EDITOR'S PAGE
Slow learners Forty years ago scientists forever changed the nature of warfare and the relationships between nation states with their most awesome achievement—a thousandfold increase in the explosive force of weapons. They soon increased it another thousandfold. Today a single missile-carrying submarine, a couple of bombers, or a handful of missiles could in a few minutes cause more havoc than World War II. After the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which occurred 40 years ago this week, some of the scientists involved in developing the first, crude nuclear weapons used in these attacks stated that the security of the U.S. and of the world in general could no longer depend primarily on military force—it had to depend on diplomacy and accommodation to contain the potential of nuclear destruction. Their view was not widely accepted. As Albert Einstein remarked later, nuclear weapons changed everything except our way of thinking. What has occurred over these past four decades is an unremitting search by the world's two dominant powers for security based on the unrestrained application of science and technology to develop ever more sophisticated nuclear weaponry. Some claim this approach has worked. Nuclear weapons have not been used again. There has been no major war in Europe. But the basic insecurity remains. And it is getting worse, as is indicated by the enormous further buildup of nuclear arsenals in very recent times and the massive increases planned for the next five years or so. The promise by weaponeers that science and technology can produce the magic bullet that will bring true, or even improved, security and solve the dilemmas of the current doctrine of mutual nuclear suicide is still being held out as strongly as ever. It is a promise that has never been met. Each new weapon system has triggered an upward spiral in the arms race and brought greater uncertainties. It is a promise that never can be met because of the dynamics of technology itself. But for the nonscientist it is a beguiling promise. It has not been resisted successfully, or even challenged seriously, by slow-learning policy makers of the Soviet Union and the U.S. for 40 years. In fact, each effort at mutual arms control between the superpowers has become enmeshed in concurrent weapons developments and so reduced, in most cases, to ineffectiveness by leaving critical technological options open. Why is this so? It is no doubt due partly to the very complexities of nuclear arms issues—complexities that are all too readily used by advocates of all persuasions to obscure from all but the most persistent even a view of what should be basic givens. A current example is the widely promoted myth that the U.S/s strategic nuclear force was neglected and even allowed to decay during the 1970s, just when the Soviet Union was embarking on a major upgrading of its force. There is no doubt that the Soviet Union started a major modernization of its nuclear forces during the 1970s, a program that continues to this day. Deployment of the Soviets' very large SS-18 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) started in 1975, as did deployment of slightly smaller SS-17s and SS-19s. The 1970s also brought an upgrading of Soviet submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs). The total number of strategic warheads and bombs deliverable by Soviet missiles and bombers increased from about 1900 in 1970 to about 5900 by 1979, a gain of 4000. During this period of supposed neglect, the corresponding number of warheads and bombs deliverable by U.S. strategic forces increased more than 5000, from 4000 to 9200. Among other things, the 1970s saw the addition to U.S. forces of the Minuteman III ICBM and two generations of SLBMs. Forty years of blind faith in technology has pushed the world up a very dangerous blind alley. Maybe this 40th anniversary of the birth of the nuclear age is a good time finally to start some serious and objective discussion about finding a way out. Michael Heylin Editor
Views expressed on this page are those of the author only and not necessarily those of ACS
August 5, 1985 C&EN
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