{"id":70965,"date":"2009-08-06T13:32:45","date_gmt":"2009-08-06T13:32:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2009\/08\/06\/ellsberg-le-complexe-et-la-bombe\/"},"modified":"2009-08-06T13:32:45","modified_gmt":"2009-08-06T13:32:45","slug":"ellsberg-le-complexe-et-la-bombe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2009\/08\/06\/ellsberg-le-complexe-et-la-bombe\/","title":{"rendered":"Ellsberg, le Complexe et la Bombe"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ellsberg, le Complexe et la Bombe<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n

Le jour de l’anniversaire du largage de la bombe atomique sur Hiroshima est toujours l’occasion de divers articles et commentaires aux USA. Le sujet reste tr\u00e8s sensible, tr\u00e8s pol\u00e9mique. Cet article de Daniel Ellsberg, mis en ligne ce 6 août 2009<\/a> sur Truthdig.com<\/em>, est d’un particulier int\u00e9r\u00eat. L’auteur est un grand dissident US, d’abord analyste de la Rand Corporation puis du Pentagone, ensuite auteur de la \u00ab\u00a0fuite du si\u00e8cle\u00a0\u00bb, en 1971-72, – les Pentagon Papers<\/em> sur l’engagement US au Vietnam, – qui lui valut un jugement de la Cour Supr\u00eame en sa faveur, contre le gouvernement des USA.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Dans cet article tr\u00e8s long, Ellsberg d\u00e9voile quelques faits jusqu’alors ignor\u00e9s, \u00e0 notre connaissance, qui le montrent en situation d’une tr\u00e8s grande proximit\u00e9 des \u00e9v\u00e9nements qui accompagn\u00e8rent le d\u00e9veloppement aux USA de la Bombe (la bombe atomique [BA] puis la bombe thermonucl\u00e9aire \u00e0 hydrog\u00e8ne [BH], la Super<\/em>).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

On retiendra trois passages de cet article, qui \u00e9clairent des aspects int\u00e9ressants de l’histoire de la Bombe.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

• Le premier est l’exp\u00e9rience \u00e9tonnante de Ellsberg, alors jeune lyc\u00e9en, qui avait pourtant d\u00e9j\u00e0 dissert\u00e9 sur l’emploi de la Bombe avant son emploi effectif, et dans le cadre officiel et collectif de son coll\u00e8ge. On d\u00e9couvre ainsi que la chose n’\u00e9tait ni une surprise, ni un r\u00e9el secret quant \u00e0 sa possibilit\u00e9, que la venue de la Bombe \u00e9tait appr\u00e9hend\u00e9e exactement pour ce qu’elle allait \u00eatre, m\u00eame dans ces milieux bien \u00e9loign\u00e9s du pouvoir. On se trouvait beaucoup moins \u00ab\u00a0dans l’inconnu\u00a0\u00bb que ce qu’on a bien voulu faire croire ensuite, pour \u00e9carter le poids d’une trop grande culpabilit\u00e9. Il faut noter dans ces remarques la pr\u00e9sence d\u00e9j\u00e0 effective du probl\u00e8me fondamental de civilisation (voir Toynbee<\/a>) que constitue le d\u00e9veloppement disproportionn\u00e9 des facteurs du progr\u00e8s, avec l’avance formidable du d\u00e9veloppement technologique, contre d’autres domaines, notamment l’\u00e9valuation \u00ab\u00a0civilisatrice\u00a0\u00bb de tels progr\u00e8s, compl\u00e8tement laiss\u00e9s en arri\u00e8re (ce que le sociologue William F. Ogburn nommait \u00ab\u00a0cultural lag<\/em>\u00ab\u00a0, mentionn\u00e9 ici par Ellsberg).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n

«It was in a ninth-grade social studies class in the fall of 1944. I was 13, a boarding student on full scholarship at Cranbrook, a private school in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. Our teacher, Bradley Patterson, was discussing a concept that was familiar then in sociology, William F. Ogburn’s notion of \u00ab\u00a0cultural lag.\u00a0\u00bb<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

»The idea was that the development of technology regularly moved much further and faster in human social-historical evolution than other aspects of culture: our institutions of government, our values, habits, our understanding of society and ourselves. Indeed, the very notion of \u00ab\u00a0progress\u00a0\u00bb referred mainly to technology. What \u00ab\u00a0lagged\u00a0\u00bb behind, what developed more slowly or not at all in social adaptation to new technology was everything that bore on our ability to control and direct technology and the use of technology to dominate other humans.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

»To illustrate this, Mr. Patterson posed a potential advance in technology that might be realized soon. It was possible now, he told us, to conceive of a bomb made of U-235, an isotope of uranium, which would have an explosive power 1,000 times greater than the largest bombs being used in the war that was then going on. German scientists in late 1938 had discovered that uranium could be split by nuclear fission, in a way that would release immense amounts of energy.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

»Several popular articles about the possibility of atomic bombs and specifically U-235 bombs appeared during the war in magazines like The Saturday Evening Post. None of these represented leaks from the Manhattan Project, whose very existence was top-secret. In every case they had been inspired by earlier articles on the subject that had been published freely in 1939 and 1940, before scientific self-censorship and then formal classification had set in. Patterson had come across one of these wartime articles. He brought the potential development to us as an example of one more possible leap by science and technology ahead of our social institutions.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

»Suppose, then, that one nation, or several, chose to explore the possibility of making this into a bomb, and succeeded. What would be the probable implications of this for humanity? How would it be used, by humans and states as they were today? Would it be, on balance, bad or good for the world? Would it be a force for peace, for example, or for destruction? We were to write a short essay on this, within a week.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

»I recall the conclusions I came to in my paper after thinking about it for a few days. As I remember, everyone in the class had arrived at much the same judgment. It seemed pretty obvious.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

»The existence of such a bomb—we each concluded—would be bad news for humanity. Mankind could not handle such a destructive force. It could not control it, safely, appropriately. The power would be \u00ab\u00a0abused\u00a0\u00bb: used dangerously and destructively, with terrible consequences. Many cities would be destroyed entirely, just as the Allies were doing their best to destroy German cities without atomic bombs at that very time, just as the Germans earlier had attempted to do to Rotterdam and London. Civilization, perhaps our species, would be in danger of destruction.<\/em>»<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

• …Puis, quelques paragraphes plus loin, Ellsberg nous fait part de ses r\u00e9actions le 6 août 1945, lorsqu’il entendit Truman annoncer la grande nouvelle. Le sentiment de l’adolescent, tel que le vieil homme d’aujourd’hui se le rappelle pour nous, est celui d’un immense malaise, outre la force tragique de la nouvelle de l’utilisation de la bombe; malaise, justement, devant l’absence compl\u00e8te de dimension tragique, du sentiment d’immense pr\u00e9occupation qu’il eût \u00e9t\u00e9 fond\u00e9 d’attendre dans la d\u00e9claration du pr\u00e9sident, \u00e0 c\u00f4t\u00e9 de l’annonce victorieuse. Rien de cela, rien qu’une jubilation qui paraît aujourd’hui ind\u00e9cente et obsc\u00e8ne, en plus de sa stupidit\u00e9 inh\u00e9rente.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n

«I remember that I was uneasy, on that first day and in the days ahead, about the tone in President Harry Truman’s voice on the radio as he exulted over our success in the race for the Bomb and its effectiveness against Japan. I generally admired Truman, then and later, but in hearing his announcements I was put off by the lack of concern in his voice, the absence of a sense of tragedy, of desperation or fear for the future. It seemed to me that this was a decision best made in anguish; and both Truman’s manner and the tone of the official communiqu\u00e9s made unmistakably clear that this hadn’t been the case.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

»Which meant for me that our leaders didn’t have the picture, didn’t grasp the significance of the precedent they had set and the sinister implications for the future. And that evident unawareness was itself scary. I believed that something ominous had happened; that it was bad for humanity that the Bomb was feasible, and that its use would have bad long-term consequences, whether or not those negatives were balanced or even outweighed by short-run benefits.<\/em>»<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

• Enfin, Ellsberg nous fait part de la d\u00e9couverte, 29 ans plus tard, quand son p\u00e8re lui confia son secret, du r\u00f4le que joua justement ce p\u00e8re dans les pr\u00e9misses du d\u00e9veloppement de la bombe \u00e0 hydrog\u00e8ne, de sa d\u00e9cision de d\u00e9missionner lorsqu’il d\u00e9couvrit \u00e0 quoi allait servir sa contribution. Cela se passait \u00e0 la fin de 1949. Son p\u00e8re n’\u00e9tait pas un ing\u00e9nieur atomiste mais un ing\u00e9nieur concepteur d’usines et de chaînes de production pour mat\u00e9riels de guerre (il avait travaill\u00e9 pendant la guerre sur les chaînes Ford qui produisirent le Consolidated B-24 Liberator<\/em>, puis sur les chaînes Dodge de Chicago, qui produisirent les moteurs du Boeing B-29 SuperFortress<\/em>).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n

«I told him, \u00ab\u00a0You must have the date wrong. You couldn’t have heard about the hydrogen bomb then, it’s too early.\u00a0\u00bb I’d just been reading about that, in Herb York’s recent book, \u00ab\u00a0The Advisors.\u00a0\u00bb The General Advisory Committee (GAC) of the AEC—chaired by Robert Oppenheimer and including James Conant, Enrico Fermi and Isidor Rabi—were considering that fall whether or not to launch a crash program for an H-bomb. That was the \u00ab\u00a0super weapon\u00a0\u00bb referred to earlier. They had advised strongly against it, but President Truman overruled them.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

»\u00ab\u00a0Truman didn’t make the decision to go ahead till January 1950. Meanwhile the whole thing was super-secret. You couldn’t have heard about it in ’49.\u00a0\u00bb<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

»My father said, \u00ab\u00a0Well, somebody had to design the plant if they were going to go ahead. I was the logical person. I was in charge of the structural engineering of the whole project at Hanford after the war. I had a Q clearance.\u00a0\u00bb<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

»That was the first I’d ever heard that he’d had had a Q clearance—an AEC clearance for nuclear weapons design and stockpile data. I’d had that clearance myself in the Pentagon—along with close to a dozen other special clearances above top-secret—after I left the RAND Corp. for the Defense Department in 1964. It was news to me that my father had had a clearance, but it made sense that he would have needed one for Hanford.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

»I said, \u00ab\u00a0So you’re telling me that you would have been one of the only people in the country, outside the GAC, who knew we were considering building the H-bomb in 1949?\u00a0\u00bb<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

»He said, \u00ab\u00a0I suppose so. Anyway, I know it was late ’49, because that’s when I quit.\u00a0\u00bb<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

»\u00ab\u00a0Why did you quit?\u00a0\u00bb<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

»\u00ab\u00a0I didn’t want to make an H-bomb. Why, that thing was going to be 1,000 times more powerful than the A-bomb!\u00a0\u00bb<\/em> […] My father went on: \u00ab\u00a0I hadn’t wanted to work on the A-bomb, either. But then Einstein seemed to think that we needed it, and it made sense to me that we had to have it against the Russians. So I took the job, but I never felt good about it.\u00a0\u00bb<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

»\u00ab\u00a0Then when they told me they were going to build a bomb 1,000 times bigger, that was it for me. I went back to my office and I said to my deputy, ‘These guys are crazy. They have an A-bomb, now they want an H-bomb. They’re going to go right through the alphabet till they have a Z-bomb.'\u00a0\u00bb<\/em>»<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Ces r\u00e9v\u00e9lations du p\u00e8re de Ellsberg, qui n’ont jamais \u00e9t\u00e9 publi\u00e9es \u00e0 notre connaissance par son fils, tendent \u00e0 mettre en \u00e9vidence combien l’enchaînement de la BA vers la BH \u00e9tait une impulsion bureaucratique \u00ab\u00a0naturelle\u00a0\u00bb, ou disons syst\u00e9mique, qui avait d\u00e9j\u00e0 pr\u00e9c\u00e9d\u00e9 la d\u00e9cision politique, mais en imposant de facto<\/em> une forte pression \u00e0 cette d\u00e9cision politique pour qu’elle soit prise. Le p\u00e8re d’Ellsberg d\u00e9missionna vers la fin de 1949, quand il apprit<\/strong> la destination du projet de structure industrielle sur lequel il travaillait; mais il laisse entendre que ce projet \u00e9tait en route depuis un certain temps, sans que les industriels soumissionnaires (la firme Dupont) soient eux-m\u00eames au courant pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment de cette destination («…I was in charge of the structural engineering of the whole project at Hanford<\/em> after the war<\/em><\/strong>», – ce qui peut signifier, bien entendu, bien avant la fin 1949). Cela implique la forte possibilit\u00e9 que le programme de la bombe nucl\u00e9aire \u00e9tait industriellement lanc\u00e9, non seulement avant la d\u00e9cision politique de le lancer (janvier 1950), mais avant m\u00eame que les USA apprennent que l’URSS poss\u00e9dait la bombe atomique, – cet \u00e9v\u00e9nement qui fut une grande surprise pour ces m\u00eames USA et un argument politique essentiel utilis\u00e9 pour lancer la BH (premi\u00e8re explosion de la BA russe le 29 août 1949, identification US de l’explosion par l’identification des retomb\u00e9es nucl\u00e9aires au d\u00e9but de l’automne 1949).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

De m\u00eame, la r\u00e9action de Truman au largage du 6 août 1945 telle qu’elle est d\u00e9crite par Ellsberg rel\u00e8ve du pur processus bureaucratique et politicien, sans le moindre souci des probl\u00e8mes humanitaires et moraux soulev\u00e9s par la bombe. (L’argument op\u00e9rationnel, lui, – l’emploi de la bombe \u00e9tait-il n\u00e9cessaire contre le Japon d’ores et d\u00e9j\u00e0 \u00e9cras\u00e9, – est toujours l’objet d’une virulente pol\u00e9mique historique.) Il a d\u00e9j\u00e0 \u00e9t\u00e9 affirm\u00e9 par l’ancien attach\u00e9 militaire de Truman \u00e0 l’\u00e9poque (t\u00e9moignage dans le documentaire TV Soleil noir<\/em> de 1995), et nous pensons que c’est un argument extr\u00eamement valable, que l’un des arguments essentiels pour l’emploi de cet arme, outre les diverses consid\u00e9rations politiques et strat\u00e9giques \u00e0 plus longue \u00e9ch\u00e9ance (notamment l’avertissement \u00e0 l’URSS), \u00e9tait d’ordre int\u00e9rieur et politicien. Pr\u00e8s de $2 milliards avaient \u00e9t\u00e9 d\u00e9pens\u00e9s sur le Manhattan Project<\/em> et, au Congr\u00e8s, où les oppositions r\u00e9publicaines \u00e0 l’administration d\u00e9mocrate \u00e9taient virulentes, un fort mouvement en faveur d’une proc\u00e9dure d’impeachment<\/em> contre le pr\u00e9sident, en cas de non-utilisation de l’arme pour prouver son \u00ab\u00a0utilit\u00e9\u00a0\u00bb et justifier l’investissement, avait \u00e9t\u00e9 lanc\u00e9.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Moralit\u00e9 continuelle: pour bien comprendr les USA et leur politique ext\u00e9rieure pr\u00e9tendûment \u00e9labor\u00e9e avec minutie, la consultation du volet int\u00e9rieur et de la dynamique syst\u00e9mique, que ce soit la bureaucratie du complexe militaro-industriel ou les rapports de forces politiciens, est recommand\u00e9e.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Mis en ligne le 6 août 2009 \u00e0 13H31<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ellsberg, le Complexe et la Bombe Le jour de l’anniversaire du largage de la bombe atomique sur Hiroshima est toujours l’occasion de divers articles et commentaires aux USA. Le sujet reste tr\u00e8s sensible, tr\u00e8s pol\u00e9mique. Cet article de Daniel Ellsberg, mis en ligne ce 6 août 2009 sur Truthdig.com, est d’un particulier int\u00e9r\u00eat. L’auteur est… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[831,4766,3782,8533,3409,3012,3147,1325,8532,3783,3123,3784,3519,3611,963],"class_list":["post-70965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bloc-notes","tag-a","tag-atomique","tag-ba","tag-bh","tag-bombe","tag-complexe","tag-ellsberg","tag-hiroshima","tag-hydrogene","tag-manhattan","tag-militaro-industriel","tag-project","tag-technologie","tag-truman","tag-urss"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70965\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}