So do you think the world would be in a better shape today, if the world would have listened to Neumann and had its nuclear war?
The characterization of starting a nuclear war as genocidal is very acurate, no matter how "noble" the intentions were. Stalinist sowjet russia was hell on earth, but nuking them would have just made hell spread and worse.
Von Neumann was clearly a genious. But when you leave out the dark details, it just becomes cult like glorification. I don't think, there should be a disclaimer everywhere he is mentioned, but in a praise article like this, it should be included.
The grandparent is misquoting von Neumann and taking his remarks way out of context. von Neumann was part of a presidential commission from 1945 that came up with policy recommendations for the post-nuclear age. They accurate surmised that Russia would get the bomb, and that this would lead to what we now call a Cold War, with all the downstream ramifications like constant geopolitical instability from proxy wars. They were 100% right on the money. Niels Bohr called it the "complementarity" of the bomb. It was really remarkable how much they figured out from an understanding of nuclear physics, their experience in the war, and some rudimentary game theory.
They also knew about thermonuclear bombs. von Neumann was instrumental in doing the theory to show it possible during the Manhattan project. A prediction from the commission was that the inevitable outcome of Russia getting the bomb would be a nuclear arms race to develop more powerful bombs, faster delivery vehicles, and hair-trigger firing mechanisms. They predicted nuclear brinkmanship, and the removal of safeguards. They knew it would only be a matter of time before real events, or accidental mistakes led to a nuclear exchange between these two powers. And the longer you waited, the more devastating this would be.
They came up with recommendations: a nuclear non-proliferation treaty with allowances for mutual inspections. A revival of a league of nations to settle disputes. A mutual-defense treaty whose members would be permitted access to Anglo-American nuclear weapons for defensive purposes only. All of these would come to pass eventually, but at the time they were completely rejected (except the UN, although it came to serve a different purpose) by Truman and Churchill. The idea of Russia developing a bomb on a short timescale was seen as ludicrous. The idea of a "Cold War" was science fiction.
But in 1950 the Soviet Union had just detonated their first atomic bomb some months before. They still had a ways to go to ramp up production and make it a practical, deployable weapon. They had the bomb though, and would no longer be willing (if they ever would have) to partake in an arms reduction, mutual defense non-proliferation treaty. The Cold War was suddenly real, and ramping up. Bohr and von Neumann were proven right.
The US had not yet developed the thermonuclear bomb, so the bombs they had were like the weaker ones dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These were powerful weapons, no doubt, but not fundamentally any worse than the kind of devastation that was already normalized with the firebombing of Dresden, Tokyo, and other cities. Just more compactly packaged. So there was a very brief window where the invasion of the Soviet Union could have happened and would have been successful. How many would have died depends on how long it would take to force a surrender. Certainly hundreds of thousands, likely millions.
So now we get to 1950, and what von Neumann is saying is essentially this: "Look, you political half-wits hacks failed to take action when we warned you five f@&$ing years ago that this would happen, while there was still time to have peaceably avoided this mess. Now millions will die in pointless proxy wars fought between client states in the decades to come, culminating in an eventual nuclear exchange that will kill billions, destroy world civilization, and maybe even the entire human race.
"Or, hear me out, we can put a stop to this right now with a preemptive invasion of the Soviet Union. Millions will die, but millions are going to die anyway, and we will possibly save billions. Stalin kills millions of his own people anyway."
He didn't use those words, but that's a summation of what his argument was at the time. Once again, this advice was rebuffed. The politicians didn't want to start a war the public wouldn't understand. Better, they thought, to kick the can down the road. He then countered with the quote in the grandparent post, which is essentially saying "No, kick the can and you get a bigger mess. Settle it now and fewer people have to die." Better to rip that bandaid off.
It's a calculus of death. But that's no different than the logic that went into bombing Japan to prevent an even more devastating invasion of Honshu. It is sickening and abhorrent, but not necessarily wrong, and it is not genocide.
I see, we have a different base moral.
Well, in my world it is absolutely wrong to nuke a civilian city.
"so the bombs they had were like the weaker ones dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These were powerful weapons, no doubt, but not fundamentally any worse than the kind of devastation that was already normalized with the firebombing of Dresden"
And the firebombing of Dresden was very wrong as well, but unlike those conventional bombings, the nuclear bombs lead to lasting contamination. The bang of a fusion bomb might be way bigger, but the radiation is way worse with nukes.
"to prevent an even more devastating invasion of Honshu"
And the calculus was never between nuking a civilian city vs. full scale invasion. There would have been plenty of other options, like let the bomb explode in the sky in view of the emperors palace, or if that fails, dropping it on actual military bases.
Humanitarian ethics was just not a factor anymore to those planning it. They wanted the data for the effect of a nuke on a city. And von Neumann seemed to have been among those cold planing strategists, since he did propose nuclear war with his quotes, where I do not see them out of context, but as a clear statement for first strike war with nuclear weapons. And the effect of this is genocidal.
It is a cautionary tale that, when dealing with humans and complex systems, these rational abstractions that assume perfectly spherical cows should be heavily discounted. The world is too complex to fit it into a mathematical model you can solve analytically.
just imagine how many conflicts of the 20th and 21st cenntury would have been avoided, if Russia was denied nuclear superpower status.
Russia has been blackmailing the free world with nuclear weapons for the last 70 years.
One theory for the rising internal discord in the USA's public sphere is we no longer have "The Communists" as our convenient "The Other". For purposes of scapegoat, rhetorical foil, and cast of usual suspects.
What is "Liberal Democracy" without "Communism" to push against?
For better or worse, we're now finding out.
Unless there's context I'm missing, I don't see how this says what you're saying. When I read this quote, I take it to mean, "if you say you want to bomb some time in the future, how do you rationally justify not doing so sooner?" It sounds like it's just an argument about strategy, that if bombing is a foregone conclusion, you're in a better position if you do so sooner than later.
The MIT Press page says it's now out of print, but it gained a lot of notice when it appeared, and must be in many libraries.
My own conclusion from Von Neumann's opinions about this is that genius in science and mathematics does not provide any special insight into other kinds of problems, such as arise in politics, military strategy, social issues, or ethics.
https://www.americanheritage.com/prisoners-dilemma
> "In 1950 Life magazine quoted the great Hungarian-American physicist John Von Neumann, co-father of both the atom bomb and the digital computer, advocating immediate pre-emptive nuclear war against Russia: “If you say why not bomb them tomorrow, I say why not today? If you say today at 5 o’clock, I say why not one o’clock?” He was hardly alone. Generals and members of Congress were making the same arguments..."
The fact that all this is getting swept under the rug in this article, as well as in the obviously habiographic bibliographical treatment that it references, doesn't bode well for the future of scholarly historical research in the USA. Past treatments were far more balanced.