I SHARE Dr Hamish Maclaren’s military memories (“Letters, August 7”), having been in Glasgow University OTC (Officers Training Corps) Royal Artillery section in the early 1960s. Once, on an exercise we were given radios – big boxes with glowing valves (chips were something you put salt and vinegar on then). On the back the metal labels were in Russian, because they were made in Canada as gifts for our Brave Allies, the Glorious Red Army. Now only a few years later these same people were our enemy to be blasted with nuclear bombs. A tragic metamorphosis, beyond irony
Dr Maclaren is absolutely right to call for a change of mind, or metanoia. Either we get rid of the Bomb, or it gets rid of us all. We cannot co-exist. This is recognised by the 122 states at the UN, which on July 7, 2017 signed the treaty banning nuclear weapons. This has been blackballed by the rogue nuclear states, including Britain, but is supported by all parties supporting Scottish independence. What better argument than this?
It is salutary and humbling to consider how we got into this nightmare in the first place. As early as July 1945 – before Hiroshima – the US Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended that “with atomic weapons a nation must be ready to strike the first blow if needed”. The resultant war plan – JIC 329/1– singled out for obliteration 20 Soviet cities. However, the United States only had the two bombs earmarked for Japan. After these experiments proved so successful, US production of nuclear weapons raced ahead. But Russia didn’t have a nuclear bomb till 1949.
The Soviet breaking of the American nuclear monopoly prevented the implementation of war plan JIC 329/1, and later plans. Thus, deterrence has worked – but in the exact opposite way we imagine. Had Andrei Sakharov not invented the hydrogen bomb in 1949, Russia might well have been obliterated by the US, as planned by JIC 329/I.
I had the privilege of meeting Professor Joseph Rotblat, the last living survivor of the Manhattan Project and a pupil of Albert Einstein’s. He quoted General Leslie Groves, head of the project: “From two weeks after taking up the post, there was never any illusion on my part that the main purpose of the project was to subdue the Russians."
This completely reverses the whole demonology of deterrence. The inescapable historical truth is we were the instigators of the nuclear arms race and drove forward all the technical innovations that followed.
Brian M Quail, Glasgow G11.
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