Thanks to the international box-office success of Oppenheimer, the use and morality of nuclear weapons have become a popular discussion again. While we have lived in the nuclear era for the better part of a century, nuclear escalation and deterrence policy remains at the forefront of any military confrontation, including with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. That campaign has played out against the backdrop of modern nuclear weapons technology and the fear that Russia might escalate to nuclear levels in order to break the stalemate in its favor. Yet the technological advancements in nuclear weapons, and indeed, non-nuclear weapons, since the time of Robert Oppenheimer might make it less likely either side will resort to a grand nuclear clash.

(Library of Congress)

On Aug. 6, 1945, an American aircraft dropped an atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later, a second bomb was detonated over Nagasaki. The two bombs killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians. The debate over the morality of these bombings began immediately and has only intensified over the decades as the destructive power of nuclear arms increased with the development of a thermonuclear weapon.