\ Chapter : WAR IN THE ATOMIC AGE By Bernard Brodie Most of those who have held the public ear on the subject of the bomb have been content to assume that war and obliteration are now completely synonymous, and that modern man must therefore be either obsolete or fully ripe for the millerium. : No doubt the state of obliteration—-if that should indeed be the . future fate of nations which cannot resolve their disputes—provides little scope for analysis. A few degrees difference in nearness to totality is of relatively small account. But in view of man's historically tested resistance to drastic changes in behavior, especially in a benign direction, one may be pardoned for wishing to examine the various possibilities inherent in the immeasurably more destructive and horrible than any the world has yet known. | That fact is indeed portentous, and to many it is overwhelming, But as a datum for the formilation of policy it is in itself of strictly limited utility. It underlines the urgency of our reaching correct decisions, but it does not help us to discover which decisions are in fact correct. Men have in fact been converted to religion at the point of the sword, but the process generally required actual use of the sword against recalcitrant individuals. use. The atomic bomb does not lend itself to that kind of discriminate The wholesale conversion of mankind away from those parochial attitudes bound up in nationalism is a consummation devoutly to be wished and, where possible, to be actively promoted. But the mere existence of the bomb does not promise to accomplish it at an early enough time to be of any use. The carcful handling required to assure long and fruitful life to the Age of Atomic Energy will in the first instance be a fynction of distinct national governments 3» not ~1UjI