Digital Montage by David Eubank
Iran launched a satellite the other day that has gone mostly unnoticed compared to the Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1959, but make no mistake about the significance of this technological Madness.
The launch is a clear escalation; an intended demonstration of power and real danger. It is an ‘in your face’ threat to the civilized world that few realize. We have been desensitized today about the real danger of nuclear destruction now that the cold war is over, but the reality is a Clear and Present Danger.
For most of my life, I have been interested in The Bomb.
Nearly fifty years ago now, I paid my fifty cents and entered a world of madness, a world of Mutual Assured Destruction at a carnival sideshow in Ohio. Hiroshima, a movie along with photographs of what the first Atomic Bomb had accomplished, was the show. Now as I look back and create a timeline in my mind I realize that Hiroshima was recent history at that time– only fifteen years earlier. The Bomb was real; it was part of the living memory of anyone over the age of fifteen. The images of Hiroshima were forever burned into my mind. Especially when we practiced Air Raid Drills in school. Maybe you have seen the pictures of such drills, where all of the students either get under their desks or go out into the hall and crouch down with heads down in protective postures. I went to grade school in an old stone building. The basement in fact was a designated Bomb Shelter. When the alarm would sound, we would all go very orderly, in single file, down into the basement of the school. I remember the long cavern-like hallway down there, no windows, constructed of reinforced concrete and massive stone. We would get down on the floor, our heads down facing the cavern wall until the all clear sounded. Back then, in the fifties, Bomb Shelters were everywhere, in almost any structurally reinforced concrete building. Those little Black and Yellow signs (some are still around today) identified safe places to hide from the bomb. After I saw the Hiroshima pictures, I knew that down in that Bomb Shelter, there would be no hiding. The invention of the Hydrogen Bomb upped the ante 10 fold and as Sputnik circled the earth blurting out it’s faint beep, we all knew, even the children, that death awaited humanity, if humanity still existed. Just ask anybody who grew up in the fifties. Just watch some of the old movies like On the Beach or Dr. Strangelove that today are bizarre; almost unbelievable snapshots of the danger we faced then and still face today. Only today, we all seem to believe the danger has passed.
My interest in The Bomb never waned; I watched every movie and read everything I stumbled across about the inevitable nuclear Holocaust. It was in the late seventies that I got my real introduction into the subject of Nuclear Strategy. I was in my last semester of college; I needed a social science credit to graduate. As an art student I really didn’t care for most of the courses offered, it was just another petty annoyance on the road to an art degree. Then I saw a course in the catalog: Nuclear Strategy. My advisor said the course would work, so I signed up. I thought this will be more fun B movies, but I was mistaken. On the first day of class, I walked into a room full of very clean cut military officers and political scientists. I can assure you I was the only longhaired hippy in the room and all eyes were on me. The professor was best described as a man in black. He was a well-dressed stately looking man, who I can now say was serious, extremely intelligent, kind and surely had a warped sense of humor because he invited me to stay. Professor David Lauscher, called me aside as he was handing out our reading packages at the end of class. He explained to me that the course was the real deal and that it would be a lot of work for anyone not up to speed. I felt like a donkey running the Kentucky Derby compared to the other students in the class who were serious professionals. After the professor and I talked a little more I assured him I would keep up with the required reading and briefings and that I was serious about learning; he encouraged me to continue. The reading load was incredibly difficult, the most difficult in all my years in college including graduate school. The volume included declassified defense department briefings, studies and history on Thermal Nuclear War. We studied how we as a nation arrived at our current Nuclear Policies and Strategies. We read Machiavelli’s, The Prince and Herman Kahn on Thermal Nuclear War and we studied their ideas in relation to current policy. We studied targeting strategies, damage predictions, and the importance of delivery systems. The information was sobering, frightening. Any hope for a satisfactory outcome to a nuclear confrontation, an actual nuclear war, was at best impossible. At worst, a nuclear war would mean the end of the human race. Machiavelli’s principles of deterrence lead to the current policy of Mutual Assured Destruction, (MAD). Simply stated, both sides said you will be totally destroyed if you attack and the stalemate of the Cold War was founded.
This one idea maintained the balance of power between the Soviet Union and the United States. Dooms Day, the stuff of B movies, was reality.
The Berlin Wall still stood and the British were engaged in the Falkland’s War with Argentina. That war was the first time modern weapons and modern delivery systems were tested in battle. Images of smart bombs and accurate missile guidance systems that can acquire targets became reality. The idea that a small rogue country who could acquire the technology and a delivery system and would emerge as a new nuclear threat was also reality. The professor predicted that in the future this new threat would become our challenge in the future and would require a very different policy than MAD. You see the balance of power between Super Powers was altered by Argentina. They had gained the ability to challenge a much greater force with limited technology and inflicted serious damage. Britain could have just wiped the Argentineans off the face of the earth, but that would have been a disproportionate use of power. The idea emerged that if a small country got the bomb and could deliver it, they would hold the upper hand in a conflict. Why? Because even though they could be ultimately destroyed, everyone else would still be here and have to deal with a 911 event of biblical proportions.
The hard part is not acquiring the bomb; it is delivering it to a target.
With nuclear weapons you don’t have to be accurate you just have to be in the neighborhood. Therefore, as the professor pointed out then, if Argentina decides to commit suicide and say attack San Francisco we could do little but destroy them and mourn our loss. Where as with the USSR, we would all be gone, as would they. In addition, we would have to consider destroying an entire country where many innocent people would die to deal with a rogue political leader. However, we all have leaders who pilot the car and we all go along for the ride. As you can see, things can get out of hand very fast.
The Iranian Sputnik is a clear demonstration that they have a delivery system and is a serious escalation in threat strategy.
They are now entering the realm of the possible along with North Korea who many believe have achieved the ability to strike a target in the Western United States. The North Koreans plan to launch an ICBM test soon according to news sources. I can only imagine what Dr. Lauscher would say, “I told you so”. He predicted more than thirty years ago the situation we face today would be our future if the then Soviet Union and we did not act to stop the proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Well we failed to act then and now the future of the past is our present. Pakistan, India, North Korea, Israel, the decentralized former Soviet Union and now Iran are threats. China has grown into a Super Power with the Bomb and the United States and Russia face new threats from many small nations. We no longer face a single enemy or a single threat and if things get out of hand, it is going to be very bad for all of us. The fact is the collective old Nuclear Powers have not developed a new strategy to address these new threats. In fact the Old School Powers (including us) have escalated, proliferated the technology for political and financial gain over the last three decades.
We have entered into a game of chess between Super Powers where small countries are the chess pieces. Control in the game is an illusion. Leaderships change as in Pakistan, as in Iran, as in North Korea and new players do not follow the old rules. They bring different ideologies, religions and different agendas than their predecessors. Without rigorous evolving policies, the world takes another step closer to the unthinkable. Perhaps it is as simple as human ambition and the thirst for individual power. If you want to sit at the big table, you have to have the Bomb.
The other big item in the news is the new Antimissile System, a missile shield scheduled for deployment in Europe; Russia is opposed to the deployment.
For decades, we had an ABM Anti Ballistic Missile treaty with the Russians. An ABM system could disable enemy missiles and give the opponent the edge in a nuclear exchange. This was destabilizing to the MAD doctrine because if you knocked down enemy missiles you might survive. However, today because of the widened threat, we seek that additional protection not from Russia, but from smaller enemies. The Russians sticking to current strategy see the New ABM system as a measured escalation, a threat as it is according to doctrine.
The final threat that my old professor predicted was non-state attached enemies, i.e. Terrorists, as we know them today.
These enemies are not part of a recognized government. They have no diplomats, no homeland soil to protect, and no fixed infrastructure to attack and destroy. They operate outside of the rules and they are organized. 911 was proof that they can cause great damage and we were unprepared to deal with not only the threat, but also our response. Our policies and our doctrine at the time lead us to take action against Iraq instead of Osama Bin Laden. Why? Because we are unprepared to deal with non-state sponsored aggression, we just had not really thought out what to do. Iraq was a convenient and logical target. They were an aggressor and we knew the address. As misinformed as our leaders were, they believed that Iraq was a host nation to our new enemy. Without a clear doctrine to guide them, our leaders made critical mistakes as they tried to restore the balance of power. We face the same problem with small countries that have the Bomb. What is the proper response? Certainly Iraq should prove one thing. We are unprepared to deal with a nuclear aggressor like North Korea or Iran. If Iran gets the Bomb and decides to go suicide, we will be left with few options other than total destruction of a people or do nothing. If Iran chooses to proliferate nuclear technology to the terrorists, again what will be the response? Iran may in fact pose a larger threat to Europe, Russia and certainly Israel and the Middle East. Even if a nuclear conflict were isolated to the region, the effects would be felt worldwide as radiation spreads through the atmosphere creating poison air. Not to mention India and Pakistan where millions, even billions, would possibly die in a nuclear exchange leaving the rest of us to slowly die from radiation fallout.
Finally, soon the United States and Russia will begin new talks to reduce our nuclear arsenals.
This perhaps will be another step forward– an opportunity to develop a policy, a doctrine to deal with nuclear proliferation. It is hard to tell Iran you can’t have the Bomb when we have so many. But to change, to go back to a time when no nuclear weapons existed will take trust and confidence and a global effort. It probably isn’t in the cards anytime soon. As they say, it is hard to put the Genie back in the bottle.
The New Age of Sputnik has arrived and we as a species need to find a solution to maintain peace because the other options are impossible.
If you think Global Warming is a threat, the day someone starts launching nuclear-armed missiles you will wish for a little problem like too much carbon in the atmosphere! Yes this situation is serious, far more so than the media reports. Perhaps we have all became just too desensitized to the threat. Iran’s President continues to call for the destruction of Israel. The reasons why Iran hates Israel are complex and require super diplomacy to find a solution. If the world powers cannot convince Iran to stand down their nuclear program and seek peace, Iran will force Israel to act before Iran has a bomb, if the escalation continues. It is a dangerous game and the motives seem insane. From a strategic point of view, it would be better to defend one’s country before the enemy has overwhelming power. This is the idea that led us to preemptively invade Iraq. Even though as it turned out there were no weapons of mass destruction, our leaders believed there were.
I had an office in Tucson back in the nineties; it was in a row of old railroad houses converted into offices. The building manager Al had a little office at the end of the block. I don’t recall why I went to see him, but I remember it was my birthday, August sixth. Al looked sad and as we talked, he told me about his war experience. Al had arrived in the Pacific just before the end of WWII. A couple of days after he arrived we dropped the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima. Soon after the Japanese surrender, he was sent to Hiroshima to provide aid to the victims the vast majority civilians, women, children and the elderly. Al’s face told the whole story; the horror of his experience was in his eyes. Al struggled with the why for all of his days. He said he just had to believe we dropped that bomb to save lives.
Have you ever wondered why there are no longer any Bomb Shelters in American cities?
I have been making art about The Bomb for more than thirty years now and as new members seek or join the nuclear club, I add them to my work. I use monsters like Godzilla because he, like Frankenstein, is a result of science. They represent the uncontrollable creations of men that have not asked the right questions of nature. Monsters created by ego and the need for power without fully understanding the consequences and human behavior. We may never evolve to a species that can fully answer these questions because we may destroy ourselves before that can happen.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article5655143.ece
Related posts by David Eubank
How I Learned to Stopped Worrying and Love the Bomb
http://davideubank.wordpress.com/2008/09/09/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-bomb-philosophical-cinema/
Monster the Bomb and Modern Art
http://davideubank.wordpress.com/2008/09/08/monsters-the-bomb-and-the-development-of-modern-art/
This February 4 2009 Times Article is a well-written synopsis of the evolving strategic situation.
"I Have Become Death"
