Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky Quotes
Maintaining a U. S. Nuclear Arsenal presents only one benefit today: deterring the use of nuclear weapons by others. Thus, there is simply no reason for nuclear weapons to play a central role in U. S. Defense Policy any longer.
This was his last publication. He died of a heart attack as the magazine was being printed. Since this was written one other possible use of nuclear weapons has been suggested—namely, retaliation for a biological attack. From a policy point of view, maintaining an arsenal of biological weapons for retaliatory purposes is dangerous and use for retaliation of biological weapons is not very controllable and arguably less humane than a nuclear weapon. His point however still holds. We have to have a national defense policy against many threats and we have to have defense policies that handle all these without nuclear tactics is insufficient to handle any of the threats without causing more problems and we have other weapons and techniques that are just as, if not more, effective. They and systems under development have the major role in our current defense policy.
Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky, Nuclear Physicist, Director Emeritus, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Scientific & Nuclear Weapons Advisor to Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy & Carter, “Nuclear Insecurity: Correcting Washington’s Dangerous Posture”, Foreign Affairs, September / October 2007
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Many politicians and military thinkers disagree with Kraus. America, England, France, Russia, and Israel have all demonstrated over the years that even with great provocation they would not resort to nuclear retaliation nor have they ever threatened use of WMDs. Iran, in contrast, has repeatedly stated as one of their major objective, the total destruction of another UN member state—Israel. Further, Iran has never possessed a weapon that it did not use shortly after possession, including poison gas. Therefore America and the United Nations have all determined that a double standard is necessary with Iran.
See {633890} regarding the nuclear accidents at that time.
The origin of the United States refusal to rule first use out lies with the Cold War concern of a massive Russian Ground attack in European countries. Even with NATO, we could not deploy ground and air resources fast enough to prevent the takeover of entire countries. Then when we amassed the troops and airpower to counterattack, there would be massive civilian casualties of the invaded nations. So American strategy, at the insistence of our European Allies was to deter invasion. By renouncing first use, the Western Powers would almost invite the Russians to invade European nations. There was a similar fear of North Korea and China,
The alternative deterrent was to maintain an army of over 2 million men overseas in both Europe and Asia, and the cost was much greater than the then perceived cost of nuclear weapons. At the time no one figured the cost of coping with the radioactive material and waste as well as the cleanup of nuclear bomb factories like Hanford. These costs were still not known byt the 21st century.
Israel started it nuclear weapons program under Perez’s leadership. They do not admit that it is even in existence. Yet all their potential enemies in the Middle East realize that they have enough nuclear weapons capacity that if they are in danger of being overrun, they can literally destroy the attacking nation and all the countries that might be assisting that nation. Before Israel had developed this capability, some in the Middle East had as their objective to destroy the state of Israel and “drive the Jews into the sea”. No one believes that it is now possible to militarily defeat Israel without the attacking nations also being destroyed. For years, Israel has had the military might to conquer any nation in the Middle East and use their nuclear shield to protect them from any interference, but they have not done so demonstrating that the Israeli governments will not use nuclear weapons for any other purpose.
Wolfgang Kurt Hermann "Pief" Panofsky, was a German-American physicist who won many awards including the National Medal of Science.
