Maybe Hasegawa's interpretation has new implications regarding nuclear deterrence theory, but not how the author suggests. The idea that the nuclear bombings were not decisive factors in Japan's surrender does not mean that nuclear weapons do not serve as a deterrence. Nuclear weaponry advanced so much in the aftermath of WW2 that now nuclear countries can literally reduce entire nations to pixie dust. And the potential of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) all but guarantees that nuclear countries will never attack each other for fear of nuclear escalation.
"the potential of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) all but guarantees that nuclear countries will never attack each other for fear of nuclear escalation."
I would feel a lot more secure in the efficacy of MAD if war was rational in the first place. History shows it is anything but.
It hasn't even been 100 years since the last nuclear weapon was used offensively, but already the world has come dangerously close to starting a nuclear war.
Numerous accidents involving nuclear weapons have happened. Critical and very dangerous errors were made in detecting that nuclear war had already begun when it hadn't. Countries with nuclear weapons have come close to going to war with each other (India and Pakistan, Cuban Missile Crisis). Weapon-grade nuclear material and nuclear weapons have gone missing. The American nuclear weapon launch codes were all 0's for something like 20 years.
It is an open question how a nuclear power will react to having a nuclear weapon exploded on their soil (potentially by terrorists under a false-flag operation) but it likely won't be a calm and measured response against the perceived perpetrator. If this happens in a poweder-keg like the Middle East, the ensuing chaos could easily draw in other nuclear powers.
Crumbling nuclear-weapons and launch-detection infrastructure in the former Soviet republics is still a major concern because of continued and increasing potential for accidental launches of weapons still aimed at their former Cold War foes, not to mention the renewed possibility of a second Cold War that has been in the news recently, and Putin's overt threats of the use of nuclear weapons.
You are absolutely right to be skeptical about MAD, the invention of genius civilians like Robert Strange McNamara who also brought up the horribly fought Vietnam War, the previous generation F-35, the M16/M4, etc. etc. etc.
The Soviets never bought into it, and rightly judged us to be utterly evil to target their children in their homes instead of military targets like we'd done prior the the early '60s.
As you implicitly note, we can be sure nuclear weapons will again be used in anger. Although the dangers from a false flag operation are potentially less than you think, in that each weapon has a radioisotope signature which tells you everything from its design to where the fissionable materials came from. So we'd know who manufactured it, or so I gather and believe from my study of all this (born when Eisenhower was still president, I'm a child of the cold war with e.g. my mother's Civil Defense Block Mother sign a dozen feet from me).
I don't think its right to judge the rationality of decisions based on their outcome. The question is whether war was a rational decision at the time. From a realist perspective anything decision is rational if it can lead to an improvement in the chances for survival. If war leads to a relative increase in my power even if I may lose soldiers and resources, then its worth it.
If country A has 100 soldiers while country B has 20 soldiers, even if the cost of war is a 2 to 1 loss in soldiers, war would result in the absolute power of country A.
In a conflict between two countries with nuclear weaponry, the core logic is the same, but the paradigm is different. Nuclear warfare can erase both countries off the face of the earth. This follows from the fact that to combat nuclear attacks, countries started adopting hair-string triggers to destroy the adversary before they can send more warheads their way... except now every country is doing the same thing. In this case, forget the relative nonsense, anyway you cut it, nuclear warfare is not rational for countries because it will end their survival.
My belief is that MAD is sound. And my underlying assumption is that countries tend to think rationally when dealing with international relations. Regardless of leadership, countries do whats best for them an overwhelming majority of the time. Case in point, how often has the U.S. (the bastion of freedom) voluntarily helped countries/people when the U.S.' interests were not directly involved? Also, observe how a seemingly crazy country like North Korea plays the game shrewdly by varying is strategy depending on its adversary.
I agree that there is a threat that nuclear weapons will get in the wrong hands and, in that case, I think its more than probable that disaster would ensue. But the safety and standards for handling infrastructure degradation has improved significantly since the early days of nuclear weapons (when many were lost to the ocean and never recovered) . As for Putin's threats, its nothing a good back and forth of denouncing and condemning can't fix.
Would America surrender if SF or NYC was nuked? No.
Would America surrender if we were essentially defeated, blockaded, and the enemy were bombing our cities with impunity? Of course we would.
It isn't like America just snuck two nukes into Japan. It had totally defeated the Imperial Navy and was essentially bombing Japan without any resistance.
The comparison between Japan in August 45 and UK during the Blitz is just stupid.
Even if the Soviet attack was the last straw, it was only a straw. They were trying to use the Soviets to negotiate a better peace and it failed. This is like blaming your QB for missing the Hail Mary for losing the game. It was the first 59 minutes of game that caused you to lose.
People online (not real historians) like to hype this up to bandwagon the "US didn't win WWII, the USSR did" mythology. The truth is it was a huge combined effort.
The Imperial Navy was so utterly defeated and out of resources that they were sending pilots on kamikaze missions to save fuel. Virtually all training had been suspended in the final months of the war because the Japanese had no access to oil. This is why their initial thrust in the war was south to the oil fields of the Dutch East Indies (the history of the Royal Dutch Shell facilities in the region is an incredible but largely untold story in WWII).
Depriving the Japanese of oil was an early and effective tactic of the American Navy in the Pacific. The Japanese made a faulty assumption that they could defend supply lines from the Southern Zone to the Japan. In many ways, this was the downfall of Japanese naval forces in WWII. The Japanese also didn't realize that the US and Britain had long since cracked their codes, both military and diplomatic, and even when the Germans told the Japanese their codes had been compromised, they refused to believe it!
Quoting from Daniel Yergin's The Prize:
> Of Japan's total wartime steel merchant shipping, some 86 percent was sunk during the conflict and another 9 percent so seriously damaged as to be out of action by the time the war ended.
The Allies were sinking Japanese oil tankers faster than the Japanese could build new ones!
Japanese defeat in WWII can't be assigned to any single cause, but the vastly superior supply chain of the US Navy in the Pacific and the enormous petroleum production capabilities of America is surely up there.
Yes, as I've already mentioned it deserves more thought than just two sentences when you're trying to sell the idea that nuclear weapons are not deterrents to large scale wars. So far modern history has already disproved Hasegawa's opinion. Ever since the advent of global ballistic weapons, we have yet had another major world war besides conflicts here and there. They have kept the peace.
World wars are uncommon whether we have nuclear deterrents or not, after all we had none before 1914. However we have had major near decade long regional conflicts and many wars by proxy between nuclear powers. While it's persuasive to think that nuclear weapons have prevented world wars, there isn't much evidence to support that idea.
While it is true that there weren't any wars called World Wars before 1914, what really distinguished those wars was the weapons technology and the massive devastation that resulted from that. Human nature does not change as quickly as technology does, though, and if you define a world war as a war that involved all the major powers of the time, there were in fact four wars in Europe before that that involved all the great powers of the time in two rival alliances: the Thirty Years War, the War of the Spanish Succession, the Seven Years War of 1756-63, and the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.
With that in mind, that makes world wars considerably more commonplace. Given the timing between the six world wars, we're in a definite lull. Nuclear deterrence is likely the major reason for that.
In terms of "massive devastation", scaled for population, I strongly suspect the Thirty Years War will give either World Wars a run for their money in the area over which they were fought. It certainly left very deep scars that were felt up to WWII....
There's a big difference between wars conducted directly by major world powers and little conflicts by proxy. They are not the same thing especially when it comes to scale. The other replies to your post have already made my point.
France likely surrendered because their home country defense force was defeated and their capital overrun, the countries administration had little chance of extracting itself from the rest of France before being completely overrun.
This does not always mean surrender; think Napoleon's invasion of Russia. The difference for Russia in my opinion is that they had a large homogeneous land mass upon which to move and maintain their administration.
I think it was the large number of casualties the soviets were wiling to tolerate, I doubt the French would have encouraged the loss of a million as was incurred during Stalingrad. Consider also that the large land mass was a liability as it had to be defended, for example from Japan.
The USSR had time, resources (human and material) and the land buffer to keep fighting. The farther Germany pressed into the USSR, the more Germany's resources and supply lines were stretched and the Soviets eventually realized that.
Similar reasons cost Napoleon dearly ~130 years before.
Also, Stalin's massive ego wouldn't allow a city named after himself to be taken by the Germans. That's the primary reason that particular city suffered the high casualties that it did. Stalin once told Churchill at the Tehran Conference that "when one man dies it is a tragedy, when thousands die it's statistics."[1]
Well, in World War I the French did have 1.3 millions casualties. But there the French leadership did not face a situation were the war seemed hopelessly lost in the face of rapid German advances.
But the distinction is that its wasn't the potential of losing Paris and Parisians that forced France to surrender. The French government judged that they had more to lose than gain from continuing to fight.
