Reply #36: I think the Hiroshima analogy is flawed

[thucythucy]

in a number of ways. Or more to the point, the characterization of how and why Japanese society shifted in the ways it did post 1945 is off the mark, and thus inapplicable to our current situation.

The Japanese people, Japanese society, the Japanese elites or what-have-you, did not make the laudable changes cited because of Hiroshima, at least not entirely. The Japanese constitution, for example, was imposed by the Japanese people by an occupying power (the United States). The anti-militarist provisions of that constitution have at least as much to do with American sensibilities as they do to Japanese. What Hiroshima did (along with the Russian declaration of war a short time later) was convince a large enough portion of Japanese rulers that the war was utterly lost. It also profoundly shocked the Japanese people, of course, and made them far more amenable to the changes imposed by the occupying power. But it is highly doubtful, at least to my mind, that the sorts of changes listed by the poster--at least in regards to militarism and imperialism and democracy (the economic restructuring is a different matter) would have happened had the bombing of Hiroshima not been followed by the American occupation. Remember too, that Japanese education was also entirely revamped--also at American insistence--so that Japanese boys and girls would no longer be inculcated into militarism at any early age.

If one is going to use an analogy here (and I agree that all historical analogies inevitably fall short--that's always the case with analogies, more or less) I think Chernobyl is much more apt. First, like the present disaster, this was an accident in the energy industry resulting from a combination of poor design and poor oversight, and pushing the technology ahead of where it was safe to go. Second, like Chernobyl, there were immediate deaths, followed by more long term health and environmental consequences that will take years if not decades to measure.

I think there is a third similarity to Chernobyl that is perhaps most chilling, which is also perhaps why this analogy has not, to my knowledge, been brought up by the mainstream media. And that is that Chernobyl was the tipping point, the straw that broke the camel's back, that began the process that was the lead to the unraveling and collapse of the Soviet Union. The economic consequences of Chernobyl--not only the immediate cost but the fact that the accident rendered a huge swathe of productive farmland and industrial plant completely useless--added to the burden of the Afghan occupation, the parasitic Soviet military/industrial complex, the inefficiencies of Soviet economics in general--graft, greed, corruption--coupled with the loss of faith all these engendered, gave the crumbling edifice a shove that even Gorbachev couldn't right. The coup attempt was the final straw, after which it all came tumbling down.

So, instead of BP=Katrina and Obama=Bush, what we have is BP=Chernobyl and Obama=Gorbachev. Gorbachev, you might recall, was a "reformer" dedicated not to a radical restructuring of the Soviet edifice, but incremental changes that were supposed, over time, to lead to some form of "socialism with a human face." Instead, he presided over the system's utter collapse. Obama, similarly, seems dedicated to the proposition that American society can be saved by tinkering at the edges--regulating the private health insurance industry instead of confronting and replacing it is the most obvious example--to give us a kinder, gentler predatory capitalism. FDR was able to pull it off, more or less, but he had three plus terms, an overwhelming majority in both houses of Congress, and a much better ability to explain what needed to be done than Obama has thusfar been able to demonstrate.

It is this analogy that has me worried, because what followed after Gorbachev was hardly an unmitigated good. True, the collapse of Soviet power meant the end of the extended Soviet (and Russian) empire, much as the collapse of American military and economic power may (and to some extent already has) led to greater independence, certainly in Latin America, but also in Europe and Asia. But the dislocation and suffering in Russia itself was something fierce, and in many ways we're still watching events there play out.

Of course there are many ways in which this analogy doesn't apply. But I think it is far closer to the mark than any other analogy I've seen discussed.

Best wishes to all.

ThucyThucy