July 7, 2023

Bulletin 330: "'The real purpose in making the bomb was to subdue the Soviets.'* Now it's happening again, on a vast scale. WHY?" A conversation with acclaimed historian Peter Kuznick and Greg Mello in Los Alamos, July 22

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Previously: Bulletin 329: Russia rules out nuclear disarmament negotiations; second week of Ukrainian offenses fail; what will US and NATO do? Build 60 projects in LANL's Pajarito Corridor?, Jun 17, 2023

Dear friends and colleagues --

So many things cry out for writing in this space. Today, there will be just this one.

We hope you will join us in a discussion in Los Alamos on July 22 at 6:30 pm in Fuller Lodge (2132 Central Ave, map)

Our discussion will be both historical and profoundly current.

The meeting will be live-streamed to those who register in advance. Only the live audience will be able to ask questions. We will send out the livestream coordinates in another Bulletin. Again, you will need to register to view this event.

You are invited to a Zoom meeting.
When: Jul 22, 2023 06:30 PM Mountain Time (US and Canada)

Register in advance for this meeting:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwtc-2trjsjHNOjGquQDeq020XeeaZBHZgf

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Here's a brief introduction, which will not do justice to Peter's talk and perspectives, to whet your interest:

During World War II, the perception that (then-Soviet) Russia might -- or would -- need "subduing" after World War II was never far from the minds of many conservatives and Manhattan Project leaders, including General Groves. Much later, he famously said:

“I think it is also important to state -- I think it is well known -- that there was never from about two weeks from the time I took charge of this project any illusion on my part but that Russia was our enemy and that the project was conducted on that basis.” (Testimony "In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer”, Transcript of Hearing Before Personnel Security Board, Washington, DC, April 12, 1954 to May 6, 1954, p.173 [p.183 in pdf] http://bit.ly/1x9T6dQ)

Even during the war he said more, among friends. Joseph Rotblat, whom we knew, recalled a March 1944 dinner conversation:

"In March 1944 I experienced a disagreeable shock. At that time I was living with the Chadwicks in their house on the Mesa, before moving later to the "Big House:' the quarters for single scientists. General Leslie Groves, when visiting Los Alamos, frequently came to the Chadwicks for dinner and relaxed palaver. During one such conversation Groves said that, of course, the real purpose in making the bomb was to subdue the Soviets. (Whatever his exact words, his real meaning was clear.) Although I had no illusions about the Stalin regime-after all, it was his pact with Hitler that enabled the latter to invade Poland-I felt deeply the sense of betrayal of an ally. Remember, this was said at a time when thousands of Russians were dying every day on the Eastern Front, tying down the Germans and giving the Allies time to prepare for the landing on the continent of Europe. Until then I had thought that our work was to prevent a Nazi victory, and now I was told that the weapon we were preparing was intended for use against the people who were making extreme sacrifices for that very aim.

My concern about the purpose of our work gained substance from conversations with Niels Bohr. He used to come to my room at eight in the morning to listen to the BBC news bulletin. Like myself, he could not stand the U.S. bulletins which urged us every few seconds to purchase a certain laxative! I owned a special radio on which I could receive the BBC World Service. Sometimes Bohr stayed on and talked to me about the social and political implications of the discovery of nuclear energy and of his worry about the dire consequences of a nuclear arms race between East and West which he foresaw.

All this, and the growing evidence that the war in Europe would be over before the bomb project was completed, made my participation in it pointless. If it took the Americans such a long time, then my fear of the Germans being first was groundless.

When it became evident, toward the end of 1944, that the Germans had abandoned their bomb project, the whole purpose of my being in Los Alamos ceased to be, and I asked for permission to leave and return to Britain"

(Joseph Rotblat, "Leaving the Bomb Project," in Assessing the Nuclear Age: Selections from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Len Ackland and Steven McGuire, eds., 1986, emphasis added)

As the certainty of technical success became apparent in early 1945, the ambition to use the atomic bomb as an instrument of international control grew as well, especially after Roosevelt's death. Recall that the "Little Boy" (Hiroshima) bomb was never tested prior to use. It's nuclear design was quite basic, and certain.

Today, another bloody European war is underway, a war strongly provoked and continuously prolonged by the U.S. and its NATO allies for the quite-explicit purpose of weakening and subduing Russia, i.e. of defeating Russia and destroying it as a sovereign state.

This risks nuclear war.

That risk is good for business at NNSA and of course at LANL.

It is certainly no exaggeration to say that from late 1945 until now, potential nuclear conflict with Russia has been THE prime motive for budgets and programs in Los Alamos -- our primary focus on the 22nd -- and all across the U.S. nuclear warhead complex and ten thousand or a hundred thousand other defense contractors.

Get this: it was just two weeks after the Japanese offer of surrender on August 15, 1945 that a list of Russian cities to be targeted with atomic bombs was presented to Groves. First the bomb was about Germany. Then it was about Japan. All other narratives had to be suppressed, until Japan was defeated. Then, it was all about Russia.

The bombs needed to broil Russians if they didn't behave properly didn't yet exist but Norris Bradbury, as he took over management of "Site Y" (Los Alamos), promised he and his staff would produce and improve them.

As a result, the late 1940s in Los Alamos were among other things a struggle to make enough plutonium pits in the new DP nuclear materials complex, and -- until bomb assembly was moved to Kirtland Air Force Base in 1948, to build enough complete bomb assemblies -- to satisfy war planners.

Ever the motivating manager, Norris Bradbury also told the Los Alamos community, many of whom were considering leaving, that conducting more Trinity-like nuclear tests in the process of perfecting the bomb could be "fun."

Today, NNSA and LANL again explicitly cite geopolitical conflict with Russia (and to a much lesser extent China) as the major justification for NNSA's -- and LANL's -- huge new plutonium pit program. In keynote addresses I have heard, it comes right at the beginning, to frame and justify what follows.

Only now, everything is much more costly than it was in 1945. We believe startup of NNSA's full pit production program by 2036 will cost at least $47 billion, if it ever happens, more than the entire Manhattan Project in constant dollars ($31 billion; p. 5).

Los Alamos is expected to eat up most of that money (55%-60%) -- in a crash program to build what some officials admit will be a temporary pit capability, which was what happened in the late 1940s also.

The Manhattan Project spent some $70.4 million in then-year dollars on the entire Los Alamos project (Atomic Audit, p. 60)-- i.e. $1.18 billion in today's dollars. Based on NNSA's most recent estimates, we believe LANL's startup cost for pit production (not including subsequent production or facility replacements) will lie in the range of $23 billion, 19 times as much as the entire cost of Site Y during the Manhattan Project, including the Trinity test.

If, that is, it continues.

To round out the cost of our national obsession with our only nuclear peer competitor, the overall cost of deploying and upgrading U.S. nuclear weapons, including the environmental cleanups required to sustain community support, now easily exceeds $2 trillion, 40% of the inflation-corrected total US cost of World War II ($5 trillion in 2023). In 2017, the Congressional Budget Office estimated (p. 8) the 30-year cost of nuclear weapon modernization at a cool $400 billion ($500 billion now from inflation alone, plus all the cost increases that have occurred over the past 5 years).

Assuming we survive the acute phase of our war with Russia (by no means certain) -- and it is a hot war, with roughly 10,000 mostly-Ukrainian deaths per month, thanks mostly to U.S. weaponry and political intransigence -- Russophobia is again bleeding us to death.

"The national-security state is a malignant tumor on the American body politic," writes libertarian Jacob Hornberger. "There are multiple problems facing our nation. But the biggest one is the national-security-state form of governmental structure under which we have been living for some 75 years...This political cancer is taking us down from within. That’s why it is imperative that Americans make its removal their top priority."

No matter whether our politics lie on the left as many of ours tend to do, or on the right like Hornberger's, or wherever, we have to face the reality of what is being proposed here and now. Do we want new warheads -- enough of them to facilitate arms control break-out, because that's the purpose of LANL's production.

Our silence is our assent, both to a new nuclear arms race, centered right here in northern New Mexico and also to a continuing war in Ukraine. That war could be brought to an end in a day, if the U.S. president picked up the phone and said, "Enough death. You are destroying your country. Stop right now, Mr. Zelensky. You aren't getting one more bullet from us. I have Vladimir Putin on the other line. Let's end this."

Please come on the 22nd. Los Alamos is a fear-ridden community, when it comes to discussing any of these issues, as many people in that community tell us. They are afraid of being seen at an event which questions LANL programs -- or the rectitude of its role. We really need you to come in person to this meeting.

If you want to help with outreach, please write Trish, or call 505-265-1200.

So stay tuned, there's much more going on as we will write. We hope to see some of you soon.  We will send Zoom coordinates soon. If you get this email by forwarding, you can get updates and more information by subscribing to our main listserve by sending a blank email here. or by looking on our web site for the latest Bulletins, press releases, and activist letters.

Sincerely and best wishes to all,

Greg Mello, for the Los Alamos Study Group