75 years since the atom bombs were dropped. Lots of claims that Japan was about to surrender anyway (except they didn’t after the first bomb). You become aware of the event when you work in a place with a peace bell.
Photos courtesy of the amazing Dean Calma.
Since then we have come close, maybe the closest was the Cuban Missile Crisis. We have operated under something called MAD (mutually assured destruction). Did it work? Well we didn’t have a nuclear war.
It reminded me of a discussion I had with the head of CND in the UK. We were talking about modern staff reporting, and how you could demonstrate you helped the organisation meet a goal. I asked how you could ever show that a persons activities in CND helped to avoid a nuclear war. The answer was obviously that you can’t.
Either peace activists or MAD could have played a part, they are opposite ideas, and in truth we can never really say which one, if either, had a major roll.
What the former CND head said was that sometimes you just need to keep going without knowing whether you are having an effect.
Interestingly both sides would say their goal was to prevent a nuclear war. Worth pointing out that Iran is at the front of the bell ringing ceremony.
I used to work with somebody that had spent time in a very poor country. He was a really nice guy – but refused to give to poor countries. He said he just couldn’t see how you could ever have an effect.
Sometimes you just have to choose what is right and keep on doing it irrespective of the lack of key indicators of performance. What goals do we work for? Peace, justice, personal wealth a prosperous country or a mix of them?