Speaker
Description
The horrific physical, medical, and environmental effects of nuclear weapons underpin long-standing ideas about nuclear deterrence, as well as challenges to their legitimacy and legality. Yet while US planners anticipated the bomb’s immense physical destruction in Japan 1945, they paid little attention to its probable medical and environmental effects. Instead, it was news reports about radiation in the aftermath of the bombings that first raised public concerns and criticisms about the bomb’s health effects. I show that this criticism prompted US officials to manage publicly-available information about the bomb in order to shape its early reception as a powerful – yet still acceptable – weapon. US efforts took advantage of the unique circumstances around Hiroshima and Nagasaki to emphasize the bomb’s physical destruction but downplay radiation effects to domestic and international audiences. In doing so, they also sought to avoid association with chemical weapons, which had been banned in response to public pressure after World War I. I argue that this information management was central to US efforts to build early public acceptance of nuclear weapons. The findings provide insight into contemporary political debates around nuclear weapons, as well as broader questions about the legitimization of new weapons in international politics.
| If you are submitting an Open Panel proposal, have you included all four abstracts in attachment? | No, I am submitting a Closed Panel abstract |
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| Would you like to be considered for travel funding through the NetSec COST Action? | No |
| Are you a member of the NetSec Management Committee? | No |
| What discipline or branch of humanities or social sciences do you identify yourself with? | Political Science/International Relations |
| Which of the following best describes your stage of the career? | Associate Professor |
| In which country is your home institution? | United States |
| What is your gender? | Female |