Nuclear arms control is one of the world’s greatest success stories, at least for now. The world’s nuclear stockpile shrank from an estimated 70,000 warheads in 1986 to about 12,000 today. But all that may be going in reverse. At the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin refused to rule out the idea that nuclear weapons might at some point be used. This was assumed to mean “tactical” or “battlefield” nuclear weapons, but even this so far unrealised prospect sounds chilling.
By 2023 the “Doomsday Clock” of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists was set at 90 seconds, the shortest it has ever been. Former British prime minister Gordon Brown, writing in a British newspaper issued his own uncharacteristically grim warning a few days ago: “At no time since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 has the world looked so dangerous, nor has an end to its 56 conflicts, according to the Global Peace Index – the highest number since the Second World War – seemed so distant and so difficult to achieve.”
In the US, it was revealed earlier this month that in March, US President Joe Biden approved a new top secret nuclear strategic plan called “Nuclear Employment Guidance”. Reports of the contents are – for obvious reasons – vague but the new strategy is said to include a focus on China’s expansion of its nuclear arsenal. It was also reported to involve preparations for the US to face nuclear challenges from China, Russia and North Korea simultaneously.
What we do know – according to American experts – is that of those 12,000 warheads currently in existence about 2,000 are said to be on “high alert”. That means in the event of conflict some of them could reach targets in fewer than 30 minutes.
Nine countries have nuclear weapons, including Israel, India and Pakistan. A handful of other countries have moved towards acquiring nuclear weapons technology, although that’s difficult to do clandestinely.
The old Cold War term about a nuclear arms race is Mad – mutually assured destruction. It dates from the 1960s and a strategist at America’s Hudson Institute, Donald Brennan. Mr Brennan pointed out that any attempt by one nuclear power to surprise an enemy with a “first strike” would result in immediate retaliation and a second strike that would destroy both powers and perhaps much of the planet, the northern hemisphere in particular.
In the 1980s there were various scary TV dramas involving a “nuclear winter” caused by massive amounts of debris in the atmosphere after a nuclear catastrophe. Back in the 1950s, American school children were taught to “duck and cover”, to hide under their desks if a nuclear air raid alarm sounded. It’s not clear what hiding under a desk might achieve, beyond terrifying children, their parents and teachers. Mr Brennan was correct to call the whole thing mad.
But perhaps there is another wave of madness in the world right now. There is so much conflict and hostility that we need to consider how best to extend arms control treaties.
Former US President Barack Obama in 2009 spoke optimistically of seeking “a world without nuclear weapons”. In 2022 Biden administration officials suggested more realistically that it might be possible to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in US strategy. As recently as last June, the US State Department insisted that “the New Start Treaty” to limit strategic nuclear weapons between the US and Russia would continue in force until February 2026.
Both sides were reported to be operating within the treaty’s agreed limits. Even so, the current souring of international relations by the Ukraine war, the weakness of international agencies including the UN and the pause in international diplomacy linked to political uncertainty about November’s US presidential elections, mean that it is reasonable to fear a growing level of nuclear anxiety. And so what can be done?
Well, it is always useful first to recognise that there is a problem. Continuing and extending arms control treaties would remove some of the fear, although treaties can be broken and monitoring demands a degree of trust. International organisations can monitor nuclear arsenals but realistically cannot enforce agreements. Yet it’s also important not to despair.
Rational governments under rational leaders do not want to destroy their own nations. Moreover, no matter how many peace-loving people might wish that nuclear weapons had never been invented, they are not about to be disinvented or banned. The best that we can hope for is that the Ukraine war, Gaza, and those dozens of other conflicts around the world do not tempt a desperate leader in a nuclear-capable power to become the first to use nuclear weapons since the 1945 American bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
In Japan, at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, the Genbaku Dome looms like a ghost. It’s the only structure left standing in the area where the first atomic bomb exploded on 6 August 1945. There is a chilling emptiness about this memorial. That emptiness should remind us all that Mad really does mean mutually assured destruction. It is also a reminder we would be mad in its most literal sense to contemplate a nuclear strike anywhere, ever.
