TOWARDS A WORLD WITHOUT WARS
by Joseph Rotblat
Former President, Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs, and
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, 1995
This lecture will be mainly about humankind and science, which is part of humankind.
And since I am a scientist, I'll talk a little bit about myself.
Humanity, An Endangered Species
I am a man of peace. Of course, you would expect this of a
person who has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, but that
doesn't necessarily follow. I am also a pacifist. I abhor war. I
dislike immensely any violence. But I am not an absolute
pacifist. I describe myself as something like a realistic pacifist,
though that may sound like an oxymoron. I am not an absolute
pacifist, because I do not believe in absolutes. Nature is so immensely rich with infinite
variety of possibilities that nothing can be excluded. By the same token, nothing should
be impossible. Any concept that seems out of this world can be realized if enough faith
and effort are put into it. A world without war is such a concept. The theme of my lecture
is to indicate to you that this is a necessary condition for the survival of humankind on
this planet.
You may have different views about the origin of the human species. You may take the
view of the Judeo-Christian Bible that it is the deed of God on the sixth day of creation.
Or you may take the other extreme, the view of the rationalists who say that human life is
the result of an infinite number of seemingly random changes in the molecular structure
of some parts of the body. But whatever view you take, I'm sure you will agree that life is
our most precious commodity. We cannot imagine that the whole species can come to an
end, least of all by the action of man. Yet, the unimaginable has now become possible.
The continuation of the human species on earth can no longer be guaranteed. The human
species is now an endangered species. Of course, one always envisions that human life
may come to an end. But we always think of it as the result of some cosmological event,
say a collision with a meteorite or with a comet or perhaps a violent volcanic eruption.
Indeed, we believe that some types of animals that once dominated this planet, like the
dinosaurs, became extinct as the result of some such event, although we don't exactly
know the nature of that event. Because that event took place 65 million years ago and
nothing of that magnitude has occurred since, you may say that for all practical purposes,
we can forget about it.
That human life could come to an end by the action of man was never considered
seriously. Of course, throughout history we have had wars with terrible carnage. Despite
the fact that the 20th century is supposed to be an enlightened century, in absolute terms,
the largest number of fatalities in war have occurred in this century. In the First World
War, 8.5 million people perished as the direct result of combat. In the Second World
War, 55 million people died. And since the end of the Second World War, between 20
million and 40 million people have been killed in various wars, mainly in the developing
countries.
Perhaps the worst case of genocide occurred during the Second World War when, under
the orders of Hitler, a systematic, almost a scientific program of extermination was
carried out on people for no reason other than that they were members of a certain race.
In all these atrocities, however, the human species as such was not endangered, largely
for technical reasons.
Now, however, these technical obstacles have been overcome. Omnicidal weapons have
been introduced, the weapons that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The destruction of
these cities heralded a new age, the Nuclear Age. The chief characteristic of this age is
that for the first time it has become possible for man to bring the whole human species to
an end in a single act.
Now, I wouldn't be surprised if some of you think that I am exaggerating. I wouldn't be
surprised because I myself, although involved in the making of these weapons, did not
believe it either. When we started the atom bomb project in England in 19391940, which
was well before the Manhattan Project in the United States, we already had a good idea
of the enormous destructive power of the bomb. We knew all about the blast effect. We
knew about the heat wave. We also knew about the radioactive fallout. But even so, we
did not believe that the atom bomb could bring about the end of the human race. For that,
we calculated, one would need a very large number of nuclear weapons, something of the
order of 100,000 of them. And even in our most pessimistic scenarios, we could not
imagine that human society would be so stupid as to accumulate this obscenely huge
number of weapons for which we could see no purpose whatsoever. And yet, it turns out
that human society was that stupid.
Until a very short time ago, this huge number of nuclear warheads, a hundred thousand of
them, were accumulated mainly in the arsenals of the two great powers of the time, the
United States and the Soviet Union. And on several occasions we came very close to their
actual use.
I remember one such an occasion in particular-the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, when we
were a hair's breadth away from the ultimate catastrophe. It all depended on the decision
of one man. Fortunately, Nikita Khrushchev was a sane man. But we may not be so lucky
next time.
"Here then is the problem which we present to you, stark and dreadful and inescapable.
Shall we put an end to the human race or shall mankind renounce war?"
Forty-two years ago, a number of scientists who realized the great danger to humanity
issued a manifesto known as the Russell-Einstein Manifesto. The first part of this
manifesto said: "We are speaking on this occasion not as members of this or that nation,
continent, or creed, but as human beings, members of the species man, whose continued
existence is in doubt." Then it went on: "Here then is the problem which we present to
you, stark and dreadful and inescapable. Shall we put an end to the human race or shall
mankind renounce war?"
This manifesto was signed by 11 scientists, starting with Bertrand Russell and Albert
Einstein. I am now the only surviving signatory of that manifesto, and as such I feel it my
duty, even my mission, to keep on posing to the world this question: "Shall we put an end
to the human race or shall mankind renounce war?"
Men of Peace, Leading the Arms Race
With the end of the Cold War, the immediate danger has abated. We are now in the
process of reducing the nuclear arsenals. We still don't see any signs of willingness of the
five nuclear-weapons states to go ahead with their elimination, although they are
committed to this. Therefore, nuclear weapons are still here. And as long as they are here,
there's always the danger they may be used. But, as I said, the immediate danger is now
somewhat less. However, other means of mass destruction may be invented, other means
perhaps even more readily available than nuclear weapons.
Here again, you may wonder why scientists should engage in activities that may bring the
human race to an end. Going back to nuclear weapons, I have to remind you that the atom
bomb was the invention of scientists who started the work on their own volition. Nobody
compelled them to do this. Most of them were people with a humanistic approach to
science. But how did they come to engage in such activities?
Perhaps the best way to answer this is to use a specific example, and here I'm using
myself as this example. From my youth I was a great enthusiast of science. I believed that
science has a purpose, that it should serve mankind and improve the lot of people,
certainly not cause destruction. So how did it come about that I, on my own volition, in
1939 when I was in Liverpool, went to the head of the department, James Chadwick, who
discovered the neutron, and suggested to him that we should start work on the atom
bomb?
The answer to this question lies partially in a coincidence, a quirk of history, namely, that
the breakthrough discovery that led to the atom bomb was made shortly before the
Second World War. This vital discovery was the discovery of fission, which was made by
two Austrian scientists, Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch, following some work of German
chemists. The discovery was that if you hit the nucleus of a uranium atom with neutrons,
an elementary particle, it may break into two almost equal halves, for example, into the
atoms of krypton and barium. In this process, a relatively large amount of energy is
released.
Now this paper by Frisch and Meitner was published in February 1939. As it happens, at
that time, I was doing some experiments using uranium and neutrons. It occurred to me
that in this process, apart from producing these two fragments, some more neutrons may
also be emitted. The process may be something like this. You hit the uranium atom; you
produce these two types of atoms and also a few neutrons as well. It didn't take more that
a few days to carry out the experiments that confirmed that, indeed, several neutrons were
coming out at this process of fission. Let me add very quickly that this same discovery
was made independently and simultaneously in several other laboratories. This is how
science works. When an idea is ripe, it occurs to many scientists.
What is the importance of this observation? The importance is that you can start a nuclear
chain reaction. If you take some of the neutrons that are emitted here, you can use them
to hit other uranium nuclei to produce more fission and more neutrons and so on. It'll go
on and very quickly, in an exponential fashion, a very large amount of energy is released.
This was the first time it became possible to utilize the vast stores of energy contained in
the atomic nucleus. And this is the energy that you are now using. About one-fifth of all
our electricity in this country (U.K.) comes from this source, nuclear reactors.
Out of this, another idea emerged, namely, that if this multiplication of neutrons in the
fission process occurs in a very short time-and my calculations have shown it would
occur in less than a microsecond, less than a millionth of a second-you then get a mighty
explosion, in other words, the atom bomb. So the idea of the atom bomb had already
occurred to me and to other scientists in early 1939.
As soon as I had this idea, I tried to push it out of my mind. The notion that I should be
involved in making a bomb, a weapon of mass destruction, was completely contrary to
everything I held true about science. So I tried to forget about it. Nevertheless, I had this
feeling that other scientists might not have the same moral scruples. In particular, I had in
mind the scientists in Germany, where some of the work had started. I was afraid that if
German scientists under Hitler pursued the idea and made a bomb, then it was likely that
Hitler would win the war and Nazism would then conquer the world. I could not accept
this. This was a terrible time for me, perhaps about the worst dilemma that a scientist
could experience. On the one hand, working on a tool of mass destruction went against
all my ideas of science. On the other hand, these very ideas were in danger of being
eradicated if Hitler acquired the bomb and the war was lost.
Nuclear Deterrence, A Flawed Principle
It took me the whole summer of 1939 to fight with myself about this, and eventually an
external event made up my mind for me. That event was the start of the Second World
War when Germany invaded my native country, Poland. Within a few weeks, the German
army overran Poland, and the whole military might of Germany was exposed. It became
clear to me that if, in addition, Hitler had the bomb, then he would no doubt use it and the
whole of our world, science, and humanity would be lost. And this I could not accept.
So this is the reason why I went to Chadwick and suggested that we start work on the
atom bomb. I subsequently have found that many other scientists started the work for the
same reasons. I did not abandon my humanitarian principles. On the contrary, I used
these principles as a reason for starting the work. I reasoned that if the bomb could be
made, then the only way to prevent Hitler from using his bomb against us would be to
have a bomb ourselves with which to threaten retaliation. This is, in other words, the
concept of nuclear deterrence, which is used to this day as a reason for retaining nuclear
weapons. And as I've said, other scientists used the same sort of reasoning. We needed
the bomb not to be used, not even against Germany, but to prevent its use by the
Germans. So, we had to act quickly before the German scientists could succeed.
As it turned out, this fear was unfounded. The Germans did start their atom bomb
research at the same time we did, but due to some wrong calculations and faulty
experiments, they came to the conclusion that it wouldn't work. They thought such a
device would weigh a ton or more and that in any case they couldn't get enough material
for it. So they gave up the atom bomb project in 1942, even before the Manhattan Project
in the United States started in earnest. But, of course, we didn't know about this until
much later.
Later on, I realized that this concept of nuclear deterrence is flawed for various reasons.
One reason, for example, is that deterrence will only work if your opponent is a
reasonable person. It will not work with an unreasonable person. And as we know from
history, often we do get national leaders who behave irrationally. And indeed, even if
they are rational leaders, they may begin to behave irrationally in case of war, particularly
if they face defeat. I'm convinced, although I cannot give you any proof for it, that if
Hitler had had the bomb, his last order from the bunker in Berlin in April 1945 would
have been to drop the bomb on London, even if it meant terrible retribution to Germany.
It would have been in line with his philosophy of Götterdammerung, the "Twilight of the
Gods."
But perhaps the worst of our mistakes was a naive belief that the military people would
listen to us, the scientists, once they got hold of the weapon. Of course, they did not.
They had from the beginning the idea of how to use the bomb and what the target should
be. And the target was always Japan.
One may have different opinions about the motivation for using the first atom bombs;
you will get different versions depending on the historians to whom you talk. I'm not a
historian, but I have personal experience. And I will never forget something that was said
by General Leslie Groves, who was the head of the Manhattan Project. The other person
here is James Chadwick, who at that time was in Los Alamos, where he was the head of
the British mission.
Groves came to Los Alamos from time to time. I was living with the Chadwicks. On one
occasion in March 1944, after a private dinner, Groves said quite casually, "You realize,
of course, that the main purpose of the project, is to subdue the Russians." I want to
remind you that this was in March 1944, long before the war ended. This was the time
when the Russians were our ally. They carried the main burden of keeping the German
army engaged and giving the Allies time to prepare for the invasion of the continent. And
I was told that all our work there was to subdue these people.
When I told people about this remark, nobody would believe me. They said, no, you must
be wrong. He wouldn't have said this. People even called me a liar; one of them had been
a member of the House of Lords.
Ten years later, however, on another occasion, Groves actually repeated this in more or
less the same words. He said, "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." This is published. Everybody can see it.
What was the result of the first bomb? In my opinion, an immediate consequence of
dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was that it provoked the Soviet Union to
start its own project so as to take away the monopoly of the Americans. And within a few
years, with the help of spies from the British mission, they succeeded. The United States
became alarmed at having lost the nuclear monopoly and started a rush project on the
super bomb, the hydrogen bomb. But here too the Russians were on their heels. And so
began this nuclear arms race, which resulted in building up these enormous nuclear
arsenals and brought us very close to utter catastrophe. Thus the scientists' original idea
of making the bomb in order that it should not be used failed miserably. Not only was the
bomb used, it was used as soon as it was made and used against a civilian population. We
did fail miserably.
Scientists, Beguiled by Inventions
I would not like to represent this as a problem of scientists versus the government. It
wasn't so clear-cut. Many scientists foresaw what would happen if the bomb was used in
the way it was used. One of the first of these people was Niels Bohr, one of the greatest
scientists of this century. Already in 1944, he foresaw the dire consequences of a nuclear
arms race, and he came out with an idea about how to prevent it. He presented this to
Roosevelt, to Churchill, but they rejected it.
Later on, after the first test of the weapon in Alamogordo in July 1945, a number of
scientists began to express their horror about the possible use of the bomb on civilian
populations. One of these was Leo Szilard, a Hungarian scientist, who was one of the first
to think of the atom bomb idea and was very active in trying to prevent its use. But his
voice was not listened to.
Other scientists, however, were in favor of the use of the bomb. One of them, the person
about whom probably all of you know, was Robert Oppenheimer, who was the head of
the Los Alamos mission.
As I said before, many of these scientists began to work in the secret laboratories, and to
a very large extent, the momentum of the arms race was led by scientists. Scientists
themselves, on both sides of the iron curtain, kept the arms race going. They kept
improving their own weapons and making the weapons of the other side more vulnerable.
Often they did it not because of a real need but, I regret to say, for the sheer exhilaration
of inventing new gadgets. It's a terrible thought, and it's not my opinion alone. One
person who made it known in this country was Lord Zuckerman, who was for many years
the chief scientific advisor to the British government. This is what he said:
When it comes to nuclear weapons, the military chiefs of both sides, usually serve only as
a channel through which the men in their laboratories transmit their views. It is the man
in the laboratory, who would at the start, propose that for this or that arcane reason it
would be useful to include a node, or to devise a new Nuclear Warhead. It is he, the
technician, not the commander in the field, who is at the heart of the arms race.
I also want to quote another person who actually worked on the design of the atom bomb,
Theodore Taylor, who is now one of the most active antinuclear campaigners. Drawing
on his own experience, he said:
The most stimulating factor of all was simply the intense exhilaration that every scientist
or engineer experiences when he or she has the freedom to explore completely new
technical concepts and then to bring them into reality.
I have spent a great part of my talk on the history of the atom bomb because it is vital to
my theme. I posed a question in the beginning: "Is it possible for a scientist, a humanistic
scientist, to become engaged in a work of mass destruction?" I've shown by my own
example that yes, it is possible.
I pose another question. "Is it possible for a group of scientists, collectively to keep on
working on weapons that put the whole of mankind in danger?" And again, the answer is
yes.
It happened once. It may happen again. The danger is real. Nuclear weapons at the
moment are perhaps the only means that can bring about this catastrophe. But in the
course of time, if science goes on, other means of mass destruction may be developed.
Scientists, Making Amends
I am sure you will agree with me that we must not allow this catastrophe to happen. We
owe it to our forefathers, who bequeathed to us the enormous riches that resulted from
thousands of years of their work. We owe it to future generations to make sure they will
be able to enjoy them. We owe an allegiance to humanity. Now, this is a job for all of us,
for everyone who has an interest in preserving humanity, but this is particularly a job for
scientists, because most of the dangers may result from the work of scientists.
At one time, science was a totally innocent affair. It was largely the pursuit of gentlemen
of leisure. They would go around and notice some old species of plants, or find fossils, or
gaze at the skies or at some unusual events, then they would write down their
observations and talk about them with their fellows. All this was quite harmless and
innocent. It was almost an axiom of science that it had nothing to do with ordinary life. In
the course of time, there developed precepts such as "science should be undertaken for its
own sake," "science is neutral," "science has nothing to do with politics," "science cannot
be blamed for its misapplication," and "scientists are just technical workers."
The problem is that many scientists to this day believe in this. They still think they live in
an ivory tower and what is going on outside is of no concern to them. But this is
obviously untrue. The development of nuclear weapons shows what an enormous
influence science has. It may determine the destiny of the whole of humankind. Therefore
scientists must take this into account. They must remember the impact, the social impact,
of science.
A group of scientists I mentioned before, starting from the Russell-Einstein Manifesto,
began to think about this in the 1950s, when the danger became evident. This started with
an idea from Bertrand Russell. He communicated it to Albert Einstein, who immediately
agreed to the concept that scientists should get together in a conference to see what they
could do to avert the danger.
The result was the manifesto issued in London in 1955. Russell gave me the honor of
being the chairman of that session. I want to give you this final paragraph from the
manifesto:
There lies before us, if we choose, continued progress and happiness, knowledge, and
wisdom. Shall we instead choose death because we cannot forget our quarrels? We
appear as human beings to human beings. Remember your humanity and forget the rest.
If you can do so, the way lies open for a new paradise. If you cannot, there lies before
you the risk of universal death.
As a result of this manifesto, scientists got together in a little village in Nova Scotia
called Pugwash. Out of this first meeting, there grew up a new movement of scientists.
The Pugwash Movement is an expression of the awareness of the social and the moral
duty of scientists to help to prevent and overcome the actual and potential harmful effects
of scientific and technological innovations. We take this very seriously. We have been
working for 40 years. Although I should not be too immodest, I believe the work has
helped to avert the danger of nuclear war so far.
During the Cold War, our main effort was on this immediate danger. Halt the arms race.
Prevent a nuclear war. Now that the immediate danger is over, we have to go farther. In
the long run, the elimination of nuclear weapons, although very important immediately, is
not the answer, because nuclear weapons cannot be disinvented. We cannot erase from
our memories the knowledge of how to make them. Should there be in the future a
serious dispute between great nations, it would not take them long to rebuild nuclear
arsenals. We would be back where we were.
The long-term solution is obvious. You must not talk of any war. You must not create a
situation in which even conventional weapons would be used, which can then escalate
into using other types of weapons. Therefore our long-term objective now is the
elimination of war altogether. And this is a task not just for scientists but for everybody.
Wanting Peace, Prepare for Peace
I realize that to many of you the notion of a world without war is something completely
utopian, a crazy idea. How can there be a world without war? This is a reasonable
question. For many centuries we've been governed by a policy based on the Roman motto
that says: Si vis pacem para bellum-If you want peace, prepare for war. Throughout the
centuries, we followed this motto. We prepared for war and what we had was war, not
peace. And this continues even now in the Nuclear Age. We have got to do something
about this.
If you think about this seriously, you will find that a war-free world is not such a crazy
idea. We are getting to it without knowing it. We are getting it gradually. Just look at the
situation in the world today. In Europe, which has experienced continuous wars, the two
mortal enemies have always been France and Germany. Now a war between these two
countries is quite inconceivable. This applies to all the other members of the European
Union. This is an enormous revolution, if you think about it, a change that would have
been considered unbelievable even 25 years ago.
We are gradually realizing the futility of war. We are gradually realizing that we must
find other means to solve disputes. Nevertheless, for this concept to be accepted
generally, we have to have a process of education that will make us feel like members of
the world community.
In other countries and on other continents too we see that military regimes are crumbling.
Democracies are being introduced. At the present time, there is not a single international
war going on in the world. There are, of course, civil wars with terrible casualties, as
we've seen in Rwanda, but even these are gradually becoming fewer. We are gradually
realizing the futility of war. We are gradually realizing that we must find other means to
solve disputes.
Nevertheless, for this concept to be accepted generally, we have to have a process of
education that will make us feel like members of the world community. In particular, we
must begin to think about security in global terms rather than in national terms. Now that
any war could result in the destruction all humankind, we must think in these terms. We
have to start getting used to the idea that we are members of the world community.
Strangely enough, this is becoming more realizable as the result of the progress of
science and technology. It is really paradoxical that the same human activity, science and
technology, that can bring the whole of mankind to an end can also be our salvation. The
fantastic advances in science, technology, communication, and transportation have
shrunk the globe and brought us all very close to each other. We can now, in an instant,
see what's going on anywhere in the world. We've become almost like one family. And
further advances in technology will make it even more so. We are gradually creating the
tools to bring us all together and therefore to have no war.
This is occurring even on formal terms, if you look at the number of treaties that have
been signed recently with the great majority of nations participating. We have a
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The Chemical Weapons Convention just came into
force a few months ago with 167 signatories. The Nuclear Arms Proliferation Treaty has
187 adherents. In other words, we are even formally getting to a state when we see the
need to avoid nuclear war. I am optimistic that that will come about, and I feel we must
do whatever we have to do to convince our governments and ourselves that we have to
change the basic approach to security, and to change it according to this motto: Si vis
pacem para pacem-If you want peace, prepare for peace.
I have been quoting many sources. In conclusion, may I quote myself? This is from my
Nobel Lecture in Oslo, and this is how I end it:
The quest for a war free world has a basic purpose, survival. But if in the process, we
learn to achieve it by love rather than by fear, by kindness rather than by compulsion, if
in the process, we learn to combine the essential with the enjoyable, the expedient with
the benevolent, the practical with the beautiful, this will be an excellent incentive to
embark on this great task. But above all, remember your humanity.
(Public lecture given at Taplow Court, Maidenhead, UK, on September 28, 1997.)