Saturday, May 13, 2006

Secrets of the Bomb

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19010

The secrets behind the atom bomb were kept within a circle of physicists. Are they now common knowledge for any and all who seek it?

The precedent was set. Now the bomb, or aligning one's country to a nuclear "power", such is the case with Canada, is a requisite for national security interests. The race to the bomb, motivated by the assumption that the Germans were "close" to developing it themselves, was founded on rather erroneous intelligence. The breakdown of intelligence gathering exacerbates the anxiety that stirs within the insecure hegemon.

Fear justifies the use of irrational means in fulfilling "righteous" ends. But the tenuous situation that is called the nuclear age demands diplomatic communication. Muscular sabre-rattling is absent of poise or control. It capitulates to chaos, and shouts futilely at a silent universe. What is most integral for peace in an age of danger? The paradoxical answer is trust. Trust does not mean surrendering to the will of the "enemy", giving into every demand. That is not compromise, but capitulation. The imposition of a singular will onto the "other" is also devoid of trust. Trust means trusting the dialogue. Trust means that communication shall never break down, because dialogue continues as long as we exist. Listening to the claim of the other. Considering it and respond.

However, communication is not a debating society. The walls of the ivory tower, the fortresses of suburbia, or the avant-garde architecture of urban technicity is illusory protection. Understanding and trust does not lie in the superficial matrices of gesture and preception, criticism and commentary. Protest, but do not just protest. Commentary is often a profitable endeavor for the disingenous, committed to retrenching the lines, and exploiting vertiginous sources of fear. The trouble of "taking a position" is that it is difficult not to rage against contrary positions; to defend a singular truth, your truth. War cannot be adopted as a legitimate means for protesting conflict. Sitting on the fence, however, ignores the possibility of violence and the absurdity that is life.

Violence is a part of life, as bizzare as that sounds. The essentialist argument, however, is erroneous. It assumes violence is a cleanser, a purifier. The "Great War", the war to end all wars, was certainly anything but. Humanity, even though we are told otherwise, is not by nature either good and peaceful or evil and violent. The former, of course, is espoused by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who calls for a return to innocent origins. The latter is famously attributed to Thomas Hobbes, who describes man's natural state as being "nasty, brutish, and short". The Rousseauian account asserts violence as the product of modern civilization, as Hobbes places it within the natural being of man. We are not by nature either good or bad. It is how we respond to our circumstances that decides our fate.

War, one must remember, is the absolutely final resort. And even then, it cannot be seen as an absolute in of itself. Because if victory is judged to be legitimate at any cost, the conflict destroys the victors as it does the defeated.