Book: Command and Control

I have owned this book since shortly after it came out in 2013, but I keep putting off starting it because it is huge (632 pages) and dense and the subject matter is weighty and more than a little scary.

Ostensibly it's about the control and safety issues surrounding our nuclear arsenal.

However, it turns out to be about much more. It's about the politics behind the policy, the efforts by scientists in the Manhattan Project to demonstrate "the gadget" on something other than civilian populations, the negotiations following WWII about sharing nuclear secrets with the USSR, about the various efforts toward world government or at least world control of nuclear arms, and about the advocates for pre-emptive use of atomic bombs in 1948 to impose a Pax Americana.  As such it's a valuable adjunct to Gar Alperovitz's "The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb" and Richard Rhodes' "The Making of the Atomic Bomb," both of which are part of my permanent library.

Written by Eric Schlosser, author of the great "Fast Food Nation," it turns out to be pretty readable.  And full of fun facts.

The fact that the world hasn't seen an accidental nuclear detonation yet is nothing short of incredible, given the number of nukes in the world, their haphazard storage, and the number of accidents in their handling.

Despite a few Dr Strangelove characters in the story, there are a reassuring number of thoughtful, careful military players.

The book sidetracked me onto another book mentioned, "One World or None," a 1946 collection of essays by Manhattan Project scientists about how important nuclear nonproliferation is and how nuclear power plants may come to dominate our power grid.

It's interesting the difference in perspective 3/4 of a century makes.

The scientists here are mostly full of self-serving platitudes and self-congratulations, which you can tell masks the underlying unease the scientific community felt about the demonstration of nuclear weapons against civilian populations. Richard Rhodes and Eric Schlosser delve deeper into the morality questions, but even in 1946 the consensus was by no means absolute.

One chapter, by General H.H. Arnold, describes atomic warfare in terms I've never heard before. He describes the value of the targets destroyed -- in this case factories, weapons plants and stores, and other industrial targets, using estimates of the costs of rebuilding -- versus the cost of bombing that target. With small bombs, it can cost almost as much to knock down a factory as its worth, when you factor in the cost of the munitions and delivery. Atomic weapons were a quantum leap "forward" in that you could wipe out four square miles with one bomb.

Of course Arnold pointedly avoids mentioning civilian or non-monetary targets, which ended up being the primary targets in WWII due to weather.