Demon on the Earth

Demon on the Earth

Many of the American and European émigré scientists who developed the first nuclear weapons were profoundly distressed about the demon they had let loose on the world. They pleaded for the global abolition of nuclear weapons, but their pleas went unheeded; the prospect of a national strategic advantage galvanized both the U.S.S.R. and the United States and the nuclear arms race began.

In the same period, there was a burgeoning international trade in the devastating non-nuclear weapons coyly called “conventional”. The good statistics are available. In the past twenty-five years, in dollars corrected for inflation, the annual international arms trade has gone from $300 million to much more than $ billion. In the years between 1950 and 1968, for example, there were, on the average, worldwide several accidents involving nuclear weapons per year, although perhaps no more than one or two accidental nuclear explosions.

The weapons establishments in the Soviet Union, the United States and other nations were large and powerful. In the United States they included major corporations famous for their homey domestic manufactures. According to one estimate, the corporate profits in military weapons procurement are 30 to 50 percent higher than in an equally technological but competitive civilian market. Cost overruns in military weapons systems are permitted on a scale that would be considered unacceptable in the civilian sphere. In the Soviet Union the resources, quality, attention and care given to military production is in striking contrast to the little left for consumer goods.

The demon the scientists had let loose on the world will destroy us all one day… Or never. Credit photo: Elena

According to some estimates, almost half the scientists and high technologists on Earth are employed full or part-time on military matters. Those engaged in the development and manufacture of weapons of mass destruction are given salaries, perquisites of power and, where possible, public honors at the highest levels available in their respective societies. The secrecy of weapons development, carried to especially extravagant lengths in the Soviet Union, implied that individuals so employed needed almost never accepted responsibility for their actions. They were protected and anonymous.

Military secrecy made the military the most difficult sector of any society for the citizens to monitor. If we do not know what they do, it is very hard for us to stop them. And with the rewards so substantial, with the hostile military establishments beholden to each other in some ghastly mutual embrace, the world discovers itself drifting toward the ultimate undoing of the human enterprise.