I really don't blame them. The only way for the Russian people to understand what Ukraine are going through is to have it happen to them. It's awful! Dictatorship is worse because nothing can be...
I really don't blame them. The only way for the Russian people to understand what Ukraine are going through is to have it happen to them.
It's awful! Dictatorship is worse because nothing can be done easily. However, with enough unrest, he can be overthrown or made to stand down. There are only so many people that can be dealt with internally by political and military means, before it becomes civil unrest followed by civil war.
Hopefully this is an eye opening experience for the Russian people and they speak out that war needs to stop.
From what I’ve read, strategic bombing doesn’t work. Even in a democracy, bombings don’t result in the civilian population blaming their government. They blame the enemy for bombing them, and if...
From what I’ve read, strategic bombing doesn’t work. Even in a democracy, bombings don’t result in the civilian population blaming their government. They blame the enemy for bombing them, and if anything, it stiffens their resolve. We can see that in the reaction of Ukraine to the much more severe Russian bombing and from other times it was tried in history.
Hopefully these drone attacks were against military targets. It can’t win the war, but the disruption might have some tactical effect.
[civilian bombing] is a predictable human response when an effort is failing to attempt to punish the opponent for the temerity of not losing; this behavior is especially pronounced in personalistic dictatorships but certainly not restricted to them. Naturally bombing against civilian targets, since its introduction, has often been the means of this sort of punishment response; more broadly this kind of thing fits into the error of ‘emotive strategy,’ […]
[…]
[I]n the aftermath of [World War II], efforts to survey the morale impact of the bombing largely concluded that – wait for it – being bombed hardened civilian will to resist. Together the allies had dropped some 2,500,000 tons of bombs – eight thousand times the quantity Douhet predicted would induce surrender – and the net effect of this was to increase German resolve to resist.
A weakness in this argument is that many people believe it ended the war in Japan, but apparently that’s ambiguous:
Japanese surrender is very complex; whatever simple summary of it you have heard – either that the atomic bombs definitely did or definitely did not lead directly to Japanese surrender – is almost certainly wrong given the complexity of the question.
I know Ukrainian drones frequently target oil refineries, and believe I've seen several reports of them targeting power plants and transformers. I doubt they would intentionally target an...
Hopefully these drone attacks were against military targets. It can’t win the war, but the disruption might have some tactical effect.
I know Ukrainian drones frequently target oil refineries, and believe I've seen several reports of them targeting power plants and transformers. I doubt they would intentionally target an apartment building though; more likely this drone crashed in the building after being shot down, or changed course after being jammed.
That's some fascinating perspective! I do wonder if there is a difference when a war is already controversial. For example, my understanding is that the Japanese and German people broadly...
That's some fascinating perspective! I do wonder if there is a difference when a war is already controversial. For example, my understanding is that the Japanese and German people broadly supported their respective countries' aggressive actions in WW2. But, I'm not sure if the US population, for instance, would have been willing to fight in Iraq (which was already highly controversial) if it meant getting bombed randomly from time to time. I guess I could see it going either way in that case.
Democracies can be seriously scary when attacked and I think 9/11 was a good example of that. I suspect further attacks on the US would promote the pro-war side, not the doves.
Democracies can be seriously scary when attacked and I think 9/11 was a good example of that. I suspect further attacks on the US would promote the pro-war side, not the doves.
It's hard to say that what seems intuitive is what would actually be the case in this hypothetical scenario, but if you were being globally criticized by the vast majority of the world's...
It's hard to say that what seems intuitive is what would actually be the case in this hypothetical scenario, but if you were being globally criticized by the vast majority of the world's population and governments, yes it's possible that might have people reflect differently, but I'm not so sure.
There's surely a lot of people who thought and think that various terrorist attacks are justified because of the US's foreign policies, I think that was partly Bin Laden's justifications for attacking civilians is that civilians were responsible for what their government did. Of course that does not matter because that's one religious fanatic's perspective, or several hundred (or thousands) for that matter. So it was easy for US citizens, or probably any reasonable person, to dismiss the argument that these terrorist attacks were some kind of reasonable defense or someone attacking back. If however, almost every country had said "Well you get what you deserve, your country is committing horrible atrocities and terrorist attacks are them fighting back", of course that is an abhorrent idea to even type out honestly considering the real situation we are actually in, but just posing that hypothetical in any case would make me wonder if US citizens would have thought differently about it or not.
If you're near universally denounced, of course you got there somehow, it doesn't generally just happen overnight, so the reality of that is also hard to say because I do think people work themselves into those states gradually makes it hard to recognize that other perspective. It'd be different if you just did one horrible thing and immediately were universally denounced, but I see it as quite different when you gradually work your way up to that where you get mild criticism along the way for your various actions, ignore it because there's always a critic for any situation, then criticism grows slightly and you still ignore it because that's easier, and it grows a little more and so on. As you get used to the growing criticism, the harder it gets to go back.
There's also the matter that people don't necessarily directly have control over their government or the ability to exert their will in an obvious way, even in democracies, and that's obviously an even worse problem under a dictator. You're asking someone to choose between blaming the dictator who has in a way, more control over their daily lives but not necessarily accountability, and blaming the 'other' that mostly exerts control over your life by attacking you. There's also no direct consequence to blaming the 'other', other than they just keep attacking you, but there might be consequences to blaming your dictator if they crack down on that type of speech or activity.
I've read before that the London bombings brought the Brits closer to one another and their neighbors, and firmed up their resolve as well. But....supportive Russian citizens accept...
I've read before that the London bombings brought the Brits closer to one another and their neighbors, and firmed up their resolve as well.
But....supportive Russian citizens accept dictatorship/aggression in exchange for their own protection, and that by shattering the deal the citizens become, yes, angrier about Ukraine, but also gain new doubt of their "Strong Man". So perhaps the move here isn't to count on citizens to revolt or say boo, but to embolden Putin's many many many enemies to make a move, and to make Putin's trading partners cut him worse and worse deals.
We saw similar doubt cast upon Benjamin Netanyahu's strong man keep us safe persona after the attack, and we saw that it mobilized Bibi's political enemies.
I mean, it was also on a scale that has literally never occurred before or since. Not just the two atomic bombs, but the multiple fire bombings. Further atomic bombs were, literally, brand new....
A weakness in this argument is that many people believe it ended the war in Japan, but apparently that’s ambiguous:
I mean, it was also on a scale that has literally never occurred before or since. Not just the two atomic bombs, but the multiple fire bombings.
Further atomic bombs were, literally, brand new. Japan literally didn't know if they could just wipe them off the map with no repercussions tomorrow. There was absolutely a fear of the unknown thing going in the Allies advantage at that time.
Not really arguing that it wasn't complex, just that it's also a scenario that literally cannot happen again. Edit- Maybe i'm not getting the link, but it's just a person responding to a picture...
Not really arguing that it wasn't complex, just that it's also a scenario that literally cannot happen again.
Edit-
Maybe i'm not getting the link, but it's just a person responding to a picture of a tweet and neither seems to be sourcing anything?
Twitter doesn't display threads anymore, unless you're logged in apparently. Some people still haven't got the memo. Here's the whole text: There’s a complex set of historical debates about why...
Twitter doesn't display threads anymore, unless you're logged in apparently. Some people still haven't got the memo.
There’s a complex set of historical debates about why the atomic bombs were dropped and moral debates about whether it was justified. This explanation is far closer to fact-free “propaganda” than pretty much any of those arguments.
Ironically, of course, this “explanation” also robs the Japanese leadership of agency and doesn’t really reckon with the aspects of the decision-making around the bomb and war termination that warrant reflection.
The nuances of this debate are taught in college classes and are part of PhD comprehensive exams for a reason. Lots of hard-to-parse evidence. Fierce arguments with moral significance. Robust counterarguments. This explanation doesn’t appear anywhere because it’s nonsense.
But let's use this as a chance to explore the actual historiography, because there's little to learn from this particular bad tweet...
The traditional U.S. interpretation of the atomic bombings after WWII framed them as a tragic necessity to end the war and forestall the casualties of an invasion of Japan. Truman's memoirs developed this point as did many "orthodox" historians. https://amzn.to/3oo5oxZ
Gar Alperovitz offered the first major broadside with ATOMIC DIPLOMACY (1965), which argued that the bomb was used to intimidate the Soviets as the Japanese on the verge of surrender. It drew heavily on the U.S. decisions around the Potsdam Conference. https://amzn.to/3n8NfoO
This "revisionist" argument became a mainstay in the debate, producing a wave of follow-on arguments from the '70s to the '90s, peaking with the 50th anniversary of the bombings in 1995.
To illustrate just a few entries, drawing on J. Samuel Walker's historiographical essay, there was Ronald Takaki's HIROSHIMA (1995) which emphasized the role of racism in the targeting of Japan. (This drew counterarguments about area bombing in Germany.) https://amzn.to/3n811YF
There was also Barton Berstein's "A Post-War Myth" (1986), which argued that the military estimates for U.S. deaths were far lower than the hundreds of thousands cited by Truman: 46,000 to be precise. https://bit.ly/30fdwJu
But there were also "neo-orthodox" defenses based on archival research during this period as well, particularly in the '90s.
Robert Maddox's WEAPONS FOR VICTORY (1995) argued that while parts of the Japanese gov't had put out peace feelers, the intent was neither clear to the U.S., nor made directly rather than via the Soviets, nor willing to accept essential U.S. terms. https://amzn.to/3quZq19
Edward J. Drea's MACARTHUR'S ULTRA (1992) used allied code-breaking to show that the "46,000 U.S. deaths estimate" was outmoded quickly. The costs might have been inflated, but the Japanese were building up for a major defense for the autumn of 1945. https://amzn.to/3Hexy7f
D.M. Giangreco's HELL TO PAY (2009) argued that a review of War Department records, as well as President Hoover's study on the subject for the government, showed massive casualty estimates as well. https://amzn.to/3kqpruv
The litigation of the evidence and the tendency for heated rhetoric helped produce what Walker calls the "middle ground."
Richard Frank's DOWNFALL (1999) used Japanese documents to show that the Japanese gov't was nowhere near surrendering prior to Hiroshima -- though the U.S. KIA and casualty estimates were overblown. https://amzn.to/3wB3I84
Tsuyoshi Hasegawa's RACING THE ENEMY (2005) used U.S., Soviet, and Japanese archives to argue that it was the two-punch combination of the Soviet moves towards Manchuria and Hiroshima which led Japan to surrender -- a complex argument. https://amzn.to/3D8bA3j
John Dower's CULTURES OF WAR (2010) argued that Truman was acutely sensitive to new battlefield losses as the war wound down on other fronts and that these would have been unacceptable to him and the public given that the bomb was available. https://amzn.to/3c6dkye
Campbell Craig and Sergey Radchenko's THE ATOMIC BOMB AND THE ORIGINS OF THE COLD WAR (2008) argued that Hiroshima was intended to end the war, Nagasaki to keep the Soviets from invading Manchuria and threatening U.S. interests in Asia. amzn.to/3wR0gGR
Wilson Miscamble's FROM ROOSEVELT TO TRUMAN (2007) argued that Truman wanted to save American lives, whatever the cost, since those were his special obligation. Casualty estimates were irrelevant. https://amzn.to/3wB4xhg
Andrew J. Rotter's THE WORLD'S BOMB (2008) argued that Truman's motivations were to save U.S. lives, whatever the number, and the it was highly unlikely the Emperor could have convinced a fractured cabinet to surrender without the bomb or Soviet entry. https://amzn.to/3qqR3Ul
Marc Gallicchio's UNCONDITIONAL (2020) framed the debate in both Japan and the U.S. over how to end the war as fractured and polarized for domestic political purposes -- and how many of those arguments live on today. https://amzn.to/3qvNxrB
I'm leaving out important contributions in all of these camps and haven't discussed many key issues: Japanese and U.S. civ-mil relations; debates over such a demonstration bombing; the warnings of scientists; and the "use as made ready" posture towards the use of the bomb.
The basic point is that the literature is capacious, nuanced, and the facts matter: both as a point of history and as points in the broader moral debates about WWII, war in general, and nuclear weapons in particular. It's foolishly glib to act otherwise.
Again, props to J. Samuel Walker for his historiographical essay in AMERICA IN THE WORLD (2014) which provides pithy summaries of these debates and the factual points on which they turn. https://amzn.to/3wHeEBo
No Sound Cloud but I would encourage you all to follow people who are honest-to-God nuclear experts like @wellerstein@ProfTalmadge@NarangVipin@DrRadchenko@Fiona_Cunning among many others.
(And subscribe to my Shakespeare-themed podcast, @BardFlies)
Yeah, the bottom line is still that strategic bombing mostly doesn’t work. It looks like everything after the first post of that Twitter thread can’t be read unless you log in. Here are some quotes:
Yeah, the bottom line is still that strategic bombing mostly doesn’t work.
It looks like everything after the first post of that Twitter thread can’t be read unless you log in. Here are some quotes:
Richard Frank's DOWNFALL (1999) used Japanese documents to show that the Japanese gov't was nowhere near surrendering prior to Hiroshima -- though the U.S. KIA and casualty estimates were overblown.
Tsuyoshi Hasegawa's RACING THE ENEMY (2005) used U.S., Soviet, and Japanese archives to argue that it was the two-punch combination of the Soviet moves towards Manchuria and Hiroshima which led Japan to surrender -- a complex argument
John Dower's CULTURES OF WAR (2010) argued that Truman was acutely sensitive to new battlefield losses as the war wound down on other fronts and that these would have been unacceptable to him and the public given that the bomb was available.
Campbell Craig and Sergey Radchenko's THE ATOMIC BOMB AND THE ORIGINS OF THE COLD WAR (2008) argued that Hiroshima was intended to end the war, Nagasaki to keep the Soviets from invading Manchuria and threatening U.S. interests in Asia. https://amzn.to/3wR0gGR
Wilson Miscamble's FROM ROOSEVELT TO TRUMAN (2007) argued that Truman wanted to save American lives, whatever the cost, since those were his special obligation. Casualty estimates were irrelevant. https://amzn.to/3wB4xhg
Andrew J. Rotter's THE WORLD'S BOMB (2008) argued that Truman's motivations were to save U.S. lives, whatever the number, and the it was highly unlikely the Emperor could have convinced a fractured cabinet to surrender without the bomb or Soviet entry.
Marc Gallicchio's UNCONDITIONAL (2020) framed the debate in both Japan and the U.S. over how to end the war as fractured and polarized for domestic political purposes -- and how many of those arguments live on today.
It is super awful. The day before, a drone strike killed a civilian and injured more in Moscow. I didn't like that happening, but I looked at the other side: THOUSANDS of civilians killed in...
It is super awful.
The day before, a drone strike killed a civilian and injured more in Moscow. I didn't like that happening, but I looked at the other side: THOUSANDS of civilians killed in Ukraine.
I hate all this. I just want it to end and for dictators to stop existing/hurting their own/other countries' people.
I wonder if Ukraine is making a super hard push with everything they've got, because they have a 50-50 chance they can't count on US support for the next 4 years.
Between this and Kursk, the war is bound to get more and more inland for the Russians. If the strains of sanctions + labour shortage + long term effects of the the temporary fixes start to roll in...
Between this and Kursk, the war is bound to get more and more inland for the Russians. If the strains of sanctions + labour shortage + long term effects of the the temporary fixes start to roll in the lives of the average of Russian things could turn ugly, fast.
When it will happen though, and in what way, who knows.
I don't want Russian civilians to get killed (well, I don't want anyone to get killed). I saw some discussion on Reddit that was unsurprisingly disgusting. So much blood thirst. It seems...
I don't want Russian civilians to get killed (well, I don't want anyone to get killed). I saw some discussion on Reddit that was unsurprisingly disgusting. So much blood thirst. It seems appropriate to retaliate by going after infrastructure, just as Russia is doing to Ukraine. It will still impact civilians and impedes their ability to invade.
The Ukrainian military has been handed the 18 Ukrainian-made Bohdana self-propelled howitzers financed by Denmark, Danish Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen announced.
Backed By Tanks And Covered By Glide-Bombing Fighter Jets, Ukrainian Troops Have Advanced Into Russia Along A New Axis It's worth noting that this incursion is in the area west of the existing...
On Thursday, Ukrainian combat engineers breached Russian defenses along the border near the village of Novyi Put, around 20 miles west of the 400-square-mile Ukrainian salient in Russia’s Kursk Oblast.
It's worth noting that this incursion is in the area west of the existing incursion and south of the Seym river (where Ukraine previously blew up all bridges), so calling it a "new axis" seems wrong to me. It's just the next step of the ongoing Kursk incursion: Take control of the boxed-in area where Russia is unable to resupply their forces.
I really don't blame them. The only way for the Russian people to understand what Ukraine are going through is to have it happen to them.
It's awful! Dictatorship is worse because nothing can be done easily. However, with enough unrest, he can be overthrown or made to stand down. There are only so many people that can be dealt with internally by political and military means, before it becomes civil unrest followed by civil war.
Hopefully this is an eye opening experience for the Russian people and they speak out that war needs to stop.
From what I’ve read, strategic bombing doesn’t work. Even in a democracy, bombings don’t result in the civilian population blaming their government. They blame the enemy for bombing them, and if anything, it stiffens their resolve. We can see that in the reaction of Ukraine to the much more severe Russian bombing and from other times it was tried in history.
Hopefully these drone attacks were against military targets. It can’t win the war, but the disruption might have some tactical effect.
More:
Strategic Airpower 101 (acoup.blog)
[…]
A weakness in this argument is that many people believe it ended the war in Japan, but apparently that’s ambiguous:
I know Ukrainian drones frequently target oil refineries, and believe I've seen several reports of them targeting power plants and transformers. I doubt they would intentionally target an apartment building though; more likely this drone crashed in the building after being shot down, or changed course after being jammed.
That's some fascinating perspective! I do wonder if there is a difference when a war is already controversial. For example, my understanding is that the Japanese and German people broadly supported their respective countries' aggressive actions in WW2. But, I'm not sure if the US population, for instance, would have been willing to fight in Iraq (which was already highly controversial) if it meant getting bombed randomly from time to time. I guess I could see it going either way in that case.
Democracies can be seriously scary when attacked and I think 9/11 was a good example of that. I suspect further attacks on the US would promote the pro-war side, not the doves.
It's hard to say that what seems intuitive is what would actually be the case in this hypothetical scenario, but if you were being globally criticized by the vast majority of the world's population and governments, yes it's possible that might have people reflect differently, but I'm not so sure.
There's surely a lot of people who thought and think that various terrorist attacks are justified because of the US's foreign policies, I think that was partly Bin Laden's justifications for attacking civilians is that civilians were responsible for what their government did. Of course that does not matter because that's one religious fanatic's perspective, or several hundred (or thousands) for that matter. So it was easy for US citizens, or probably any reasonable person, to dismiss the argument that these terrorist attacks were some kind of reasonable defense or someone attacking back. If however, almost every country had said "Well you get what you deserve, your country is committing horrible atrocities and terrorist attacks are them fighting back", of course that is an abhorrent idea to even type out honestly considering the real situation we are actually in, but just posing that hypothetical in any case would make me wonder if US citizens would have thought differently about it or not.
If you're near universally denounced, of course you got there somehow, it doesn't generally just happen overnight, so the reality of that is also hard to say because I do think people work themselves into those states gradually makes it hard to recognize that other perspective. It'd be different if you just did one horrible thing and immediately were universally denounced, but I see it as quite different when you gradually work your way up to that where you get mild criticism along the way for your various actions, ignore it because there's always a critic for any situation, then criticism grows slightly and you still ignore it because that's easier, and it grows a little more and so on. As you get used to the growing criticism, the harder it gets to go back.
There's also the matter that people don't necessarily directly have control over their government or the ability to exert their will in an obvious way, even in democracies, and that's obviously an even worse problem under a dictator. You're asking someone to choose between blaming the dictator who has in a way, more control over their daily lives but not necessarily accountability, and blaming the 'other' that mostly exerts control over your life by attacking you. There's also no direct consequence to blaming the 'other', other than they just keep attacking you, but there might be consequences to blaming your dictator if they crack down on that type of speech or activity.
I've read before that the London bombings brought the Brits closer to one another and their neighbors, and firmed up their resolve as well.
But....supportive Russian citizens accept dictatorship/aggression in exchange for their own protection, and that by shattering the deal the citizens become, yes, angrier about Ukraine, but also gain new doubt of their "Strong Man". So perhaps the move here isn't to count on citizens to revolt or say boo, but to embolden Putin's many many many enemies to make a move, and to make Putin's trading partners cut him worse and worse deals.
We saw similar doubt cast upon Benjamin Netanyahu's strong man keep us safe persona after the attack, and we saw that it mobilized Bibi's political enemies.
I mean, it was also on a scale that has literally never occurred before or since. Not just the two atomic bombs, but the multiple fire bombings.
Further atomic bombs were, literally, brand new. Japan literally didn't know if they could just wipe them off the map with no repercussions tomorrow. There was absolutely a fear of the unknown thing going in the Allies advantage at that time.
Devereaux links to a Twitter thread that shows how complex the historical debate became around how the Japanese leadership decided on surrender.
Not really arguing that it wasn't complex, just that it's also a scenario that literally cannot happen again.
Edit-
Maybe i'm not getting the link, but it's just a person responding to a picture of a tweet and neither seems to be sourcing anything?
Twitter doesn't display threads anymore, unless you're logged in apparently. Some people still haven't got the memo.
Here's the whole text:
There’s a complex set of historical debates about why the atomic bombs were dropped and moral debates about whether it was justified. This explanation is far closer to fact-free “propaganda” than pretty much any of those arguments.
Referencing this image: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FD8GFfKWYAg_hR2.jpg
Ironically, of course, this “explanation” also robs the Japanese leadership of agency and doesn’t really reckon with the aspects of the decision-making around the bomb and war termination that warrant reflection.
The nuances of this debate are taught in college classes and are part of PhD comprehensive exams for a reason. Lots of hard-to-parse evidence. Fierce arguments with moral significance. Robust counterarguments. This explanation doesn’t appear anywhere because it’s nonsense.
But let's use this as a chance to explore the actual historiography, because there's little to learn from this particular bad tweet...
The traditional U.S. interpretation of the atomic bombings after WWII framed them as a tragic necessity to end the war and forestall the casualties of an invasion of Japan. Truman's memoirs developed this point as did many "orthodox" historians.
https://amzn.to/3oo5oxZ
Gar Alperovitz offered the first major broadside with ATOMIC DIPLOMACY (1965), which argued that the bomb was used to intimidate the Soviets as the Japanese on the verge of surrender. It drew heavily on the U.S. decisions around the Potsdam Conference.
https://amzn.to/3n8NfoO
This "revisionist" argument became a mainstay in the debate, producing a wave of follow-on arguments from the '70s to the '90s, peaking with the 50th anniversary of the bombings in 1995.
To illustrate just a few entries, drawing on J. Samuel Walker's historiographical essay, there was Ronald Takaki's HIROSHIMA (1995) which emphasized the role of racism in the targeting of Japan. (This drew counterarguments about area bombing in Germany.)
https://amzn.to/3n811YF
There was also Barton Berstein's "A Post-War Myth" (1986), which argued that the military estimates for U.S. deaths were far lower than the hundreds of thousands cited by Truman: 46,000 to be precise.
https://bit.ly/30fdwJu
But there were also "neo-orthodox" defenses based on archival research during this period as well, particularly in the '90s.
Robert Maddox's WEAPONS FOR VICTORY (1995) argued that while parts of the Japanese gov't had put out peace feelers, the intent was neither clear to the U.S., nor made directly rather than via the Soviets, nor willing to accept essential U.S. terms.
https://amzn.to/3quZq19
Edward J. Drea's MACARTHUR'S ULTRA (1992) used allied code-breaking to show that the "46,000 U.S. deaths estimate" was outmoded quickly. The costs might have been inflated, but the Japanese were building up for a major defense for the autumn of 1945.
https://amzn.to/3Hexy7f
D.M. Giangreco's HELL TO PAY (2009) argued that a review of War Department records, as well as President Hoover's study on the subject for the government, showed massive casualty estimates as well.
https://amzn.to/3kqpruv
The litigation of the evidence and the tendency for heated rhetoric helped produce what Walker calls the "middle ground."
Richard Frank's DOWNFALL (1999) used Japanese documents to show that the Japanese gov't was nowhere near surrendering prior to Hiroshima -- though the U.S. KIA and casualty estimates were overblown.
https://amzn.to/3wB3I84
Tsuyoshi Hasegawa's RACING THE ENEMY (2005) used U.S., Soviet, and Japanese archives to argue that it was the two-punch combination of the Soviet moves towards Manchuria and Hiroshima which led Japan to surrender -- a complex argument.
https://amzn.to/3D8bA3j
John Dower's CULTURES OF WAR (2010) argued that Truman was acutely sensitive to new battlefield losses as the war wound down on other fronts and that these would have been unacceptable to him and the public given that the bomb was available.
https://amzn.to/3c6dkye
Campbell Craig and Sergey Radchenko's THE ATOMIC BOMB AND THE ORIGINS OF THE COLD WAR (2008) argued that Hiroshima was intended to end the war, Nagasaki to keep the Soviets from invading Manchuria and threatening U.S. interests in Asia. amzn.to/3wR0gGR
Wilson Miscamble's FROM ROOSEVELT TO TRUMAN (2007) argued that Truman wanted to save American lives, whatever the cost, since those were his special obligation. Casualty estimates were irrelevant.
https://amzn.to/3wB4xhg
Andrew J. Rotter's THE WORLD'S BOMB (2008) argued that Truman's motivations were to save U.S. lives, whatever the number, and the it was highly unlikely the Emperor could have convinced a fractured cabinet to surrender without the bomb or Soviet entry.
https://amzn.to/3qqR3Ul
Marc Gallicchio's UNCONDITIONAL (2020) framed the debate in both Japan and the U.S. over how to end the war as fractured and polarized for domestic political purposes -- and how many of those arguments live on today.
https://amzn.to/3qvNxrB
I'm leaving out important contributions in all of these camps and haven't discussed many key issues: Japanese and U.S. civ-mil relations; debates over such a demonstration bombing; the warnings of scientists; and the "use as made ready" posture towards the use of the bomb.
The basic point is that the literature is capacious, nuanced, and the facts matter: both as a point of history and as points in the broader moral debates about WWII, war in general, and nuclear weapons in particular. It's foolishly glib to act otherwise.
Again, props to J. Samuel Walker for his historiographical essay in AMERICA IN THE WORLD (2014) which provides pithy summaries of these debates and the factual points on which they turn.
https://amzn.to/3wHeEBo
No Sound Cloud but I would encourage you all to follow people who are honest-to-God nuclear experts like @wellerstein @ProfTalmadge @NarangVipin @DrRadchenko @Fiona_Cunning among many others.
(And subscribe to my Shakespeare-themed podcast, @BardFlies)
Yeah, the bottom line is still that strategic bombing mostly doesn’t work.
It looks like everything after the first post of that Twitter thread can’t be read unless you log in. Here are some quotes:
It is super awful.
The day before, a drone strike killed a civilian and injured more in Moscow. I didn't like that happening, but I looked at the other side: THOUSANDS of civilians killed in Ukraine.
I hate all this. I just want it to end and for dictators to stop existing/hurting their own/other countries' people.
I wonder if Ukraine is making a super hard push with everything they've got, because they have a 50-50 chance they can't count on US support for the next 4 years.
Between this and Kursk, the war is bound to get more and more inland for the Russians. If the strains of sanctions + labour shortage + long term effects of the the temporary fixes start to roll in the lives of the average of Russian things could turn ugly, fast.
When it will happen though, and in what way, who knows.
I don't want Russian civilians to get killed (well, I don't want anyone to get killed). I saw some discussion on Reddit that was unsurprisingly disgusting. So much blood thirst. It seems appropriate to retaliate by going after infrastructure, just as Russia is doing to Ukraine. It will still impact civilians and impedes their ability to invade.
Ukrainian military receives 18 Bohdana howitzers financed by Denmark (Kyiv Independent)
Russian cities left defenseless as Ukraine ramps up drone attacks (Kyiv Independent)
Backed By Tanks And Covered By Glide-Bombing Fighter Jets, Ukrainian Troops Have Advanced Into Russia Along A New Axis
It's worth noting that this incursion is in the area west of the existing incursion and south of the Seym river (where Ukraine previously blew up all bridges), so calling it a "new axis" seems wrong to me. It's just the next step of the ongoing Kursk incursion: Take control of the boxed-in area where Russia is unable to resupply their forces.