People, not property: population issues and the neutron bomb

Abstract

Population issues often factor into militarism as, historically, population was identified with power. The destructive capabilities of weaponry in the twentieth century shifted the role of population as more civilians were at risk, and the introduction of nuclear armaments did so even further. During the Cold War, the United States and Soviet Union entered into a nuclear arms race which threatened the earth’s entire population, and the earth itself. The neutron bomb was introduced as a clean weapon, however, and its proponents argued that it would protect property while killing people. This article examines various aspects of population as it related to arguments for and against the neutron bomb, beginning in the 1950s.

Notes

¹ See Kyoko Selden and Mark Selden, The Atomic Bomb: Voices from Hiroshima and Nagasaki (New York: Routledge, 2015); Ronald Takaki, Hiroshima: Why America Dropped the Atomic Bomb (New York: Little, Brown, 1995). Also see Committee for the Compilation of Materials on Damage Caused by the Atomic Bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Hiroshima and Nagasaki: The Physical, Medical, and Social Effects of the Atomic Bombings (New York: Basic Books, 1981).

² See Tamara Orr, The Hydrogen Bomb: Unleashing the Nuclear Age and the Arms Race (New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, 2005); Richard Rhodes, Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995).

³ Scott C. Zeman, “Confronting the ‘Capitalist Bomb’: The Neutron Bomb and American Culture,” in Atomic Culture: How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, ed. Scott C. Zeman and Michael A. Amundson (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2004), 66–7.

⁴ See James A. Tyner, War, Violence, and Population: Making the Body Count (New York: Guilford Press, 2009); Jennifer Dabbs Sciubba, The Future Faces of War: Population and National Security (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2011); Kenneth Hill, War, Humanitarian Crises, Population Displacement, and Fertility: A Review of the Evidence (Washington DC: National Academies Press, 2004).

⁵ Hans Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace. 4th ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968), 232–235. Also see Oliver Jutersonk, Morgenthau, Law and Realism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 5–13.

⁶ William Fielding Ogburn, War, Babies, and the Future (New York: Public Affairs Committee, 1945), 7–12.

⁷ See Harold Cox, The Problem of Population (London: Jonathan Cape, 1922), 70–2. Also see Raymond Pierpont, ed., Fifth International Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Conference (London: William Heinemann, 1922), 177–8; Havelock Ellis, Essays in Wartime (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1917), 65–9; and John C. Duvall, “Overpopulation As a Prime Factor in the Cause of War,” in Sixth International Birth Control Conference, ed. Margaret Sanger (New York: American Birth Control League, 1926), 107–19.

⁸ See Guy Irving Burch, Population Roads to Peace or War (Washington DC: Population Reference Bureau, 1945); Paul R. Ehrlich, The Population Bomb (New York: Ballantine Books, 1968). For other examples of population warnings and the nature of war with respect to population in this period, see Lawrence Lader, Breeding Ourselves to Death (New York: Ballantine Books, 1971); James A. Tyner, War, Violence, and Population: Making the Body Count (New York: The Guilford Press, 2009).

⁹ Fred M. Kaplan, “Enhanced Radiation Weapons,” Scientific American 238, no. 5 (May 1978): 44–51; World Peace Council, In the Name of Life Itself, Ban the Neutron Bomb (PLACE: World Peace Council, 1977), 22–6.

¹⁰ Ove Bring, “Regulating Conventional Weapons in the Future, Humanitarian Law or Arms Control?” Journal of Peace Research 24, no. 3 (September 1987, Special Issue on Humanitarian Law of Armed Conflict): 279–80. For more on the extent of injury and manner of death caused by FAEs, see the statement by Colonel Llewellyn on 14 September 1978 at the Preparatory United Nations Conference on Prohibitions or Restrictions of Use of Certain Conventional Weapons, Geneva (cited in Ove Bring, 285).

¹¹ William Laurence, “The Neutron Bomb,” The Saturday Evening Post 235, no. 18 (May 5, 1962): pp. 52–6; Thomas A. Dodd, “N-Bomb: Weapon for Peace?” Letter to the Editor, The Saturday Evening Post 235, no. 29 (August 11, 1962): 4–6.

¹² Zeman, “Confronting the ‘Capitalist Bomb’,” 65.

¹³ “The Scientific and Moral Problem that Perplexes the World,” Time 69, no. 22 (June 3, 1957): 64–7. Also see “High Price of Suspension,” Time 74, no. 22 (November 30, 1959): 17.

¹⁴ Bernard Brodie, “Strategy Hits a Dead End,” Harpers, October 1955: 33–7. Also see Marc Trachtenberg, History and Strategy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 261; Barry Scott Zellen, State of Doom: Bernard Brodie, the Bomb, and the Birth of the Bipolar World (New York: Continuum, 2012).

¹⁵ Lawrence Freedman, “Has Strategy Reached a Dead-End?,” Futures (April 1979): 123.

¹⁶ Dwight David Eisenhower, “The President’s News Conference,” June 26, 1957. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=10822. For an early Senate debate on supporting research of ‘clean bombs’ see United States Senate, Control and Reduction of Armaments, Hearing before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate. Eighty-fifth Congress, Second Session, March 6, 1958 (Washington DC: US Government Printing Office, 1958), 1370–520.

¹⁷ For opposition arguments, see E.U. Condon, “Bombs for Peach Hypocrisy,” Nation 187, no. 17 (November 22, 1958): 376–7.

¹⁸ Quoted in Katherine Magraw, “Teller and the ‘Clean Bomb’ Episode,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 44, no. 4 (May 1988): 32.

¹⁹ Benjamin Greene, “Captive of a Scientific-Technological Elite: Eisenhower and the Nuclear Test Ban,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 45, no. 1 (2015): 39.

²⁰ Edward Teller and Albert L. Latter, Our Nuclear Future: Facts, Dangers, and Opportunities (New York: Criterion Books, 1958), 116–33, 139–42.

²¹ Ibid., 143. Teller and Latter also worked to make a case for industrial and energy applications of atomic power. Other popular accounts by scientists included Captain Burr W. Leyson, Atomic Energy in War and Peace (New York: EP Dutton, 1951); Ralph E. Lapp, Atoms and People (New York: Harper & Bros, 1956).

²² Magraw, “Teller and the ‘Clean Bomb’ Episode,” 34.

²³ Karl W. Deutsch, “The Impact of Science and Technology on International Politics,” Daedalus 88, no. 4 (1959): 677.

²⁴ Henry A. Kissinger, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy (New York: Doubleday & Anchor Books, 1958), 162.

²⁵ “Is the Neutron Bomb Ready?” Time 78, no. 1 (July 7, 1961): 44–5.

²⁶ D.G. Brennan, ed., Arms Control and Civil Defense (Croton-on-Hudson, NY: Hudson Institute, 1963), 35–8.

²⁷ Time magazine, “Is the Neutron Bomb Ready?” 44.

²⁸ Ibid.

²⁹ Senator Thomas J. Dodd, Letter to President-Elect Kennedy, November 25, 1960. For more on questions regarding the possibility and potential of a neutron bomb, see “Neutron Bomb: How, Why, When?” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 17 (1961): 297. Papers of John F. Kennedy. Presidential Papers. President’s Office Files. Special Correspondence. Dodd, Thomas J., November 1960–February 1963, http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/Archives/JFKPOF-029-014.aspx.

³⁰ United States Senate, Nuclear Test Ban Treaty: Hearings before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, Eighty-eight Congress, First Session, on August 12–15, 19–23, 26, 27, 1963 (Washington DC: US GPO, 1963), 430–35, 459–72.

³¹ For moral and theological arguments on nuclear targeting of civilian populations in the early 1960s, see John C. Bennett, “Debate on the Nuclear Dilemma,” Theology Today 18, no. 4 (January 1962): 412–21; Norman K. Gottwald, “Moral and Strategic Reflections on the Nuclear Dilemma,” Christianity and Crisis 21, no. 23 (January 8, 1962): 239–42.

³² Ira S. Lowry, “The Post Attack Population of the United States,” for the Technical Analysis Branch of the US Atomic Energy Commission (Santa Monica, CA, 1966), 121–4. Also see Norman Hanunian, “Dimensions of Survival: Post Attack Survival Disparities and National Viability,” for the Technical Analysis Branch of the US Atomic Energy Commission (Santa Monica, CA, 1966).

³³ For an example of a government report on health and nuclear weapons testing, see US Atomic Energy Commission, Health Aspects of Nuclear Weapons Testing (Washington DC: US GPO, 1964). For information on university programmes, see US Public Health Service, University Curriculums and Fellowships in Radiological Health (Washington DC: US Department of Health, Education and Welfare, 1964).

³⁴ Tamplin and Gofman, Population Control through Nuclear Pollution, 192–9.

³⁵ Snell Putney and Russell Middleton, “Some Factors Associated with Student Acceptance or Rejection of War,” American Sociological Review 27, no. 5 (October 1962): 657–9.

³⁶ K. Miettinen, “Mininukes and Neutron Bombs: Modernization of NATO’s Tactical Nuclear Weapons, Introduction of Enhanced Radiation Warheads,” Research on Peace and Violence 7, no. 2 (1977): 56–7.

³⁷ Zeman, “Confronting the ‘Capitalist Bomb’,” 70.

³⁸ President Jimmy Carter, Letter to Senator John Stennis, July 11, 1977. Also see S. T. Cohen, The Neutron Bomb: Political, Technological and Military Issues (Cambridge, Massachusetts and Washington, DC: Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, 1978), 94.

³⁹ Vincent A. Auger, The Dynamics of Foreign Policy Analysis: The Carter Administration and the Neutron Bomb (Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), 15–17, 35–6. For more on Carter’s human rights legacy, see Mary E. Stuckey, Jimmy Carter, Human Rights, and the National Agenda (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2009); Kenneth E. Morris, Jimmy Carter, American Moralist (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996).

⁴⁰ David Whitman, The Press and the Neutron Bomb, Kennedy School of Government, Case Study C14-84-607.0 (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1983), 39, 47.

⁴¹ Darshan Singh, ed., India Supports Disarmament, Rejects the Neutron Bomb (New Delhi: Sterling, 1979), 13.

⁴² Deborah Shapley, “The Media and National Security,” Daedalus 11, no. 4 (Fall 1982): 203; Vincent A. Auger, The Dynamics of Foreign Policy Analysis: The Carter Administration and the Neutron Bomb (Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), 37; David Whitman, The Press and the Neutron Bomb, Kennedy School of Government, Case Study C14-84-607.0 (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1983), 40, 60–61.

⁴³ Auger, Dynamics of Foreign Policy Analysis, 39.

⁴⁴ Directives to the USSR Delagation to the XXXIV Session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, January 17, 1978.

⁴⁵ Jimmy Carter, “United States Naval Academy Address at the Commencement Exercises,” June 7, 1978. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=30915. And “Political Letter of Soviet Ambassador to the United States Anatoly F. Dobrynin,” July 11, 1978, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, TsKhSD, f. 89, per. 76, dok. 28, ll. 1–9; document obtained by Carter-Brezhnev Project; translated by Mark Doctoroff. http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/111258

⁴⁶ Beverly Ann Deepe Kever, News Zero: The New York Times and the Bomb (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 2004), 94; “The Racial Dimensions of the Nuclear Age: Insights Gleaned from Interdisciplinary Literature,” presentation at the national conference of the National Association of African American Studies and Affiliates, Houston, Texas, February 21, 2003.

⁴⁷ Deepe Kever, News Zero, 95.

⁴⁸ Alfred Gellhorn, “National Security and the Health of People: Human Needs and the Allocation of Scarce Resources,” Social Science & Medicine 19, no. 4 (1984): 307.

⁴⁹ Ibid., 307–08.

⁵⁰ Ibid., 309.

⁵¹ Helen Caldicott, Nuclear Madness (Brookline, MA: Autumn Press, 1978), 76–7.

⁵² Ibid., 83.

⁵³ Alton Frye, “Opinion: Slow Fuse on the Neutron Bomb,” Foreign Policy 31 (1978): 96.

⁵⁴ Ibid.

⁵⁵ Ibid., 103; Freedman, “Has Strategy Reached a Dead-End?,” 122–4.

⁵⁶ Bernard Brodie, “The Development of Nuclear Strategy,” International Security (Spring 1978): 79. On the survivability of nuclear war, also see Donald Rumsfeld, US Department of Defense Annual Security Report (Washington DC: US GPO, 1978).

⁵⁷ Daniel Ellsberg, “There Must Be No Neutron Bomb,” The Nation 226, no. 20 (May 27, 1978): 633.

⁵⁸ Ibid., 632–3. The article was taken from a March 18, 1978 speech Ellsberg made to the Neutron Bomb International Forum in Amsterdam. Also see Daniel Ellsberg, “Nuclear Armament,” Epiphany 3, no. 2 (Winter 1982): 26–41.

⁵⁹ S.T. Cohen, The Neutron Bomb: Political, Technological and Military Issues (Cambridge and Washington: Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, 1978), 77–8.

⁶⁰ Ibid., x.

⁶¹ Ibid., 80–81. Also see Sam Cohen, The Truth About the Neutron Bomb, The Inventor of the Bomb Speaks Out (New York: William Morrow, 1983); Samuel T. Cohen, “Morality and the Neutron Bomb,” National Review 32 (August 8, 1980): 948–50.

⁶² Hans Morgenthau, “The Fallacy of Thinking Conventionally about Nuclear Weapons,” in Arms Control and Technological Innovation, ed. David Carlton and Carlo Schaert (Toronto: John Wiley, 1976), 255–6. Ibid., 259–60.

⁶³ Ibid., 260.

⁶⁴ Darshan Singh, ed., India Supports Disarmament, Rejects Neutron Bomb (New Delhi: Sterling, 1979), 17–18.

⁶⁵ Ibid., 19. For additional comments on genetic effects on the population at large, see Miettinen, “Mininukes and Neutron Bombs,” 56–7.

⁶⁶ Miettinen, “Mininukes and Neutron Bombs,” 56–7.

⁶⁷ Leon Wieseltier, “When Deterrence Fails,” Foreign Affairs 63, no. 4 (Spring 1985), 827–47.

⁶⁸ Bernard T. Feld, “The Neutron Bomb Decision,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 37 (October 1981): 5. Also see Dick Toornstra, “Neutron Bomb: Reactions from Europe,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (November 1981): 60–61.

⁶⁹ “Neutron Bomb,” National Review 33 (September 4, 1981): 1000.

⁷⁰ William F. Buckley, “Outstanding,” National Review 33 (September 18, 1981): 1100.

⁷¹ For more on modern city development and especially its relationship to nuclear capabilities, see Robert H. Kargon and Arthur P. Molella, Invented Edens: Techno-Cities of the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008).

⁷² Kaplan, “Enhanced Radiation Weapons,” 51.

⁷³ Julian Perry Robinson, “Neutron Bomb and Conventional Weapons of Mass Destruction,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 34 (March 1978): 42–3.

⁷⁴ Ibid., 42.

⁷⁵ C. Raja Mohan, “Neutron Bomb: The American Dream and Global Nightmare,” Social Scientist 10, no. 2 (February 1982): 20.

⁷⁶ Ibid., 24.

⁷⁷ David Hafemeister, Physics of Societal Issues: Calculations on National Security, Environment and Energy (New York: Springer, 2007), 18.

⁷⁸ Ibid.

⁷⁹ Freedman, “Has Strategy Reached a Dead-End?,” 127.

⁸⁰ “Battlefield of the 1990s: It’s not Sci-Fi, It’s Real,” US News and World Report 83 (July 4, 1997): 48–50.

⁸¹ See John Kaag and Sarah Kreps, Drone Warfare (Cambridge: Polity, 2014); Medea Benjamin, Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control (New York: Verso Books, 2013).

⁸² Hans Born, Bates Gill, and Heiner Hänggi, eds., Governing the Bomb: Civilian Control and Democratic Accountability of Nuclear Weapons (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 23; Lawrence Freedman, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 381–3.