History News Service

Time to Question the Nuclear Myth

By Ira Chernus
History News Service

A new myth about cold war nuclear stability is in the making.

Back in the days of superpower rivalry, the story goes, stability between the United States and the Soviet Union reigned. U.S. and Soviet leaders talked together as reasonable men and worked out reasonable arrangements to protect us from the Bomb. Everything was safely under control.

Like any story based on faith, this myth offers reassurance, even if it doesn't mirror historical reality.

The myth was born in the world of the early 1950s, which was quite different from today's world. Back then, there was a widespread sense of instability. People everywhere were horrified that the superpowers built and tested nuclear weapons like two kids in a schoolyard, each afraid that the other might get one step ahead. The government of India took the lead in condemning the dangers of nuclear testing and the arms race.

President Dwight Eisenhower wanted desperately to calm nuclear fears, so that he could keep his allies and woo neutrals, while building more nuclear weapons. So he fervently proclaimed a desire for peace. He intoned the same mantras that Indian and Pakistani leaders voice today: "We shall use these weapons only for defense;" "Our policies aim only at stability and security."

In July, 1955, Ike reluctantly went to the first summit meeting, at Geneva. There he smiled benignly, shook hands with the Soviet leaders, and proposed "Open Skies," so that each side could see the other's military preparations.

Thus was born "the spirit of Geneva." For a moment, the world overlooked the mushrooming U.S. nuclear arsenal and Ike's deadly serious plans to use those weapons -- in Korea, in China, in Germany -- if he could not stop communist expansion any other way.

But at Geneva and the summits that followed it, superpower leaders were hardly resolving their conflicts cooperatively. They were dueling with words, like Indian and Pakistani leaders today. The Soviets immediately rejected "Open Skies" because it would give the United States a greater spying advantage (as Ike knew).

And then as now, while the leaders talked, the military-industrial complexes created new weapons. Eisenhower was already planning the U-2 spy plane, which was supposed to fly secretly over the Soviet Union if "Open Skies" failed. When a U-2 was shot down in 1960, the incident ruined what might have been the most amicable summit yet.

But by then the "spirit of Geneva" was mostly a fond memory, anyway. Reality remained unstable. In Moscow, there had been no compunction about crushing the Hungarian revolt of 1956. In Washington, anticommunist fervor had demanded more and more weaponry, especially after the satellite Sputnik was launched in 1957. On both sides, talk of banning nuclear tests was more for propaganda than for saving humanity.

At the height of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, President Kennedy could only figure the rough odds on starting World War III and hope for the best. No mechanisms of control kept the situation stable.

Once again, world outrage forced the reluctant superpowers to the negotiating table, where they signed a Limited Test Ban Treaty. But once again, the reassuring impression of stability would only be temporary.

When the Cold War ended, the myth of "enduring stability" was widely accepted as authentic history. The Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), renewed in 1995, and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) of 1996 seem to give the myth credence. Here are the five members of the "nuclear club," apparently agreeing to cap the arms race.

But India, Pakistan, and other nations complain about a continuing double standard. The nuclear powers have done little, they say, to live up to Article VI of the NPT, which obligates the signatories to pursue total disarmament.

The CTBT bans old-fashioned nuclear tests (the kind India and Pakistan can afford). But, at U.S. insistence, it allows the high-tech and computerized testing that only the U.S. can carry out. So the nuclear powers are free under the treaty to continue doing as they wish, while insisting that others remain nuke-free.

In this country such objections to the double standard are barely heard. The myth of "enduring stability" wields immense power. Behind its cloak, the U.S. military still deploys thousands of nuclear weapons, ready to use at a moment's notice. The Stockpile Stewardship Program funds planning for a whole new generation of nuclear weapons, to be tested in the laboratory. In this country, as in south Asia, the nuclear arms race goes on, though without the old-fashioned explosions.

The record of the nuclear age shows that bombs -- whether past, present, or future -- always generate anxiety and threats of war. The idea that "our" bombs breed stability, while only "their" bombs breed war, is a dangerous self-deception. Indian and Pakistan have been trying to tell us that for years. It is too bad that we did not get the point before they got the Bomb.

Ira Chernus is a professor of religious studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder and writer for the History News Service.

[Ira Chernus, Religious Studies Dept., Box 292, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309. Phone: (303) 492-6169; fax: (303) 493-4416; e-mail: chernus@spot.colorado.edu.]