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Is Doomsday Clock Down to Two Minutes?
A transcript of the Lew Rockwell Show with Peter Kuznick.
Rockwell: Well good morning. This is the Lew Rockwell Show. And it’s great to have as our guest this morning Professor Peter Kuznick. Dr. Kuznick is professor of history at American University in Washington. He was the founder and he’s the director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University. Author of many books. Most famously, outside of academia, anyway, his participation in Oliver Stone’s 10-episode series on The Untold History of the United States and co-author of the book that came out from that series. Both of these things, I must say, extraordinary, extraordinary work.
Professor, you’re a part of the abolition of nuclear weapons, thank goodness. You’ve devoted much of your life’s work to what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and trying to prevent other things like that from taking place. What are you feeling about our — I know the bullet of the atomic scientists, it seems to me they always have the hand about to go to midnight.
Kuznick: Yes.
Rockwell: Do you feel that’s the case, as what Trump is doing with Russia or has been doing with Russia? A very scary business.
Kuznick: You know, it’s interesting. Oliver Stone and I just put out the new edition of our book.
Rockwell: Oh. Magnificent.
Kuznick: It just came out. And we added a 160-page chapter on the end of Obama and the Trump administration. And what we did was we looked at the way the world was at the end of 2012, when our first book came out. And that one was more than 750 pages. The current one is over 900 pages.
Rockwell: Wow.
Kuznick: But in late 2012, the world was pretty messed up but the hands of the Doomsday Clock were at eight minutes before midnight. The big issue was America’s missile defense systems. The tension between the U.S. and Russia was much, much less than it is now. The tension between the U.S. and China was much less.
And so if you look at what’s happened in the last six-plus years, when we published our original book to when we came out with the new one, the world has gotten incredibly more hostile, more dangerous. We’ve gone from the Doomsday Clock being eight minutes before midnight to being two minutes before midnight. We’ve got Russia doing its biggest war games since the Cold War. The United States and NATO conducting their biggest war games since the Cold War. Tremendous tensions between the U.S. and Russia, the worst relationship in decades; the U.S. and China. The situation with Iran is now again facing a crisis. The Korean situation is certainly better than it was in late 2017 but is in no way resolved and again ready to blow up at any point. And not just the U.S. and Russia and China, but we’ve also got the problems between India and Pakistan, which again almost went to war. They were both bombing each other’s countries again very, very recently. So the world is looking pretty shaky right now.
So for me, the number-one priority is certainly the nuclear threat. I approach these things from the standpoint of the existential crisis. And the major existential crisis for life on our planet right now is still the threat of nuclear war and nuclear annihilation.
But in the long run, we’ve also been threatened with climate catastrophe. We can get into that, too.
So I think that the world right now is looking very, very bleak, the world situation. There is no leader and no leaders anywhere who are really speaking for the planet. You’ve got Trump talking about making American great again and Putin making Russia great again and Xi making China great again and Modi making India great again. I mean, you’ve got these pygmies at a time when we need some real noble statesmen who are terribly lacking right now. And so I am very concerned. And the nuclear threat does keep me up at night.
Rockwell: You know, to go back to something that you’ve devoted a lot of scholarly work to, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, do most Americans still think those were necessary, that those were actually good things when Truman did that?
Kuznick: Well, you know, that’s hard to determine. But the latest poll that I’ve seen was a poll a couple of years ago conducted by CBS News. And that had 43 percent opposing the use of the atomic bombs –
Rockwell: Oh.
Kuznick: – and 42 percent supporting it. Most of the surveys over the years have been something more in the range of 55/45 in favor of the bomb. But this latest one was much more encouraging.
We know that among women and among younger people there’s greater opposition to the use of the bomb. It’s mostly the older Americans who continue to accept the mythology surrounding the bomb. Which Obama doubled down on when he went to Hiroshima. I had been calling for Obama to go to Hiroshima since the time he got elected. And he finally, in May of 2016, decided to go. I was there also at that time. NHK, Japanese public television, brought me over there to do some shows and commentary while Obama was there. And Obama, if you remember this speech, his opening line was, “Death fell from the skies in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” Death didn’t fall from the sky! The United States dropped two atomic bombs!
Rockwell: Yes.
Kuznick: But then he goes on and he says, “We must look history straight in the eye.” And he says, “World War II reached its brutal end in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” That’s the prevailing myth. That’s the myth that they’ve been doubling down on since 1945, the idea that the atomic bombs were terrible but they were necessary in order to end the war without a U.S. invasion. Nonsense. The invasion was not going to happen.
It wasn’t even the atomic bombs that ended the war. It was the Soviet invasion of Manchuria and Japan — or the beginning — the surrounding islands. And as Prime Minister Suzuki says — I think it was August 10 when he was asked why we had to have a surrender so quickly and end the war, he says, “The Russians, the Soviets were already in the Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands. They’ll be in Hokkaido tomorrow. When that happens, the foundation of Japan will be destroyed. We must surrender when we can surrender to the Americans.” Because they knew that with Americans there was at least a chance that they would be able to keep the emperor.
But the reality is that American policy makers had known that there were two ways to end the war without the bomb. The first was to ensure the Japanese that they could keep the emperor, which we wanted to do anyway for our own purposes. Although, Jimmy Byrnes, secretary of state, was opposed to that and convinced Truman that he would be politically crucified if he let the Japanese keep the emperor. Nobody complained when it finally happened, when we did let them keep the emperor. And secondly, we knew that the Soviet invasion was going to break the backs of the Japanese resistance. American intelligence had been saying that for months, as had the Japanese themselves in some of the intercepted cables. The Japanese Supreme War Council met on May 16th and said that invasion of Japan by the Soviet Union will spell the end of the Japanese Empire.
So we knew that. Truman knew that. In fact, Truman refers to the intercepted July 18th telegram as the telegram from the Jap emperor asking for peace. Truman says he went to Potsdam to make sure that the Soviets were coming in. And he meets with Stalin, has lunch with Stalin; Stalin assures him that the Soviets are coming in on time. And Truman writes in his journal, “Stalin will be in the Jap war by August 15th. Finis, Japs, when that occurs.” He writes home to his wife, Bess, the next night and says, “The Russians are coming in. We’ll end the war a year sooner now. Think of all the kids who won’t be killed.” And Truman knew this.
So the question for historians really is, knowing that the bombs were militarily unnecessary and morally unjustifiable, why did the United States decide to use them. And the conclusion that I and others have drawn is that the real target was not Japan. The real target was the Soviet Union. We were saying to the Soviets, if you interfere with U.S. plans in Europe or the Pacific, this is what you’re going to get and worse, much, much worse.
Rockwell: Wow. And of course, I remember the Chicago Tribune leaked this, that the Japanese were trying to surrender, if only they could keep the emperor and not have him tried as a war criminal and keep him, which as you point out, the U.S. eventually went along with that, and yet refused to accept their offer of surrender, so.
Kuznick: And one of the things that you probably know, but a lot of listeners don’t, is that the United States had eight five-star admirals and generals in 1945. Seven of the eight are on the record saying that the atomic bombs were either militarily unnecessary, morally reprehensible, or both. Admiral Leahy, the chair of the meetings of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and was Truman’s personal chief of staff, said, “This puts us on the moral level of the barbarians of the Dark Ages.”
But the Americans, one of our myths, a key anchor in our sense of American exceptionalism, is the idea that somehow this was a moral act because it prevented an invasion in which Truman says a half million American boys would have been killed. It was not. And it was instrumental in starting the Cold War and began the nuclear arms race. The scientists, many of them – the Frank Committee, at the University of Chicago Met Lab, had argued against dropping the bomb, even if it would be militarily advantageous, they said, because it could lead to an uncontrollable arms race that could threaten the future of mankind. And that’s what happened. We’re lucky to have survived it.
You know, we look at what’s going on now, there’s about 14,000 nuclear weapons left now, 93% controlled by the U.S. and Russia. But by the mid ‘80s, it had gotten close to 70,000. I take my students every summer to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a study abroad class. And I would find myself, year after year, writing down the same statistic at the Atomic Bomb Museum in Hiroshima that, by 1985, the world had accumulated the equivalent of 1.47 million Hiroshima bombs. How insane do we have to be? How many times do we have to be able to kill everybody on the planet before we’re satisfied?
Rockwell: It’s actually astounding. Is it just evil? Are they power mad? I mean, do you have an explanation or is it just the nature of the state and the imperial state? What is it?
Kuznick: I think all of the above. And there’s a certain kind of – Freud, in his wonderful, beautiful but depressing 1929 book talks about the death instinct. I mean, why, as a species, do we spend so much more perfecting the means of killing and destruction, the lethality of our weapons, than we do on trying to find peace and economic development and solving the world’s problems? Why do we have a War Department – now we call it Defense Department – and not a Peace Department? I mean, why do we not spend any money or any effort or – you know, we put so much of our intelligence and resources devoted to perfecting the means of killing. It doesn’t make any sense from a human standpoint.
There’s certainly profits to be made. And we understand, unfortunately, why those who were called the Merchants of Death after World War I, the arms merchants, the arms manufacturers, might want to profit from death. You know, every time one of those drones goes off, every time a bomb is dropped, every time we have military exercises, that’s putting money into the pockets of some of the most ugly, greedy bastards on this planet.
Rockwell: You know, I thought it was interesting, just the other day, when Trump was, I think, giving an interview to FOX News, where he said, there is such a thing as the Military Industrial Complex and, in effect, I tried to bring all the troops out of Syria and they wouldn’t let me.
Kuznick: Well, he’s got the power. He could risk some of his capital on that.
You know, Trump sometimes says intelligent things when it comes to the military and U.S. interventions and wars but his actions are almost entirely the opposite. The huge military budget, the official budget, what, $760 million, record breaking. Record breaking arms sales across the planet by the United States. Massive war games. You know, so Trump maybe somewhere in that pea brain of his understands this but certainly has not acted in a responsible way as president.
And why would he choose people like Pompeo and Bolton –
Rockwell: Ah!
Kuznick: – to be his closest advisers?
Rockwell: Yes. I must say, it’s quite astounding. I think we have to think that he knows what he’s doing, or who knows. I suppose it’s possible for people to be caught up in this stuff. Or that he was just lying in all of his campaign promises, unlike those other politicians.
(LAUGHTER)
Kuznick: But Trump doesn’t lie. We know that.
(LAUGHTER)
Rockwell: So it’s an alarming business. And you mentioned war games. The Russians have their war games in their own territory. We have our war games right on their borders.
Kuznick: Yes, right on the border.
Rockwell: Which is a very threatening business. So it’s astounding.
But I want to thank you so much for the work you do, for the students you teach, for the truths you tell, and for the books you’ve written. And of course, we’ll be sure to link to the new edition of yours and Oliver Stone’s book.
Kuznick: Great. Appreciate that.
Rockwell: And thanks so much for coming on. And again, thanks for the work you do.
Kuznick: My pleasure. Thanks. Thank you, Lew, also. Take care.
Rockwell: Well, thanks so much for listening to the Lew Rockwell Show today. Take a look at all of the podcasts. There have been hundreds of them. There’s a link on the LRC front page. Thank you.
