This is a sample chapter from the forthcoming The Realist Case for Eliminating Nuclear Weapons, by Ward Hayes Wilson.

BATTLESHIPS

Chapter 1

    Eliminating nuclear weapons is not possible. It is not possible because nuclear weapons are necessary and this conclusion—that they are necessary—cannot be wrong. It cannot be wrong because it has been ratified by decades of experts and officials. Think of all the intelligent, prudent government officials who have sat up late at night, worrying over their heavy responsibilities. Imagine the experts who studied the subject carefully in school, absorbing the assumptions and facts, and who have worked for years with great intellectual rigor on the matter. Consider that the subject has been weighed and debated in every culture, on every continent, with many different approaches to security, and everywhere it has been concluded that nuclear weapons are too powerful, too destructive, too important to ever be eliminated. We do not like nuclear weapons, but we have to unwillingly admit that they are necessary. It is not possible to argue with seventy years of careful thought.
    Except.
    Except it is possible that seventy years of experts could be wrong. It is possible for conventional wisdom about the necessity of a weapon to be wrong. It is possible for government officials, even after years of soul-searching, to be wrong. It is possible not because it is theoretically possible, not because we can imagine it happening, not because it is within the realm of possibility. It is possible because it has already happened. It possible because it is historical fact. It has happened again and again throughout history—with chariots, with giant ancient warships, with medieval mounted knights, with battleships, and with other weapons.
    Let us begin our investigation of nuclear weapons with a parable about how long experience and large bodies of thought about weapons can be wrong. If experts and officials have been wrong about these other weapons, why couldn't they be wrong about nuclear weapons? A clear and recent example of this kind of myopia is battleships.

    Battleships

    The story of battleships spans more than 500 years, but the piece we’re interested in is a forty year period in the first half of the twentieth century. It is a narrative of misperception, misjudgment, and mistake that caused one European power to lose a war and deeply damaged another’s status as the leading nation of the world. It is a story that demonstrates how forgetting to focus on the utility of a weapon can both undermine a country’s chances in war and threaten its long-term security.
    Beginning in the middle 1500s, overseas colonies made ships essential. Nations needed both fleets of commercial ships to transport goods, and warships to protect those commercial ships. As the importance of colonies grew throughout the 1600s, 1700s, and 1800s, the importance of navies also grew. And the most important fighting ships in those navies were battleships. Peoples’ eyes were drawn to battleships. They were the biggest and most powerful vessels, they had the latest technology, and they provoked awe. Battleships created status, they determined the rank order of nations in the world, they inspired patriotism in citizens—they were seen as vital to a nation’s self-image.
    Their importance was demonstrated in large ways and small. For example, battleships seemed to vibrate with a meaning that stretched far beyond their ordinary military capabilities. They represented national power—expressing the majesty and might of a nation—which allowed them to accomplish tasks that mere shells and guns could not. Throughout the 1800s, battleships were such icons of power that a single ship could coerce a nation. Send a battleship into the harbor of a smallish power, make your demands and many times the nation would bow before the symbolic power of the great vessel. It was known as “gunboat diplomacy,” and it was a standard tool in coercing smaller nations. It made a good argument for keeping battleships.
    In 1902, Rear Admiral Lord Charles Beresford of the British navy captured the sense of this power in a single phrase. In a speech he gave in New York he said that “battleships are cheaper than battles.” Here Lord Charles has neatly summed up two widely shared assumptions about battleships. First, that it was cheaper to buy battleships than suffer all the costs of war, and, second, that battleships were so potent they could deter an adversary from launching a war. It would be easy to interpret Lord Charles’ phrase as meaning: “Possess these ultimate weapons, and you won’t ever find yourself in a war.” U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt liked the sentiment so much he borrowed the phrase and used it in his own speeches. The symbolic power of battleships loomed large in peoples’ minds.
    And in small details, too, battleships appeared. For example, when Japan submitted a set of 21 demands to China’s head of state in 1915, the diplomats who drafted the document took care with even the smallest details. They had it printed on paper with a battleship watermark so that even the paper exemplified Japan’s military power. The symbolic value of battleships was everywhere in international relations throughout the 18th and especially the 19th centuries.
    The critical event in our story occurs just after the world crossed over the cusp from the 19th century into the 20th century—in 1906, to exact—with the launching in Great Britain of the H.M.S. Dreadnought. This battleship touched off extraordinary emotions when it was christened and launched. The Dreadnought was an improvement over previous types of battleships, with more powerful steam turbine engines and larger guns. But the reaction it caused was out of all proportion to the rather slight increase in military value it represented over earlier ships.
    The Dreadnought was met with delirium in Great Britain. It was hailed as a revolution in warfare. On its maiden voyage up the Thames more than a million people lined the banks of the river to cheer. The area where it was docked had to be closed regularly because crowds of up to 30,000 people would pack the pier so tightly, hoping for a closer look, that it endangered small children, the weak, and the elderly.
    “The influence of the Dreadnought spread far beyond the limits of strategic and diplomatic concerns. The ship played roles in national identity and imperial sentiment.” It’s name eventually became synonymous with an entire class of bigger, revolutionary warships. Commercial products adopted the (very popular) Dreadnought name. Songs, books, and poems celebrated the ship as an embodiment of British greatness. Eventually the ship acquired “an almost mystical, lineal connection to a British past infused with ideas of justice and liberty.”
    Surprisingly, this slightly hysterical response to the Dreadnought was echoed throughout Europe and across the globe. But unlike the joy and celebration it evoked in Britain, in other countries the Dreadnought inspired apprehension, alarm, and envy. From Washington to Moscow, Tokyo to Santiago, government ministers told their masters that it was essential to acquire these new vessels. Dreadnoughts, they explained, were imperative for maintaining military strength, diplomatic prestige, and national pride. Described as “the most deadly fighting machine ever launched in the history of the world,” the Dreadnought touched off a massive arms race.
    "The Japanese, fresh from their triumph at Tsushima, responded almost immediately to the Dreadnought with their own Satsuma and continued building all-big-gun ships as rapidly as their limited industrial base would allow. The French, though no longer much interested in sea power, would not long resist the trend, and by 1911 the first true Gallic dreadnought, Jean Bart, was sliding down the ways. In 1910 the Italians added the nineteen thousand ton Dante Alighieri and kept on building. The Russians, after losing virtually their entire fleet in 1905, were naturally susceptible to dreadnought fever, laid down the Pervoz-vannyi class as early as 1906 and then the Gangut class in 1911. Even Austria-Hungary, with precious little seacoast to defend, built the twenty thousand ton Viribus Unitis. Those that could not build dreadnoughts of their own, like Turkey and Brazil, simply ordered them built by others."
    Similarly, in the United States a major ship building effort got under way.  This effort seemed so important, and “[t]he relationship between a strong fleet and a successful foreign policy was so vital in [President Theodore] Roosevelt’s eyes that he assumed personal control over the service, serving as his own de facto naval secretary through his entire administration.”
    But perhaps the most significant decision made about dreadnoughts was made in the capitol of Britain’s chief rival. Germany by nature was a European land power, but Kaiser Wilhelm II decided that Germany’s traditional dominance on land should be augmented with a challenge to British dominance at seas. Wilhelm was Queen Victoria’s grandson, he had spent many summers in England mixing with British aristocracy and racing his yachts against theirs. He admired Britain’s navy. Battleships, he felt, represented a special kind of national power. One time the Kaiser explained to the King of Italy why battleships were so important, “All the years of my reign my colleagues, the Monarchs of Europe, have paid no attention to what I have to say. Soon, with my great Navy to endorse my words, they will be more respectful.” Germany embarked on a massive dreadnought building campaign and by 1917 they had 16 of these imposing, expensive ships.
    The British, in response to the perceived threat from the Germans to their dominance at sea, accelerated their own building of Dreadnought-class warships. By 1917, barely eleven years after the first battleship of this kind had been launched, Great Britain had more than 30 of these giant ships. This arms race, between a rising power in Europe (Germany) and the dominant power in the world (Great Britain), heightened tensions between the two countries and shaped the course of events for decades to come.
    Although battleships played almost no serious military role in World War I, they continued to hold center stage in world affairs. In the post-war years the fascination with battleships continued unabated—extending to every part of government and society.
    Peace movements, for example, saw battleships as the key to preventing war. Horrified by the senseless killing in World War I—particularly on the Western Front—a large and politically powerful peace movement grew up in Europe during the 1920s. Some peace groups argued that only teaching nonviolence or supporting the League of Nations could prevent war. Most, however, felt that the key to preventing war was preventing arms races. The dreadnought arms race between Germany and Great Britain seemed to them to have been pivotal in causing the war. To prevent future wars, they argued, limits had to be placed on the number of battleships. Preventing a battleship arms race, they were sure, would prevent future wars.
    Officials in government agreed with this analysis, and in the years between World War I and World War II enormous diplomatic effort was poured into negotiating treaties that limited the number, size, and kind of battleships that could be built. The Washington Treaty of 1922 and the two London treaties that followed in 1930 and 1936 made limits on battleships the centerpiece of their terms. The treaties were hailed as essential diplomatic accomplishments.
    But of course, these treaties didn’t prevent war. When war came again in 1939, it came for reasons that had nothing to do with battleships. And shockingly, battleship after battleship was sunk in World War II. In the Atlantic, in the Mediterranean, in the Pacific and in every other place where battleships were caught without air cover, they were pummeled and sunk almost without exception. It turned out that even though battleships were impressively large and carried the latest in big guns, they were also remarkably vulnerable.
    Their vulnerability was shocking to all those who had believed so ardently in the value and importance of battleships. How could this great ships have turned out to be so easily sunk? But when people looked back, they realized with consternation that even on the day it first took to sea the H.M.S. Dreadnought and all the other large, expensive battleships were not “the most deadly fighting machines ever launched.” Far from it. The Dreadnought and the other battleships like it were actually already on the edge of obsolescence. The signs had been there all along. An astute observer of military trends could have figured it out. But the worldwide, semi-hysterical excitement had obscured unpleasant realities.
    Two new weapons that appeared at about the same time as the Dreadnought severely curtailed the military utility of battleships. Torpedo boats—small, very fast, and inexpensive boats powered by new engines and armed with torpedoes—made it possible to attack battleships in swarms and sink them. Even if several torpedo boats were lost in such an attack, a cost/benefit analysis still made it worthwhile. Torpedo boats initially lacked the range to leave coastal waters and fight on the oceans, but denying battleships the ability to sail safely near shore was already a significant reduction in their military utility.
    The other new weapons that spelled obsolescence for battleships were submarines. Submarines could approach battleships by stealth and sink them before anyone knew that danger was at hand. Although submarines were not yet as capable and effective as they would be in World War II, they were already feared. “. . . [A]fter all, the Grand Fleet itself declined to venture into the central North Sea after 1916, such was its respect for the increasingly effective German U-boats.”
    Even as early as 1906 it should have been obvious to an objective observer that torpedo boats and submarines heralded the coming of the end. Battleships, because of their size and expense—were too tempting as targets. Their 200 year role as the undisputed master of the seas was sinking like the setting sun. Yet the powerful emotions that battleships evoked overwhelmed such pragmatic assessments.
    It was the arrival of the Second World War that made the obsolescence of battleships undeniable. In that conflict, submarines regularly sank battleships, much to the dismay of admiralties (especially the British). But the real threat came from a new weapon: the dive bomber. A battleship caught out on the open ocean by dive bombers was as good as sunk. The fate of the Japanese battleship Yamato—at 78,990 tons one of the heaviest battleships ever built—is perhaps representative. During the U.S. invasion of Okinawa in the early part of 1945, the Yamato sailed out of port to attack the Allied invasion fleet. Despite the fact that it was accompanied by a cruiser and eight destroyers to provide anti-aircraft support, once the Yamato was sighted, it was sunk by U.S. dive bombers in less than two hours.
    Battleships, at one time the key to military success, were reduced by the end of World War II to little more than floating artillery platforms: useful for bombarding shore positions once full control of the air had been established, but unable to protect themselves in an open combat environment. World War II finally drove home the point that the day of the battleship was over. But it took two world wars and scores of battleships being sunk before that reality could force its way into the minds of government officials and experts.
    What was gained as a result of this remarkable infatuation with battleships? Or to put it another way, what was bought with all the national treasure that was poured out on dreadnoughts during the forty years from 1906 until 1945? Almost nothing. In World War I, there were no massive sea battles like Trafalgar where battleships played the key role that determined the outcome of the war. Few battleships saw combat and those that did often ended ignobly (sunk by mines, sunk by submarines, unable to close with the enemy).
    What was achieved by all the diplomatic and government effort that was expended during the peace of the 1920s and 1930s? What impact did those hard-won treaties have? Like shoveling sand into the rising tide, this diplomatic effort was as pointless as the original arms race had been. Treaties restricting battleships did nothing to forestall World War II.
    What was achieved by the money spent on battleships in the run-up to World War II? It turned out to be good money thrown after bad. Battleships were rarely decisive in World War II and they certainly did not play a role commensurate with their cost.
    But the costs of the inability of government officials to distinguish reality from emotion went beyond money and effort wasted. Battleship infatuation had a larger impact, especially for the two main rivals in the arms race, Germany and Great Britain. For Germany, it seems likely that their decision to build dreadnoughts was at least partly responsible for Great Britain joining the war. As a result of their huge naval spending, Germany became fixed in the minds of British government officials as a dangerous adversary. And that perception played a crucial role in tipping Great Britain’s decision to join the war. The Kaiser’s fixation on dreadnoughts, therefore, was probably half the reason Germany lost the war. (The other half was the decision to launch unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917, a decision that eventually brought another adversary—the United States, into the war.) The inability of Germany’s leaders to see the reality rather than an emotionally-charged image lost them the war which did real damage to Germany’s long-term national security.
    But perhaps the most severe consequences were meted out to the foremost naval power: Great Britain. Even though they ended up on the winning side, it is difficult to argue that the British decision to spend massively on battleships before, during, and after World War I constituted a wise investment in their national security. British battleships saw almost no combat and played no significant role in the outcome of either World War I or World War II. But the massive spending had enormously negative long-term impacts on British security. Economists and historians now argue that the runaway naval spending during these years played a significant role in depleting British finances and its demotion from the greatest power on the earth to only one of many middle-sized powers. Ultimately, the end of the British Empire may have been foreordained by the end of colonialism. But wild spending on battleships hastened that end.

    Conclusion

    What the story of battleships shows is that it is possible for governments and experts to be wrong. Governments have made mistakes—mistakes that lasted for decades—about weapons. No one was immune. Infatuation with an impressive weapon can affect anyone, from the lowliest academic scholar or military planner to the most exalted government minister or admiral of the fleet. These mistakes take on a life of their own. The battleship mistake overpowered differences of culture, doctrine, and habit of mind. People in Europe, in the New World, and in Asia were equally carried away by the frenzy for dreadnoughts. And once their eyes were fixed on battleships, it was hard for experience to cure their tunnel vision. Decades went by, evidence accumulated, yet still the faith in battleships persisted. Only the harshest reality—the humiliating loss during World War II of these expensive warships again and again at the hands of smaller, cheaper weapons—eventually broke through their obsession. What the story of battleships teaches us is that it is possible to be very wrong about the value of weapons for a very long time.
    If experts and government officials were wrong about battleships, then it is clearly possible that they have been wrong about nuclear weapons. Even though there is seventy years of accumulated thinking about nuclear weapons, we don’t have to give up. Questioning the assumptions of the last seventy years isn’t a fool's errand. It is essential work. Maybe nuclear weapons are not necessary. Maybe it is possible to eliminate these dangerous weapons sometime soon. The claim that it is impossible to eliminate nuclear weapons because their necessity has been proved again and again for seventy years is simply wrong. Of course it is possible to be wrong about a weapon for decades. If anyone was inclined to doubt that conclusion, the story of battleships removes all doubt.
    If it is possible that nuclear weapons can be eliminated, then we owe it to ourselves to look more closely, to examine and explore the issue with care. Nuclear weapons represent an enormous risk and if there is some way of avoiding that risk, it is only prudent to try to do so. Even though there is a remarkable consensus among officials in many nations, it makes sense to test the assumptions they have been operating under, rework the calculations they have made, and make certain that they have seen reality as it really is.

(c) Ward Hayes Wilson 2017 All rights reserved.