DANCING ON THE EDGE WITH THE BOMB

In 1898 a mysterious explosion sank the American battleship Maine in Havana harbor. While the exact cause is still debated, the results were undeniable and decisive. Press and public clamor for retaliation led swiftly to an American declaration of war against Spain followed by an invasion of Cuba, the conquest the Philippines and Guam and the sudden leap of the United States into the position of world-wide imperialistic dominance it still occupies.

Slightly more than a decade later, in 1914, two shots fired by a Serbian terrorist in little-known Sarajevo, Bosnia set off World War I, a conflagration of earthshaking global consequences which no one expected or wanted, causing nearly 40,000,000 military and civilian deaths, the results of which continue to reverberate throughout Europe, Asia and the Middle East to the present day.

             In 1950, at a peak in Cold War tensions, political and strategic overreach by General Douglas MacArthur commanding United Nations forces fighting North Korean aggression against the South triggered an unanticipated and overwhelming Chinese response. The result was three years of additional bloody warfare in Korea, which in addition to hundreds of thousands of deaths on all sides brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.

 Hydrogen Bomb

Credit: Unshootables.com/Creative Commons

             Once again, in 1962, a dangerous miscalculation by Soviet Premier Nikita

Khrushchev in attempting to place nuclear missiles in Cuba to balance the presence of American missiles around his country, brought the world closer than ever to the edge of a nuclear war with unimaginable global consequences. How close we came to disaster, we later learned, rested less on diplomacy than on the heroic choice by a Soviet submarine Captain NOT to launch a nuclear torpedo at an American destroyer despite faulty indications that an attack was underway.

             We know now that on at least three other occasions, false positive readings on radar screens in both Soviet and American nuclear defense systems nearly led to the launching of retaliatory responses which could have brought catastrophic results for both human civilization and the global environment. In each case, only the actions of individual humans, under intense pressure, choosing to interpret the reports as electronic glitches rather than incoming missile tracks, prevented disaster. 

 Slim Pickins rides the bomb in the movie Dr. Strangelove

Credit: basementrejects.com/Creative Commons

             Exactly what chain of events might be set off by the provocative statements, military posturing, accidents, missile tests, war games or even deliberate actions by players in the current dramatic standoff between North Korean dictator, Kim Jung Ill and President Donald Trump is not yet known. What we do know, however, is that massive historical conflicts and global disasters can be triggered by rogue individuals or unanticipated events at multiple levels in complex systems, often in ways that are unimaginable and, in fact, entirely unpredictable.

             The more heated the crisis atmosphere, the more likely it is that preexisting ideological predispositions or perceptual biases rather than objective facts will determine the decision-making process. Were American destroyers really under attack in the Gulf of Tonkin the summer of 1964—as early reports reaching Washington indicated? Or, to what degree were the reports interpreted, or shaped, to bring about the desired political results?

             Likewise, how was the intelligence perceived or even “fixed” in the run-up to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, to support the incorrect preconception that Saddam Hussein was on the cusp of developing nuclear weapons? And what cascade of seemingly endless tragedy has ensued in the region because of that decision?

             Recent exposure to what have been called “Black Swans” (unpredictable or unforeseen events with extreme consequences) like the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, 9/11, or the almost-complete global financial meltdown in 2008 should certainly give us pause; as should our growing understanding of the sensitivity of interconnected planetary systems to human activity. 

            What Chaos Theorists describe as the “Butterfly effect” might, at least metaphorically, allow us to recognize the snowballing impact that small, seemingly inconsequential changes in one part of a complex system can unleash in the system as a whole.

             What this means in the current nuclear standoff with North Korea is that there is no room for even the slightest miscalculation, error or lack of caution. Threats and over-heated rhetoric can only set the stage for a cascade of disastrous consequences, the like of which only sheer good fortune has prevented multiple times during our dangerous three-quarter century experiment of dancing on the edge with the bomb. We can no longer rely on blind luck to save us--from ourselves.

Les Adler

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You can also find this commentary on OpEdNews 

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AMERICA’S ‘FORGOTTEN WAR’ -- KOREA 1950-1953

The costly lessons of America’s ‘Forgotten War’ are being ignored once again.

Two thirds of a century ago, American lack of understanding of complex Asian realities coupled with a large dose of military hubris embroiled the country in a Korean conflict which nearly escalated into a nuclear-enabled World War III.

Responding to a reckless North Korean attempt to reunify the artificially divided peninsula by force, President Truman, with United Nations backing, authorized Far Eastern Commander, General Douglas MacArthur, to defend the South and drive the attackers back across the 38^th Parallel. MacArthur’s brilliant Inchon landing succeeded in beating back the intruders, liberating Seoul and re-establishing a pro-Western government in the South.

General Douglas MacArthur
Public Domain-author unknown

Encouraged by his victories, however, MacArthur pushed well beyond his orders and pressed the attack northward with the goal of destroying the Northern armies and defeating the Communist-dominated State. The effect of his actions, while aimed at reunifying the peninsula in America’s favor, also directly challenged the newly-established Red Chinese government by threatening military action up to and potentially beyond the Chinese border in Manchuria.

Ignoring Chinese warnings as well as overt directions from more cautious diplomatic and military leaders in Washington, MacArthur’s miscalculation triggered the surprising and overwhelming Communist Chinese response which led to an additional three years of costly and bloody land warfare in Asia leading the death of more than 36,000 U.S. soldiers—ending with the uneasy stalemate which has existed for nearly 65 years at the same 38^th Parallel where the conflict began.

Bodies of U.S., U.K., and ROK soldiers 
before mass burial at Koto-ri,1950 

(Photo by Sgt. F. C. Kerr)

Currently, a newly energized American leader, without foreign policy experience and with a tendency to make provocative and aggressive statements ("if China won’t help, we will solve the problem without them! U.S.A”) and also led by generals is currently convinced that the show of and possible use of overwhelming military force, rather than diplomacy, will succeed in defanging the rhetorically aggressive and now nuclear-armed North. In the process, it runs the risk of pushing the ever more paranoid leadership in Pyongyang toward a point of no return where the slightest miscalculation, a missile test gone astray, a nuclear test, a misreading of intentions, may trigger unintended and disastrous military results.

Once again U.S. leadership is relying on the tenuous belief that China, Russia or others will not intervene—even if the United States acts unilaterally to destroy the North’s capacity to employ weapons of mass destruction-- or that unanticipated events in a newly-destabilized region will not widen the conflict well beyond Korea.

While analysts have been comparing theevolving conflict to the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, a much more apt comparison should be that of Korea in 1950 and 1951, when an ambitious and arrogant General blundered into a world of trouble neither he nor the American people ever fully expected or understood.

Les Adler, Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus of History and Interdisciplinary Studies

Sonoma State University

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