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Does Chirac's slip reflect France's real position on a nuclear Iran?
Evidently unaware of the wartime ban, Campbell published in May 1941 a story with a more alarmist view, Robert A. Heinlein's "Solution Unsatisfactory," which came very close to describing the Manhattan Project itself: "Someone in the United States government had realized the terrific potentialities of uranium 235 quite early, and, as far back as the summer of 1940, had rounded up every atomic research man in the country and sworn them to silence." Heinlein overestimated the difficulty of controlling an atomic explosion, so that what his scientists develop by 1945 is not an atomic bomb, but radioactive dust, which they drop with devastating consequences on Berlin.
Heinlein's technical errors are unimportant. More significantly, he understood that atomic weapons research could not be kept a secret, and that America's nuclear monopoly would be unlikely to create international stability unless it imposed a new world order. Accordingly, the President issues a peace proclamation, that, "divested of its diplomatic surplusage," says, "The United States is prepared to defeat any power, or combination of powers, in jig time. Accordingly, we are outlawing war and are calling on every nation to disarm completely at once. In other words, 'Throw down your guns, boys; we've got the drop on you!' "
Unfortunately, the scientists of the USSR--in the story dubbed the "Eurasian Union"--have also discovered the uses of atomic dust, and the result is the devastating Four-Days War. (If Heinlein's understanding had been more widely shared by his countrymen, the U.S. might have been spared the atom spy hysteria of the postwar era in which politicians seemed to think that the secrets of fission could be patented and kept secret.) In the war the enemy is destroyed, but power is seized by the colonel who conceived of using the radioactive dust in the first place. The world is now at peace, but it has become a vast dictatorship; hence the story's title.
I know I've told this story before, but my Dad transshipped a large crate from the USS Indianapolis to the Tinian beach on his little amphib. He was not told what it was, but there was a squad of Marines, with literal shoot to kill orders if anyone touched the crate.
My old man's story is validated by a short remark in the book about the Indy (which was lost a few days later and was a scandal as men were left in the water dying to sharks for a long time).
Another story about my pop (told by my uncle, Dad never mentioned it) is that during WW2 (as an ensign) he visited the Navy department to suggest that they consider using centrifuges to separate U235 from U-238. (He was into sci fi). They gave him a look and said do you want to be part of the war in the pacific or go to a laboratory. He went for the medals.
I disagree with Spiffor, that could very well be France's real position. America is selling the idea of a non-nuclear Iran on the basis that it's a fundamentally evil regime, that Ahmadinejad is a madman, that they want to destroy Israel, etc...
Chirac is just saying that France wants to avoid proliferation, not that Iran is the devil incarnate.
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