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Mars Waits

© Larry Winn

On the morning of August 6, 1945, a lone American aircraft progressed almost noiselessly through a clear sky over Hiroshima, Japan. Inexplicably reversing course, it dashed away at full throttle to avoid the effects of the nuclear Hell it had just unleashed on the city below. It was the first time human beings had ever done anything that nasty to other human beings.

On the plus side, nuclear weapons have prevented the outbreak of another war like the one they ended. The reason: atomic doomsday machines put national leaders at risk. Such men tend to view the loss of their own lives as unacceptable.

Nothing lasts forever. Frontier theory predicts that enclosure, defined in "First Principles", will guarantee a change in the nature of war to permit the appropriation of one group's resources by another, facilitated by the use of lethal force. War is zero-sum economics at work on an international level.

Indeed, a glance at the headlines reveals that Ares, god of war in Greek mythology, called Mars by the Romans, is at large on planet earth. We contemplate famine-driven wars and modern crusades accompanied by such environmental damage that the future of biological diversity, if not life on this planet, is in question. Environmental terrorism has become a fact of existence. Fueled by religious intolerance and ignited by a pathological lust for power, Middle Eastern wars have left miles of beach paved with oil oxidizing in the heat. In some places, not even algae will grow.

Countries with reputations for hair-trigger military responsiveness are acquiring both weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them. India acquired "the bomb" in 1974. Pakistan tested its own nuclear weapon in May of last year. Israel probably has a covert arsenal. South Africa may also have a secret nuclear stockpile. Iraq has atomic aspirations; so has Iran.

China is already a strategic nuclear threat to the U.S. Taiwan and North Korea have shown interest in acquiring nuclear weapons of their own, this in spite of the fact that both are signatories to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.

It doesn't take a missile to deliver weapons of mass destruction. A truck, ship or civilian aircraft would do as well. It's easy. Terrorists could do it. Terrorists will do it.

To keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of potential combatants would require not only the destruction of stockpiles everywhere (assuming we can find them), but also the killing-off of the men who carry the knowledge of how to build nukes. Said CIA Director Robert Gates (in the Bush administration) about scientists with the knowledge to design nuclear weapons, "We know from experience that small numbers of key people count."