Oliver Kamm is a phenomenon I have yet to understand. He writes a blog which is generally quite intelligent, even if his writing is frequently verbose and occasionally pompous. I understand from his blog that he sometimes appears on television to provide political commentary, and he also writes columns for the Guardian infrequently. Despite all this, I have no idea who he is or why anybody would want to hear his opinions – well, no more than why anybody would want to hear my opinions.
He recently wrote one such column for the Guardian entitled “Terrible, but not a crime“, referring to the use of atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Naturally this column drew quite a lot of fire from the sort of people who read the Guardian, who can usually be relied upon to react exactly how you expect them to. Kamm has replied to many of the letters that were published and some of the blog reactions as well, so you should read some of those if you want to hear his opinion.
I’d prefer to go back to the original column, a short version of which would read as follows:
There is a widespread conviction that, at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, America committed acts that were not only terrible but also wrong… This alternative history is devoid of merit.
Kamm believes that the “traditionalist interpretation” of the decision to drop the bomb is entirely correct – that Truman gave it the green light on the basis that it would bring the war to a rapid end and consequently save many lives on both sides. This argument is
founded on the conviction that a blockade and invasion of Japan would cause massive casualties. Estimates derived from intelligence about Japan’s military deployments projected hundreds of thousands of American casualties… we can conclude with a high degree of probability that abjuring the bomb would have caused greater suffering still.
Kamm appears to be something of an expert on this issue, and I have no reason to doubt that Truman did drop the bomb for exactly the reasons he gave at the time. However to say that the use of atomic weapons was justified on that basis is mistaken.
We need to start with the basic question – why use the atomic bomb at all? The “traditionalist” answer is the bomb caused such massive devastation that it gave massive support to the “peace party” in the Japanese Cabinet, as exemplified by the title of the paper that Kamm cites – “The Shock of the Atomic Bomb and Japan’s Decision to Surrender – a Reconsideration“, by Sadao Asada, which says that
Japan’s peace party made the maximum political use of the atomic bomb to end the war. To them, the bomb was “a gift from Heaven”, “a golden opportunity”, and a “psychological moment” to end the war; they saw the bomb as “assisting” their peace efforts and as a means for the military to save face.
This is true, but it’s worth noting that the Japanese appear to have seen the Russian entrance into the Pacific War as being critical for this movement, although Emperor Hirohito specifically referred to the bombing in the Imperial Rescript on Surrender from August 15:
Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is indeed incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should We continue to fight, it would not only result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization.
There’s no doubt that the use of atomic weapons was a singular moment in the history of warfare in many ways, and their destructive power was seen as being critical to their success. However that destructive power was not in itself as extraordinary as we might think. The Notes of one of the Meetings of the Interim Committee on the Manhattan Project, dated May 31, 1945 record that
It was pointed out that one atomic bomb on an arsenal would not be much different from the effect caused by any Air Corps strike of present dimensions’.
This was backed up by the US Strategic Bombing Survey that was carried out after the end of the war, which compared the atomic bombing with other weapons and, as David Edgerton expands, in his excellent book on technology, “The Shock of the Old“, suggested
that an atomic raid did the same sort of damage as a standard large conventional one, a few per cent at most of the destruction meted out to Japan from the air.
As a result, the US needed to reserve a number of targets for potential future use, among which were the Hiroshima and Nagasaki arsenals, which as a result avoided significant bombing in the run-up to August 1945. (During this time, the cost of the atomic programme (around $2bn) diverted significant resources from conventional weapons production – according to Edgerton, the same amount would have paid for around 2,500 B-29 bombers. So the US robbed Peter to pay Paul, raising legitimate but unanswerable questions of whether the nuclear programme in fact lengthened the war.)
So if the damage done by atomic weapons was known to be on a par with conventional air strikes at the tactical level, then what was their utility at the strategic level? The use of atomic weapons actually required high levels of civilian casualties in order to play its role in US strategy, essentially in order to lead to the effects that Asada notes in his paper. From the same Notes referred to above, the Interim Committee was told by Oppenheimer that “the visual effect of an atomic bombing would be tremendous”, and the choice of target was critical. As Rupert Smith describes in his also-excellent book on the use of military force in the modern world, “The Utility of Force“, there was only one possible target for atomic weapons:
The people – massed in their cities; the source of manpower and industrial power; the polity of the state – were now the only target worth attacking, since their cities were the most plausible objectives: constant, sitting targets of mass… Industrial war, not to mention total war, was impossible in such circumstances.
However this leads us to a relatively simple moral and legal question – whether large numbers of civilian casualties are justified in the pursuit of a military victory. Kamm has acknowledged that this is a serious issue, suggesting a moral distinction between “knowingly” killing civilians (e.g. accepting them as foreseeable collateral damage in pursuit of a military target) and intentionally killing civilians. I find this distinction to be questionable in the case of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but Kamm quotes a “prominent academic philosopher” that
… according to Anscombe, the killing of the residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was intentional. Had those residents not been killed by the dropping of the atomic bombs, the effectiveness of the bombs in inducing surrender would have been undermined, and the people who dropped the bombs would have felt that they had failed in their objectives… if her position is to be challenged germanely, the distinction between knowingly killing and intentionally killing has to be challenged directly rather than disregarded.
So let’s challenge that distinction, shall we? For anybody in doubt about the status of civilians during times of war, I’d refer you to Part IV of Additional Protocol 1 to the Fourth Geneva Convention (12 August 1949) relative to the protection of civilian persons in time of war, which states the following:
- In any armed conflict, the right of the Parties to the conflict to choose methods or means of warfare is not unlimited.
- Any Person not belonging to the armed forces is considered as a civilian and the same applies in case of doubt as to his status.
- The prohibition of attacks on civilian persons and civilian property includes all acts of violence, whether committed in offence or defence.
Although the Geneva Conventions were drafted after World War Two, they drew on principles that pre-dated that war and are still germane to this discussion. Targeting civilians is not wrong because the Geneva Conventions say so; the Geneva Conventions say so because targeting civilians is wrong. The question then is, were civilians targeted in the use of atomic weapons in Hiroshima and Nagasaki? The short answer was yes; although the primary targets were the arsenals in the two cities, the Notes I referred to earlier record
there was general agreement that we could not give the Japanese any warning; that we could not concentrate on a civilian area… the Secretary agreed that the most desirable target would be a vital war plant employing a large number of workers and closely surrounded by workers’ houses.
The vital war plant was a legitimate military target, and the workers’ houses were not. While not aware of the precise numbers that would be affected, the US administration was aware of the scale of the damage that the bombs would cause – in fact, that was the key part of the calculation that they hoped would end the war quickly.
The use of nuclear weapons has been controversial ever since their first use, and there has been no definitive judgement on their use. However the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice on the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons from 8 July 1996 is the closest thing to an authoritative statement. The Court found unanimously that
A threat or use of nuclear weapons should also be compatible with the requirements of the international law applicable in armed conflict particularly those of the principles and rules of international humanitarian law, as well as with specific obligations under treaties and other undertakings which expressly deal with nuclear weapons;
but was split on the use of such weapons in self-defence, explaining that
It follows from the above-mentioned requirements that the threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, and in particular the principles and rules of humanitarian law;
However, in view of the current state of international law, and of the elements of fact at its disposal, the Court cannot conclude definitively whether the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be lawful or unlawful in an extreme circumstance of self-defence, in which the very survival of a State would be at stake;
You can find a full discussion of nuclear weapons in the context of international humanitarian law at the ICRC website, in an article by François Bugnion, the ICRC Director for International Law and Cooperation within the Red Cross Movement in September 2005.
While the ICRC analysis is that they “[find] it difficult to envisage how the use of nuclear weapons could be compatible with the principles and rules of international humanitarian law”, it is clear that the use of atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not a “crime” since there was no law to prohibit their use. However something does not have to be a crime to be wrong.
I agree with Kamm in his traditionalist view that Truman’s decision was based on the belief that dropping the atomic bomb was the lesser of two evils; the lesser of two evils, however, remains an evil.