Modernizing Nuclear War

Seventy-nine years ago, the Truman administration dropped atom bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, instantly killing approximately 100,000 innocent civilians. Host Robert Scheer calls these horrific incidents among the major instances of terror ever committed in human history. Bill Hartung of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft joins Scheer Intelligence to discuss the history and legacy of nuclear weapons in relation to the military industrial complex, as a $2 trillion effort from the Pentagon to build “a new generation of nuclear-armed missiles, bombers, and submarines” takes place. The central question underlying the conversation is asked by Scheer; “How could they, in good conscience, be talking about modernizing the devil's weapon?” Hartung claims that the Pentagon and arms manufacturers are doing so under the guise of deterrence, but also because of false stories of controllable nuclear war and even the “evil” consideration that it may be necessary to use nuclear weapons on certain populations. “I think some of the folks promoting this stuff would like to believe that they're not putting the future of humanity at risk. So they kind of tell themselves these stories, which they then tell to the public and hope they can persuade them.” In the past, the horror of nuclear war was widely acknowledged to some extent by the public and the political class alike, as even Reagan said a nuclear war could never be won and should never be fought. Hartung claims that the belief that nuclear war could be winnable was previously “pushed off the agenda,” but it “seems to be back.” Despite movies like Oppenheimer, which to some extent injected the issue of nuclear war into public discussion, citizens and the media remain largely uninterested and unaware of the dangers of nuclear war, especially with regard to the war in Ukraine. This is reflected in the opinions of the American political class. Hartung points out that “if you go to Washington, there's this sort of atmosphere that, if you're for reducing these things, you know, you're the one who's unrealistic. The logic is flipped on its head ...”