The Doomsday Machine,
Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner
by Daniel Ellsberg
I had never heard of the term OMNICIDE until I read this book. I’d never heard of the term nuclear winter. One of the questions
Ellsberg ask over and over in the book, “Does any nation on earth, have the
right to posses such capability? A right
to threaten (by its simple possession of that capability), the continued existence of all other
nations, populations, their cities, and civilization as a whole?”
Another difficult book to write about and for
many reasons.
I will also add that if you have any
interest, even the remotest interest in the state of the world, the big world, along
with the US, and your own personal world, your state, your city, your home,
your family, as it relates to the possibility of a nuclear event, this book as
difficult as it is to read, I recommend.
The main reason I read this book: coincidence. Recently we had the back and forth irrational
banter and taunts between President Trump and the crazy guy from North
Korea. And because I recently saw the
movie, THE POST.
Without Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon Papers
and the history of The Washington Post newspaper and all that transpired would
have never happened. Ellsberg is
portrayed in the movie as the source of the Pentagon Papers, but you really
don’t know that much about him, what he is doing, where he worked, how old he
was, his true motivation; that part of the Pentagon Papers history is not what
the movie is about.
The 2nd
reason, during the week that I saw the movie, a book review had been included
in The Week magazine, featuring the Daniel Ellsberg book. The book was published in December of 2017.
Daniel Ellsberg today is 86 years old. I was curious about the title, the author, and so I put it on hold at the JAX library.
Ellsberg got his graduate and doctorate
degree from Harvard, he studied economics.
His dissertation on decision
theory was based on thought experiments that showed that decisions under
conditions of uncertainty and ambiguity generally may not be consistent with
well defined probabilities. How he got from studying economics to working at
RAND, you have to read the book. The
book is based largely on his experience as a RAND consultant in the late 1950s
and 1960’s. He also worked for the
Pentagon under Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.
Based on Ellsberg’s work at RAND, specifically
analysis of the command and control of nuclear weapons, he was given
access and clearance to study and analyze what I refer to as the “methods and
procedures” that govern how and when nuclear weapons are used. Ellsberg gets a front row seat to all of it,
the military understanding of command and control and the politicians, the
elected officials understanding of the same.
Ellsberg goes out to military installations all over the world and gets access to and interviews
every level of personnel in the command chain of when and how nuclear arms
would be used. And what you find out is
incredible and scary. And the incredible
and scary aspects of what Ellsberg analyzes and reports from way back then,
most of it is still going on today.
The book is set in the context with so much
history and Ellsberg makes sure you know what and who and why decisions are made,
not made, with what degree of information, sometimes misinformation, and at
what level. His chapters on the Cuban Missile Crisis, I couldn’t believe some
of what I was reading. He was right in the middle of the crisis, it was amazing.
There is also information on Nixon and what he as a
president considered when wanting to end the Vietnam war. Yes nuclear weapons. And the difference between what the public
thought was going on and what was really going on specific to “who had access
to the button”, it’s amazing what you learn when you read this book.
From what I’ve read in recent reviews of this
book, much of what is in the book is not new. Others have written memoirs or
historical books on all things nuclear.
Many like me, may have not read any of the prior books on this topic, this
book I hope is ready by many. Perhaps others will come to this title like I did, the dots were connected and I was very curious.
I could not believe some of what I was
reading. The book is very detailed, some
times too much. I found much of it well presented, while the subject matter is
extremely difficult to accept and believe, the book is not arduous. Much of the book feels like you are reading a report he may have worked on at Rand. Ellsberg also shares the human
side of what he was thinking and going through, many times working in disbelief
and complete frustration, what he knew, and what others could not grasp
or understand or simply ignored.
Certainly the idea or the suggestion that today there could be a successful, isolated, preemptive nuclear strike,
to deter further conflict, is political theatre.
From what I read and understand of this book, a preemptive, isolated
nuclear event inevitably becomes a slippery slope most likely ending the world as we know it
today. Ending the world, ending humanity, ending civilization, otherwise known as omnicide.
Quote from the book.......
WE HUMANS almost universally have a false self-image of our species,” Ellsberg writes, believing that “monstrous, wicked policies … can only be conceived and directed and carried out by monsters.” But those who created this threat to humanity were normal and ordinary people. Given our long and dismal history, our willingness to burn and maim and kill each other on massive scales, and our irrepressible inventiveness at devising ever more efficient and destructive weapons, the only possible conclusion is that “this is not a species to be trusted with nuclear weapons.”