Nuclearism: The Threat of Destruction to Keep the Peace

One of the concepts Lipton explores is nuclearism, the idea that the threat of nuclear annihilation helps to keep peace in the world.  Lipton even goes as far to say that some people or groups of people have come to revere nuclear weapons as god-like entities due to their "world-destroying power."  He sees this type of hero worship as a cause of "a vast societal numbing" and as a barrier to nuclear disarmament.

I found this very interesting and disturbing.  Although it seems absurd that possession of nuclear weapons by both the U.S. and the Soviet Union kept the Cold War from escalating to full out war, there does seem to be a ring of truth to the idea.  History and Lipton's careful analysis in his memoir demonstrate that leadership on both sides came to revere and fear nuclear weapons to such a degree that each superpower began to see that the only way to keep world balance and therefore world peace was to arm itself with an abundance of nuclear weaponry.  In other words, the only way to ensure that its Cold War rival didn't attempt to extend its sphere of influence via nuclear attack  was for each superpower to arm itself with nuclear weapons and make that armament known.  Only the threat of mutually assured annihilation could keep world order.

Like Lipton, I find this type of foreign policy both bizarre and sad.  It's bizarre that the ability to destroy the world and humankind has kept the peace in the past and is still viewed by some as the only way to protect world order.  I also find it sad there is so much mistrust in the world that, to some, diplomacy alone will never be enough.  The fact that many of the scientists who created the first atomic bomb, including Oppenheimer, became the most outspoken opponents of bombing warfare made our continued reliance on bombs even more unsettling.  How could we continue down that path when the creators, the people who understood this type of weaponry better than the majority of people on the planet, thought it was a disastrous idea?

I think the answer to this question lies in both our fear and mistrust of other nation states and to the "vast societal numbing" Lipton mentions in his book.  Since other people and other nations can't be trusted to disarm themselves, we, as Americans, must combat our numbing and debilitating fear that our way of life and culture might be forever destroyed by arming ourselves with nuclear weaponry.  According to Lipton, nuclearism is society's mistaken way of protecting its culture and assuring the continuation of the human race as a whole.