by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
The New Criterion<\/em><\/p>\n A review of\u00a0The Seventh Decade: The New Shape of Nuclear Danger<\/i>\u00a0by Jonathan Schell (Metropolitan Books, 2007, 272 pp.)<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n D<\/span>uring the nuclear freeze movement of the 1980s, Jonathan Schell became well known for his detailed arguments calling for global nuclear disarmament. His latest plea updates the narrative of the earlier\u00a0Fate of the Earth<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0The Abolition<\/i>, by now warning us that seventy years into the nuclear age the nightmare of \u201cThe Bomb\u201d is growing in ways far more dangerous than even during the Cold War American-Soviet stand-off.<\/p>\n The argument is again well-written, often passionate, and takes a new tack in praising the efforts of Ronald Reagan \u2014 the book\u2019s unlikely hero-prophet \u2014 at the 1986 Reykjavik Summit where he tried to convince Mikhail Gorbachev to help him rid the world of nuclear arms. Schell\u2019s good Reagan came to his senses late in his administration, only after the other Reagan spent a fortune on strategic nuclear weapons, rearmed NATO forces in Europe with tactical nuclear weapons, and may well have helped thereby to implode the Soviet Union.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, Schell rightly points out that realists and conservatives have come a lot closer to his way of thinking from their prior insistence on unilateral American nuclear deterrence. Witness the recent\u00a0Wall Street Journal<\/i>\u00a0opinion essay calling for global abolition of nuclear weapons by the deans of American foreign policy Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn, William Perry, and George Schultz.<\/p>\n Schell\u2019s argument is straightforward and at first glance unimpeachable. The world\u2019s nations often came to the bomb haphazardly. America used it at Hiroshima in sloppy and casual fashion. Only through luck and a half-century of Soviet-American trial-by-error diplomacy did the superpowers narrowly avoid blowing the world apart.<\/p>\n But now the threat is far worse still. There are more nuclear players than ever before \u2014 many of them existential enemies of one another, like Pakistan and India who almost went to war once again in 2002. Terrorists have greater chances to acquire unaccounted-for nuclear devices \u2014 and ever mounting perceived grievances.<\/p>\n Many of these new players are not subject to rational calculations of the old bottom-line Kremlin. Worse still, the United States has ceased being a restraining force for multilateral sobriety. Under George Bush, America has made things far worse by its unilateral and preemptive policies, its over-reliance on military solutions, and its snubbing of global institutions that alone can fashion the framework of disarmament.<\/p>\n Schell writes with his usual elegance, and all sane people would wish that his visions of a peaceful nuclear-free world could come true \u2014 especially given his minatory recitations of how close the world has come to using nuclear weapons. But there are also enough historical errors, contradictory and inconsistent logic, and partisanship in this book to doubt both Schell\u2019s presentation and the very wisdom and practicality of global nuclear disarmament itself.<\/p>\n First, Hiroshima and Nagasaki most definitely did stave off an American invasion of Japan that would have cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Schell omits any real mention of Okinawa, but that bloodbath (50,000 American casualties, 200,000 Japanese and Okinawan dead) loomed large at the newly constructed Pentagon as a precursor of what to expect on Japan itself in late 1945 and 1946. After that island carnage, veterans lamented not that the bomb was used on Japan to preempt another nightmarish invasion, but that it might have been used earlier to prevent Okinawa altogether.<\/p>\n Revisionist historians, of course, cite the Soviet invasion of Manchuria as prompting Japanese surrender, or argue that the bomb was intended as a loud and deadly demonstration to Joseph Stalin of newly found American power and resolution. Perhaps \u2014 but again war planners at the time were far more obsessed with not repeating the bloodletting of the 1944\u20131945 Pacific theater on a far grander scale. For all the dangers of the nuclear age, for seventy years we have not witnessed total industrial war on a continental scale of the type that nearly wiped out Western civilization twice in the twentieth century.<\/p>\n Whatever Schell\u2019s nuanced argumentations, it was during the Clinton administration that the nuclear scientist A. Q. Khan ensured Pakistan the bomb and shipped his nefarious methodology abroad. North Korea reached the nuclear threshold in the late 1990s. And\u00a0mirabile dictu<\/i>\u00a0it was during the Bush administration that Khan was exposed and North Korea is, for the moment apparently, shutting down its reactor.<\/p>\n Schell warns: \u201cHaving outgrown its parochial Cold War breeding ground [the Bomb] is moving to take up residence in every part of the globe.\u201d He then immediately cites three examples: India, Pakistan, and North Korea. But India exploded a nuclear device (\u201cpeaceful\u201d or not) in 1974. North Korea apparently has not yet detonated a successful bomb and may well be disarming under multilateral pressures and bribes. And Pakistan became nuclear only during the Clinton administration which put a higher premium on the efficacy of international watchdog agencies than has any administration before or since.<\/p>\n T<\/span>he war in Iraq looms large in the narrative as morally reprehensible and a strategic blunder. But such castigation immediately must prompt contortions. If the world is to disarm, what are we to do with fanatics like Saddam Hussein and Muammar al-Qaddafi, who were seeking nuclear technology and have a history of violent war-making, both conventional and terrorist-inspired?<\/p>\n Schell downplays the fact that both of their programs are now gone (Qaddafi purportedly confessed to Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi of his fears of ending up like Saddam). Curiously, Schell also warns how close Saddam was to bomb-making while simultaneously damning the Bush administration for removing him on false pretenses.<\/p>\n So how odd to be told that Saddam did not propose a threat that justified his removal \u2014 only to deprecate the efficacy of the 1981 Israeli bombing of the Iraqi reactor at Osirak on the grounds that \u201cafter the attack, they [the Iraqis] turned to uranium enrichment, a quicker path to the bomb.\u201d And odder still to learn that \u201chaving once put together most of the know-how for building the bomb, Iraq could one day call on its scientists to do so again.\u201d But then Schell also quotes the often unreliable Seymour Hersh as proof that the United States was considering a preemptive nuclear strike on Iran.<\/p>\n There is no mention of the relationship between constitutional government and nuclear weapons \u2014 a glaring omission in regards to Iraq. In fact, the only hope that an oil-rich Iraq will not go nuclear in the future is not the United Nations or appeals to compassionate reason, but the chance of a consensual government that arises in the ashes of the Baathist catastrophe.<\/p>\n Schell doesn\u2019t consider why a Britain, France, India, Israel, or the United States having such weapons is far different from a China, Pakistan, or Russia \u2014 much less an unhinged Iran or North Korea \u2014 in possession of such frightening arsenals. Full-fledged democracies \u2014 the truism is largely true \u2014 have a history of not attacking each other so frequently, in part due to transparent institutions that monitor their militaries in a way not accorded to the Red Army or the Pakistani intelligence services.<\/p>\n T<\/span>he real danger, it seems to me, is not that France may have over 300 bombs or Israel 170, but that these other illiberal regimes should have any. An omnipresent argument of moral equivalence permeates the book. Schell accepts the complaints of former Third World dictatorships that liberal constitutional states have one set of nuclear rules for themselves while applying quite different ones to poorer others \u2014 but never questions that reasoning on either historical or humanitarian grounds. It surely does not help his case to quote approvingly the greatest mass-murder in civilization\u2019s history, Mao Zedong, to the effect that \u201cit is absolutely impermissible for two or three countries to brandish their nuclear weapons at will, issue orders and commands, and lord it over the world as self-ordained nuclear overlords.\u201d<\/p>\n There is a disturbing tendency to blame the United States for the present state of nuclear proliferation. (The supposed implosion of unilateral Bush administration policies is, for example, repeatedly referred to as \u201cThe Fall.\u201d) But does any serious student of diplomacy actually believe that France went ahead with nuclear acquisition only because the United States rejected a 1954 French proposal to discuss a global atmospheric test ban? Or does the expansion of NATO under George Bush or his advocacy of anti-missile systems really explain the rise of an authoritarian bellicose Mother Russia \u2014 rather than the spiraling profits of oil, ex-KGB operative Vladimir Putin\u2019s authoritarian tendencies, and nationalist angst over the breakup of the old Soviet Union?<\/p>\n For all of Schell\u2019s requiems for Iraq, and its supposed lessons that one can\u2019t unilaterally disarm a regime that may or may not have dangerous weapons, the verdict, as we see from the surge, is still out. Ironically, should Iraq stabilize and its constitutional government provide an antithesis to Iran and the Gulf monarchies, then Schell\u2019s goal of stopping proliferation will have been advanced, not retarded. Indeed, Schell should ask whether Iraq, Libya, and North Korea were closer on January 20, 2001 or now to obtaining nuclear weapons? Oddly again, Schell seems to recognize this disturbing fact when he offhandedly says of nuclear non-proliferation, \u201cThe United States calls for strong measures; Europe is content with weaker ones; Russia and China are happy with even weaker ones or none at all.\u201d<\/p>\n Schell seems uninterested in military history, which in turn leads him to embarrassing rhetorical questions. After stating that it might well have been true in May 1994 that no country was targeted by the strategic forces of the United States, Schell editorializes: \u201ca statement that, if true, seemed to cry out for a follow-up question: in that case, why does the United States still require nuclear weapons in the thousands?\u201d The obvious answer after 2,500 years of civilized war would be twofold: first, the U.S. might not have to point its weapons precisely because everyone knows it has them and thus reacts accordingly; and, two, perceived enemies in 1994 might well be different from those in, say, 2007 \u2014 or 2030 for that matter.<\/p>\n Finally, who would police Schell\u2019s global police? The United Nations did nothing to stop the Balkan, Rwandan, and Darfur genocides but apparently did a great deal to facilitate corruption and starvation with its Oil-for-Food skullduggery. No international court ever convicted mass-murdering Slobodan Milosevic, much less caught Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic in an era when the genocidal Saddam Hussein has been removed, caught, tried, and executed.<\/p>\n Schell seems to acknowledge the problem of international oversight, but he blithely reassures us that in a world of nations disarmed of nuclear weapons, the \u201ccheater\u201d who unilaterally rearms would find no \u201cgenuine\u201d advantage:<\/p>\n At best, the cheater would enjoy a monopoly for a brief period. Indeed, if one spins out these scenarios, it is difficult to imagine how a cheater could gain genuine advantage from its violation.<\/p>\n Actually it is not difficult at all to imagine such an advantage. Try, for example, a Mahmoud Ahmadinejad within \u201ca brief period\u201d of, say, fifteen minutes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u00a92007 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson The New Criterion A review of\u00a0The Seventh Decade: The New Shape of Nuclear Danger\u00a0by Jonathan Schell (Metropolitan Books, 2007, 272 pp.) During the nuclear freeze movement of the 1980s, Jonathan Schell became well known for his detailed arguments calling for global nuclear disarmament.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[87,753],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-Ur","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5326,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/embedded-and-elitist-left\/","url_meta":{"origin":3499,"position":0},"title":"Embedded and Elitist Left","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 1, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"The Long March through Schools of Journalism by Bruce S. Thornton Private Papers If you want a good example of the \"long march through the institutions\" undertaken by sixties leftists after they left school, look no further than the career of Orville Schell, dean of Berkeley's School of Journalism. Since\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":947,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/nuclear-realities\/","url_meta":{"origin":3499,"position":1},"title":"Nuclear Realities","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 26, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Given the worrying over nuclear Iran, it is timely to review the rules of nuclear proliferation. Nuclear Cred Otherwise insignificant nations and failed states gain credibility by shorting their own people to divert billions of dollars to acquiring a bomb. Take away that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Nuclear Warfare"","block_context":{"text":"Nuclear Warfare","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/war\/nuclear-warfare\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3501,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/so-whos-afraid-of-an-iranian-bomb\/","url_meta":{"origin":3499,"position":2},"title":"So Who’s Afraid of an Iranian Bomb?","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 29, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services At first glance, it would seem a straightforward thing to stop a relatively weak but volatile Iran from obtaining a nuclear bomb. It would also seem to be something a concerned world community would be actively working to do. After all, the Sunni\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "October 2007"","block_context":{"text":"October 2007","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2007\/october-2007\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3387,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/pakistani-punditry\/","url_meta":{"origin":3499,"position":3},"title":"Pakistani Punditry","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 30, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner Lost in all the frenzied reaction to the Bhutto assassination is any consistency of critique. 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That's exactly the opposite of what the NIE reported just two years ago, when it claimed Iran's ruling mullahs were\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "December 2007"","block_context":{"text":"December 2007","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2007\/december-2007\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10716,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/who-gets-to-have-nuclear-weapons-and-why\/","url_meta":{"origin":3499,"position":5},"title":"Who Gets to Have Nuclear Weapons \u2014 and Why?","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 7, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"By Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review \u00a0 The rules used to be controlled by two big powers, but not anymore. \u00a0 Given North Korea\u2019s nuclear lunacy, what exactly are the rules, formal or implicit, about which nations may have nuclear weapons and which may not? \u00a0 It is complicated. \u00a0\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "China"","block_context":{"text":"China","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/china\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3499"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3499"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3500,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3499\/revisions\/3500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}