In the mouths of western politicians, the word "diplomacy" is synonymous with unconditional surrender. They would rather burn the world to the ground than accept that they can't get all of their maximalist demands and engage in actual good faith negotiations with their adversaries, trying to work out a compromise.

[–] freagle@lemmygrad.ml 15 points 6 days ago (7 children)

As seen in Nagasaki and Hiroshima

[–] barrbaric@hexbear.net 13 points 6 days ago (6 children)

IIRC the damage inflicted by the atomic bombings weren't especially noteworthy compared to the rest of the bombing campaign, and it was more a way to test out their new toys. If the nukes hadn't been used but conventional bombing had continued, it would likely have had a similar result. This video by Shaun lays out a pretty compelling case that the Japanese surrender was due to the Soviet declaration of war and invasion of Manchuria.

This is all ignoring of course that despite the insistence of unconditional surrender, the Americans accepted surrender with conditions and allowed the emperor to continue to hold his titles anyway. There's definitely something to be said about taking maximalist positions just to make a point even when they don't actually care about several of the goals that make up those positions.

[–] ghost_of_faso2@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 5 days ago

IIRC the damage inflicted by the atomic bombings weren’t especially noteworthy compared to the rest of the bombing campaign

It should also be of note that it would terrify the people of NK, the atom bomb dropping on Japan was a cultural milestone for them.

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