Atomic road trip

Here's a review of the book A Nuclear Family Vacation: Travels in the World of Atomic Weaponry by Nathan Hodge and Sharon Weinberger from the Chicago Tribune.

Atomic road trip

Traveling the world in search of answers about the policies and purposes surrounding nuclear weapons

By Eric Arnesen
July 12, 2008

With the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Cold War between the U.S. and its powerful communist opponent came to a quiet end. For almost half a century, the two superpowers had aimed ever-expanding numbers of increasingly powerful thermonuclear weapons at one another, fully knowledgeable that any attack by one side against the other would be met by a return rain of destruction that would likely lead to Armageddon.

The deep ideological and military conflict between the Soviets and the Americans did not result in a nuclear exchange; doomsday, happily, never arrived. But what happens "when a war ends," ask defense journalists Nathan Hodge and Sharon Weinberger, and "the warriors don't go home?"

Arms-reduction treaties have dramatically reduced the number of nuclear weapons, and the U.S. last tested a nuclear weapon in 1992. Yet the U.S. and, to a lesser extent, Russia continue to spend vast sums on research, development and maintenance of their shrinking nuclear arsenals. In the meantime, a small but growing number of other nations have joined, or are seeking to join, the nuclear club. The specter of nuclear detonation continues to haunt our imagination.

In "A Nuclear Family Vacation," the husband-and-wife team of Hodge and Weinberger set off to explore "the powerful role nuclear weaponry still plays in today's world" by embarking on a cross-country—and eventually overseas—adventure into the world of what they call nuclear tourism. Over two years they traveled to Alamogordo, N.M., site of the world's first nuclear detonation, and to various museums devoted to the history of nuclear weapons, former missile silos and test sites, current research installations and other military headquarters. Their later travels took them to the Marshall Islands, Russia, the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan and Iran.

The phenomenon of nuclear tourism, they tell us, "is experiencing something of a renaissance," attracting to decommissioned bunkers, museums and the like unspecified but significant numbers of people drawn by "a mix of cold War nostalgia and morbid curiosity." Albuquerque boasts a National Atomic Museum with interactive exhibits for children, Albert Einstein action figures and Little Boy shot glasses (named after the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945) in its gift shop. In Las Vegas, a 3-year-old Atomic Testing Museum, partially funded by Lockheed Martin, displays Cold War paraphernalia—comic books, cereal boxes and Christmas ornaments reflecting an "atomic motif"—along with a model fallout shelter from the 1950s. North of the city, the Nevada Test Site draws busloads of retirees and thousands of others make the "pilgrimage" to the original Trinity site in New Mexico; in Oak Ridge, Tenn., the Energy Department promotes its own "nuclear heritage" with bus tours around its facility there.

While Hodge and Weinberger are hardly alone in putting Cold War destinations on their holiday itinerary, their account indirectly suggests that nuclear tourism is a niche market appealing to a limited audience. Just how many people visit these sites, their reasons for doing so, what they got out of the experience and how profitable nuclear tourism is are questions left unasked and unanswered.

The atomic vacation angle seems more a gimmick to lure in readers than the intended subject of the book. (Though, to be fair, their informal travelogue is usually engaging and often amusing). Beyond the catchy imitation-neon-sign typeface and the mushroom cloud at the end of the highway on the book's cover is a more serious work about the state of nuclear policy and the role of nuclear specialists in a post-Cold War world. Given the vast sums expended on nuclear weapons today, what do the scientists, contractors and military officials see as their purpose? What, in fact, do they actually do?

Hodge and Weinberger spend more time on the road interviewing officials at government offices, laboratories and military installations than they do checking out atomic museums. (Much of their vacation time, it seems, consisted of being subjected to countless dull PowerPoint presentations by bureaucrats justifying what they do.) The questions they pose are important, the answers they receive more than a little disturbing.

"Where was the debate over nuclear strategy?" they ask. "We had spent two years traveling the world to understand how nations view nuclear weapons. We came away less convinced than ever that there was any strategy to speak of." American nuclear programs, they conclude, constitute "a complex adrift, grasping for meaning and purpose." In the absence of meaningful political leadership, there is only "strategic ambivalence." Missing from their countless conversations was "any discussion about the purpose of the nuclear arsenal."

Hodge and Weinberger certainly found true believers as well as those who creatively seek to recast their mission for a post- 9/11 world: to meet a terrorist threat, develop anti-ballistic-missile systems, or otherwise diversify their funding streams to protect their institutional existence. The Bush administration's push for the development of a "nuclear bunker buster" may have "failed to gain much traction," and anti-ballistic-missile tests have hardly lived up to their promoters' hype. Yet the government continues to pour "hundreds of millions of dollars into an effort to revive nuclear weapons production."

What struck Hodge and Weinberger, however, was more a sense of drift and purposelessness than fervent belief. Some military brass seemed to recognize clearly that nuclear weapons "were no longer a growth business." The two journalists discovered "malaise at Los Alamos," where scientists were uninspired by serving as a mere "repair shop for nuclear weapons." Even the recruitment of "top-notch scientists . . . was becoming an uphill battle, particularly in an era when new graduates didn't see the need for nuclear weapons." As one lieutenant colonel from the Air Force Academy admitted, weapons developers are " 'a dying breed.' " Many of their interviewees had pragmatically if unenthusiastically adapted to the task of dismantling weapons or ensuring their effectiveness in the absence of actual testing (through, for instance, "stockpile stewardship" and by developing the Reliable Replacement Warhead).

The "greatest challenge—and perhaps danger—. . . is the lack of any coherent nuclear strategy for dealing" with the variety of threats we face today, they conclude. Indeed, while they express "a respect for the patriotism and dedication of those who toil in the nuclear weapons complex," they ultimately fear it is "an enterprise that had lost its way."

"A Nuclear Family Vacation" leaves the impression that America's nuclear endeavor is an idea whose time has come and gone, one with little place in a post-Cold War world whose threats—even nuclear ones—are profoundly different after 9/11. Our nuclear arsenal, they conclude, "serves many purposes, but no particular end." The weapons infrastructure "continues to exist merely because no one has come up with a compelling reason to shut it down."

Given their punch line, it is surprising that Hodge and Weinberger do not wade deeply into the substance of nuclear strategy or politics, or challenge too directly the people with whom they talked. By and large they ask questions, listen and record the responses, saving their evaluations for later. As for anti-nuclear activists—who have been around almost as long as the Bomb has—they make only cameo appearances in their pages, offering little by way of substantive criticism of policy, past or present.

Why take a nuclear family vacation, the authors rhetorically ask. To remind us "of a threat to which we've become inured." Most nuclear tourists likely have something else in mind when they pack up the kids for their outings to missile-test sites or atomic museums. Defense journalists like Hodge and Weinberger obviously have an agenda that informs their itinerary. And they succeed admirably in reminding us that nuclear weapons have "never really gone away" and in calling attention to the crucial public debates that are not taking place. The questions they pose are significant and overdue; the answers they receive unsettling. The account of their travels may not resolve difficult political and military questions, but they remind us that the purpose and future of our nuclear arsenal are too important to be left to those whose jobs remain dependent upon its perpetuation.