The New Age of Sputnik

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"

Filed under: Art, Art News, Environment, Journalism, Media, News, Nuclear War, On Art, Politics, The Bomb, Uncategorized , Ahmadinejad, Atomic Art, Iran Nuclear Program, Iranian President, Neclear War, Nuclear Power, Sputnik, The Bomb, Weapons of Mass Destuction

How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, Philosophical Cinema

 

After my last post I went down stairs from my studio and turned on the Turner Classic Movie Channel. Some how the Gods of the universe must be telling me something because the 1964 movie Dr. Strangelove was on. I have to say it is one of my favorite movies of all time. Directed by Stanley Kubrick it stars Peter Sellers as Dr. Strangelove, Merkin Muffley and Mandrake. Sellers plays three characters in the movie that is punctuated by metaphor after metaphor. The film is a black comedy that portrays doomsday at the height of Cold War politics. Things have gone very wrong inside the Strategic Air Command. General Jack D. Ripper played by Sterling Hayden goes mad and orders his bombers to attack the Soviet Union. Mandrake played by Sellers is Ripper’s English Officer Aid that try s to reason with Ripper and engages him in a profound philosophical discussion about the dangers of nuclear war. Sellers also plays the president who attempts to manage an insane War Room in an attempt to avoid Doomsday. George C. Scott is the General in Charge, Scott is wonderful, he isn’t the least worried about Doomsday. Dr Strangelove also played by Sellers is a mad scientist who has invented the weapons of mass destruction and is consumed by the science. His other personality is one of reason while his dark evil side literally fights with his good moral side. Slim Pickens plays Major T.J. “King Kong” a B-52 Bomber pilot trained to carry out his mission at any cost.

Major T.J. King Kong, Slim Pickens riding the Bomb in Dr. Strangelove

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxrWz9XVvls&NR=1 But unknown to all of them the Russians have invented a Doomsday machine that is unstoppable. This is one movie that is worth watching. Like many old films they are lost in the caverns of film archives. I have added several links that review the film and also a Youtube preview. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8dUqlxm3_o&feature=related

 

Dr Strangelove Movie Review http://www.filmsite.org/drst.html

On the Beach filmed in 1959 starring Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire, Anthony Perkins and was directed by Stanley Kramer is on of the most profound dramas about Doomsday you will ever watch. After a nuclear war most of the world has died from radiation exposure. Peck is a submarine commander that finds the last survivors on earth in Australia where they wait for the radioactive death to come as radiation circles the earth. The drama unfolds as the survivors try to cope with the end result of world gone insane. This film gets into the dirty reality of nuclear war from a human perspective. This is another must watch film that again was on Turner Classic Movies just the other day.

 

Fred Astaire sums it all up in this Youtube clip

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGm4yCov7nE&feature=related

 

Review Summary by Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Although there’d been “doomsday dramas” before it, Stanley Kramer’s On the Beach was considered the first “important” entry in this genre when originally released in 1959. Based on the novel by Nevil Shute, the film is set in the future (1964) when virtually all life on earth has been exterminated by the radioactive residue of a nuclear holocaust. Only Australia has been spared, but it’s only a matter of time before everyone Down Under also succumbs to radiation poisoning. With only a short time left on earth, the Australian population reacts in different ways: some go on a nonstop binge of revelry, while others eagerly consume the suicide pills being issued by the government. When the possibility arises that rains have washed the atmosphere clean in the Northern hemisphere, a submarine commander (Gregory Peck) and his men head to San Diego, where faint radio signals have been emanating. The movie’s all-star cast includes: Peck as the stalwart sub captain, Ava Gardner as his emotionally disturbed lover, Fred Astaire as a guilt-wracked nuclear scientist, and Anthony Perkins and Donna Anderson as the “just starting out in life” married couple. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The power of Art can shape the future as well as explain the events of the past. Perhaps it is time that we creative people begin to search for ideas, images and answers that will transform this global civilization into a world of hope. We all know the dangers and yet we chose to ignore the reality of the danger. Climate Change, War, Energy, Food are the threats. What should we do as individuals as Nations to ensure that “We” survive as One World. Or do we allow our fears to over come us, do we shrink away from the challenge and only look at our selfish needs. I think we are at the edge of great change, global change. How will we handle that change will be tomorrows history.

Filed under: Art, Environment, Media, Movies, Nuclear War, On Art, Photography, Politics, The Bomb, Uncategorized , Doomsday, Dr. Strangelove, Peace, Turner Classic Movies, War

Monsters, The Bomb and the Development of Modern Art

• As I read the news today “Oh Boy” as the lyrics of the famed Beatles song goes.

The age of Nuclear War has not ended, the player’s have changed but the game is the same.

Recently the United States announced the intention to deploy an anti-missile system in eastern Europe. The Russians have strongly denounced the plans as an aggressive act of nuclear escalation.

• The rhetoric of war has become a policy of diplomacy with regard to negotiations with Iran over their nuclear programs.

Recent air strikes into Pakistan a nuclear power with an unstable government should be getting far more attention than they are in the media.

As I watched the movie Thirteen Day’s last night, a movie about the Cuban missile crisis, I began to think about the impact of the Bomb on modern culture.

• The Cuban missile crisis is a point in world history where the unthinkable almost happened because the leaders of the then Soviet Union and the Untied States almost lost control of the Monster of Nuclear Power.

Accidents, miscommunication and the inability to control the military and allied governments involved nearly took us to the point of Mutual Assured Destruction. “MAD” as the doctrine that governs our nuclear strategy in known.

• In a nut shell the strategy implies if you attack us we will retaliate with all possible force and the end of the civilization will result. Game over, period.

That is the stalemate of nuclear strategy.

But wait the model changed from two super powers playing a dangerous game of chess with the fate of the world hanging in the balance.

Others have gotten into the game on a smaller but still deadly scale. Pakistan, India, China, North Korea, Israel, all of the former Eastern Block countries, NATO powers and now Iran and who knows who else perhaps independent terrorists.

What lead up to the Cuban Missile Crisis can be summed up as a technological short fall of the era.

• The long range ICBM, Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles where still in the developmental stage.

Cuba was close to the Untied States and positioning missiles within range of the continental US was a practical move on the chess board for the Soviets at the time.

That move not only demonstrated the practical limits of technological advancement of 1960 era weapons systems it tested the fundamental theories of their use and the doctrines that controlled the game.

• Frankenstein had escaped the laboratory and the villagers were in a panic.

He was none to soon reined in and the Mad Scientists went to work on bigger and better monsters.

The technology improved over the years to the point where it doesn’t matter where the monster lives it can come to your house in a matter of minutes.

“It’s Alive”! Today we can be sure that the technology has caught up with the idea, the ideas of arrogant power and the fallacy of mans control over nature, perhaps better said the nature of man.

• For some time now I have thought about the impact of the Bomb, the impact of technology, of War and the juxtaposition of art related to science.

The symbolist writers of the late 19^th century started the discussion about the industrial revolution, Mary Shelly gave us Frankenstein.

Then the artists responded to the horror of WWI with abstraction and the birth of modern art.

The period before WWI was the gestation. The Cinema brought the monsters of technology to life with images and science fiction stories as a metaphor to combat the reality of what had become human history.

• Godzilla may be one of the most unrecognized original creations of Modern Art.

I don’t know of any serious Art Historian who is looking at Monsters, Godzilla, Frankenstein and Alien as serious art as images.

I guess what started this was the references that E.H. Gombrich makes about comic book images he felt they have been over looked by Art Historians. Of course he is a serious Art Historian. I personally feel a strong connection to these images and ideas. I have been using them in my artwork for many years.

These images are the language of my generation. Saturday Matinées where countless hours were spent in the 1950s and the 60s watching the Monsters wreck havoc over the world.

This was all in the shadow of the ultimate threat of nuclear destruction.

Godzilla is the First Son of the Atomic Age.

He was incubated from the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution. His gestation period was from the beginning of World War One to the end of World War Two.

He followed the development of Modern Art.

• Godzilla was the explanation the world needed to come to grips with Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The development of Modern Art followed the same violent path, from WWI through the end of WWII.

It was the European Artists that fostered the rise of new imagery that attempted to express and explain the madness of the modern world.

No representational image could come close to describing the carnage of WWI.

It was the first modern war in all of its horror. Godzilla was the explanation of the next war.

Much of what went on in the arts after the war was the formation of images that were in search of meaning or perhaps meaning in search of images.

The new images were outside of what the human visual experience had been able to comprehend and understand as was the war.

Artists in all mediums pushed the boundaries of imagery.

• The birth of Fascism in Europe gave rise to Modern Art in America.

As the creative minds of Europe fled the Nazi’s they brought with them the visual lessons of the First Great War as well as the developing language of the coming war.

That was hardly experience enough for the event of WWII. From Auschwitz to Hiroshima reasonable minds searched for an explanation.

Modern Art was the answer and from Modern Art, Godzilla was crowned King of the Monsters, a Mutation of nature.

How else could the Japanese deal with the horror of the War, which their leaders brought upon them?

The destruction in Japan was beyond compare to anything ever experience before in the history of the world.

• Science wielded all of its genius into one horrific invention that was incomparable with any previous invention since the creation of the known universe.

Humans had become Gods, Gods of destruction.

• Still today the threat of the bomb is greater than ever before with governments around the world lusting for its power.

In America we fear anyone who may acquire the Bomb, to such a degree we continue to develop Bombs that are usable Nukes.

These are Bunker Busters Bombs that can get an enemy who is hiding in underground fortresses, insulated from conventional weapons.

They are not the big city busters that were developed in the 50s and 60s these are small target specific weapons that minimize wide spread damage.

• But like Godzilla and Frankenstein they will be impossible to control.

They are Threshold devices that will eventually be used for the good of Mankind. It is always for the good of Mankind that drives the development of destruction.

This is the Symbolism of Godzilla, Frankenstein and of course King Kong.

Mary Shelly set the tone with her work Frankenstein. I would have to attribute her work to the age of symbolist writers at the turn of the last century.

Man can not control the forces of nature; because of the lust within, he will turn that power to evil.

Every child knows this instinctively. Children create images of Monsters in their dreams as a way to rationalize their fears, nightmares which are abstractions of reality.

Monsters are an important part of the language of a modern Art, an Art that is rooted in symbolism, expression and abstraction.

It is from these abstractions that we as humans are able to develop rational ideas about our survival and our future.

• That is if we allow ourselves to have a future.

At this point I think Super Hero’s are a way to justify the development of superior powers to combat our enemy’s.

We associate Hero’s with good intentions, their power over comes evil.

I think we need to beware of where our leaders take us in this quest of good before they lose control of the monsters.

Perhaps it is the Creative artists today that need to help our nations find new ways to deal with the uncontrollable powers created by men of good intentions.

• I mean seriously did Robert Oppenheimer really think he was doing something positive when he led the effort to create the Bomb?

After its use he realized that he had become death, well duh.

Kim Welcomes the Monster

Filed under: Art, Environment, Nuclear War, On Art, Politics, The Bomb , Frankenstein, Godzilla, Monsters, Nuclear Power, Science