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Then, too: Was it in fact the Bomb that brought the war to an end? The Japanese government was in total disarray in the summer of 1945, so Hiroshima and Nagasaki may merely have provided an excuse for a surrender. The Soviets entered the war on Aug. 8--after Hiroshima and before Nagasaki. The Japanese may have concluded that it would be better to surrender to the Americans than to risk prolonging the war and allowing the Soviets to take more spoils. The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey conducted just after the war concluded that the atom bombings were not decisive in defeating the Japanese, and in reality may have strengthened their will to resist.
Certainly almost all who were involved in the Hiroshima decision believed at the time that the Bomb would be effective and that its use was necessary. Both presumptions, applied initially to Japan, were soon to shape all nuclear diplomacy after the war, since the presumptions of necessity and effectiveness would make threats to use nuclear weapons believable. Nixon inherited those presumptions, though he came to question them. He did not believe that the bombing of civilian populations wins wars. Eventually the whole problem was to be made immaterial, once Soviet and American nuclear weapons so grew in numbers and in power that the threat of mutual annihilation emerged as the only strategy available to either side. At first Nixon observed this process. Later he managed it.
"I didn't really begin to realize the significance of the Bomb until I was a candidate for Congress, and came to Washington in 1947. Even then, my sense of how the Bomb changed the geopolitical balance of the world grew rather gradually. There were two immediate developments as a result of our having the Bomb. One: the demobilization on the part of the U.S.--much too fast. Two: the demobilization on the parts of the British and the French--much too fast because they had the crutch of the Bomb. Suddenly the U.S. was the most powerful nation in the world. From that time forward, whether we wanted to or not, we would have to play a major role on the world's stage.
"And I would say that we did not want to play that role. World power is something very much opposed to the ingrained American attitude. Basically, Americans are idealists. We go into war for pragmatic reasons, but we have to be appealed to on idealistic terms. We are very impatient about being in a world where balance of power may make a difference, where one must sometimes recognize that you win without getting total victory. The fact that the Bomb made us a world power meant that we had to learn how to be one, and it has been very difficult."
As Nixon talks, the mannerisms for which he has often been burlesqued start to crop up. Yet in his presence the sudden scowl, the self-administered hug are not only not funny; they do not seem at all spasmodic or out of joint with what he is saying. He is 72, and perhaps his mannerisms have grown less pronounced over the years. But here he is speaking about things with which he feels supremely comfortable, history and diplomacy, and the comfort shows in his face and body.