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| Perhaps not if, it is when |
© 2016 Michael Swickard, Ph.D. There is a mainly unseen and
undiscussed danger in America. It is that we are subject to irrational fear in
some areas. And our enemies know this. What do we fear the most? Atomic bombs.
The Soviet Union and our country
engaged in a War of Fears during the Cold War from a principle known as Mutually
Assured Destruction or MAD. Growing up in the 1950s I became aware that my life
would be over in minutes if any madman pushed the button. In October 1962 that
almost happened.
The central idea of deterrence was where
you and your enemy if either use nuclear weapons will both be completely
destroyed. It worked. We haven’t had a nuclear attack in seventy years of
nuclear weapons.
But now our country faces a dilemma:
if some terrorist organization explodes a nuclear weapon on American soil what
is our national response? We do not have an articulated policy.
No one is talking about the threat
of a nuclear attack, yet rouge states have fissionable material and making a
bomb while complicated is possible. It is not my intention to unduly scare
Americans but there is a lot of the material already made. And, Iran along with
North Korea have been making more for bombs.
It would seem to rational Americans
that it isn’t a question of if, rather when, some terrorist attacks our country
with a nuclear bomb. I would predict widespread panic that will bring our
nation to its knees. America would be hurt more by the panic than by anything
else.
A nuclear bomb doesn’t need to be
the size of the first bombs, it can fit in a suitcase. So the question is: what
is America’s policy about being attacked? What is our response to nuclear
attack by terrorists?
Rather than trying to come up with a
policy while in ashes, it would seem that we need an articulated policy that we
would really do. Would we bomb some enabling country into the Twelfth Century
or is our response to send a protest letter to the United Nations?
MAD worked with the Soviets, but the
threats are terrorist groups and their sponsors. How can America respond if say
ISIS sets off a nuclear bomb in our country?
To end World War Two, the Allies had
to do three things: defeat and disband the armies of Germany, Italy and Japan.
Second, the Allies had to displace the leadership of those three countries.
Finally, they had to change the culture of those three countries so that a new
generation of fascists did not arise.
We are engaged in multiple places in
our world in a war of small scale domination. It is not like Germany taking
Europe, but there are similarities. Most notably, any method was fine with the
Nazi Government. Likewise, there seems no restraint of our attackers in the
Middle East.
At the start of WWII, Admiral
William “Bull” Halsey is quoted as saying, “Before we’re through with them, the
Japanese language will be spoken only in hell.” The Japanese attack on Pearl
Harbor sparked that feeling in many Americans.
Thankfully we beat Japan’s dictatorship
but after the war joined hands with the Japanese people. Not so much at first
but they became good trading partners. I lived in Japan for three years and
enjoy their culture.
We must have a plan for the threat
of nuclear attack and after the first nuclear attack on America to insure that
no other attack every comes. Perhaps we can stop the threat entirely if we have
the right policy.
That will require a ruthlessness
that matches our enemies since that is all that they know. Importantly, it is
not the ground people that enable such attacks, it is the nations that supply
money, training and hardware to the terrorists. That is who we must intimidate
into inaction.
For that reason, our leaders in
Washington must be clear that an attack on America with nuclear weapons will
result in catastrophic damage to the nations that enabled that attack. This
must happen even though innocent lives in those countries would be taken.
We must have a rational response policy
if we are to deter attack.
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