Fear and thinking
Monday, September 21, 2009 at 05:49AM It’s hard to recreate the atmosphere that dominated the Cold War. Today there is a tendency to regard nuclear weapons as weapons that used to scare people but that seem relatively benign today. But the fear that informed those early discussions about these weapons was powerful. It was so strong that even a redeployment of missiles - just moving them around - could touch off a crisis that almost led to nuclear war.
Emotions ran so high and the hysteria was such that Americans insisted that their children practice drills for responding to nuclear attacks.
Shelters were built in towns and stocked with supplies. Signs - particularly visible bright yellow and black signs - were placed on buildings so people would know where the run to when the attack came. Emergency announcements were practiced on radio and television. Families built their own shelters in back yards and basements. To say that the fear reached a fever pitch is certainly accurate. To say that it reached hysteria might be too strong - but on the other hand, you could certainly argue that hysteria is exactly what it was.
The emotional impact of America’s vulnerability to nuclear attack was magnified by the fact that America had been so safe for so long. Surrounded by two large oceans on east and west and adjoining two friendly neighbors to north and south - the United States had faced no real threat to its homeland in more than 130 years. No living American had felt what it was to fear attack. No living American had ever even talked to a grandfather or grandmother who remembered the fear of attack from outside the country. The sense of safety was ingrained by generations of security. Into this confident sense of ongoing invulnerability the nation plunged into the fear of nuclear war. The notion of nuclear attack ripped psychic holes filled with doubt, anxiety and overpowering fear.
Perhaps no other event symbolizes the kind of group madness that can sweep over a fearful people as well as the McCarthy witch hunts of the early 1950s. Convinced that secret communists within the US government were subverting America and - worse yet - stealing the secret of the atomic bomb, Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin held hearings across more than three years that falsely accused hundreds of loyal Americans of communist sympathies on the basis of innuendo and hearsay. The hearings destroyed lives, disrupted government, and brought hysterical fear and accusation into the heart of the governing process.
What was the result of pouring all this fear into the American psyche? Fear is a powerful motivator. Fear-filled people can perform feats of strength and stamina (not to mention speed) they find astounding afterward. Some forms of fear, it is claimed, help us to focus attention on important problems. (“Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”) But in general fear does not lead to clear thought. Ask five witnesses of a horrifying event what they saw and you will rarely get five identical answers. Putting pressure on a person, inducing fear in them, almost always leads to distorted thinking. The people in horror movies who are petrified with fear while we scream at them what they should obviously be doing (“Get out of there!”) are one popular example of how fear can confuse and incapacitate us.
So given that Americans were deeply afraid of nuclear weapons, what affect did this fear have on judgments about nuclear war and nuclear weapons? How did the fear shape beliefs about what nuclear weapons were capable of or especially well-suited for? As we shall see, fear led American policy makers and nuclear strategists (as well as ordinary citizens) astray. Fear created a series of distortions and incorrect judgments that interacted to create a profoundly mistaken view of nuclear weapons. And this should not surprise us. Of course the fear of nuclear war warped thinking during the Cold War. It makes perfect sense. What would be surprising is if it hadn’t. The problem is that much of that Cold War thinking is still governing what we think and say about nuclear weapons. Mistakes were made in a time of fear and now they’ve become embedded into the debate. Our responsibility - now that we’re in a time of calm and greater security - is to root out the ideas that grew up out of fear and to create instead more realistic and sensible judgments.
Reader Comments (3)
Yeah, I've been writing like a madman and been really bad about keeping up with the blog. Also last week my car died, I had to fight with PSE&G, the refrigerator died, and the furnace broke. Not a good week. Sigh. The life of a nuclear scholar is never easy. Except for Jeffrey Lewis.