Why
Is There So Little Protest Against Recent Threats Of Nuclear War?
Our
tempered response to this looming catastrophe is deeply unsettling.
04/22/2017
05:59 pm ET
Updated Apr
23, 2017
AARON
BERNSTEIN / REUTERS
In
recent weeks, the people of the world have been treated to yet another display
of the kind of nuclear insanity that has broken out periodically ever since
1945 and the dawn of the nuclear era.
On
April 11th, Donald Trump, irked by North Korea’s continued tests of
nuclear weapons and missiles, tweeted that “North Korea is looking for
trouble.” If China does not “help,” then “we will solve the problem without
them.” North Korean leader Kim Jong Unresponded by announcing that, in the event of a
U.S. military attack, his country would not scruple at launching a nuclear
strike at U.S. forces. In turn, Trump declared: “We are sending an armada, very
powerful. We have submarines, very powerful, far more powerful than the aircraft
carrier. We have the best military people on earth.”
During
the following days, the governments of both nuclear-armed nations escalated
their threats. Dispatched to South Korea, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence declared that “the era
of strategic patience is over,” and warned: “All options are on the table.” Not
to be outdone, North Korea’s deputy representative to the United
Nations told a press conference that “thermonuclear war may break out at any
moment.” Any missile or nuclear strike by the United States would be responded
to “in kind.” Several days later, the North Korean government warned of a “super-mighty
preemptive strike” that would reduce U.S. military forces in South Korea and on
the U.S. mainland “to ashes.” The United States and its allies, said the
official statement, “should not mess with us.”
Curiously,
this North Korean statement echoed the Trump promise during his presidential campaign that he
would build a U.S. military machine “so big, powerful, and strong that no one
will mess with us.” The fact that both Trump and Kim are being “messed with”
despite their possession of very powerful armed forces, including nuclear
weapons, seems to have eluded both men, who continue their deadly game of
nuclear threat and bluster.
And
what is the response of the public to these two erratic government leaders
behaving in this reckless fashion and threatening war, including nuclear war?
It is remarkably subdued. People read about the situation in newspapers or
watch it on the television news, while comedians joke about the madness of it
all. Oh, yes, peace and disarmament organizations condemn the escalating military confrontation and
outline reasonable diplomatic alternatives. But such organizations
are unable to mobilize the vast numbers of people around the world necessary to
shake some sense into these overwrought government officials.
Many
people believe that Kim and Trump are too irrational to respond to reason and
too autocratic to give way to public pressure.”
The
situation was very different in the 1980s, when organizations like the Nuclear Weapons
Freeze Campaign (in the United States), the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
(in Britain), and similar groups around the world were able to engage millions
of people in protest against the nuclear recklessness of the U.S. and Soviet
governments―protest that played a key
role in curbing the nuclear arms race and preventing nuclear war.
So
why is there so little public protest today?
One
factor is certainly the public’s preoccupation with other important issues,
among them climate change, immigration, terrorism, criminal justice, civil
liberties, and economic inequality.
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Another
appears to be a sense of fatalism. Many people believe that Kim and Trump are
too irrational to respond to reason and too autocratic to give way to public
pressure.
Yet
another factor is the belief of Americans and Europeans that their countries
are safe from a North Korean attack. Yes, many people will die in a new Korean
War, especially one fought with nuclear weapons, but they will be “only”
Koreans.
In
addition, many people credit the absence of nuclear war since 1945 to nuclear
deterrence. Thus, they assume that nuclear-armed nations will not fight a
nuclear war among themselves.
Finally―and
perhaps most significantly―people
are reluctant to think about nuclear war. After all, it means death and
destruction at an unbearable level of horror. Therefore, it’s much easier to
simply forget about it.
Of
course, even if these factors explain the public’s passivity in the face of a
looming nuclear catastrophe, they do not justify it. After all, people can
concern themselves with more than one issue at a time; public officials are
often more malleable than assumed; accepting the mass slaughter of Koreans is
unconscionable; and if nuclear deterrence really worked, the U.S. government
would be far less worried about other nations (including North Korea)
developing nuclear weapons. Also, problems―including
the problem posed by nuclear weapons―do not
simply disappear when people ignore them.
It
would be a terrible thing if it takes a disastrous nuclear war between the
United States and North Korea to convince people that nuclear war is simply
unacceptable. The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki should already have
convinced us of that.
Dr.
Lawrence Wittner (http://www.lawrenceswittner.com) is Professor of History
emeritus at SUNY/Albany. He is the author of Confronting the Bomb (Stanford University Press).
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