"Heinlein, Robert A - The Last Days Of The United States" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)

FOREWORD

After World War II I resumed writing with two objectives: first, to explain the meaning of atomic weapons through popular articles; second, to break out from the limitations and low rates of pulp science-fiction magazines into anything and everything: slicks, books, motion pictures, general fiction, specialized fiction not intended for SF magazines, and nonfiction.
My second objective I achieved in every respect, but in my first and much more important objective I fell flat on my face.
Unless you were already adult in August 1945 it is almost impossible for me to convey emotionally to you how people felt about the A-bomb, how many different ways they felt about it, how nearly totally ignorant 99.9% of our citizens were on the subject, including almost all of our military leaders and governmental officials.
And including editors!
(The general public is just as dangerously ignorant as to the significance of nuclear weapons today, 1979, as in 1 945Чbut in different ways. In 1945 we were smugly ignorant; in 1979 we have the Pollyannas, and the Ostriches, and the Jingoists who think we can УwinФ a nuclear war, and the groupЧa majority?Чwho regard World War III as of no importance compared with inflation, gasoline rationing, forced school-busing, or you name it. There is much excuse for the ignorance of 1945; the citizenry had been hit by ideas utterly new and strange. But there is no excuse forthe ignorance of1979. Ignorance today can be charged only to stupidity and lazinessЧboth capital offences.)
I wrote nine articles intended to shed light on the postHiroshima age, and I have never worked harder on any writing, researched the background more thoroughly, tried harder to make the (grim and horrid) message entertaining and readable. I offered them to commercial markets, not to make money, but because the only propaganda
that stands any chance of influencing people is packaged so attractively that editors will buy it in the belief that the cash customers will be entertained by it.
Mine was not packaged that attractively.
I was up against some heavy tonnage:
General Groves, in charge of the Manhattan District (code name for A-bomb R&D), testified that it would take from twenty years to forever for another country to build an A-bomb. (USSR did it in 4 years.)
The Chief of Naval Operations testified that the УonlyФ way to deliver the bomb to a target across an ocean was by ship.
A very senior Army Air Force general testified that УblockbusterФ bombs were just as effective and cheaper.
The chairman of NACA (shortly to become NASA) testified (Science News Letter 25 May 1946) that intercontinental rockets were impossible.
Ad nauseumЧthe old sailors want wooden ships, the old soldiers want horse cavalry.
But I continued to write these articles until the U.S.S.R. rejected the United StatesТ proposals for controlling and outlawing atomic weapons through open skies and mutual on-the-ground inspection, i.e., every country in the world to surrender enough of its sovereignty to the United Nations that mass-weapons war would become impossible (and lesser war unnecessary).
The U.S.S.R. rejected inspectionЧand I stopped trying to peddle articles based on tying the Bomb down through international policing.
I wish that I could say that thirty-three years of УpeaceФ (i.e., no A- or H- or C- orN- orX- bombs dropped) indicates that we really have nothing to fear from such weapons, because the human race has sense enough not to commit suicide. But I am sorry to say that the situation is even more dangerous, even less stable, than it was in 1946.
Here are three short articles, each from a different ap
proach, with which I tried (and failed) to beat the drum br world peace.
Was I really so naif that I thought that I could change the course of history this way? No, not really. But, damn it, I had to try!







УIf you pray hard enough,
water will run uphill. How hard?
Why, hard enough to make water
run uphill, of course!Ф
ЧL. Long
THE LAST DAYS OF THE UNITED
STATES


УHere lie the bare bones of the United States of America, conceived in freedom, died in bondage. 1776Ч1986. Death came mercifully, in one stroke, during senility.
УRest in Peace!Ф

No expostulations, please. Let us not kid ourselves. The next war can destroy us, utterly, as a nationЧand World War III is staring us right in the face. So far, we have done little to avert it and less to prepare for it. Once upon a time the United Nations Organization stood a fair chance of preventing World War III. Now, only a major operation can equip the UNO to cope with the horrid facts of atomics and rocketryЧa major operation which would take away the veto power of the Big Five and invest the world organization with the sole and sovereign power to possess atomic weapons.
Are we, as a people, prepared to make the necessary sacrifices to achieve a world authority?
Take a look around you. Many of your friends and neighbors believe that the mere possession of the atomic bomb has rendered us immune to attack. SoЧ the country settles back with a sigh of relief, content to leave foreign affairs to William Randolph Hearst, the Denver Post, and the Chicago Tribune. We turn our backs on world responsibility and are now hell-bent
on new washing machines and new cars.
From such an attitude, with dreadful certainty, comes World War III, the Twenty Minute War, the Atomic War, the War of Final Destruction. The УsecretФ of the atomic bomb cannot be kept, the experts have told us repeatedly, for the УsecretФ is simply engineering know-how which can be developed by any industrial nation.
From this fact it can be predicted that any industrial nation, even though small and comparatively weak, will in a few years be able to create the means to destroy the United States at will in one all-out surprise attack. What constitutes a strong power in the Atomic Era? Scientific knowledge, engineering skill, and access to the ores of uraniumЧno more is needed. Under such circumstances the pretensions of the Big Five to veto powers over the affairs of this planet are preposterous. At the moment there is only the Big One, the United States, through its temporary exclusive possession of the Bomb. TomorrowЧfive to ten yearsЧ the list might include any of the many nations with the two requirements.
Belgium and Canada have the greatest known deposits of uranium. Both are small but both possess science and skill in abundance. Potentially they are more powerful than any of the so-called Big Five, more powerful than the United States or Russia. Will they stand outside indefinitely, hat in hand, while the УBig FiveФ determine the fate of the human race? The developments of atomic weapons and of rocketry are analogous to the development of the revolver in individual affairsЧit has made the little ones and the big ones all the same size. Some fine day some little nation may decide she is tired of having us around, give us one twenty-minute treatment with atomic rocket bombs, and accept our capitulation.
We have reason to fear such an attack. We have been through one Pearl Harbor; we know that it can happen to us. Our present conduct breeds fear and distrust in the hearts of men all over the globe. No matter how we
think of ourselves, no matter how peaceful and good hearted we think ourselves to be, two facts insure that we will be hated by many. We have the BombЧit is like a loaded revolver pointed at the heads of all men. Oh, we wonТt pull the trigger! Nevertheless, do you suppose they love us for it?