Nuclear weapons debate

The only time nuclear weapons have been used in warfare was during the final stages of World War II when USAAF B-29 Superfortress bombers dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early August 1945.

On June 2, 1945, Arthur Compton, the leader of the Manhattan Project's Metallurgical Laboratory, also known as Met Lab, at the University of Chicago briefed his staff on the latest information from the Interim Committee, which was formulating plans for the use of the atomic bomb to force Japanese capitulation.

We are ready to renounce its use in the future and to join other nations in working out adequate supervision of the use of this nuclear weapon.”[3] - The Franck Report 70 scientists involved in the Manhattan Project, many of them from Met Lab, represented in part by Leó Szilárd, put forth a petition to President Harry Truman in July 1945.

"[4] - The Szilárd PetitionThe petition also warned Truman to consider the future implications of the decision to use the atomic bomb, including the probability of a rapid nuclear arms race and a decline in global security, and pleaded with him to prevent such an eventuality if possible.

Exploding with a yield equivalent to 12,500 tonnes of TNT, the blast and thermal wave of the bomb destroyed nearly 50,000 buildings (including the headquarters of the 2nd General Army and Fifth Division) and killed approximately 75,000 people, among them 20,000 Japanese soldiers and 20,000 Koreans.

Application of game theory to questions of strategic nuclear warfare during the Cold War resulted in the doctrine of mutually assured destruction (MAD), a concept developed by Robert McNamara and others in the mid-1960s.

Since the end of the Cold War, theories of deterrence in international relations have been further developed and generalized in the concept of the stability–instability paradox[17][18] Proponents of disarmament call into question the assumption that political leaders are rational actors who place the protection of their citizens above other considerations, and highlight, as McNamara himself later acknowledged with the benefit of hindsight, the non-rational choices, chance, and contingency, which played a significant role in averting nuclear war, such as during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 and the Able Archer 83 crisis of 1983.

[21] Professor John Mueller of Ohio State University, author of Atomic Obsession[22] has also dismissed the need to interfere with Iran's nuclear program and expressed that arms control measures are counterproductive.

[23] During a 2010 lecture at the University of Missouri, which was broadcast by C-Span, Dr. Mueller also argued that the threat from nuclear weapons, including that from terrorists, has been exaggerated in the popular media and by officials.

[24] In contrast, various American government officials, including Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, Sam Nunn, and William Perry,[25][26][27] who were in office during the Cold War period, now advocate the elimination of nuclear weapons in the belief that the doctrine of mutual Soviet-American deterrence is obsolete and that reliance on nuclear weapons for deterrence is increasingly hazardous and decreasingly effective ever since the Cold War ended.