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this post was submitted on 06 Nov 2024
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I spent my econ class learning about how tourism is good for the economies of resort towns, and watching travel shows about those resort towns :)
During a visit to a clients family home, I heard his younger sisters bashing their homework assignment because the teacher wanted them to give positive arguments for dropping the nukes on Japan in addition to arguments for not dropping them. I knew I got taught propaganda long ago when I was there but damn that caught me off guard.
I'm assuming this is in the context of WWII? How is it propaganda? This sounds like a decent assignment not to try to morally justify the dropping of atomic bombs, but to build (and possibly dismiss) the arguments use for doing so. It can be a long walk, but there were massive geopolitical implication for both for and against at the time. Again, it isn't a moral argument but an education that there are, for better or worse, people in the world that held both views.
I once wrote an essay about how dropping two nukes was excessive, but one was maybe okay :)
Real talk, these are the things I was taught in those young impressionable years. It's fucked up. And I'll bet plenty of my old classmates are still fucked up.
The more learning of history the more fucked up it gets. Geopolitics is cruel, and the atomic bombing of Japan during WWII is a good example of this. When examining the letters between the American ambassador to the Soviet Union, US Secretary of War, President FDR and later President Truman, it paints a story that the bombing had little to do with the people or military of Japan, and not even saving the American soldiers lives, which is often a rationale given for the bombing.
What it looks like is that the cold war with the Soviet Union was heating up even before V-E day, and geopolitical actions were taking place to cement stronger positions on both side before the shaky alliance of the Allies fell part post Axis defeat. Around V-E day the Soviet Union had already controlled much of Central and Eastern Europe taking conquered Nazi Germany territory. The Allies alliance called for splitting control of former Nazi territory. The Western Allies saw the Soviet Union pull right up on their doorstep in Central Europe. Close to V-J day, there were already actions taken by the Soviet Union that concerned the Western Allies in Europe and it looked like the Soviet Union's success in Eastern Asia taking conquered Japanese Axis territory on the Asian continent was going to play out the same negative way for the Western Allies with a split of control of Japan itself.
The only way to avoid that would be for the Western Allies to defeat Axis Japan before the Soviet Union got close enough to claim contribution to the effort to take the island nation of Japan. Enter the atomic bombs. President Truman ordered them used. These delivered a swift defeat of Axis Japan cementing Western control of Japan without having to cede any control to the Soviet Union.
Further, another geopolitical goal and outcome: The two bombs dropped back to back, so close together were to telegraph to the world that the USA had the capacity to churn out atomic bomb en mass. This was a geopolitical subtext signal to all other nations to not mess with the USA militarily or they too could face unlimited USA atomic bombs dropped on them. This wasn't true. In reality the USA spent 100% effort for years to produce just enough nuclear fuel for only 3 atomic bombs cores. One was used a the Trinity test, and the other two were dropped on Japan. It would be many months before the USA had enough fuel to make a 4th bomb, but the adversaries of the USA didn't know that.
There was a good chance that immediately after defeat of the Axis in WWII, that war would have broken out between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union. The threat to the Soviet Union of American atomic bombs possibly bought the world a multigeneration delay of WWIII trading it instead for the proxy wars we saw through the second half of the 20th century.
Was any of this worth it? I don't know. We can speculate on the other possible timelines, but we'll never know for sure whether this was the best choice and we avoided another devastating war, or did we squander countless innocent lives only to delay the inevitable WWIII, but this time with both sides trading nukes destroying our world and our spieces?
In short; Geopolitics is messy and cruel.