You and the Atomic Bomb
by George Orwell
This piece by George Orwell was
originally published by the Tribune 19 October 1945 within months after
atomic bombs were dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan by the only
country ever to have used them to kill people and destroy cities, viz., the
U.S.A. Orwell had written enough about the latter that had been remarkably
stupid, but this particular piece was exceptional for the insights it shared
about the world dispensation that lay ahead in the age of atomic weaponry. In
addition, it was clear that the groundwork for his novel, Nineteen
Eighty-four had been completed by this writing.
Considering how likely we all are to be blown to pieces by
it within the next five years, the atomic bomb has not roused so much
discussion as might have been expected. The newspapers have published numerous
diagrams, not very helpful to the average man, of protons and neutrons doing
their stuff, and there has been much reiteration of the useless statement that
the bomb "ought to be put under international control." But curiously
little has been said, at any rate in print, about the question that is of most
urgent interest to all of us, namely: "How difficult are these things to
manufacture?"
Such
information as we--that is, the big public--possess on this subject has come to
us in a rather indirect way, apropos of President Truman's decision not to hand
over certain secrets to the
Had
that been true, the whole trend of history would have been abruptly altered.
The distinction between great states and small states would have been wiped
out, and the power of the State over the individual would have been greatly weakened.
However, it appears from President Truman's remarks, and various comments that
have been made on them, that the bomb is fantastically expensive and that its
manufacture demands an enormous industrial effort, such as only three or four
countries in the world are capable of making. This point is of cardinal
importance, because it may mean that the discovery of the atomic bomb, so far
from reversing history, will simply intensify the trends which have been
apparent for a dozen years past.
It
is a commonplace that the history of civilisation is
largely the history of weapons. In particular, the connection between the
discovery of gunpowder and the overthrow of feudalism by the bourgeoisie has
been pointed out over and over again. And though I have no doubt exceptions can
be brought forward, I think the following rule would be found generally true:
that ages in which the dominant weapon is expensive or difficult to make will
tend to be ages of despotism, whereas when the dominant weapon is cheap and
simple, the common people have a chance. Thus, for example, thanks, battleships
and bombing planes are inherently tyrannical weapons, while rifles, muskets,
long-bows and hand-grenades are inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon
makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon--so long as there is no answer
to it--gives claws to the weak.
The
great age of democracy and of national self-determination was the age of the
musket and the rifle. After the invention of the flintlock, and before the
invention of the percussion cap, the musket was a fairly efficient weapon, and
at the same time so simple that it could be produced almost anywhere. Its
combination of qualities made possible the success of the American and French
revolutions, and made a popular insurrection a more serious business than it
could be in our own day. After the musket came the breech-loading rifle. This
was a comparatively complex thing, but it could still be produced in scores of
countries, and it was cheap, easily smuggled and economical of ammunition. Even
the most backward nation could always get hold of rifles from one source or
another, so that Boers, Bulgars, Abyssinians,
Moroccans--even Tibetans--could put up a fight for their independence,
sometimes with success. But thereafter every development in military technique
has favoured the State as against the individual, and
the industrialised country as against the backward
one. There are fewer and fewer foci of power. Already, in 1939, there were only
five states capable of waging war on the grand scale, and now there are only
three--ultimately, perhaps, only two. This trend has been obvious for years,
and was pointed out by a few observers even before 1914. The one thing that
might reverse it is the discovery of a weapon--or, to put it more broadly, of a
method of fighting--not dependent on huge concentrations of industrial plant.
From
various symptoms one can infer that the Russians do not yet possess the secret
of making the atomic bomb; on the other hand, the consensus of opinion seems to
be that they will possess it within a few years. So we have before us the
prospect of two or three monstrous super-states, each possessed of a weapon by
which millions of people can be wiped out in a few seconds, dividing the world
between them. It has been rather hastily assumed that this means bigger and
bloodier wars, and perhaps an actual end to the machine civilisation.
But suppose--and really this the likeliest development--that the surviving
great nations make a tacit agreement never to use the atomic bomb against one
another? Suppose they only use it, or the threat of it, against people who are
unable to retaliate? In that case we are back where we were before, the only
difference being that power is concentrated in still fewer hands and that the
outlook for subject peoples and oppressed classes is still more hopeless.
When
James Burnham wrote The Managerial Revolution it seemed probable to many
Americans that the Germans would win the European end of the war, and it was
therefore natural to assume that
We
were once told that the aeroplane had "abolished
frontiers"; actually it is only since the aeroplane
became a serious weapon that frontiers have become definitely impassable. The
radio was once expected to promote international understanding and co-operation;
it has turned out to be a means of insulating one nation from another. The
atomic bomb may complete the process by robbing the exploited classes and
peoples of all power to revolt, and at the same time putting the possessors of
the bomb on a basis of military equality. Unable to conquer one another, they
are likely to continue ruling the world between them, and it is difficult to
see how the balance can be upset except by slow and unpredictable demographic
changes.
For
forty or fifty years past, Mr. H.G. Wells and others have been warning us that
man is in danger of destroying himself with his own weapons, leaving the ants
or some other gregarious species to take over. Anyone who has seen the ruined
cities of
Had
the atomic bomb turned out to be something as cheap and easily manufactured as
a bicycle or an alarm clock, it might well have plunged us back into barbarism,
but it might, on the other hand, have meant the end of national sovereignty and
of the highly-centralised police state. If, as seems
to be the case, it is a rare and costly object as difficult to produce as a
battleship, it is likelier to put an end to large-scale wars at the cost of
prolonging indefinitely a "peace that is no peace."