The Half-Life Of Remembrance
Benjamin Netanyahu has argued for the past three decades that Iran cannot possess a nuclear weapon. I disagree with practically everything Netanyahu has ever said or done, but surprisingly, I am with him on this. Indeed, I take his statement to its logical conclusion. Iran should never wield the power of the bomb, and neither should any other nation.
Mentioning the hope of total nuclear disarmament in the face of today’s myriad of crises can feel quaint, a relic of movements that fizzled out in the ’80s. The Cold War has been over for 34 years, and we are even further removed from the pervasive atomic dread that peaked with the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. As Daniel Immerwahr, Bergen Evans professor in the humanities at Northwestern University, wrote in his The Guardian article “Forgetting the apocalypse: why our nuclear fears faded — and why that’s dangerous,” as the survivors of Hiroshima die out, many people are too young to remember the encompassing fear the bomb created during the Cold War. As the fear vanishes, so does world leaders’ appreciation for the threat nuclear weapons pose.
This blasé attitude toward nuclear war is at odds with the real and intensifying risk of nuclear conflict. Today, humanity’s global stockpile of nuclear warheads numbers at over 12,000. (It should be noted that around 8,000–9,000 of those 12,000 are not actively “deployed” and ready to launch). While still too many, 12,000 warheads are mercifully far fewer than the 70,374 in existence when their numbers peaked in 1986. The decades-long project of U.S.-Russian reductions and the testing ban that accompanied it were momentous achievements. Achievements that came from the work of painstaking diplomacy and negotiations, qualities that are terrifyingly absent today. On Feb. 6, the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty — negotiated in 2010 after the expiration of the START 1 treaty between the U.S. and Russia, both of which capped each country’s deployed strategic warheads at 1,550 each — expired, ending five decades of bilateral arms control and reduction. There are now no limits to what Russia and the U.S. can build and deploy. Worse, the Trump administration appears to have no serious desire to begin negotiating another treaty. Obama’s lofty rhetoric of a “world without nuclear weapons” has been thrown aside as his successor stumbles towards a second arms race.
Among the other members of the nuclear club, the situation is equally Lovecraftian. North Korea is estimated to have 50 warheads. Pakistan, India, and their old friend Britain all have arsenals in the low triple digits. France has just under 300, as well as a strategic doctrine and arsenal that includes using a small air-to-ground nuclear missile as a “warning shot.” Israel is widely believed to possess around 90 warheads.
Building To Destroy
In contrast to the decades of declining nuclear stockpiles, the world’s three largest nuclear powers are actively and significantly expanding their capabilities. In China, the People’s Liberation Army has embarked on an extensive military buildup in a bid to rival the U.S., and Beijing’s nuclear ambitions are beginning to take center stage. The Pentagon estimates that China’s arsenal of nuclear warheads will grow from 600 to over 1,000 by 2030. In the Sichuan province, old facilities are being expanded and refurbished to restart the assembly of what is suspected to be the new warheads’ plutonium cores. In Northern China, new missile silos sit, ready to store the Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles that the PLA increasingly tests.
Russia has likewise upgraded its ICBMs and aims to fully replace their considerable stock of Soviet systems. Putin has also announced the development of innovative platforms, including a nuclear-powered cruise missile and an inter-ocean thermonuclear torpedo. These technological forays are new variations on the old paradigm of the nuclear “triad” — thermonuclear deliveries by air, land, and sea. These new developments represent the largest leap forward in strategic planning since the early days of the Cold War. Yet the U.S. is making no concerted diplomatic effort to avert the danger, let alone reduce the threat posed by its own atomic stockpile.
Rather, the U.S. has initiated its own gargantuan project to upgrade or replace nearly every element of its atomic infrastructure. The newly announced B-21 stealth bombers can drop a nuclear payload. General Dynamics has a $15.38 billion contract to produce 12 nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines. The Columbia-class SSBNs will phase out the current Ohio-class, and house the Trident II missiles — the American triad’s sea leg. As in China, production of the warheads themselves has restarted in earnest. The Great Plains are buzzing with activity as Northrop Grumman executes a $140 billion contract to upgrade America’s ICBM system, building new silos to store new missiles. All of these projects, like most Pentagon spending, are delayed and over budget. The total cost of America’s nuclear rearmament is estimated to be $1.7 trillion over the next three decades.
Total Annihilation
The end of the world is dramatic rhetoric, but it’s not hyperbole. Most nuclear devices in strategic arsenals today are magnitudes more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If a thermonuclear warhead were to strike a city, the aftermath would be the worst immediate suffering ever experienced in human history. In the inner radius of the blast, people would simply cease to be. In the following minutes and hours, many more would succumb to a grotesque variety of jellifying injuries. In his article, Immerwahr references John Hersey’s legendary report in The New Yorker titled, “Hiroshima,” which described one Methodist preacher’s recollection of a woman’s skin that “slipped off in huge, glove-pieces.” In later weeks and months, radiation poisoning would continue to kill. Over the following years, as in Hiroshima, birth defects would skyrocket. Generations of physical reminders would pass down the bomb’s legacy.
Such horror would not be limited to one locale. The hair-trigger nature of strategic planning and most countries’ doctrine of deterrence would ensure an overwhelming retaliation. Even a “small” war could see dozens of warheads launched. An all-out conflict between the U.S. and Russia or China would mean hundreds. The initial carnage would be followed by the frost of nuclear winter. Simply put, the bombs would launch enough soot into the atmosphere to block out the sun’s warmth for a decade. Global agriculture would collapse, and the few of us left alive would starve to death in an irradiated world.
Atomic Jack-In-The-Box
This irradiated future is more likely than many realize. All that’s needed is a misunderstanding between two states with the bomb, and pop goes the atomic weasel. The Cold War was littered with moments on the edge, lost bombs, and narrowly averted disasters. The world is fast entering into a similar era of global rivalry that is rife with potential catastrophe. Communication between the U.S. and our potential nuclear adversaries is currently low. State violence and aggression are at a recent high. Despite the ceasefire, tensions in the Middle East remain at a knife’s edge. In South Asia, a belligerent Narendra Modi and the entrenched Pakistani military establishment have repeatedly skirmished over longstanding tensions. To the east, it is widely feared that China’s leadership will seek to reunify Taiwan once confident of the PLA’s surge in capabilities. In Europe, Russia has repeatedly invoked the nuclear threats toward Ukraine and NATO — threats taken seriously by U.S. intelligence. The weasel is ready to pop.
One would hope that fears of a conventional war would lead to nightmares of a nuclear one and emphasize the importance of a permanent ban. Alas. Spurred on by the shredding of U.S. credibility by the Trump administration, many middle powers are wondering if they can still rely on the United States’ nuclear umbrella — America’s promise to respond in kind to any nuclear attacks on its allies. Officials in Poland, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Germany, and Japan have all floated the possibility of developing their own nuclear arsenals to provide security in the absence of a reliable American presence. All of these countries are signatories to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which legally prevents them from building nuclear weapons. Legality aside, most of the above countries could probably procure the bomb without much difficulty. If they so wished, a few nations with the on-hand technical skill could end the non-proliferation regime in less than a year.
We The People
The re-upping of the world’s nuclear capabilities might be a hot topic among military planners and think tanks, but the broader populace remains largely ignorant of these extraordinarily consequential discussions. Reporting is not necessarily scarce. Policy institutes and centers regularly churn out reports and analysis, and a number of articles were published after the expiration of New START. Despite all of this vital work by journalists and experts, the broader story seems to have not broken into America’s national conversation. Bafflingly, despite a $1.7 trillion price tag and a hyper-partisan political environment, rearmament goes not just unattacked by political leaders, but ignored.
The threat of nuclear war was once part of our collective inheritance from the Cold War. The stockpiles were reduced and maintained, and the chance of armageddon felt ever less pressing. The feeling remains, but it is no longer congruent with reality. There is no patch of land on Earth unthreatened by the nuclear buildup. Our leaders, in the States and afar, are making disastrous choices unchallenged. This cannot continue. The maintenance of our current safeguards, and the creation of new ones, is vital.
There are still some of the old guardrails. As of writing, the ban on nuclear testing still mercifully holds, as does the NPT among all but five countries — India, Pakistan, Israel, South Sudan, and North Korea. There was real progress made in reductions during the ’80s and the ’90s, and this work needs to be built upon, not abandoned. One nuclear bomb is a nuclear bomb too many, and we’re currently sharing our Earth with 12,000 of them. I am not idealistic enough to believe that the end of violent conflict is a realistic goal, but it does not need to include the possibility of human extinction. The list of dangers created by nuclear weapons’ existence alone is neverending: an accidental detonation, terrorists acquiring a warhead, Matthew Broderick hacking into the WOPR and initiating a game of Global Thermonuclear War. Governments cannot be allowed to view arms control and reductions as pesky rules. We need to demand an earnest effort toward total disarmament.
The political difficulties of this are undoubtedly enormous. The current rulers of Russia, the U.S., and China are all autocratic nationalists intent on expansion. The governed’s consent may matter less than it once did, but the people still have a voice, particularly in the States. Congress votes on the Pentagon’s budget every year, so write to your representatives. Tell them to raise a stink, to stall the passage, and raise awareness on the floors of Congress. Get involved with organizations and institutes for peace. Be the person holding the “No Nukes” sign at anti-war protests. Moreover, remember that calling for diplomacy is not naïve. The rules-based international order might have been a farce, but negotiated treaties got rid of 55,000 warheads in 30 years. The world may yet enter another period of reductions. All three of the aforementioned autocrats are old. Most of you reading this will one day live a Putin-less, Xi-less, and Trump-less life. When that happens, an opportunity will hopefully arise for a kinder, less hostile world. If we put in the work now, we’ll have a better chance to seize it then.
We don’t have to live in constant danger of nuclear war. We can leave a safer world to our descendants: No more nukes, forever and always.
