Hugh Gusterson | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

An education in occupation

Hugh Gusterson — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 12:43:43 -0800

As the last American soldiers left Iraq in December, so, too, did many of the journalists who had covered the war, leaving little in the way of media coverage of post-war Iraq.

Death by drone

Hugh Gusterson — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 17:03:18 -0700

Anwar al-Awlaki was clearly not a nice person, but the manner in which he was killed on September 30 should trouble us all, regardless of our political orientation. Awlaki, a US citizen who once lived in Northern Virginia, was a Muslim cleric who took up residence in Yemen, where he incited anti-US sentiment -- until he was executed by a drone.

The costs of war

Hugh Gusterson — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 07:54:23 -0700

Military responses to problems have a way of creating all sorts of new problems. The tenth anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy offers an opportunity to reflect on the costs and benefits of the wars the United States initiated against Iraq and Afghanistan after the terrorist attacks. A comprehensive new study, "Costs of War," sponsored by Brown University (and with which I have been affiliated) suggests that the costs have been wildly out of proportion to the benefits.

The human element

Hugh Gusterson — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 20:20:13 -0700

The discussions about the safety of nuclear reactors in the new post-Fukushima world have focused on technical questions: Is it possible to make reactors earthquake-proof? What is the best way to ensure that spent fuel remains safe? What is the optimal design for coolant systems? Can reactors be made "inherently safe"?

An appreciation: The Republican senator who opposed nuclear arms

Hugh Gusterson — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 16:19:09 -0700

"If you've been in a war, you cannot but have your views altered. The devastation, the terrible devastation, is not something one ever forgets."
- Mark Hatfield, 1986

The lessons of Fukushima

Hugh Gusterson — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 20:00:52 -0700

As an anthropologist, I am always interested in what humans learn from their mistakes. Can humans change their behavior, thereby improving their chances of survival, not just through natural selection, but also through cultural learning? Or are we hardwired to repeat our mistakes over and over, like humanoid lemmings?

More to the point, what lessons will we learn from the nuclear accident at Fukushima, an accident thought to be impossible just two weeks ago?

An open letter to the Tea Party

Hugh Gusterson — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 09:38:56 -0700

Congratulations to your movement for so quickly and fundamentally shifting the political debate in the United States. You have put a vital issue on the national agenda: the increasing share of our wealth as a nation that has been commandeered by the government, and the resulting budget deficits that are like a massive iceberg toward which our economic ship of state drifts at its peril.

Now showing: Countdown to Zero

Hugh Gusterson — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 13:53:31 -0700

Great historical changes begin as the quixotic obsessions of a vanguard of idealists who are seen as dangerous radicals or ideological deviants by many of their contemporaries. Think of the first advocates of the abolition of slavery, the first suffragettes, and the first gay rights activists.

The olive branch in the West Bank

Hugh Gusterson — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 15:22:39 -0700

Israel's ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren, was recently quoted as saying that relations between the U.S. and Israel were undergoing a "tectonic rift in which continents are drifting apart." If the quote is accurate, which Oren later disputed, it is surely an overstatement.

Against counterinsurgency in Afghanistan

Hugh Gusterson — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 08:42:57 -0700

It says something about American politics that Gen. Stanley McChrystal was not fired because U.S. casualties in Afghanistan are running at record levels, because the much vaunted Marja initiative has failed, or because the Kandahar offensive is already in trouble during its preliminary rollout. No, he was fired because he and his team embarrassed the White House with carelessly frank talk to a journalist. "This is a change in personnel, but not a change in policy," said President Barack Obama in announcing General McChrystal's dismissal.

Do professional ethics matter in war?

Hugh Gusterson — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:58:55 -0800

What happens when the U.S. military decides that an academic discipline's professional ethics code is a nuisance?

That is the situation in which anthropology now finds itself.

An American suicide bomber?

Hugh Gusterson — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 12:05:10 -0800

"As for the Taliban fighters, they not only don't cherish life, they expend it freely in suicide bombings. It's difficult to imagine an American suicide bomber," Washington Post pundit Richard Cohen opined in a recent column.

Afghanistan: Vietnam all over again

Hugh Gusterson — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 14:48:03 -0800

"Today they are ringing the bells; tomorrow they will be wringing their hands," Sir Robert Walpole.

We don't know the intimate details of the discussions in President Barack Obama's recent war councils, so it's impossible to know what the chess-player-in-chief is thinking as he sends 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. We only know what he is telling us.

How to get out of Afghanistan

Hugh Gusterson — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 10:35:13 -0700

It's nice to hear from readers of this column, even if they ask pointed questions. Anne Winterfield, a graduate student at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, read my recent article on the futility of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan and called me up with a question about the last sentence of that article: "Say our job is done now, Mr.

The shared sins of Soviet and U.S. nuclear testing

Hugh Gusterson — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 08:16:16 -0700

Gerald Sperling's new film, Silent Bombs: All for the Motherland, recounts the effects of decades of nuclear testing on Kazakh villagers near the Soviet nuclear test site at Semipalatinsk. The film is at once very particular to Kazakhstan, the exotic ambience of which is evoked with a sad lyricism, and, in a disturbing way, generic to the nuclear age. It evokes something that is simultaneously strange and familiar.

Why the war in Afghanistan cannot be won

Hugh Gusterson — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 09:44:57 -0700

A number of commentators have remarked of late on the ominous parallels between the situation in Afghanistan today and the quagmire in Vietnam in the 1960s:

Thinking creatively about the North Korean stalemate

Hugh Gusterson — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 12:47:42 -0700

We all know the saying that you can't be a little bit pregnant--either you are or you aren't. According to Henry Kissinger, getting nuclear weapons is like getting pregnant. In a Washington Post op-ed published on Nagasaki Day, Kissinger wrote, "The root cause of our decade-old controversy with Pyongyang is that there is no middle ground between North Korea being a nuclear-weapons state and a state without nuclear weapons."

Hiroshima and the power of pictures

Hugh Gusterson — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 15:10:27 -0700

Sixty-four years ago this week the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed by atomic bombs. Whether we endorse or condemn the bombings, how do we grasp the enormity of the destruction that befell those two unfortunate Japanese cities? The last survivors of the bombings are passing into history, taking with them the power of their living witness. But for me, the full force of the bombings has always come from pictures more than words.

Iran: Looking forward

Hugh Gusterson — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 08:01:02 -0700

Ayatollah Khamenei and the Iranian regime had two choices when their blatant rigging of the election was met with massive street protests. They could stand aside, a la the decrepit regimes of Eastern Europe in 1989; or they could send out uniformed thugs to beat, kill, and intimidate the protesters until their movement buckled, a la China's Tiananmen Square strategy.

They chose the latter, and we will all pay the price.

The CTBT debate begins again

Hugh Gusterson — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 07:25:48 -0700

North Korea's nuclear test on May 25 has increased the urgency of the nuclear test ban cause but also raised further questions about the feasibility of achieving a truly universal ban. President Barack Obama has promised to seek "aggressive" and "immediate" ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). Signed by Washington in 1996, the CTBT was brought before the Senate for ratification once before in 1999.