Critical escalation: The hydrogen bomb

Jeremy J. Stone

One Western scientist, here dubbed an ‘arrogator of the right’, Edward Teller, insisted, at first for personal intellectual reasons and later for geopolitical reasons, that a hydrogen bomb be built. Using tactics of exaggeration and even smear, he successfully manipulated the policy-making process for five decades, denouncing all manner of arms control measures and promoting arms-race- escalating programs of many kinds.

The Soviet Union, hearing of his H-bomb project, built its own H-bomb. As a direct consequence of the unusual personality of this particular individual and of the power of the H-bomb, the world may have risked a level of annihilation that might not otherwise have transpired, or might have come later and under better political controls.

If so, no scientist has ever had more influence on the risks that humanity has run than Edward Teller, and Teller's general behavior throughout the arms race was reprehensible, as is described within. Meanwhile, inside the Soviet Union, among the Russian atomic scientists, only Peter Kapitsa could opt out of bomb construction without dire consequences and even that was at the cost of seven years of house arrest. But the much younger Andrei Sakharov, as his political consciousness grew, managed to push the evolving envelope of his political and moral possibilities throughout his life.

Two Western atomic scientists, Leo Szilard and Niels Bohr, especially preoccupied themselves with issues of post World War II policy and encouraged others to do so. A significant fraction of the rest of the world's atomic scientists joined them then, or later, in political agitation and education, nationally and internationally, to control the atom. In particular, of course, this community of scientists of conscience created and nurtured our organization, FAS.

Together, these non-arrogating scientists played an important role in the preservation of the peace, and in the struggle against proliferation of nuclear weapons. But they could not prevent the creation of unnecessarily large weapons (such as the H-bomb) or the endless multiplication of nuclear weapons of all kinds.

God only knows how all of these scientists should be ultimately judged. But we can, at least, try to understand the context in which they found themselves, what they were thinking and what they were trying to do.

Fonte (em port.): Sagan, C. 1998 [1996]. O mundo assombrado pelos demônios. SP, Companhia das Letras. Artigo originalmente publicado em 1994.