Below The Beltway

Brad Warbiany wonders how the past 60 years might have been different if nuclear weapons had never been developed.

Here’s a few scenarios that I think are quite likely:

1. The Invasion of Japan

Without the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki or a coup in Tokyo (which seems unlikely), the Allies would have been required to invade the Japanese home islands in order defeat Japan. Plans for such an invasion were in the works prior to the end of the war and estimates at the time of more than 1 million casualties and over 200,000 deaths on the allied side and as many as 5 to 10 million on the Japanese side. And that’s assuming things went according to plan, which they often did not in World War Two.

The post-war consequences of such an invasion are unclear, but it’s obvious that Japan would have been far more devastated than it was in September 1945, and would have taken far longer, if ever, to bounce back. The role that Japan has played in the Post-WW2 world would have been far different.

2. World War III In Europe

Say what you will about nuclear weapons, but they accomplished one thing. Thanks to Mutual Assured Destruction, neither the United States nor the Soviet Union pushed a crisis to the point where hot war was inevitable. Without that in place, it is quite likely that another land war in Europe would have taken place at some point. It could have been started by the Berlin Blockade, which started just three years after the war ended at a time when the frontier between NATO and the Warsaw Pact was a place as tense as the 38th Parallel is today. Or, it could have been started by efforts by Hungary and, later, Czechoslovakia, to break away from Soviet control. Or by one of the many leadership crises that the USSR experienced after the war. Without the threat of total destruction holding them back, the military and political calculations and risks taken by both the Soviets and NATO would probably have been very different.

3. A Greater Threat To Israel

There is one thing that has guaranteed the existence of the State of Israel for the past 30 years or so, and that is the unspoken but well-known fact that Israel possesses enough nuclear weapons to destroy any Arab nation, or any combination or Arab nations, that may threaten it. While attacks by terrorists and groups like Hezbollah are still a major problem, the likelihood of a nation like Syria directly attacking Israel is low precisely because they know they face the ultimate sanction. Without that deterrent, Israel would be far more vulnerable, and the Arab world far less restrained.

The point is this: for how horrible people think nuclear weapons are, a world without them would likely have been far worse. With the exception of the Cuban Missile Crisis, there has never really been a crisis serious enough where the possibility of a nuclear exchange was anywhere within the realm of possibility. And, while the world has dealt with many small conflicts over the past 60 years, we have, so far, avoided the world-devastating conflicts that are a common part of history prior to 1945.