He Said: A Review and Reflection on the Screening of Chapter 3 of ‘The Untold History of the United States’

He Said: A review and Reflection on the Screening of Chapter 3 of ‘The Untold History of the United States’

                Chapter 3 of Oliver Stone’s and Professor Peter Kuznick’s documentary goes a long way to question the use of the atomic bomb in ending WWII. The central premise of the episode is to ask the audience whether it was necessary, and whether it would have been done if Vice President Henry Wallace had been chosen as Roosevelt’s running mate in 1944, making him the president in 1945 upon Roosevelt’s death.

                The facts of history remain the same in this ‘untold’ history. There is nothing in the episode that is factually wrong. Professor Kuznick said that what he wanted was a discussion of the implications, not the facts. He looks forward to critics attacking his predictions and evaluations, not the story which he told. However, I noticed several assumptions and implications which could be argued using several facets of IR theory. I will argue against the deduction made in the film that the atomic bomb was not needed in order to end the war in 1945, and I instead will argue that the atomic bomb was important to the war effort and the defeat of Japan so swiftly.

                On May 8^th, 1945 (Berlin time) the remaining Nazi officials surrendered to U.S. and Soviet forces, ending the war in Europe and declaring the Third Reich a totalitarian regime of the past. Immediately, Stalin pledged forces to the war in Asia, specifically targeting Manchukuo, the Japanese puppet state in modern-day Manchuria, a region at times held by the Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, and Russian Empire. In fact, Manchukuo was the resource center of the Japanese Empire, from where the Japanese harvested the raw materials needed for Pacific dominance. On August 6^th the first atomic bomb, Little Boy, was dropped over Hiroshima. On August 9^th Fat Man was dropped over Nagasaki. Lesser known however, that same day the Red Army, under the command of General Alexander Vasilevsky, invaded Manchukuo. In eleven days, all of Manchuria (an area approximately the size of Ukraine) was under Soviet control. Thirteen days later on September 2^nd, 1945, the Japanese officially surrendered aboard the USS Missouri. The question remains however, whether the dropping of the atomic bombs was necessary or not to bring to such a swift end the war with Japan, or if the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, the loss of Sakhalin, and the success of the U.S. island hopping campaign had been enough to force the Emperor to give up the fight.

                One of the greatest differences between WWI and WWII was the massive use of airplanes to wage war. Yes, WWI saw its fair share of airplanes, but nothing to be compared with WWII and its massive utilization of air raids on both military and civilian targets. Air combat redefined the lines of war like no other invention before it, moving the reach of death over and across trenches, mountains, and seas, making it possible to kill thousands of civilians, hundreds of miles from the frontlines. It was this unprecedented practice that led Truman and the Joint Chiefs to deciding to drop the bomb not over a military base, not over a strategically important city, but over a city with fewer than a thousand stationed soldiers and a civilian population of tens of thousands. Where it took days of bombing, tons of material, and a week of spreading fires to burn down Tokyo a month before, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were wiped off the face of the earth in seconds. Nuclear explosion are often described as a blinding flash and then nothing to see but a mushroom cloud to heaven and rubble everywhere else.

                It was an act that would have terrified any people, any government into surrender. The Japanese had no idea that the U.S. did not have any more bombs waiting to be dropped, and the rational choice was surrender – because the only other option was assured destruction (notice the absence of the word mutually). Japan knew that it was surrounded and that defeat was inevitable. They could have held on for six months, maybe a year, perhaps two if the Soviets refused to invade Japan as the western Allies had refused to invade Normandy for so long, but Japan was already reduced to using Kamikaze pilots and ritual suicide to show defiance in the face of defeat.

                However, I will take the constructivist approach and argue that Japan was so defiant, and their culture so averse to disappointment or defeat, that they would have fought to the point of absolutely no return. That is, until their economy, their population, and their capabilities were so weak that there would be no survival for their government. I argue that Japan as a state, just as Nazi Germany, would have to be removed from power with direct, conventional warfare if it had not been for the atomic bombs. If the United States had not made it clear to Japan that annihilation was not just possible, but probable and inevitable without surrender, Japan would have fought until the smoke from conventional bombs had blocked out the sun. The Japanese culture and the government which espoused the culture of the Empire of the Rising Sun would not have given up the fight unless they understood that all they stood for was about to be gone, without hope of survival and revival. That was what was offered them after the atomic bomb was dropped, and they understood that they had to either take the small concessions of a swift surrender or be swiftly defeated without hope for any kind of prosperous future.

                Of course, surrender always looks grim, but (according to rational realist theory) states will always make the rational decision, and with an unknown amount of atomic bombs looming over their heads, the Japanese government made the rational decision of preserving their cultural identity, the majority of their population, and giving up the conquests they had made. After all, it was best for them to keep the emperor, keep the right to practice their culture, and have some autonomy in the future than lose their cities, their government, and lose the lives of all their people.

                Had there been no threat of nuclear weapons, the lack of coercive power, the lack of ability to strip Japan bare in just days or even hours, Japan would not have surrender so quickly. Without the need to protect Manchuria (and although a considerable amount of Japanese were taken as Soviet POWs) Japan would have concentrated all of its forces on protecting the main islands and fighting off as many waves of invasion as possible. Honor is such a large part of the Japanese national and state identity that I would argue that Japan would have fought until the end. To them, it would be more rational to fight for what power you have left and could just possibly maintain instead of surrendering outright to an opponent who would otherwise have to spend massive amounts of effort to conquer you. The atomic bombs killed as many people as a conventional army division may have, but it took much less effort to drop a bomb during an air raid than maintain a fighting force in enemy territory. In short, Japan would have fought, as a nation and as a state, until it found it hopeless – and the United States’ nuclear capability was what most of all underlined for them the hopelessness of their situation, leading them to surrender.

                What did such implications mean for the world order that followed? States began to prioritize nuclear armament and capabilities. If they wanted to be world powers, countries had to have nuclear arms. So, terms like WMD and mutually assured destruction came about, causing arms races between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. So, the Russian government has stated that it was nuclear arms, not national identity or democratization that kept Russia from being invaded or falling apart during the 1990s. To this day, the United States Defense Department and the National Security Strategy clearly state that nuclear weapons are the greatest threat to U.S. security and are the first priority and consideration of any security strategy. The world was, for decades, defined by nuclear capabilities and the repercussions that could come out of mass nuclear deployment. It was not until states agreed to their horror and proliferation that nationalist movements, terrorism, and conventional forces received more attention from strong and weak states. In effect, the end of the nuclear age and agreeing that their use was practically prohibited by mutual agreement was what allowed for weaker actors to more strongly oppose nuclear states (for the nuclear states were hindered by inaction and non-nuclear actors were no longer afraid of unilateral destruction). In that same way, had Japan not been afraid of nuclear destruction, they would have seen the Allies as weaker than they did and would have kept on fighting for what they still retained, afraid that they (as Germany after armistice in 1918) would be crippled beyond negotiating capabilities and forced to sign whatever was placed in front of them. Nuclear arms in effect created that crippling situation and forced Japan to sign unconditional surrender through coercive power that stemmed from the first implementation of nuclear weapons.

                It is evident that the invasion of Manchuria and the ever closing in of the United States to the Japanese mainland created a situation which would have eventually forced the surrender of Japan. However, that does mean that Japan would have so quickly surrendered to the allied powers, and that is where I argue with Mr. Stone and Professor Kuznick. It was the use of nuclear arms, not the Soviet control of Manchuria or the proximity of the United States to Tokyo that assured Japanese surrender in September 1945.