George+Week+Eleven

Since the post I made last week, my views have drastically changed on the decision he made. I previously said that the consequences of his actions were not apparent at the time, yet I was mistaken. Many of the scientists predicted and warned Truman about the inevitable arms race that the United States would enter if they dropped the bomb on Hiroshima without releasing information to the Soviets. The idea that was brought up by the scientific community to demo of the destructive power of the bomb should have been considered more than it was. Approaching the surrender of Japan more diplomatically could have saved hundreds of thousands of more live than surprise bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki did. Generally, Americans justify dropping the bomb for two reasons. The first is purely statistical, we saved American and Japanese lives, ends justify the means approach. The second is that if we had waited to drop the bomb for a later date other countries would have. I believe that while these justifications do hold a certain degree of merit, the arguments against them are not given the attention they deserve. When people say that we dropped the bomb purely to save human lives, Truman could have potentially saved more lives if he had showcased the bomb to the Japanese in order to get them to surrender. Although looking in hindsight they most likely would not have surrendered seeing as how they only surrendered after two of their cities were leveled, but America truly cared about saving lives this is the path they would have taken. The second argument is that we dropped the bomb to prevent a nuclear holocaust further down the line. But in response to that, "...scientists believe that any systems of controls envisaged should leave as much freedom for the peace developments of nucleonics as is consistent with the safety of the world" and this did not happen (Franck Report). Previously I thought that the cold war between the United States and Russia was an unforeseen consequence of entering the world into the nuclear age, but I was mistaken. More steps should have been to bring the United States into more trusting relations because "... only [a] lack of mutual trust, and not lock of desire for agreement, can stand in the path of an efficeint agreement for the prevention of nuclear warfare" (Franck) and telling the Russians about the atomic program with Hiroshima is not the way to do that.