use the atomic bomb at the end of World War II
His magisterial writings that appear in books and essays contain five major revelations: 1) In the months before the A-bombs were unleashed in August, 1945, the United States had several viable options to end the war without resorting to weapons of mass destruction; 2) These options were not created in postwar-revisionist New Left history but were known at the time at the highest levels of government
Summary
At 8:15 in the morning on August 6, 1945 the world changed forever when the United States launched the nuclear age with an air-burst atomic bomb that exploded in the skies over Hiroshima, Japan. KIRSTEIN in the realm of international-relations theory (Ghosh, 2007) He was one of the early forerunners of classical realism and skeptical of a universality of moral principles that should govern humankind. While Carr remains faithful to the tradition of classical realism that the pursuit of power and not international moral principles is essential for nation-state survival, he rejects the use of military force if arbitrarily and indiscriminately destructive. One of the most important and most clearly recognised items in this code is the obligation not to inflict unnecessary death or suffering on other human beings This is the foundation of most of the rules of war, the earliest and most developed chapter of international law (Carr, 1961)
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