High Policy and the Atomic Bomb

by BRADLEY DEWEY

1

IF the United States is forced into another war, will we use our atomic weapons, and to what extent will they help to restore peace?

There is no clear, no authoritative answer to these questions. Three years and more have passed since the first atomic bomb was launched against Hiroshima; yet the United States has no high policy — that is, no publicly proclaimed and endorsed policy — covering its use of atomic energy in war.

Information has been sleeping in the White House, gathering dust there for many months — information which is vital to the development of an atomic weapon policy and its acceptance by the American people. I refer to the final report of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Evaluation Board, whose ofhcial responsibility it was to assemble and digest facts before, during, and after the atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll in July and August, 1946. The report of the Board, with such deletions as military security may require, should have been published long since. Much of it was written for the American people and their Congress, and they should have it.

My aim here is to review the reasons which occur to me why a clear-cut, understandable atomic weapon policy would benefit our own country, our sister countries of this hemisphere, and the rest of the world.

I have short patience with those timorous folk who fear that frank discussion of atomic weapon policy would change the national character of the American people and that we should forthwith desert our traditional way of peace. The world of thinking men knows that the United States seeks no war, and knows too that we will strive for peace despite any provocation. Public knowledge of what atomic weapons can do will not alter our fundamental love of peace or decrease our w holesome distrust of those who seem to threaten it.

But no man — certainly no lover of peace — dares overlook the fact that the possibility of war exists if there are national willing to sacrifice the lives of their own people to force their ideologies on other countries.

In view of Europe’s tangled affairs today, no one can be sure that we shall not be compelled to face the issue of war, to protect either ourselves or the lives of people elsewhere for whom we have accept ed responsibility.

As the whole world was told, the purpose of exploding two atomic bombs at Bikini was to provide a wide variety of data on large-scale nuclear fission. There were hundreds of military and civilian experts among the 42,000 men required for Operation Crossroads, whose duty it was to collect these myriad data which in due course became the topsecret report of the Crossroads Historian.

It is somewhat less well known, but still a published fact, that those who planned the Bikini bomb tests provided, with the knowledge of the White House and of Congressional leaders, for an entirely separate and independent group of civilians and military men to gather information of their own, to study that gathered by others, and to evaluate the atomic bomb as a military weapon.

This group of men composed the Joint Chiefs of Staff Evaluation Board.¹ In addition to passing judgment on the uses and potential powers of atomic weapons in war, the Board was encouraged to comment and to make recommendations on pertinent subjects as it saw fit.

The Board followed its directive. It was not until July, 1947, a year after the Bikini tests, that Board members and their technical aids completed the task of studying the data in the Historian’s report, of interviewing and consulting experts in many fields, and of writing their own report on the value of the bomb and its place in war in the future.

It was understood that the Board’s report was in part for the guidance of public thinking, and that all of it except such portions as might jeopardize military security would be made public.

The report was accepted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Then the Board chairman, Dr. Karl T. Compton, together with security experts of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made certain entirely proper and expected deletions and jointly approved the remainder for publication.

The full report next went to the Atomic Energy Commission, and I am told that its security experts also approved it for publication as deleted. Then, to the best of my knowledge, it was sent to the White House in the custody of Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to President Truman.

Under date of February 25, 1948, the New York Times reported as follows: “Inquiries at Washington reveal that the report has been digested by all the boards and commissions that must consider such things and recommended for publication. It is expected to be released in about ten days, following expected final approval from the White House.”

In the many months this report has been withheld from the public, millions of words have been printed expressing mere opinion and gross speculation, thus fanning the winds of rumor so that they swirl and eddy about the earth. Now serving one propaganda, now another, rumor exaggerates or depreciates the value of atomic weapons, falsifying and distorting public opinion everywhere.

It could be argued — and, indeed, was argued — that we should have no public policy on atomic weapons so long as there remained a practical hope for the universal outlawry of atomic warfare. The statement of such a policy, it was said, might rattle the saber and disturb that calm most conducive to peaceful, multilateral agreements.

But Russia’s determined refusal, many months ago, to accept the international inspection system which is the foundation stone for atomic weapon disarmament effectively killed all hope of outlawing the weapon — and killed it for many years to come. With that practical hope died any argument against our proclamation of an atomic weapon high policy.

Today the rattle of sabers and the rumbling of caissons destroy the quiet of every international meeting. The voice of the United States raised now to declare a wise, sound policy for our employment of the atomic weapon can serve to drive away confusion.

There are various ways by which an atomic weapon policy may be formed and given to the world, just as there are various ways in which great American policies have been made and published in the past. But, as in the past, the American people must participate in the making of policy. In a democracy such as ours there can never be a high policy — that is, an important policy governing our conduct toward other nations — which does not have majority approval and acceptance. It is for this reason that I urge that the people be given the facts upon which such a policy can be based.

Of course there can be no claim that the report of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Evaluation Board contains all that is necessary for the formation of enduring high policy. But the alpha of an atomic weapon policy is in it, if the omega is not. If other facts are available, they too should be made public by proper authority whether they support or controvert the statements of the Board.

It is truly pathetic that the American people, who have spent so many millions of dollars on the development of this weapon, know so very little about it or its potential advantages — and perhaps disadvantages — to their country. Where is there an authoritative statement as to whether the atomic bomb is truly unique or is “just another weapon”? What great changes in functions, if any, does the bomb require of our Air Force, Navy, and Army?

Such questions, each of tremendous importance, can be asked endlessly with no really authoritative reply. There are general, embracing answers to questions of this sort, and only when these general answers are fully known and widely understood can the American people — the owners of the atomic bomb - pass any judgment on specific questions upon whose answers the fate of this country may depend in the future.

2

THE wisdom of a publicly known and endorsed atomic warfare policy in our own national interests hardly requires argument. In the present uncertainty, military men in all branches of the service have to base their plans for weapons and carriers and modes of atomic warfare upon their best guesses as to what the American people may demand of them. They cannot plan and build with the effectiveness born of certainty.

Until the people speak, diplomats too must base their international statements upon mere guesswork. Until the people have had the facts and a chance to argue and debate them, and to accept or to disavow suggested policies offered by their leaders, servants of the people — whether they be generals or admirals, the President or an ambassador — have no guides but their own guesses.

And the American people themselves are unfairly suffering fears and uncertainties and anxieties which only facts can dispel. Whatever fears we may have, they are shared by our friends of this hemisphere, the peoples of Latin America and of Canada, who have lived so long under the assurance of the Monroe Doctrine.

I believe that to most of us it is inconceivable that we would not use the atomic bomb should it be required for the defense of any part of this hemisphere from foreign aggression. But does this lessen our obligation to state, in words as bold and unmistakable as those of President Monroe, that we will, if need be, enforce the Doctrine with our greatest weapon?

We owe it to the rest of the world and to the cause of a better international understanding to outline the circumstances under which the American people are willing to have their bombs used, So long as these circumstances are wide open to conjecture and to surmise, friends and potential enemies may, in ignorance, jeopardize the peace.

There may be countries, perhaps in Western Europe, whose leaders move in a fool’s paradise, falsely confident that the United States will support them with atomic weapons when in fact the American people will approve no such use of their bombs.

Quite as possible, potential enemies may even now be making the first subtle moves toward war in the fond and foolish belief that the American people will not authorize the use of atomic weapons against them until it is too late.

These are admittedly conjectures, hypothetical situations, and there may be not a fact to support them today; yet tomorrow they can become realities, unless the United States proclaims to the world a public policy on atomic warfare.

“Early and provident fear is the mother of security.” Whether fear is ever a good mother of international peace is debatable. I should like to point to a more positive aspect of military high policies. I have in mind the effect, not of fear, an emotion, but of knowledge on the thinking and planning of prospective peacebreakers.

If the Japanese Emperor, his immediate advisers, and the Japanese people had known and understood the industrial might of the United States as well as it was known to a few officials, no war against the United States would have been undertaken.

This may seem incredible, but the fact leaps out from almost every page of an official United States document, “The Interrogations of Japanese Officials,” edited by Rear Admiral R. A. Ofstie, who was senior Xavy member of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey. It would not have been fear which would have deterred the Mikado and his people, for they did greatly fear the United States, and declared war in spite of their fears. But knowledge — the hard facts of our industrial capacity—would have made them certain that even with a large part of our naval strength at the bottom of Pearl Harbor they could not prevail against us.

This is not to say that a determined and aggressive people like the Japanese would have dropped their aspirations. But it does mean they would have shaped their military policies away from any conflict with us.

Neither fear nor knowledge will restrain some mud dogs. But the pages of history are filled with the accounts of wars which came about because those who provoked them were ignorant of the will and power of the countries whose armies they engaged in battle.

Too often in this country matters of great national importance are not determined in advance but are decided with imprudent haste at times when situations are tense and press upon us. Then a national leader, his statement of the facts consciously or unconsciously adjusted to the temper of the moment, gives voice to a proposed policy which is imperfectly understood and hence either fails of proper endorsement by the people or receives their unwise approval.

There is not an American who believes that we should wait until events force us before we make up our national mind and our majority will as to atomic weapon use. Vet, so far as I can determine, there has been no general demand for the facts the people must have before a policy can be approved intelligently.

There have been many demands for other facts. During the Senate hearings on the McMahon bill establishing the Atomic Energy Commission, scores of witnesses came to plead that the law permit the publication of facts of high technical and scientific value.

The press of this country faithfully reported these demands for the release of technical data of benefit to medicine and pure science and engineering. But not one journalist appeared before the McMahon Committee, nor has there been any genera! demand since then by newspapers for the facts to which they are entitled — facts which were written into the final report of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Evaluation Board, I believe, for the information of the press and public so that a national policy as blunt and as specific as the Monroe Doctrine itself might result.

Of course there are what politicians call “ political implications” in every important act and statement of a man in high office. I do not impute the suppression of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Evaluation Board report to fear of “political implications.” I do say that no such “implications” should keep the essential facts, deductions, and conclusions from the American people and their Congress.

We need a high policy governing our employment of atomic weapons in war. The American people must participate in this policy, must accept it and be willing to support it. To do this they must have facts which have been kept from them by the White House.