On August 29, 1949, the first Soviet atomic bomb, RDS-1, was tested at the Semipalatinsk test site in Kazakhstan. Jokingly, some called it “Russia itself”: they say that secrets are not stolen from the Americans. Import substitution! The power of the plutonium bomb, placed on a 37-meter metal tower, was more than 20 kilotons. More than one and a half thousand different animals (from rats to dogs) were included in the test, which was placed both in open spaces and in shelters, including military and civilian equipment. Equipment, including tanks and artillery, was also tested. The results obtained made it possible to understand the parameters of the damaging properties of nuclear weapons.
Although perhaps the most desolate and least populated place in the USSR was chosen for the landfill (with a total area of more than 25 thousand square kilometers) (less than 140 people had to be resettled), the environmental consequences, fully manifested only during perestroika, were dire. In addition, both ground and air tests were conducted for about ten years. They began to go underground only since 1961, but they could not be called “fully beneficial for the environment.” The last atmospheric test of a nuclear device was in 1962, with a total of 116 (30 land and 86 air). For 40 years, according to various estimates, 456-470 nuclear tests were conducted at the test site. At the same test site, chemical weapons were tested (175 explosions).
The results of these exercises were eliminated with the help of the Americans after the closure of the Semipalatinsk test site, which was carried out almost by the first decree of the President of independent Kazakhstan Nazarbayev (on August 29, but already in 1991). , under the Nunn-Lugar program. The complete liquidation of dozens of adits and wells was only completed in 2000.
The number of people affected by radiation and the diseases it causes are unknown. The USSR did not bother with such statistics. The creation of a “nuclear shield” meant a certain amount of “collateral losses”.
Statistics were much more rigorous in the animals that took part in the first test (including 417 rabbits, 1538 individuals, more than 170 sheep and goats, 64 pigs, 129 dogs, 375 guinea pigs, 380 white mice and rats). And people in relatively close settlements in the same Semipalatinsk were not even warned to hide somewhere. When the strongest ground eruption at that time occurred in 1953, the population was evacuated from the area of a sector with a radius of 120 kilometers (more than 2,200 people), but after the explosion they measured the level of radiation they estimated. – and took out more than a thousand and a half. But about 200 people still did not have time to go out, they received radiation. In total, thousands of people suffered from the long-term consequences of nuclear tests, the total radioactive pollution of the region reached 50 Chernobyls. It was definitely worth it – from a state standpoint.
It seems generally accepted that the creation of nuclear weapons has become the basis of the “nuclear deterrence” doctrine, which says that the threat of mutual destruction or “unacceptable damage” has such a powerful effect on the political leaders of nuclear powers. would certainly refrain from starting a nuclear war. Let us now allow ourselves to doubt the immunity of this theory in modern conditions.
Simply put, nuclear deterrence theory is based on the idea that the fear of destroying entire cities and a state’s essential infrastructure constitutes a decisive lever that prevents an attack. But by the same logic, in a conflict between a nuclear-armed state and a non-nuclear-weapon state, the non-nuclear state should surrender immediately, even if very few weapons can be used against the cities of the non-nuclear states. As in Imperial Japan after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (apparently).
The emphasis on destroying cities and infrastructure stems from the belief that political leaders care about those they govern and that threats to harm civilians are critical to them. For example, if the death of a large number of civilians is threatening, we must surrender. Is this true in all cases?
What if, in human history, civilian casualties and the destruction of entire cities, more importantly, only such losses and the threat of such destruction automatically led to capitulation? Did the massive bombing of cities during WWII cause the enemy (anyone in this case) to surrender? For example, British doctrine of the bombing of German cities justified this by saying that the German will to resist was destroyed. By comparing cities to the ground, Americans believed they were essentially destroying “war production.” This is about the same as sanctions: arguments for the need to distinguish between “elite” and ordinary “peaceful citizens” have long been thrown.
Close to 70 million people died during the Second World War, including 47 million civilians. But it was not these losses, but the defeat of their armies, that led to the surrender of Germany and its allies. And if we talk about the proportion of casualties among the population, there were much bloodier conflicts: for example, during the Thirty Years’ War in the 17th century, a fifth of the inhabitants of Germany died. This did not stop the war. During the Paraguayan War between Paraguay, Brazil and Uruguay, 58% of Paraguay’s civilian population died. And this war lasted five years – from 1865 to 1870.
During World War II, everyone believed that it was better to bomb than not to bomb. As long as there are bombs and planes. And no one also believed that victory could be achieved by comparing cities to the ground. Where does this confidence come from that the loss of cities will lead to capitulation and deter an attack if “good reasons to protect the national interest” are invented?
Moreover, all experience with military conflicts, both past and relatively modern, shows that analysts manage to more or less decipher how wars often begin, but lack clarity and a holistic understanding of exactly how and why they are exhausted. In this sense, every war is “individual”. And if we are not talking about the complete defeat of the enemy’s military forces, then it was not the awareness of the scale of destruction and losses among the civilian population, according to historical experience, that was the shortest path to peace. On the contrary, the stronger the destruction, the stronger the resistance. If an enemy makes it clear that he is ready (including now with the help of nuclear weapons) to destroy your country and, so to speak, your entire civilization, then such an enemy must be fought to the last breath of its last inhabitant. of such a country.
Up to a certain point, military (including nuclear) deterrence certainly has a chance of success, but from a certain point it no longer exists, especially when military conflict has already begun. Moreover, as with most studies of the problems of war, there is a big difference between the logic of the decision-making process before and during the war, the conditions for the end of the war, and when the world begins to think about its future. and peace noted, there is a big difference. As a state approaches the end of a military conflict, the calculation of costs and benefits will certainly be very different from those before it. At a minimum, because decisions to attack or abstain are based on far less knowledge of the enemy’s intentions, motives and, most importantly, abilities; It is based on decisions to surrender or continue the war even when hostilities are in full swing.
Many researchers note that during any military conflict, the warring parties constantly update their expectations and calculations based on the results of ongoing hostilities. Even in this process, the aims of the war may change completely.
Thus, in May 1941, Stalin hardly set himself the goal of occupying all of Eastern Europe, taking Berlin and dividing the world into spheres of influence with the Anglo-Saxons.
But at the same time, already during the war, the destruction of cities and infrastructure did not play any role in terms of “containment” any losses among the civilian population. Can this really stop Stalin, Roosevelt, Churchill? Even Hitler? Or suppose the United States nukes Japan (if they had bombs by then) just after Pearl Harbor. Will this stop Japan’s aggression? Tough. By the time their city was bombed, the Land of the Rising Sun had already lost millions from conventional weapons. With such weapons, 66 Japanese cities were destroyed. In August 1945, Japan was already on the verge of defeat, it would have surrendered without an atomic bomb.
Are there enough civilian casualties or physical destruction that could reliably deter national leaders from military action? The United States still assumes that some leaders can only be deterred by threats to their own lives. But at that time neither Saddam nor Gaddafi noticed such a threat. So that doesn’t quite work either.
At the same time, during the Cold War years and, it seems, during the triumph of the doctrine of nuclear deterrence both in the USSR and in the United States, the leaders proceeded from the fact that a potential enemy could still attack and there was no potential. losses stop him. When planning a nuclear war against the USSR in the 1970s, the USA had the potential to destroy about half of the Soviet population, 70% of the urban population and 82% of its capital structures. Such a “containment” certainly raised the threshold for nuclear war, but it was certainly not seen as impossible.
Moreover, in 1962, America and the USSR found themselves on the brink of nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis. And not because they feared nuclear attacks and the accompanying devastation, but both leaders – Khrushchev and Kennedy – during World War II.
At the same time, the presence of nuclear weapons has not helped the United States in any way in Vietnam or previously in Korea, Iraq or Afghanistan. Its presence in America did not “restrict” its competitors in any way. He lost the war in Afghanistan as well as the USSR. Of course, it’s also impossible to prove that “nuclear deterrence” hasn’t worked at all all these years. For example, it seems to work very well even in relation to North Korea. Otherwise, it is unknown how the fate of the regime will develop. However, in this case, simple deterrence can also work – with conventional weapons. In the same America, the memory of the Korean War has not yet completely disappeared.
Perhaps the decisive deterrent factor – along with nuclear weapons, we will not write about them anyway – was the fact that at the head of the leading world powers were people until almost recently (definitely until the end of the existence of the USSR). Who remembers all the horrors of the Second World War. And they did not want to repeat it, neither in nuclear nor in “conventional practice”. Such leaders are no longer with us today.
The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the editors’ position.