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Constitutional Dictatorship in the Atomic Age

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Clinton L. Rossiter
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Extract

How shall we be governed in an atomic war? Who will make the decisions for defense and survival, and what compulsions will support their peremptory execution? What will be the measure of our cherished liberties? In all the vast literature of atomic energy and the atomic bomb there appear no clear answers to these distressing questions.

Several authorities have meditated wisely upon the particular problems of domestic government in the atomic age. Robert E. Cushman has pictured the challenge of atomic energy to our traditional concepts of civil liberty; Arthur Bromage has admonished state and local public administrators to decentralize or die, and Senator Wiley has done the same for the national government; Bernard Brodie and Hanson Baldwin have warned of the inadequacy for atomic warfare of our present defense and mobilization plans. Yet no one seems to have outlined the over-all pattern that the American government would assume in the event of atomic war or indicated the workable adjustments that we might undertake now to prepare our constitutional system for this dreadful contingency. This neglect may well be just another symptom of our apparent decision (arrived at through indecision) to ignore the bomb and, like Mr. Lincoln, “confess plainly” that events control us. Since we refuse to contemplate the horrors of atomic war, we likewise refuse to imagine the sort of government that such a war would force us to adopt.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 11 , Issue 4 , October 1949 , pp. 395 - 418
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1949

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References

1 SeeCushman, R. E., “Civil Liberties in the Atomic Age,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 249, p. 54 (1947)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bromage, A. W., “Public Administration in the Atomic Age,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 41, p. 947 (1947)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wiley, A., “We Must Decentralize,” The Reserve Officer, 02, 1948Google Scholar; Brodie, B., “War in the Atomic Age” and “Implications for Military Policy,” in The Absolute Weapon (New York, 1946). pp. 21, 70;Google ScholarBaldwin, H., “Budget Arms Set-up Hit,” New York Times, 01 16, 1949.Google Scholar

2 There are, of course, several prominent exceptions to this statement. See for example Groves', General article “Can New York Hide from the Atomic Bomb?”, printed in Daily Congressional Record (01 13, 1949), p. A171;Google ScholarMorrison, Philip, “If the Bomb Gets Out of Hand,” in Masters, D. and Way, K., eds., One World or None (New York, 1946); and the articles of Professor Brodie and Senator Wiley cited in note 1.Google Scholar

3 SeeCondon, E.U., “The New Technique of Private War,” in One World or None.Google Scholar

4 Ridenour, L., “There is No Defense,” in One World or None; Bradley, D., No Place to Hide (New York, 1948). My obvious belief in the material and psychological destructiveness of the atomic bomb should not be misinterpreted as a belief that it can win wars unaided by traditional methods of fighting, or that our present sole possession of this weapon means that we cannot lose a war.Google Scholar

5 In Constitutional Dictatorship (Princeton University Press, 1948). At the request of the Editor of The Review of Politics, and with many apologies, I am quoting at length from this book. It will be cited from this note on simply as CD.Google Scholar

6 CD, pp. 5–7.Google Scholar

7 CD, pp. 13, vii.Google Scholar

8 CD, p. vii.Google Scholar

9 Ford, H. J., “The War and the Constitution”, Atlantic Monthly, Vol. CXX, p. 485 (1917).Google Scholar

10 CD, p. 13.Google Scholar

11 CD, pp. 294–297.Google Scholar

12 CD, p. 297.Google Scholar

13 CD, pp. 298–306.Google Scholar

14 SeeChester, I. Barnard's convincing article “Steps to Ease Peril of Extinction Called Unfeasible in U. S.,“ Washington Post, “Atomic Supplement,” p. 11 (August 3, 1947).Google Scholar See also Ansley, J. Coale's extremely thoughtful Vulnerability to Atomic Bombs (Princeton, 1947).Google Scholar

15 CD, pp. 308–309.Google Scholar

16 CD, p. 311.Google Scholar

17 CD, p. 312.Google Scholar SeeRadin's, Max provocative article “Martial Law and the State of Siege,” California L. R., Vol. 30, p. 364 (1942).Google Scholar

18 CD, pp. 309, 302, 303, 302,Google Scholar

19 Civil Defense for National Security, p. 1.Google Scholar

20 From a speech to the Omaha Chamber of Commerce, December 10, 1948, reprinted in Daily Congressional Record (January 5, 1949), pp. 57–59. The Atomic Energy Commission, evidently seeing little hope for civil defense in the near future, announced in February, 1949, that it was going ahead with the formation of “shock squads trained to rush aid and equipment into areas suffering from atomic explosions”. Such squads would eventually have to be integrated with the permanent civil defense organization.Google Scholar

21 Omaha Evening World-Herald, December 15, 1948.Google Scholar

22 It is somewhat distressing to report that Mr. Truman has set his face, at least temporarily, against the establishment of a permanent office of civil defense. Present emphasis, he feels, should be placed upon “peacetime planning and preparation for civil defense in the event of war, rather than operation of a full-scale civil defense program”. Accordingly, he has instructed the National Security Resources Board to “exercise leadership in civil defense planning”. Mr. Truman is entitled to full respect for the well-informed judgment that supported this decision, but we may well hope that at some point planning will cease and organizing begin. See the New York Times, March 5, 1949.Google Scholar [Since this article was written the Hopley report has been shoved even farther back on the shelf. See the Times, June 26, 1949, for an order of N.S.R.B. Chairman Steelman assigning civil defense duties to some nine departments and agencies. I hesitate to refer to the behind-scenes political struggles that led up to this totally unsatisfactory solution to the problems of civil defense.]Google Scholar

23 CD, pp. 1, 314.Google Scholar