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"The development of the atomic bomb during World War II, which relied heavily on European (and often Jewish) scientists who fled Hitler, is one illustration of the value of ethnic and cultural tolerance."
No, I'm not saying that the USSR wouldn't have bothered to develop nuclear weapons. They probably would've build nuclear weapons first if they could. I'm only saying that the Soviets didn't have a nuclear program before the Americans build and use the nuclear bomb and that they've invested tremendous resources into this under the pressure to just catch-up with the US.
As to emigrant scientists, well, although the US did indeed got the best of them, a number of German scientists were also taken in the USSR after the defeat of Nazi Germany and there they've worked for the Soviet ballistic and space program.
Aeon J. Skoble -
3/30/2008
Is it your contention that if the US had not developed atomic weapons, the USSR wouldn't have bothered? I'm aware that the US had them first, but both were working on it. Volokh's point was that America's embrace of emigrants is part of what allowed that to happen - otherwise, it might well have been the commies who did it first.
Bogdan Enache -
3/29/2008
The Soviets developed nuclear weapons after and in reaction to the US, for a short period the only nuclear power, largely thanks to some American and British spies who provided them intelligence from the Manhattan Project, some of them because of personal communist convictions, others because they genuinely believed that there was a need for a balance of power with regard to nuclear weapons in order to secure peace - a world with only one nuclear super-power was considered a rather dangerous thing.
Aeon J. Skoble -
3/29/2008
The value of having them comes up when other people have them. Since the Soviets were working on developing atomic weapons, I'd say it was a very good thing the US developed them first. This is another dimension of the same argument that has been all over L&P threads this past week. Whether we want to live in ancap world is a different issue from how we should behave in the current world. In the current world, there are states. Some of them are nominally concerned with individualism and liberty, and achieve it imperfectly and incompletely, and are annoying hypocritical about it. But the rest are even worse: totalitarian states where individualism and liberty aren't even on the table. Hypocrisy is irritating, but let's not elevate it: better a hypocritical, nominally liberal state than an honest and consistent fascist state. You know what would suck worse than America having nukes? World domination by the USSR.
Justin A Bowen -
3/29/2008
What value can there possibly be in nuclear weapons? Should we also be praising the inventors of cluster bombs, various chemical and biological weapons, and other weapons that kill indiscriminately? Were there less conflicts because of the threat of mutual annihilation? Maybe. That is a question for which we can never know the answer. In the mean time, we don't need to be referring to the development of atomic weapons as anything but one of the worst uses of human ingenuity in the history of mankind.
Sudha Shenoy -
3/29/2008
The piece is propaganda by one war machine against another war machine.
From the later 19th century onwards, the Japanese military became increasingly influential politically. Military interests dominated Japan's foreign policy from the early 1930s onwards. Domestically the military were opposed (broadly) by business interests & diplomats, who wanted to promote peaceful trade. But the military won out. Hence the treaty with Nazi Germany in 1936.
From the mid-1920s an increasingly virulent nationalism was taught through textbooks. A notorious statute was passed which was used against both liberal [non-US sense] & leftwing critics.
The military wanted an overseas empire (surprise, surprise), hence the invasion & takeover of Korea (early in the 20th century.) Later, Manchuria was invaded & occupied to secure iron & coal for war industries in Japan. Then, in the late 1930s, steps were taken domestically, to shift resources & labour into war industries. But key war materiel (oil, rubber, tin, other metals) still had to be imported. Japan relied on steel & oil imports from the US.
In 1940, the Vichy govt allowed Japanese troops into French Indo-China. That same year & the next, the US govt successively reduced, then banned, oil & steel exports to Japan; then all trade; then froze Japanese assets. This gave the Japanese military the causus belli they wanted. They attacked Pearl Harbor, & also (in short order) overran the Philippines, Malaya, Singapore, the Dutch East Indies, & Burma; & occupied Thailand. All this in order to obtain oil, rubber, tin, & other war materiel.
In the event, it was all for naught; US submarines sank most Japanese shipping. 1945 saw the decisive defeat of the military as a political force in Japan. Businessmen, diplomats, & officials were left victorious. Hence the Japanese 'economic miracle'.
Anthony Gregory -
3/29/2008
Well, it is ironic to point to the Manhattan Project as a virtuous case of the triumph of American tolerance. Isn't it?
Craig J Bolton -
3/29/2008
I guess I don't understand your comment.
The issue we were talking about was whether it was "ironic" to talk about the relatively incorporationist nature of American society when the invention made by those being incorporated was used to bomb those who were from a markedly different culture, arguably for racist reasons.
I simply pointed out that the uses to which the invention was put were more or less irrelevant to whether America was or was not incorporationist. Now you want to talk about whether the invention was a weapon? Sure it was a weapon. Those working on this weapon generally believed that it was a weapon to be used against the regime that was murdering millions of their cultural fellows. They were deceived. That is not an unusual outcome when one works for a government.
So what does your point have to do with the discussion of the relative incorporationist nature of American society?
Anthony Gregory -
3/28/2008
Wow, that's abhorrent.
Roderick T. Long -
3/28/2008
Ayn Rand wrote a screenplay called "Top Secret," glamourising the Manhattan Project. It has never been published, but her preliminary notes for it are in the Journals. It's the one unproduced Rand project that I'm glad didn't get produced.
Roderick T. Long -
3/28/2008
I don't understand how the Ubbabuga example is supposed to be analogous. It's not as though the Manhattan Project was developing a multipurpose tool which was only subsequently taken over by the government and used to incinerate foreigners. Incinerating foreigners was the understood purpose, point, and aim of the Manhattan Project from the beginning. They were trying to build an atomic weapon, not an atomic multipurpose exploder which could be used for mining asteroids or creating impresisve fireworks displays or ....
John Kunze -
3/28/2008
I recently viewed "December 7th: The Movie" from Netflix. This DVD is billed as a John Ford film "banned by the U.S government for its criticism of Army policy and its alleged anti-Americanism."
But what I found particularly interesting was a documentary on Japanese religion, education and ideology that argued that the Japanese were a uniquely dangerous threat to the world. How much of this war-time propaganda piece is racist jingoism and how much is based on fact?
Craig J Bolton -
3/28/2008
Something wrong with your logic here, Mark. Hypothetical: Ubbabuga discovers fire. Ubbabuga is a new member of the tribe recenting immigrating from the outside. Is tolerance toward outsiders resulting in the discovery of fire therefore bad or a fraud or hypocritical because Torquemada subsequently uses fire to burn to death heretics and Jews and enforce cultural uniformity??
Perhaps Oppenheimer was as guilty of racism as Truman, you think? Apparently you do.....
Mark Brady -
3/28/2008
The irony resides in the claim that Eugene Volokh cites the development of the atomic bomb as "one illustration of the value of ethnic and cultural tolerance" yet its use at Hiroshima and Nagasaki illustrates a callous disregard for the life of innocents and were the final acts in a War without Mercy that was compounded by vicious racism towards the Japanese.
Aeon J. Skoble -
3/28/2008
Um, what's ironic? I clicked over and read the full post. He's explaining how America has always, from its inception, benefited from the contributions of "foreigners" or people otherwise regarded as outsiders to the "mainstream" culture. That includes emigre Jewish physicists.
