دانلود کتاب تصمیمات هسته‌ای – تغییر مسیر برنامه‌های سلاح‌های هسته‌ای

The pursuit of nuclear weapons is rarely the story of a race to the bomb at any cost. Even the five initial nuclear pursuers, each of which worked to acquire nuclear weapons in the context of World War II, did not take uniform paths. The United States devoted vast national resources to developing a fission bomb as quickly as possible, and the British government provided expert and material support to that project.1 The Soviet Union, Germany, and Japan made different decisions, however, resulting in different approaches to nuclear weapons development. Those nuclear decisions shaped not only the outcome of the atomic programs but also, quite possibly, of the war itself. Japan offers an interesting example. Japan’s uneven efforts to develop nuclear weapons were initiated by Army Minister Tōjō Hideki in 1940, well before the United States launched the Manhattan Project. Most Japanese officials remained unconvinced that atomic bomb research and development should be prioritized, and the poorly funded program made slow and unsteady progress.2 However, in October 1941 Tōjō ascended to the office of prime minister. After Japan’s 1942 loss at Midway, Tōjō led the cabinet to accelerate new weapons development, including the nuclear bomb projects.3 Despite the enormously high stakes for Japan, the effort, shaped by leaders’ decisions, did not succeed. While the American nuclear weapons project took the form of a single, focused effort, under Japan’s highly militarized government, different service branches conducted separate, fragmented nuclear programs.4 As Manhattan Project scientists made swift progress toward a nuclear test in New Mexico, Japanese scientists advised military officers that atomic weapons would take too long to build and declared that American scientists surely faced the same constraints and difficulties. Within one of the navy’s nuclear projects, the frustrated captain in charge had first told the scientists to redouble their efforts. But eventually he too abandoned the nuclear project in favor of other, well- established research and development programs that were making better progress. Scientists’ pessimistic reports continued to inform decision- making, and in June 1945— less than a month before the United States would successfully test its first nuclear device— Army Minister Anami Korechika decided to shut down the army’s nuclear program. The navy terminated a second nuclear project in July 1945. On August 6, 1945, the United States attacked the Japanese city of Hiroshima with the first nuclear weapon used in war. In the immediate aftermath, some leaders, including the emperor, recognized the likely implications. But the failure of Japan’s nuclear weapons effort, and the scientists’ belief that no other country could succeed where Japan had failed, injected confusion and doubt into official discussions. The army rejected the possibility of an American atomic bomb, branding as propaganda President Harry S. Truman’s post- attack announcement to the world. And the few military officers who were willing to accept that the United States had produced one atomic bomb assumed the Americans lacked the capacity to quickly produce more. Japan’s military elected to proceed with existing plans to defend Japan from invasion. In contrast, Soviet leaders already knew that the US atomic effort had succeeded and correctly interpreted the news from Hiroshima. Having previously agreed to attack Japan no later than August 15, and realizing that the atomic bomb would change the course of the war’s conclusion, the Soviet Union launched a million- soldier attack against Japanese troops in Manchuria on August 9, broadcasting the declaration of war on Moscow Radio a day earlier. The forceful denials and expressions of doubt from Japan’s scientific and military experts, which arose from their frustrations with the nuclear project and the decisions to abandon the work, had delayed Japan’s response to the bombing of Hiroshima. Now, reeling from the additional shock of the Soviet attack, Japan’s Supreme War Council met in a bomb shelter beneath the imperial palace and began at last to discuss surrender with new urgency. Despite the common context of World War II, Japan’s nuclear development looked very different from America’s, and different still from the Soviet Union’s. As today’s nuclear hopefuls work toward acquiring nuclear arsenals, their programs, too, have taken paths that have been difficult to predict. Approximately two dozen states have decided, at some point, to pursue the bomb. Yet throughout the nuclear age, the progress states have made toward that goal has been neither linear nor consistent. Why does the pursuit of nuclear weapons look so different across cases? How can we make sense of the range of paths to and away from the bomb?