Atomic Signaling: Exploring Likelihood of Success and Military Necessity through the Bargaining Model of War

Abstract

Did the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II meet the military necessity and likelihood of success criteria of the Just War Theory? Many scholars and ethicists have argued that they did not. We examine the decision through the rationalist models of war preferred by international relations theorists. We introduce a simple version of the bargaining model of war and tease out its essential differences with the models of war (and, therefore, military necessity) used by most Just War Theorists. Then, we reconstruct the decision to drop the bomb on Japan, focusing especially on information states, preference sets, and operational realities, to show that, if the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki does not meet military necessity and likelihood of success criteria, no other kind of military activity can.

Keywords:

• nuclear war
• Hiroshima
• Nagasaki
• just war
• likelihood of success
• atomic signaling

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jon Askonas

Jon Askonas is an assistant professor of Politics at the Catholic University of America, where he works on the connections between the republican tradition, technology, and national security. He holds an MPhil and DPhil in International Relations from the University of Oxford. His writing has appeared in Foreign Policy, Russian Analytical Digest, The New Atlantis, Fare Forward, War on the Rocks, and the Texas National Security Review.

Joshua Hastey

Joshua Hastey is an assistant professor in the Robertson School of Government at Regent University. He writes and lectures on grand strategy, conflict on the margins of conventional war, and war ethics. His first book, published by Routledge in 2023, explains China’s use of faits accomplis in the South and East China Seas. Other recent work has been published in Journal of Strategic Security, Global Politics, and Providence.