Oppenheimer's Style and Candor II

Since February 2021, I have been posting weekly entries on nuclear weapon matters—history, technology, and “secrets,” all from a somewhat different angle—in You Might Want to Know on Substack. To see other entries, go to the You Might Want to Know Archive.

The problem of doing justice to the implicit, the imponderable, and the unknown is of course not unique to politics. It is always with us in science, it is with us in the most trivial of personal affairs, and it is one of the great problems of writing and of all forms of art. The means by which it is solved is sometimes called style. It is style which complements affirmation with limitation and with humility; it is style which makes it possible to act effectively, but not absolutely; it is style which, in the domain of foreign policy, enables us to find a harmony between the pursuit of ends essential to us, and the regard for the views, the sensibilities, the aspirations of those to whom the problem may appear in another light; it is style which is the deference that action pays to uncertainty; it is above all style thorough which power defers to reason. . . .

This sense that the future is richer and more complex than our prediction of it, and that wisdom lies in sensitiveness to what is new and hopeful, is perhaps a sign of some maturity in politics. . . .
J. Robert Oppenheimer, The Open Mind, 1948

In July 1953, J. Robert Oppenheimer published an essay that set out what he saw as the requirements for an operation by our government for the American people called Candor that would address for us the meaning of the nuclear arms race. The essay, entitled “Atomic Weapons and American Policy,” was published in the journal Foreign Affairs.

Oppenheimer had a distinctive style and as a way of getting into his essay we are taking a look at that style. One way of getting at Oppenheimer’s (or anyone’s) particular style is by looking at what it is not.

Oppenheimer’s essay “Atomic Weapons and American Policy” contains a specific critique of a common stylistic practice that Oppenheimer sees as falling short of candor. In talking about the requirements of an Operation Candor, he proposes that,

[we must] describe in rough but authoritative and quantitative terms what the atomic armaments race is. It is not enough to say, as our government so often has, that we have made "substantial progress."

The problem with allowing ourselves to be content with saying we have made “substantial progress” and leaving it at that is not, Oppenheimer implies here, first of all, that the language is vague and formulaic and maybe even boring.

When the American people are responsibly informed, we may not have solved, but we shall have a new freedom to face, some of the tough problems that are before us.

The problem with such language, then, is that it deprives “the American people” of freedom—“the freedom to face . . . some of the tough problems that are before us.” Like the problems posed by the nuclear arms race. Which are, I hope you would agree, tough problems.

Here’s another example of what I would call an unhappy stylistic practice, this one from the Age of Peril radio address Ike gave in the month before Oppenheimer’s essay was published. This was the speech where Ike announced the need for a continuing “partial mobilization” of the military and higher taxes to support it. Ike said,

But this I assure you: what has been so carefully evolved is a sound program. It contemplates in each of the armed forces calculated risks which have been prudently reasoned. And it represents, in our combined judgment, what is best for our nation's permanent security.

“Calculated risks which have been prudently reasoned”? Okay, I guess, if you say so. We’ll just have to take your word for it, won’t we? And what is being promised here is “our nation’s permanent security”? Really? Doesn’t that run counter to what Ike himself had said earlier in the speech when he warned us against the loss of freedom that would follow from the “military perfection” of “total mobilization”?

Can we get some clarification here? How?

This is more “take it or leave it” talk, isn’t it? It’s in a style that infantilizes the audience, we might say.

A more candid style, one that responsibly informed the American people, Oppenheimer says in his essay, will not “solve” the tough problems, which is surely true. Oppenheimer clearly does not purport to have solved them. But candor would be necessary to give us the “freedom to face” the problems and would make available to us “the inherent resources of a country like ours and a government like ours.”

How so? “The political vitality of our country,” Oppenheimer goes on to say,

largely derives from two sources. One is the interplay, the conflict of opinion and debate, in many diverse and complex agencies, legislative and executive, which contribute to the making of policy. The other is a public opinion which is based on confidence that it knows the truth.

The secrecy imposed by the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 and strictly maintained since that time had certainly vitiated “the conflict of opinion and debate . . . in many diverse and complex agencies” that Oppenheimer says contributes to our “political vitality.” It had also made impossible, he says, “public opinion.” At least a public opinion that could responsibly be “based on confidence that it knows the truth.”

Today public opinion cannot exist in this field [the field of atomic energy]. No responsible person will hazard an opinion in a field where he believes that there is somebody else who knows the truth, and where he believes that he does not know it.

Right. Responsible people won’t do that. Others might, of course.

Operation Candor will not amount, however, to a “tell-all.” Oppenheimer makes that clear. That should not be expected.

It is true that there are and always will be, as long as we live in danger of war, secrets that it is important to keep secret, at least for an appropriate period, if not for all time; some of these, and important ones, are in the field of atomic energy.

But,

knowledge of the characteristics and probable effects of our atomic weapons, of—in rough terms—the numbers available, and of the changes that are likely to occur within the next years, this is not among the things to be kept secret. Nor is our general estimate of where the enemy stands.

General Eisenhower had not offered in his Age of Peril speech or anywhere else an account of the “characteristics and probable effects of our atomic weapons” or an “estimate” of where the Soviets stood.

Eisenhower had asserted, however,

There has been, to this moment, no reason to believe that Soviet policy has changed its frequently announced hope and purpose--the destruction of freedom everywhere.

That’s all Ike had said in his Age of Peril speech about what he took to be the Soviets’ “hope and purpose.” Nothing about what he took to justify this claim. No clarification, no further discussion offered. Take it or leave it. And unless you are unpatriotic, you will of course take it.

He draws an either/or line there, doesn’t he? No uncertainty anywhere, no questions allowed, no reference to anything the Soviet leaders or their people actually have said about their hopes and purposes, and no questions entertained about how much we should credit what they have said about their hopes and purposes. No exploration of what Ike understands “the destruction of freedom” to entail beyond, presumably, the conquest of the United States. And the countries it considers its allies. No matter that those countries may be run by dictators. As long as the dictators say they are our allies and not allied with the Soviet Union.

Maybe what Ike said was true, of course. Maybe the “hope and purpose” of the Soviet Union was “the destruction of freedom everywhere.”

But if so, should we take this as a strength of the Soviet system or a weakness?

Next: Oppenheimer’s Style and Candor III