It is now sixty years since the destruction of Nagasaki, the last use of nuclear weapons in war. It is a time to both celebrate the survival of civilization and to confront the continuing nuclear danger.
Given that there have been tens of thousands of nuclear weapons in the world’s arsenals for the past 50 years, the fact that we are still here is testimony to a remarkable display of self-restraint by our often savage nation-states. This is due in part to our luck in political and military leaders. But much credit is due to writers such as John Hersey, who taught a whole generation about the hell on earth that one modest-sized nuclear explosion created for the people of Hiroshima.
The most credit is due to the millions who marched in the streets when the nuclear arms race seemed to be getting out of control or governments seemed to be considering nuclear use. The uprisings in the U.S. and Western Europe in the early 1980s were especially important in giving Gorbachev reason to hope that, if he pulled the Soviet Union out of the arms race, the U.S. would follow. The mutual fears that generated the huge Soviet and U.S. nuclear arsenals faded and large cuts were made that are still being implemented.
Unfortunately, the waning of public concern since the end of the Cold War has removed a critical restraining influence on nuclear-weapon decisionmakers. The U.S. stockpile is programmed to still include about 6,000 operational warheads at the end of 2012 with 1,000 ready to launch within about 15 minutes. Russia is expected to have a similar nuclear posture. Even though the two countries are no longer adversaries, their nuclear arsenals continue to justify each other.
Russia and the U.S. may possess over 90% of the world’s nuclear explosives. But even Britain, China, and France, the next three states to go nuclear, each have enough warheads to destroy civilization. Israel, India, and Pakistan have somewhat fewer weapons, but are still building up.
Since 1970, the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty has committed the first five nuclear-weapon states to disarm in exchange for other states foregoing nuclear weapons. In 2000, the five nuclear-weapon states made a number of specific near-term commitments. These included bringing the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty into force and negotiating a verifiable ban on the production of further plutonium and highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons.
However, all this is unraveling. This spring, the Bush administration blocked a statement by the parties to the Non-proliferation Treaty that would simply have noted the commitments that had been made in 2000. In that same five-year period, North Korea has built nuclear weapons, the world learned that Pakistan had put its nuclear technology on the market, and that Iran had been developing a nuclear-weapon option in secret.
The Bush administration’s preoccupation with containing China has furthered this unraveling. Its recent nuclear deal with India seems to have left it up to India to decide which of its civilian nuclear facilities and materials it can re-label as military and therefore not subject to international inspection. If India decides to sweep some of its civilian reactors, its spent fuel, or already separated plutonium inside the military fence, it could quickly build a very much bigger arsenal. Reasonable people in India and elsewhere should resist this.
Unfortunately, Pakistan’s government has already demanded the same deal as India. It is easy to imagine generals, nationalist politicians, and nuclear scientists in other countries now wanting to try their luck. Who would have thought that, out of the ashes of the Cold War, a new nuclear arms race could emerge with many more participants? But then who would have thought that twenty years later the U.S. and Russia would each still have 6,000 nuclear warheads?
The nuclear-weapon states and wannabes must be made to understand the message of the past 60 years. Nuclear weapons cannot be used and must be contained and eliminated. The alternative is a future in which nuclear weapons become truly global and permanent--until our luck runs out.
Zia Mian is a Pakistani physicist at Princeton University. R. Rajaraman is professor of physics emeritus at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. Frank von Hippel is a professor of public and international affairs at Princeton. They are all regular contributors to Foreign Policy In Focus (www.fpif.org).
