Imagine an alternative history scenario, where the United States was able to maintain a monopoly on the possession of nuclear weapons from WWII to the present. We credibly threatened to nuke anyone that tried to develop nukes. What would the world look like today?
It’d have a lot more radioactive craters in the Soviet Union and China, and Europe would be devastated probably as far west as Paris.
That’d require mixing in some magic. The technology to monitor vast ranges of Soviet and Chinese territory didn’t exist until the mid-to-late 1950s, so if they set up an isolated equivalent of Los Alamos, how would the U.S. know? The announcement that the Soviets and Chinese were developing nukes would likely coincide with the testing of their first nuke, and then what? Attacking them then is too late - the U.S. would have no idea how many the Soviets or Chinese had stockpiled, and even if it was less than ten, that presents a credible threat of significant retaliatory damage.
So, you are saying that the US would nuke our allies as well as enemies to prevent them from getting nukes? In that bizarre world then Chronos is probably right…certainly we’d have used nukes against the Soviets at a minimum. Perhaps this demonstration would be enough, but other examples would almost certainly have been needed. The Korean conflict would have almost certainly gone nuclear, with the US nuking North Korea and probably the border between China and North Korea (that was the plan originally when the Chinese jumped in).
Of course, we are talking about a different US here, one that is willing to do what you are saying, so no idea what all the ramifications would be. I don’t know if the US could have controlled the entire world from then until now even with the threat or use of nuclear weapons to force them into line.
It was a notional monopoly at best. The better alternative history might be that the UK didn’t share what it knew.
:dubious: Einstein and Szilard posted a letter to Roosevelt in 1939 discussing this, and it’s hard to imagine with the team of physicists and the vast resources the US possessed that we couldn’t have figured it out eventually without the Brits aid. Might have taken us until 1946 instead of '45, so we might have had to endure a really nasty invasion of Japan and partitioning like in Germany, but we’d have had it in the end. The UK wouldn’t have been able to develop the things during WWII regardless of how much more advanced their program was in 1940 to prevent the US (or anyone else) from getting them…I doubt they could have put together a viable program even post war with as bad a shape as they were in after the war either.
I suggest an alternate hypothetical where an assassin’s bomb kills Josef Stalin and Lavrentiy Beria in the summer of 1945, which derails the Soviet atomic bomb program, coupled with more effective counterintelligence that lets the Americans and British spot and expel Soviet spies. Hence the Soviets are delayed a decade.
Does the Korean War go nuclear? Probably. This likely hardens Soviet resolve to get their own bomb, damn the expense. I don’t see a U.S. monopoly lasting long after that and assuming the Soviets launch Sputnik more-or-less on schedule, they’ll have the perceived (but not actual, see “missile gap”) advantage in delivery systems. Would the U.S. launch a wide-scale pre-emptive attack to destroy Soviet capabilities? Maybe, If in this alternate reality Richard Nixon wins in 1960.
Clearly the States had the resources and personnel to develop the Bomb without British help - though you could question how far and how fast either the UK or US would have got on without the emigres who had come to both countries in the '30s - but without the kick start provided by the Tizard mission and later transfers of knowledge the US effort would probably been later and less well resourced. In these circumstances a 1946 completion looks optimistic - especially if the war against Japan has already ended following invasion and partition. Yes, there would be pressure to complete post-war as a counter to the Soviets but much less urgency than in '44 and '45.
As to British post-war effort, well, starting in 1947, they did build a Bomb by 1952 despite the appalling economic situation. This obviously fed on the work of the Manhattan Project and key people involved - Penney in particular - had been insiders at Los Alamos and knew the general set up but they did not know much of the detail and they got almost no help from the States following the McMahon Act in 1946. For a fascinating look at the politics and problems of the British project see Test of Greatness by Brian Cathcart - well worth a read.
Yeah, it’s hard to say, but I think the US could have had a bomb long before the Brits or anyone else did, even if it was '47 instead of '45, and that’s the key point wrt the OP.
Exactly…and that would have been too long, again wrt the OP. There is no way they would have had a bomb before the US or USSR, even if they hadn’t shared anything with the US earlier on (which was what I was responding to originally). In a theoretical world where the US paranoia didn’t allow for even allies to have the bomb the US would have been in the position of having working weapons to stifle other countries efforts, even if I’m more than a bit dubious that the US would have nuked the UK to prevent them from acquiring the things.
There was a long period of time, certainly around the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the USA had a huge advantage in the number of nukes they could field. They could in theory have struck first, annihilating Moscow and the submarine bases and whatever air bases were suspected to have nuclear weapons, as well as any suspected missile silos.
The Soviets would have struck back with their surviving weapons, some of their bombers would no doubt get through 1960s air defenses, and millions of Americans would have died - but not an un-survivable number. Hence the line in Dr. Strangelove, “Turgidson: Mr. President, I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed, but I do say no more than 10 to 20 million killed, tops! Uh, depending on the breaks.”
While the Soviets would have been ended as a threat.
The book “Resurrection Day” deals with exactly that scenario.
Cetainly if Curtis ‘Bombs Away’ LeMay had his way:
LeMay continued to be a strong advocate for use of nuclear weapons. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, LeMay tried to goad President Kennedy into bombing the missile sites in Cuba. LeMay believed that a massive display of US force would force the Soviets into capitulation. Kennedy was more cautious; the blockade worked and the crisis passed. Early in the Vietnam War, he advocated widespread bombing of key North Vietnamese industrial and military targets; President Johnson thought that this would draw the USSR and China into the war. LeMay wanted to threaten to North Vietnam that they stop aggression or “We’ll bomb them back into the Stone Age.” Outspoken and unpopular, he retired in 1965.
Stranger
Oh yes, certainly US would be first, no way could the UK divert the necessary resources while the war was going on. Only the States could afford the necessary R&D while simultaneously building up the resources to run two offensives against Japan while nominally dealing with Germany first.
You could argue the USSR would have found it harder to build their first bombs without the data Fuchs was feeding them from Los Alamos (if the Brits had not been in the Manhattan Project) but I suspect they would have got sufficient from other sources. Probably still second but later.
Stranger, in retrospect how do you feel about it? The Vietnam war would have been “won” if there weren’t any North Vietnamese cities left to supply the war effort, right? The sacrifices of your peers who were drafted wouldn’t have been in vain, right? (did you personally face the Vietnam draft?)
“We’ll bomb them back into the Stone Age.” I had believed that was McNamara, but it was indeed LeMay.
Thanks.
I think we’d have much worse relations with Europe.
People forget that we used to have significant diplomatic differences with countries in western Europe. It wasn’t until after WWII when the Soviet Union and communism became identified as our primary opposition that we put aside those other differences and tried to form the western world into a single political faction.
If we had a nuclear monopoly keeping the Soviets in check, we wouldn’t have had that motivation to form a western coalition. We probably wouldn’t have enacted the Marshall Plan and other economic recovery programs for Europe and Asia. We wouldn’t have been concerned if their economies were stalled; it would just represent better opportunities for American businesses. The only reason we historically put aside our national economic interests was because our national security issues outweighed them. We wanted to rebuild places like Britain and France and even former enemies like Germany and Japan because we wanted those countries to be strong enough to defend themselves from a communist attack. If instead we could have threatened a nuclear counter-attack, we would have been happy to have kept those countries economically weak.
America had also been generally opposed to European imperialism. We were willing to support nationalist movements in European colonies. It wasn’t just a matter of principle; it was again in America’s economic interest to see the colonial empires broken up and opened to American trade. But once we decided that we needed the support of European governments, we dropped our support of anti-colonial movements.
Although, in the long run, was the Marshall Plan really against our economic interests? I’d argue that it was a rising tide that lifted our boat as well as theirs. Maybe it didn’t lift us as much as the direct beneficiaries, but trading partners who can afford to buy what we’re selling and can sell things we find worth buying are worth more than partners who are too poor to do either.
Although McNamara was one of the architects of the earlier, Johnson-era bombing and defoliation campaigns in Viet Nam, he was never as cravenly bloodthirsty as LeMay, who literally measured effectiveness in terms of estimate number of dead per tonnage of bombs dropped (as was the primary influence for General Turgidson clutching his “Megadeaths Per Megatons” binder in Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb). McNamara never actually bought into the notion of pre-emptively attacking the Soviets even though he was quite aware that they did not have the strategic advantage in the so-called “Missile Gap” that Kennedy campaigned on, and was as much a moderating influence (strictly on an economic basis) on building overwhelming strategic superiority in the nuclear forces; specifically, he opposed space-based weapon platforms, expansion of the strategic bomber fleet, development of a nationwide anti-ballistic missile ‘shield’ (of dubious efficacy that would have cost the equivalent of at least ten years gross domestic product), favoring instead a games theory approach to deterrence that would assure catastrophic counterstrike from a hardened land based missile fleet (Minuteman) and less accurate but more defensible fleet ballistic missile (Polaris).
The Marshall Plan allowed Western Europe to rebuild quickly to the point that by the early 'Sixties much of Europe was economically better off than at any time before WWII despite the fact that many nations essentially had to rebuild their manufacturing and transportation infrastructure from the ground up (and in fact, that may have actually been advantageous in not being tied to existing pre-war infrastructure). It also permitted the United States to forge strategic alliances and joint defense agreements which opposed the expansion of Soviet influence, and of course, provided a positive image of managed market economies which led to disaffection with the failings of Soviet-led socialism and ultimately the Revolutions of 1989 which were as much about economics and quality-of-life as they were about political oppression. And of course, having trading partners in (West) Germany, France, Britain, Italy, and elsewhere opened up new markets for American goods and vice versa. The Marshall Plan may very well be the single best strategic investment that the United States has ever made, even if it cost us more than going to the Moon. If we’d made a similar investment in Eastern Europe after the end of the Cold War, we would arguably not be facing Vladimir Putin, unrest in the Ukraine, and Russian interference in Western democracies.
The United States was not particularly opposed to colonialism during most of its history. It was opposed to European influence in the Americas (e.g. the Monroe Doctrine) and under Woodrow Wilson’s and Franklin Roosevelt’s administrations encouraged the European colonial powers to grant greater autonomy to colonies, but the US has supported colonial powers when it suited them, i.e. part of the Eight Nations Alliance against the Boxer Rebellion which overthrew the Qing Dynasty in China (and is arguably the first major expansion of executive authority in foreign relations in granting the president the ability to deploy military forces in overseas conflicts for an indefinite period without a Congressional declaration of war). The US has engaged in its own form of ‘colonialism’ in terms of control of territories such as Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, and other South Pacific islands for strategic use, albeit not in the labor and resource exploitative fashion of European colonization of Africa or Asia.
Colonialism ultimately collapsed because it just wasn’t economically viable; the fiscal stress of World War II, the security issues due to anti-colonial movements, and globalization that undercut the monopolies set up by colonial powers, plus technological innovations such as synthetic rubber and nylon that undermined some of the natural resources extracted from colonies or exclusive trade partners made colonization for profit obsolete. Britain in particular hemorrhaged for years in trying to maintain control over India (“The Crown Jewel of the British Empire”) despite the security and administrative problems notwithstanding the lack of actual profits before finally giving into the reality that it wasn’t actually benefiting them in any material way.
Stranger
This^
Without MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) Doctrine or the specter of it, that is likely what would have happened. It would have been a sickeningly easy way to eliminate one’s enemies.
In any scenario where the US is developing nuclear weapons without British help, they are probably also doing it without Canadian uranium. US ores from Colorado were much lower grade, the Belgian Congo provided an initial startup supply but the source mine was flooded and closed, and the fourth known deposit was under German control. This would have further delayed development and production.