An under-emphasised point: If defeating Japanese fascism was a valid war aim, then the bomb was a really efficient weapon. Even if mining the harbors was much c

An under-emphasised point: If defeating Japanese fascism was a valid war aim, then the bomb was a really efficient weapon. Even if mining the harbors was much cheaper & had more military effect. The lesson from Versailles is that surrender wasn't enough to defeat German militarism, just a few years later they could spin stories about the army being stabbed in the back... but such stories didn't sell so well in 1950, 1960, with Soviet & US tanks facing each other in Berlin. The US ability to fly over in 1 plane, 1 bomb, 1 city was another really hard-to-deny reality. And: It's not clear that "no first use" policies are anything more than PR tools. IIRC it emerged that not one of the USSR war plans for Germany was nuclear-free.