Widdowson zum Problem des atomaren Krieges
Geschrieben von Andreas am 02. Oktober 2003 20:29:18:
Als Antwort auf: Re: Dauer des Niedergangs - Beginn des Dark Age geschrieben von HotelNoir am 02. Oktober 2003 16:09:22:
Weiter unten habe ich statements zur Lage Russlands unterstrichen, die vielleicht im Zusammenhang mit den einschlägigen Prophezeiungen interessieren könnten. Ich hoffe, Johannes hat nicht allzu viel dagegen (?).
Gruss
AndreasP.S. Ich vermute der Text noch vor dem Ende des Kosovokrieges verfasst.
Nuclear warDisintegration, each household fending for itself, means a state of chronic and general war. Although, if you keep your wits about you, you may be able to keep out of trouble, there will nonetheless be a sizeable number of people who are only too ready be drawn into violent dispute. Perhaps they covet much, where you might be satisfied with quiet simplicity. Perhaps they have much, and attract too many challenges.
We can expect that every available weapon will be used in dark age conflict, for it will be a desperate matter of kill or be killed. Evidently, the Geneva conventions will be quite irrelevant in a world in which all political structures, at every level, have disappeared. At any rate, this means that nuclear weapons - with which fifty to two hundred years hence the world will be even more awash than today - will be used (Note: in chapter 32 need to make point about nuclear proliferation continuing). In fact, nuclear weapons, given their overwhelming destructiveness, are really appropriate to fighting between states rather than between local mafias. However, we may expect innovative use of nuclear materials. Plutonium, for instance, a product of the nuclear industry that is not found in nature, is a deadly poison, as well as a nuclear fuel and explosive. A few kilograms could wipe out all of humanity, if suitably distributed. There are now tons of stuff on the earth, and this supply is going to be around for a long time - plutonium has a half life of 24,400 years. Who would want to rely on the safe use of such a potent material in the disordered and unstable conditions of the dark age?
Nevertheless, exchanges of actual nuclear weapons are most likely between relatively substantial political authorities. Hence nuclear war per se may be a feature of the incipient stages of the dark age, but not of its deepest parts, when all such authorities have been consigned to history. This may make it look to our post-dark age descendants as though the planet's dissolution into all-pervasive nuclear war was the cause of the dark age. That will not be the case, however, for as we have seen the true cause will lie in all the dynamic processes of disintegration, disorganisation and discohesion that carry us to that point.
Furthermore, while we expect that the early part of the dark age is likely to be characterised by some kind of orgiastic nuclear catastrophe, we also consider it extremely probable that a more controlled form of nuclear war may take place at one or more points during the descent. That is to say, there may be nuclear wars coming from which the world appears to recover. Of course, any such recoveries will be but false dawns - the impasses of our present historical trajectory will not be resolved by a moderate nuclear exchange; eventually, the wholesale reckoning of a full blown dark age is inevitable. The comments we are about to make on the likelihood and nature of future nuclear war apply on the whole to both the descent and the early stages of the darkness. As such, they could have been presented in Chapter 32, though it is as convenient to consider them here.
The first question pertaining to nuclear war is that of whether people will really go that far. Surely, no one is under any illusions concerning the horrors of nuclear weapons and the dreadful logic of what has been called Mutually Assured Destruction. Therefore, one might think, no one would be so lunatic as to go down the route of using such weapons. Indeed, it has seemed to some thinkers that the nuclear threat is dire enough to put nuclear powers off fighting each other altogether - that after all is the very logic of deterrence. However, as Andrew Murray puts it - 'Haven't nuclear weapons made world war three unthinkable? Doesn't global economic integration make conflict unnecessary? Wouldn't the UN step in? Isn't the nation state becoming a thing of the past? The answer is no.'
People have repeatedly entertained the conceit that the latest too-destructive weapons would keep the peace once and for all. Alfred Nobel commented to Berthe von Suttner in 1876 that he should like to 'invent a substance or machine with such terrible power of mass destruction that war would thereby be made impossible for ever'. He came up with dynamite - blowing up and killing his own brother in the process, in one of several laboratory-wrecking explosions before he perfected the formula. Notwithstanding, such sacrifice, Nobel's dream was obviously disappointed. Other weapons that in their day were presumed to be so deadly as to put war off the agenda altogether are legion. They include the 18th century artillery innovations of de Vallière and Gribeauval, machine guns as well as high explosive for the 19th century, and the poison gas and bomber aircraft of 20th century. The unthinkability of another war on this basis was an especially common theme in pacifist literature of the 1920s and 1930s - a thesis due to be blown apart in Hitler's blitzkrieg. Only a triumph of hope over experience would lead us to suppose that nuclear weapons are destined to be anything other than the latest addition to this list of weapons that made war deadlier but failed to put an end to it.
As long ago as 1960, the political theorist Herman Kahn produced his book 'On thermonuclear war', in which he argued that nuclear war is not only thinkable, but also eminently survivable. He acknowledged that the accompanying death and destruction would be enough to put all previous wars into the shade. However, given the resilience and massive size of both the planet and the human population, this would not be enough to 'preclude normal and happy lives for the majority of survivors and their descendants'.
It has been argued that the military art has always been a matter of reconciling structure and doctrine with changing firepower. By altering the manner in which forces are protected and deployed, and by exploiting developments in tactical mobility, a way has generally be found for mitigating the deadliness of enemy weapons to the point where concerted counterforce remains possible. Thus, the evolution of military doctrine may be seen as an equilibriation process in which an acceptable balance is struck between the dominant variables of firepower, mobility and dispersion. A military historian who analysed battle casualties during the Napoleonic, American Civil and two World Wars has shown that despite major increases in weapons lethality, casualty rates among combatants per day of intensive fighting remained much the same (at 15-25%). He attributed this mainly to increased dispersion of the force, and went on to calculate that the degree of dispersion suitable for fighting with nuclear weapons, though much greater than that typical of the second world war, is nonetheless tactically feasible. A number of subsequent analysts, dealing with questions of non-combatant casualties and collateral damage, have seen realistic war-fighting possibilities in the use of nuclear weapons with yields in the sub-kiloton range.
The most compelling reason for thinking that a nuclear war is possible is that we have already had one. The two bombs that ended the war against Japan in 1945 may not justify that description in many people's minds. However, they demonstrate unequivocally that human beings are prepared to visit nuclear violence on one another. The effects of the bomb were quite well understood at the time, from both theoretical calculations and practical tests. And the decision to nuke a city centre - meaning that the casualties would inevitably be thousands of non-combatant men, women and children - was taken by the supposedly good, democratic Allies at a time when the war was already going their way. Crucially, it was not the desperate act of an evil dictator for whom all other options were closing. It was done ruthlessly, rationally and in cold blood. Thus, one should have no confidence whatsoever that people will always be put off the nuclear option by its sheer horror.
During the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, the world actually came within a few hairs' breadth of a nuclear exchange. This crisis arose when the Russians decided to install nuclear missiles in Cuba, i.e. right next door to the US, in response to the missiles that the Americans had already sited next door to the Soviet Union, in the territory of their fellow NATO member, Turkey. From October 14, when American U2s first observed the missile sites, and as Russian ships carrying the actual weapons steamed towards Cuba, the tension between the two superpowers was extraordinary. The crisis reached its peak as the Soviet ships approached a line the US had drawn around Cuba. The US had said that it would attack Cuba if the line was breached, and was actively planning an invasion. In the event, Khruschev balked at the idea of 500 million dead. He overruled his Army hawks, who were more concerned about losing face, and the ships turned back. As one American official put it at the time, 'we were eyeball to eyeball, and the other guy just blinked'. Khruschev paid the price for his capitulation. He lost prestige within the Soviet Union and with China, and was deposed two years later.
The significant thing about this crisis, is that leaders on both sides believed that a nuclear war would actually come. That is to say, they were reconciled to their role in initiating it. Air Force Chief General Curtis LeMay, who was later to advocate bombing north Vietnam 'back to the Stone Age', was so wrought up in one meeting that he banged his fist on the table and insisted 'It's the greatest defeat in our history, Mr President...We should invade today.' Robert McNamara, the US defence secretary, took his Saturday evening walk thinking that it would be the last he would see. Fyodor Burlatsky, one of President Khruschev's advisers told his wife to get out of Moscow, thinking that the US bombers were already on their way. The Americans showed themselves to be no more concerned with averting a nuclear catastrophe instead of a saloon-bar-style showdown than what Ronald Reagan was later to call the 'evil empire' of the Soviet Union. Indeed, it was the US that arguably initiated the crisis and did most to turn it into such a dangerous confrontation. One has to wonder, if the US and SU were able to get themselves into this situation, then what might happen between supposedly more volatile nations, such as India and Pakistan, or indeed other nuclear powers whose reputation for responsible government is even less reliable.
Rational analysis suggests that a major war between nuclear powers is almost bound to go nuclear eventually. The conflicts of the dark age will inevitably see the use of nuclear weapons. The premeditated first strike of popular imagination, coming out of a clear blue sky, is not the real danger. A much more likely scenario is the escalation of a relatively modest conflict until it reaches the nuclear level. Though the war starts conventionally, any initial reluctance of either side to use its nuclear forces would undoubtedly diminish the closer it approaches defeat. Indeed, this is NATO doctrine. As US defence expert Molton Halperin puts it, we fight with conventional weapons until we are losing, then we fight with [tactical] nuclear weapons until we are losing, then we blow up the world. That applies, at least, when it is a war of national survival between the two powers, rather than a dispute over some peripheral issue. However, major conflicts such as the 20th century world wars have a habit of starting over side issues and third parties. As either of the combatants feels that national survival is at stake, the desperate measure of the nuclear option will become increasingly rational. Equally, the closer that the other nation approaches victory the stronger would be the temptation to pre-empt the nuclear counter-attack that its opponent would be under increasing pressure to mount. Recent and forthcoming innovations in nuclear technology are also closing the lethality gap between conventional and nuclear weapons, which means that this gap may be bridged more easily. One type of war can readily elide into other. It seems, therefore, that the chance of either side capitulating with its nuclear arsenal intact would be small, which means that the nuclear option must be a factor in calculations from the beginning.
On the other hand, a glaring counter-example from history is Hitler's decision to desist from the use of powerful nerve agents devised by his scientists, ostensibly because of his (erroneous) assumption that the allies would have the same technology. He was prepared to commit suicide before he was prepared to resort to the horrors of chemical warfare. Meanwhile, the allies only used the bomb because they were confident that the Japanese could not retaliate in kind.
Nevertheless, it is surely unwise to rely upon such precedents. A highly conflictual, disintegrated world, in which nuclear proliferation has reached most belligerents, will be a very dangerous world indeed. We have recently seen Blair and Clinton blundering into Kosovo and wreaking mayhem for no apparent advantage, in much the same way that their predecessors did in 1914 and on many earlier occasions. There is every likelihood that some future leaders will stumble with equal lack of forethought into nuclear war, and visit catastrophe on the world. States sometimes behave apparently psychotically. Even the most responsible members of the international system may have leaders at the top of the command structure who crack under the stress of the moment. Daniel Frei has observed that, in a crisis, fatigue, poor health, information overload, and the sheer length of the crisis may lead to 'cognitive and behavioural maladaptations'.
The simple availability of nuclear weapons makes it sure that they will be used in a crisis. One is reminded of the rather specious argument of the anti-gun control lobby in the United States that 'guns do not kill people - people kill people'. Evidently, it is not a coincidence that deaths from firearms are highest in countries like the US that have the greatest availability. So it is with nuclear weapons. One could argue that 'nuclear weapons do not initiate thermonuclear doomsday - people initiate thermonuclear doomsday'. True enough, but people could not initiate thermonuclear doomsday if nuclear weapons were not available. Nuclear disarmament is therefore the most hopeful route to averting such a catastrophe. Yet, the process that saw modest successes in the 70s and 80s is presumably going to proceed no further now that the Indians and Pakistanis have nuclear weapons, and others might be acquiring them. There are too many players, too many mutual suspicions, and that route to averting nuclear war is now closed off permanently.
McRae has estimated that the chance of some modest nuclear offensive occurring by 2020 is high, though guessing where or how is pointless. As he says, history suggests that the catastrophe will not occur where it is most expected. Ironically, it may be that the old cold war scenario of nuclear exchange between Russia and the west may occur after all - but at a time when people have ceased to fret about it. Russians are imbued with masses of talent and a burning aspiration. Yet their country is in political, economic and social turmoil. Russia's disintegration, disorganisation and discohesion puts it already half way to a dark age. The predictions of a dramatic recovery that have been made by McRae and others continue to look extremely optimistic. For a decade, Russians have felt themselves to be economically and politically humiliated. They are running out of hope and patience. Their military is in a desperate situation. It becomes increasingly likely that any recovery will be not peaceful but aggressive, in the style of Germany's miracle under Hitler. The most remarkable fact is that extremist elements have made as little impact as they have. However, NATO's murderous blundering in Serbia is, for one thing, giving power to the elbow of those who are bent on intemperate nationalism and confrontation with the west. When President Yeltsin finally departs, it seems inevitable that things will take a significant turn for the worse in this respect.
The other major candidate for nuclear conflict with the west is east Asia, primarily China and Japan. This might be unexpected for one thing because Japan does not even have nuclear weapons at present. It may also seem unexpected when it comes because of the apparent willingness of the region to co-operate with the west - following similar business practices, adopting western-style dress and so on, in contrast to the Islamic world, for example. Yet the disproportionate Chinese reaction to the accidental bombing of its embassy in Belgrade reveals that behind the placid veneer is an explosive combination of resentment, hatred and suspicion. Some quite trivial dispute in future could therefore surprise us by releasing all this hidden hostility in a thermonuclear blood-lust.
Having said all this, there are many other scenarios that could unfold. Japan and China have their own differences to resolve. Disputes over the Pacific - which could arise following the discovery of oil, or over exploitation of minerals on the ocean floor - would drag in China, Russia and the US, who all have strong interests there. A new European war is also quite conceivable, and that might go nuclear, depending on what proliferation has taken place by then - or indeed takes place during the course of an initially non-nuclear conflict.
However, in this chapter, we are not really concerned with the nuclear war that may take place a couple of decades hence - the war in which the present generation's children and grandchildren are destined to die. That is a phenomenon of the descent, rather than the darkness. It could of course be part of the final blow that initiates the collapse. However, if it is not too devastating and the world recovers, this coming nuclear war may postpone rather than hasten our descent into the chaos of a dark age. It will be like the forest fire that sweeps away some of the rottenness in the present world order. Still, thereafter the rottenness will continue to build once again and the dark age will come eventually.
The main lesson we will learn from the coming nuclear war is that nuclear war is survivable. People dread the unknown and nuclear war is currently unknown - the stuff of myth and speculation. Its potential horrors can, of course, hardly be overstated, but nevertheless we tend to have an exaggerated view of what our nuclear arsenal can do. The full extent of the devastation is poorly predictable. It is likely that millions or tens of millions could be killed. Some localities might be rendered uninhabitable for generations - due not so much to radioactive materials as to the enormity of the task of clearing rubble and the danger of disease from tens of thousands of unburied bodies. Nevertheless, the ultimate calamity of total destruction of the biosphere and elimination of all human life is extremely improbable.
The nuclear tests that have taken place since 1945 have deposited minute amounts of contamination around the world. It is measurable because of the sensitivity of our instruments - it is believed, for instance, that all the strontium 90 we can detect is human-made. However, the level is so low in comparison to what comes from natural sources that the idea of there being any biological effects is quite ludicrous. Of course, a general nuclear war would abruptly release contamination possibly one or two orders of magnitude greater than has come from testing. Yet, consider the fact that, according even to conservative estimates, the Chernobyl disaster sent into the atmosphere an amount of radiation equivalent to one hundred Hiroshima-size nuclear strikes. Anti-nuclear power campaigners quote this to demonstrate the dangers of that technology. However, one can look at it the other way. The practical impact of the Chernobyl disaster was negligible, even for people living quite near by. The biggest problem, both at Chernobyl and in future nuclear war, is the initial blast and not the radiation that is released. Cancer rates may certainly be elevated by the fallout, even greatly so, but this will still fall far short of wiping out all humanity.
Lovelock reminds us that there have been many investigations of the ecology of the Bikini atoll to see if the high level of radioactivity resulting from the bomb tests there has adversely affected the life of that coral island. The findings show that, in spite of the continuing radioactivity in the sea and on the land, this has had little effect on the normal ecology of the area, except in places where the initial blast blew away the top-soil and left bare rock behind. Towards the end of 1975, the US National Academy of Sciences issued a report prepared by an eight member committee of their own distinguished fellows, assisted by 48 other scientists chosen from those expert in the effects of nuclear explosions and all things subsequent to them. The report suggested that if half of all the nuclear weapons in the world's arsenals - about 10,000 megatons - were used in a nuclear war the effects on most of the human and man-made ecosystems of the world would be small at first and would become negligible within thirty years. The participant nations would of course suffer catastrophic local devastation but areas remote from the battle, which include the crucial marine and coastal systems that are so important in the biosphere, would be minimally disturbed. One can think of the oceans as a giant stabilising influence, compared to which land is puny and which we cannot disturb, even if we do our damnedest. The big plants and animals (the window dressing of the biosphere) might suffer from nuclear war, but it is doubtful if unicellular life (the biosphere's solid foundation) would even notice it. To date, there seems to be only one serious criticism of this report - its contention that the ozone layer would be partially destroyed is no longer believed to be true.
Similarly, the concept of a nuclear winter has also been questioned lately. According to this, the dust thrown into the atmosphere by a nuclear war would block sunlight, cool the earth, restrict the growth of vegetation and thereby cause starvation for animal life. It is known that volcanoes can influence the earth's weather by a similar mechanism. Yet the effects of even the largest eruptions are by no means devastating, and it is doubtful whether even a few hundred nuclear explosions would be effective at throwing up comparable amounts of dust. Even if they were, there is little reason to believe that the very survival of the planet could be even remotely at stake.
Figure 1: The puny effects of a nuclear weapon compared to the vast stabilising influence of the ocean
Thus, nuclear war does not threaten to destroy the biosphere - that is impossible - and humanity as a whole will easily weather such a catastrophe. Furthermore, even the numbers that die from the initial effects of the explosions, though fantastically high, may seem like a pin-prick to the human population, when viewed in perspective. Humanity has sustained similar casualties in other disasters. Millions of people have been wiped out at a stroke by certain floods and famines, for instance. The fires following Tokyo's Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 killed half as many people again as died in the atom bombing of Hiroshima. And in that case, Tokyo soon rebuilt itself in an orderly fashion, the population dealing with such problems as the destruction of whole districts, molten roads, and rivers choked with bodies.
The tens of millions of deaths that have been estimated for a nuclear war represent very much a worse case scenario, involving almost complete release of the combatants' respective arsenals. However, it is not necessarily obvious that this is how a nuclear war would be. A more limited exchange might be expected to lead to negotiations. People do tend to end their wars when they are convinced that further fighting will bring them little advantage. They do not go on shedding blood just for its own sake.
The overall conclusion, therefore, is that we will learn in the future that nuclear war is survivable. The dread of it will have been greatly reduced once we have lived through one and discovered that essentially normal life is possible on the other side. After that, though, nuclear weapons will become more usable than ever and the chances of further nuclear conflicts will increase. In the long run history of the human race, we expect that nuclear war will become a commonplace. And that may not be so disastrous when we are spread across the solar system and perhaps eventually beyond that.
As far as the dark age is concerned, however, we expect that its initial stages at least will be marked by a prolonged and massive thermonuclear orgy, in which virtually every remaining warhead will eventually be exploded. The extreme disintegration of this time will see uncontrolled fighting and we can expect extreme irresponsibility on behalf of the belligerents, who will not be descendants of today's governments for they will all have been swept away in the collapse.
Thus, we expect the first nuclear war to occur during the descent and to be a relatively modest affair. It will be followed by recovery. However, the doomsday scenario that is normally envisaged in connection with nuclear war will eventually occur. That will see the whole fabric of society unravel, as it destroys industry and government. Lines of communication and transport will be severed. Medical systems will break down, starved of supplies. Water, electricity and fuel will be cut off, making cities unviable. The affected countries, which will include all the richest countries of the world, will experience famine, disease and civil disorder. Populations may be reduced to as little as 20% of their starting level within a decade. In other words, there will be catastrophic disintegration and disorganisation, which is after all only what we expect for a dark age.
Let us clarify the above discussion. We believe that nuclear war on a huge scale will eventually occur. It will play a prominent part in causing the huge loss of integration, organisation and cohesion that should pitch the whole earth into a dark age. However, before that occurs, we may experience a more limited form of nuclear conflict, one from which world civilisation will be able to recover temporarily. Such a limited conflict may resolve some of the issues described in Part 3 and thus postpone the onset of the dark age. Yet it will also make nuclear war far more acceptable and thus increase the readiness of our descendants to unleash a Dr Strangelove-style thermonuclear doomsday. Throughout the dark age and indeed the dawn that follows it, people will go on being very ready to use the nuclear option. However, the conditions of the dark age may make it difficult for people to develop nuclear weapons so that they will be saved from their own folly.
In even more succinct terms, we expect one or more limited nuclear wars during the descent, followed by nuclear catastrophe at the collapse, followed by a dark age, in which technological regression alone prevents further nuclear conflict, followed by a dawn, in which humanity's inhibitions about nuclear weapons will be largely forgotten.