My article with @carsonaust, “Performative Violence and the Spectacular Debut of the Atomic Bomb,” is now available at @apsrjournal [Thread]. https://t.co/ZUhaJ0p4AY

In fact, the latter may not have made much sense without the former [END].

A carefully-crafted display of tremendous violence was just as integral to the “ordering moment” of 1945 as was the creation of self-restraining international institutions.

Our findings also suggest a more complete—and less congratulatory—understanding of the 1945 birth of the “liberal” international order. https://t.co/np1llO7hs5.

If an approach that illuminated such events now provides a deeper understanding of the historic atomic bombing decisions, it has already established its promise as a general logic that travels remarkably well across different levels of analysis.

After all, scholars have already used performative theory to explain lynchings, colonial and civil war atrocities, and poorly legitimized invasions of smaller countries. See this particularly illuminating example:

Our study underscores the potential for performative logics to shed light on episodes of mass violence that occur in various realms of politics.

It thus promised a “fair background” to showcase the new bomb’s strength, and by extension, the strength of its possessor.

Hiroshima quickly emerged as the favorite target, given that it had been largely “untouched” by prior conventional bombing and its terrain was likely to produce a “focusing effect” that would magnify the destructiveness of the blast.

They adopted a mindset akin to theater directors tending to the “look and feel” of their new gadget’s first major performance. Note how Fujii (2021) put it:

Top decision-makers therefore chose the option they believed would ensure an especially clear, visible, and deadly “atomic debut.”

Everyone who had a role in the bomb thus agreed that the question of how nuclear weapons would “first be revealed to the world” was “of great, perhaps fateful importance”—even if they didn’t necessarily agree on how to go about this.

But the bomb would only serve this role if all relevant actors UNDERSTOOD its tremendous power.

As he later stated, the bomb appeared to be the “badly needed equalizer” that would help the US avoid this outcome.

SecWar Stimson wrote in May 1943 that the US may well end up “hold[ing] the leg for Stalin to skin the deer” as things stood—it would “not be able to share much of the post-war world with him.”

This was deemed necessary in view of America’s anticipated conventional inferiority vis-à-vis the Soviet Union and Washington’s desire to influence the postwar international system.

Our core argument is that U.S. leaders orchestrated a spectacularly violent display of nuclear weapons because they believed this would help them reshape widespread perceptions of the global balance of power.

We adapt insights on “performative” violence, originally developed by scholars like the late Lee Ann Fujii to understand civil conflicts, to make sense of this historic choice.

Why were such “tamer” nuclear first-use options rejected in favor of the “ultralethal” option?

The “noncombat demonstration” option, for instance, was forcefully articulated in a report addressed to SecWar Stimson by scientists at the @UChicago (i.e., the Franck report).

A surprise attack on two heavily populated cities was one of several options US leaders considered at the time, and by far the most lethal.