Impact

The atomic bomb was not merely a new weapon; it was a new dimension of military and political power. Each in its turn, steel and gunpowder and aircraft had gradually changed war and society. In a single day the atomic bomb made a bigger change than any of them. Its blast hit every war office and chancellery on earth.

Treaties, boundaries, alliances, the charter of the new United Nations, the foreign and domestic policies of states--all are affected by estimates of the relative strengths of the nations. Now, all the estimates had to be recalculated.

New Weapon. TNT is barely twice as strong as black powder was six centuries ago. World War II developed explosives up to 60% more powerful than TNT. The atomic bomb is more than 12,000 times as strong as the best improvement on TNT. One hundred and twenty-three planes, each bearing a single atomic bomb, would carry as much destructive power as all the bombs (2,453,595 tons) dropped by the Allies on Europe during the war.

The new political era that began at Hiroshima would break in two parts: 1) the years when the bomb still remained the exclusive possession of three close allies, the U.S., Britain and Canada; 2) the years after other nations developed it.

The first phase was frightening enough --even to the people whose governments held the secret. They understood that what had happened to Hiroshima and later to Nagasaki only began to measure the atom as a weapon of war, and thus as an extension of politics.

New Power. A fortnight ago, the U.S. position was: its naval and air strength could take and hold control of any body of open water in the world. Air forces could conduct crippling assaults into enemy territory, though such assaults by themselves might not win wars. The potential limitation on U.S. power (apparent in Italy and at the Siegfried Line) came in cases where the U.S. had to send ground forces deep into a large land mass in order to bring about a surrender.

Last week the U.S. position was: planes with atomic bombs could reach any spot in the world. When they got there, they could destroy so much faster than the victims could rebuild that surrender was the onlv possible result.

That power is a stark and appalling fact. It will be so appraised in every capital. Liberated Europe, hypersensitive to power, will note it well. Asia, where occidental prestige plummeted after Pearl Harbor and Singapore, will record it.

New Relationships. Already signs have appeared.

The French press last week lashed out in a rage at the failure to add France to the three nations which held the secret--an insult to French science. More galling was the realization that inclusion in the group would have restored France to the front rank of the powers.

There were no complaints from Moscow. The event was casually ticked off in a 74-line item in the back pages of Soviet newspapers, but the Russian capital hummed with speculation about the bomb. Washington noted that Joseph Stalin had advanced by a full week the agreed date for his declaration of war on Japan. That was taken as official Soviet recognition of how fast the bomb might end the war.

Britain, a full participant in every step of the process, no longer seemed a poor third in the Big Three. Even Canada approached the Big Five in stature now that it held the secret, and three of the Big Five did not.

But secrets are perishable. The atomic bomb greatly widened the enormous gap between the top powers and the rest of the nations. In a few years it might change the world's political picture again--and far more drastically. In the long run, this new weapon might tend to place nations on the same level of power, just as gunpowder had leveled feudal classes.

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