The threat of imminent nuclear warfare is back on the agenda. It never really goes away. Somebody went to see the film Oppenheimer last week, was clearly very impressed, and wrote a strong letter to The Herald advocating that the only way to stand up to Russia, China, and North Korea was to arm to the teeth. I replied as follows:
This panegyric to the doctrine of nuclear deterrence (The lesson we Scots must learn from Oppenheimer, Herald July 24) appears eloquent and persuasive, and is indeed beautifully written, but does the argument stand up? It is true that Albert Einstein wrote to President Roosevelt as early as August 2nd 1939, effectively kick-starting the Manhattan Project, but in the event the successful Trinity nuclear detonation occurred two months after Nazi Germany had been defeated. Then the USA dropped two bombs on two Japanese cities that were exhausted and defenceless, and of no strategic military importance. The choice of Nagasaki was based on the vagaries of the local weather on August 9th, 1945. These detonations were effectively a demonstration to Soviet Russia, and a warning not to encroach any further into Western Europe. Joseph Goebbels said the Nazis would win in the end, because the allies would have adopted their methods. Such is the nature of evil.
George Santayana’s remark has become a cliché, that those who do not study the past are condemned to repeat it. But the trouble is that history seldom repeats itself. It doesn’t even rhyme, but, like a Wilfred Owen poem, it can half-rhyme. Back in 1945, the best minds, Chadwick and Feynman and Oppenheimer, devoted themselves to constructing a bomb. The Danish physicist Niels Bohr thought that nuclear research should be conducted by the scientific community in a spirit of openness, and Churchill wanted to lock him up. But Churchill in his second term came to realise that the doctrine of mutually assured destruction (MAD) was untenable. He tried to arrange a “summit” – he even coined the term – of the great powers, in pursuit of a lasting peace, but by then Churchill was a spent force and he failed.
The idea that MAD is going to carry on assuring peace is fallacious. There have been several near misses over the years, and in our own time with our devotion to automated systems, “artificial intelligence”, and managerial pseudoscience, it is only a matter of time before an “accident” occurs. We need, somehow, to get rid of these hellish contraptions. Today, rather than creating increasingly sophisticated weapons of mass destruction, our brightest and best need to address the question crucial to our own time: how can we all get along together, without destroying ourselves and the planet?
Then today I read, again in The Herald, that former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, in response to a drone strike on the Moscow Central Business District, said, “If we imagine that the offensive of the (Ukrainians) with the support of NATO was successful, and they seized part of our land, then we would have to, by virtue of the rules of the decree of the President of Russia dated 06/02/20, go for the use of nuclear weapons. There is simply no other way out.”
I dare say this piece of sabre rattling is designed for domestic consumption. I don’t think Mr Zelenskyy has any ambitions to invade Russia, although he would rather like the Russians to clear off out of Crimea and the Donetsk region. And if the Kremlin sends missiles to Kyiv, they can hardly complain if Kyiv sends a few back.
But under the threat of the mushroom cloud, life goes on. I’m enjoying my new electric car. I’m still on the learning curve. I was sitting at the head of a huge queue of cars at a four way temporary traffic light yesterday and, as it was rather a long wait, I put the park brake on. Then when the light turned green, I couldn’t get it off again! People behind me grew irate. I thought, not only have the Chinese tampered with all their own exported electric vehicles, they have somehow infiltrated the Czech Republic! Somebody has thrown a switch in Shanghai, and all the electric cars in the UK have ground to a halt!
Not so. I needed to depress the brake pedal to release the parking brake. Silly ass. Well, nobody died.
The threat of imminent nuclear annihilation does rather put the day to day vicissitudes of quotidian experience into perspective. Should the Welsh Rugby Union ban the singing of Delilah? (I think across the border in England, people are threatening to throw a switch and bring Swing Low, Sweet Chariot to a grinding halt.) I didn’t know what Delilah was all about, other than that the eponymous anti-heroine was some kind of femme fatale. Improbably, I once heard a rendition of Delilah in Motherwell in the 1970s, given by the Red Army Ensemble. So I attribute my ignorance of the song’s lyrics to a rather thick Russian accent.
Fore-giff mya Delilah, ah jyust kchood not tyke annie mehr!
It’s all about a jealous guy who sees his girlfriend with another man, and stabs her. It occurs to me that if we cancel Delilah, then we might as well cancel the whole of Grand Opera, which seems largely devoted to the idea of seducing and/or murdering prima donnas in a fit of jealous rage. Just as an example, I think of the close of Act 1 of Puccini’s Tosca, in which the corrupt Chief of Police Baron Scarpia, in an “evil, be thou my good” moment, concocts his fiendish plot of seduction and murder in the church of Sant’ Andrea della Valle, against a background of the Te Deum, the tolling of church bells, and the intermittent boom of the cannon from the Castle of Sant’ Angelo. The effect is overwhelming.
I could easily envisage that Tosca, an opera that stages an execution (at least the torture is off stage, though audible), could be cancelled simply because the audience might find it too upsetting. The audience might not feel “safe”. But is not the whole point of music drama, theatre, literature, and the arts in general, that dangerous topics can be explored in an environment that is, of itself, safe? Tosca is cathartic. Is it too fanciful to suppose that “the purgation of pity and terror” makes the outbreak of unbridled violence in reality less likely? I dare say the Red Army singing Delilah in Motherwell contributed, albeit infinitesimally, to a détente at the height of the cold war.
So I hope Sir Tom Jones carries on singing Delilah. And I expect the crowd at Cardiff may wish to join in. It’s not unusual.
jamescalumcampbell 