Yes it was an "All Hands on Deck Total War". Hard for us to even understand how Americans felt about it. To say nothing of our allies, who were also all hands on deck, but with their cities bombed to rubble.

Perfectly justified to use nukes to save even one US life and one US dollar. But it also saved years and presumably north of 1 million Japanese lives too. Also... nobody at the time really understood the longer-term side-effects from the use of such weapons so you have to look at it in the context of just a very large Boom. Not sure it would have mattered if they had known, but you can't blame them for hypotheticals.

 

No, it is not “justified to use nukes” on population “to save even one US life or one US dollar. UFB.

 

It’s hard to understand the scale of death at that point in the war. After Okinawa, what would you have suggested the course of action be? The conventional tactic would have been a mainland invasion with up to a million dead.

Here’s a great video detailing the fallen of WW2. Worth the watch: The Fallen of WW2

 

I think the use of a nuke(s) against Japan to save 1m US lives in WWII was almost certainly justified, but that's not what he said. RTFP.

 

That's a highly inefficient way to play the Crisis. Much easier investments to make with far more asymmetric upside:

• Ultra Deepwater Drillships
• Gulf of America and West Africa Oil Producers (Shipping routes avoid conflict areas)
• US land based Oil and Gas Services businesses (especially the ones where you can write off depreciation against W2 income)
• GOA area Natural Gas Producers(LNG exports)
• Uranium producers
• Thermal Coal Miners
• US based Fertilizer and Chemicals Producers
• LR and MR product tankers(US
• Gold Miners (when bond market breaks)

 

You think that would be more profitable than a few pipeline projects to push oil across the desert.

Seems like Saudi and UAE have feasible infrastructure to expand pipeline routes.

 

Don't quote me out of context.

In the context of 1945, after everything the US had been through and everything they were about to go through to get to unconditional surrender. Again, to them, it was just a big bomb, there was no quasi-religious anti-nuclear cult aspect at the time. Killed fewer people than fire-bombing in Tokyo.

Today it would be clearly illegal and non-proportional to use nukes in response to a much smaller conventional attack, in addition to whatever philosophical concerns you might have.

But worth pointing out that a mass-casualty event on the scale of 9/11 actually did cross the line, a nuclear response would have been legal, assuming you could identify and target the guilty party. Not that international "legal" even matters at that point, US policy is deliberately strategically ambiguous. You do not have to wait until somebody nukes you first.

 

The context of 1945 was an estimate of a million US casualties by conventional means not "to save even one US life or one US dollar." Thus, my response. I am glad you now seem to agree it "would be clearly illegal and non-proportional" today.

 

The thing about oil is just when you invest in long term projects prices tend to come crashing down. Lots of booms and busts along the way.

 

Stop gaslighting.

At the time, they probably would have used the bomb to prevent even very minimal further loss of life and treasure, perfectly understandable after all they had been through.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki would be just fine today. It's a little weird because of the timing, the obvious justification would have been Pearl Harbor and related attacks in the Pacific. But they didn't have the bomb yet so the whole thing dragged out for years. We attempted to get Japan to surrender once we did have the bomb, they declined, so we did a demonstration, rinse wash, repeat and then they came around. Pretty good restrain actually, that they just did one demonstration to start.

Nuking someone because their suicide bomber detonated a vest in a shopping mall would be non-proportional.

The scale of 9/11 was in the ballpark for justification, if somebody actually wanted to go there and you could identify a culprit to target. Most administrations would probably not.

Also I retract my comment about "legality". "Legal" is irrelevant wrt to nuclear weapons, if it gets to that point we're way beyond the nuances of what UN delegates might chatter about at a cocktail party, or what anybody else thinks.