History is not just a record of what happened, it is a well of wisdom we can draw from to guide our actions today and in the future. Some dates are burned into our collective memory, such as Aug. 6 and 9, 1945, when nuclear weapons were used in war for the first and only time. Others are nearly forgotten.
One of those forgotten days is Aug. 17, 1945. Acting on behalf of the Scientific Panel of the Interim Committee, my grandfather, J. Robert Oppenheimer wrote advice from the top scientists on the Manhattan Project in a letter to Secretary of War Henry Stimson. Just a week after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the letter offered advice so rooted in first principles that all of it remains true 80 years later: no nation can achieve absolute security through nuclear dominance. Considering this reality, global leaders must collaborate to resolve the underlying tensions between their nations to achieve no less than making future wars impossible.
“We are not only unable to outline a program that would assure to this nation for the next decades hegemony in the field of atomic weapons; we are equally unable to ensure that such hegemony, if achieved, could protect us from the most terrible destruction,” he wrote 80 years ago.
During the war, scientists like Niels Bohr and my grandfather hoped the atomic bomb’s terrible power might end all wars between great powers. They believed that once total war was recognized as unwinnable, nations could abandon zero-sum thinking and turn their energies to cooperation as the basis of international peace.
“We believe that the safety of this nation—as opposed to its ability to inflict damage on an enemy power—cannot lie wholly or even primarily in its scientific or technical prowess,” penned my grandfather. “It can be based only on making future wars impossible.”
In one respect, that hope has been realized. Since 1945, there has not been another direct confrontation between great powers such as the two world wars. In another…
