Seventy three years ago today, a bomb fell on Hiroshima. Many official reasons why, such as ending the war and saving the lives of POWS. Whatever, the war did end and Japan is not militarily aggressive. But consider the Bomb in wider geo-political terms. Who was the enemy who needed to be stopped. Soviet troops occupied Eastern Europe, including Germany and Austria. What was to stop them pouring into North China and Japan ? Tensions between Russia and Japan went back long before the first Russo-Japanese war in 1904-5 when the Japanese decisively crushed the Russian Navy at Port Arthur and at sea. Amazing,considering that Japan had been feudal and rural barely 50 years before, and that the Russian fleet was state of the art, as powerful as the British Navy.
Territories like Sakhalin are still disputed today. So what was to stop a Russian surge against defeated Japan, thus threatening the US, Britain and the whole balance of power in the Pacific ? Not for nothing did the US send thousands of elite Marines to North China after 1945. Ostensibly, they were there to supervise the withdrawal of Japanese troops and support the Goumindang Government. But North China was a stronghold of the Chinese Communist Party who were dependent on the Soviet Union. At least the CCP had the sense to split with Russia as soon as they could (1957)
Wars are not waged by direct means alone. Another lesson we can learn from Hiroshima, and one scarily relevant today. With Putin, we see an upsurge in aggression not just through coventional means, as in Syria, but by technology and its ability to reshape the way we think. Destroying democractic societies from within, spreading fear and ignorance, controlling key stooges to overthrow their own heritage, the masses easily persuaded. Why bother with bombs when you can use "the people"against themselves?
No comments:
Post a Comment