American militarism and the nuclear threat today [View All]

[IndianaGreen]

This is the third of a 3-part series on the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Americans are too quick to dismiss the solemn commemorations of the atomic bombings that take place every year in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We shortchange ourselves by doing so, and we play into the government's hands by purposely closing our eyes and ears to the horrific effects of atomic weapons on people and on this planet. This is why we won't protest when someone like Bush asks Congress for money to build a new generation of atomic weapons that will be easier to use by anyone having no moral misgivings about using them, someone like Bush for example.

We have much to learn from the Japanese when it comes to atomic weapons!

Part one of the series can be found here:

Part one: Prompt and utter destruction

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/aug2005/hiro-a06.shtml

Part two of the series can be found here:

Part two: American imperialism and the atom bomb

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/aug2005/hiro-a08.shtml

Sixty years since the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings

Part three: American militarism and the nuclear threat today

By Joseph Kay
9 August 2005

The decision by the administration of President Harry Truman to use atomic weapons against Japan was motivated by political and strategic considerations. Above all, the use of the bomb was meant to establish the undisputed hegemonic position of the United States in the post-war period.

These motivations were also the basic driving force behind the American intervention in the war itself. The Second World War has long been presented to the American people as a “Good War,” a war for democracy against fascism and tyranny. While it was no doubt true that millions of Americans saw the war in terms of a fight against Hitlerite fascism and Japanese militarism, the aims of those who led them to war were altogether different. The American ruling class entered the Second World War in order to secure its global interests. While the political character of the bourgeois democratic regime in the United States was vastly different than that of its fascist adversaries, the nature of the war aims of the United States were no less imperialistic. In the final analysis, the utter ruthlessness with which the United States sought to secure its objectives—including the use of the atomic bomb—flowed from this essential fact.

The American government hoped that by using the bomb it would shift the balance of forces in its growing conflict with the Soviet Union. However, the American monopoly of the bomb was short-lived. The Soviet Union responded to the bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 by rapidly increasing the amount of resources devoted to its own atomic bomb project. In 1949, the Soviet Union carried out its first atomic weapon test.

Sections of the US ruling elite and military establishment still hoped that they might be able to use the bomb in actual military situations. In 1950, Truman threatened to use nuclear weapons against the Chinese during the Korean War, and General Douglas McArthur urged the government to authorize the military to drop a number of bombs along the Korean border with Manchuria. These proposals were eventually rejected for fear that the use of the bomb might provoke a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/aug2005/hiro-a09.shtml