Trinity's Light

"The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything except our modes of thinking, and thus we drift towards unparalleled catastrophe." -- A. Einstein, May, 1946.

It is a media clich?© that "9/11 changed everything." Einstein's remark quoted above refers to an earlier and deeper transformation: the first explosion (and subsequent use) of the atomic bomb.

A visit to the "Trinity Site" where this happened is worth making. On the first Saturday of every April and November, the road to Trinity through the White Sands Missile Test Range is opened to civilians by the military. After an easy 70 mile drive south from Albuquerque and a quarter mile walk from the parking lot, you will find sight of tourists smiling as they are photographed beside the model of "Fat Man," the plutonium Auschwitz which incinerated Nagasaki. If you have bad luck, as I did on my trip, the tourists will drift away and the desert quiet flows back. A black, basalt obelisk marking the explosion's location looks across the wasteland the Spaniards called the "Journey of Death" towards the "Shadow Mountains." Over this hostile landscape on July 16, 1945, dawn's early light was split by a flash "brighter than a thousand suns."

That light still terrorizes us today. Terror of what it or its biological and chemical imitators might do in the hands of "others" helped swing the November election to the Republicans. Terror of what Saddam Hussein might do with them is used by the Administration to try to persuade the American public to make aggressive war on Iraq. (An aside: I believe that there are other motivations behind the Administration's actions: if there were no oil bonanza to be secured, nor a Daddy Bush to be avenged (or surpassed), nor a mid East to be made safe for Israel, its fervor for war might be less -- consider the different attitude towards the admitted nuclear state of North Korea. I think that the argument that a dictator as bestial as Hussein should be eliminated hardly matters to the Administration -- although is does to the public. It makes no sense to pursue a war that would kill many Iraqi civilians and generate worldwide hatred and mistrust of us, rather that containing Hussein until nature removes him -- a policy we successfully used with the far more bestial and powerful Stalin.

If we attack Iraq in order to stop Hussein from acquiring weapons of mass destruction, we will have taken a decisive step. We will have abandoned the approach to nonproliferation that proceeded by constructing international agreements (however, imperfect) and will have opted instead for keeping such weapons out of the hands of "unreliable" states by means of preemptive strikes. Such a policy must, it seems to me, fail for three reasons:

1. Fear. A natural reaction to being threatened is to seek protection. Hasn't that been our own reaction, a reaction which has created ever more catastrophic weapons? Isn't it the quite rational reaction of a North Korea which sees itself as the next "Axis of Evil" state to be chastised by us? "Protection" against a hyperpower these days means nuclear weapons. More states will seek to acquire them.

2. Hypocrisy. In particular, the hypocrisy of the US which, since it first acquired atomic bombs, has been preaching abstinence to others. Under Article 6 of the Non-Proliferation Treaty the major nuclear states pledged to eliminate their arsenals. But, as US Government policies and numerous Government statements show, we never intended to and do not intend to in the future. Far from it. As the latest National Security Strategy paper (The New York Times Sept. 20, 2002) stated, our policy is to maintain absolute military dominance over the world. It is any wonder that many countries regard our support for non-proliferation as an attempt by a nuclear "have" to keep the nuclear "have nots" in their place?

3. Greed. As was clear from the beginning, there is no nuclear "secret"; there is only the matter of acquiring adequate technology and raw materials. Capable technicians are now in abundance and raw materials will be supplied by the free market. After all that is the free market's strength: if a consumer is willing to pay enough, a seller will appear. Greed overcomes all obstacles.

For over 55 years possession of atomic weapons by the United States has been the foundation of our relations with other states. We have tried to keep other countries from imitating us but this policy is breaking down. Even now we are seeking the inevitable next step: the privatization of mass destruction, the beginning of an era when nuclear "devices" no longer are owned exclusively by nations but pass into the possession of private groups and even individuals.

A world where individuals possess devices capable of evaporating cities is an unlivable world. In self defense nations will have to guard against their own citizens and the goal of a "War on Terror" will be to achieve an absolute control over the thoughts and actions of each person. Individual deviations from prescribed behavior will simply be too dangerous to tolerate once "Alabama gets the bomb."

The inferno which America ignited at Trinity (blasphemous name!) lights a future which is a mix of Blade Runner, Brazil, and Hieronymus Bosch. This future is not inevitable but it is up to America to take the necessary steps to avoid it. America created these weapons, multiplied them, and led at every step of their technical development. While our nation still possesses some moral ascendancy, it must lead the world in renouncing the possession of these satanic devices -- unilaterally if necessary. They are all together evil.

David Isles is an Associate Professor of Mathematics.