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Today, humanity is confronted with an ugly paradox in that the world's foremost peacekeepers are nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles. One bad move on the geopolitical chessboard, however, could trigger a global catastrophe.
On July 25, 1945, in the waning moments of World War II, then US President Harry S. Truman jotted the following words in his diary, "We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world." But not terrible enough to employ them, it seems.
Just weeks later, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese industrial cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, indiscriminately killing some 200,000 civilians in, literally, a flash. Many others died in the years that followed from radiation poisoning and other associated illnesses. If there is a special place in hell for those who would expose the planet to such horrific weapons, Truman must certainly be there.
The historic tragedy is not without some dark irony. Albert Einstein, whose theory of relativity spearheaded the development of atomic weapons, was worried that Adolf Hitler would acquire the deadly know-how before the West. This prompted him in 1939 to write a
letter to Truman's predecessor, Franklin D. Roosevelt, advising him to expedite research into nuclear fission. American scientists, working in the secret Manhattan Project, succeeded beyond Einstein's wildest dreams.
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