17. The impact of nuclear weapons on the global scene
As of 2018, though several nations deploy nuclear weapons as part of their national security posture, only the United States has ever used them as part of an armed conflict, which remains the source of debate and rancor. Many argue that the use of the atomic bombs against Japan in 1945 was unnecessary, supported by the belief that the Japanese were ready to surrender and thus the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were war crimes. Others argue that the bomb could have been demonstrated rather than used on civilian population centers as a means of hastening the end of the war. These arguments ignore the facts of the situation in 1945, when the Japanese population had been trained in suicide bombing and fighting techniques, more than ten thousand kamikaze planes had been prepared for use against the invading Americans, and there was little demand for surrender within the Japanese population or military.
The atomic bombing of Nagasaki was made necessary by the Japanese refusing to respond to demands for immediate unconditional surrender following the bombing of Hiroshima, which while a horror in itself did not result in as many Japanese deaths as had the firebombing of Tokyo using conventional bombs. Even after the second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, the Japanese did not offer unconditional surrender, instead of demanding that they be allowed to retain their Emperor on the throne in the postwar world, a condition which was granted by the Allies, despite having one remaining atomic bomb ready to be dropped at the time. The dropping of the two atomic bombs hastened the end of the Pacific War, along with the Soviet invasion of Japanese held territory. In doing so they saved countless thousands of lives, Americans, British, Australians, Russians, and Japanese.