Two days after Joe Biden was sworn in as president of the United States, a new global security pact came into effect. You likely missed it.
The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, first adopted in 2017 at a conference convened by the United Nations General Assembly, prohibits member states from taking any measures to develop, test, produce, manufacture or otherwise acquire, possess, or stockpile nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices. While not legally binding on non-participants, supporters believe it will reignite momentum toward the elimination of nuclear munitions.
Their ambition is welcome. After ratification of the Non-Proliferation Treaty half-a-century ago, the world made substantial strides towards nuclear disarmament. A global protest movement applied enormous pressure on governments to ban the bomb. This contributed to a succession of agreements between the two superpowers that slashed the nuclear stockpile and restricted development of new technologies.
In his 1984 State of the Union Address, Ronald Reagan declared “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought”. He continued: “The only value in our two nations possessing nuclear weapons is to make sure they will never be used. But then would it not be better to do away with them entirely?”
Then the Cold War ended. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the brief interregnum that left the United States as the world’s lone superpower, the Republican Party forgot the Gipper’s warning. The first demonstration of this collective memory loss came in 1999, when the Clinton administration submitted the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty to the US Senate for ratification. In a portent of what lay ahead, the treaty was rejected 48-51. Every Democrat voted for the treaty, bar the abstention of West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd, Joe Manchin’s predecessor. All but four Republicans voted against. Three of the four Republicans that voted in favour later switched sides to the Democrats.
This breakdown of America’s bipartisan consensus to limit nuclear weapons has left real consequences. Arms reduction efforts have stalled. Existing security frameworks have decayed or collapsed. The global stigma against nuclear arms has eroded. The danger of further proliferation has risen.
Now the United States is adding fuel to the fire with plans to upgrade its existing nuclear inventory. The Trump administration set in motion a 30-year, $2 trillion plan to replace every missile, bomber, submarine and warhead in America’s arsenal with a new generation of deadlier weapons. One submarine alone can already destroy 24 cities, but apparently that just won’t do.
While Republicans howl about Biden’s spending plans to modernize physical and human infrastructure, and shriek that the nation cannot afford such extravagance, they raise not a whimper against this military money pit. Their protests are pure pantomime.
It’s not funny. National security should not be a never-ending game of boys with bigger toys. Trump viewed nuclear weapons as the ultimate “man card” in international diplomacy. He asked his advisers what was the point of having nukes if they couldn’t be used. A valid question if he then followed Reagan’s lead and realised that a world without them would be safer for all.
Trump drew no such conclusion. Instead he regularly shook his nuclear rattle, threatening to rain down “fire, fury and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before” on North Korea and warning “any attack by Iran on anything American will be met with great and overwhelming force. In some areas, overwhelming will mean obliteration”. Reagan made one off-the-cuff joke about nuclear bombs and never repeated the error. Trump showed no similar restraint.
At their recent Geneva summit, Presidents Biden and Putin reiterated that “nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought”. They had previously agreed to extend the New START treaty, the only remaining nuclear agreement between both states, by five years and opened the door to future arms talks. This should be encouraged.
The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty should also be approved. 185 countries have signed the treaty, with 170 having ratified it. Russia, the United Kingdom and France, all nuclear powers, have committed to it. Australia is also a party.
The last US nuclear explosion was detonated on 23 September, 1992, near the site of the first Trinity blast in 1945. George H W Bush imposed a unilateral testing moratorium five days later. With modern computer simulations, the leaders of the national nuclear laboratories and Strategic Command see no need for future tests. And voters would hardly welcome a resumption of testing less than an hour’s drive from Las Vegas.
Sceptics claim that a world without nukes is a fantasy. They argue the genie is out of the bottle. However, history shows that major arms control initiatives have succeeded before. Chemical weapons, a scourge of World War I battlefields, were banned. Biological warfare was outlawed. Land mines, once a constant, have been curtailed. South Africa, Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan all relinquished their warheads. Even if the world cannot eradicate nuclear weapons altogether, we can still mitigate their threat.
The alternative is unacceptable. Trump’s bellicose belligerence was magnified by the knowledge that he alone could instigate a nuclear attack, and that no one could stop him. In a crisis, such a decision might be made in mere minutes. With potential flashpoints around the globe, and the demonstrated potential for false alarms, no single person should have the power of Armageddon at their fingertips on a hair-trigger alert. In Trump’s paws, it was a nightmare prospect.
While still a candidate for the presidency, Joe Biden stated: “The United States does not need new nuclear weapons. Our current arsenal of weapons, sustained by the Stockpile Stewardship program, is sufficient to meet our deterrence and alliance requirements.” He must fulfil this pledge. By continuing along the Trump path to double down on its nuclear strategy, the United States risks sparking a new arms race. All without any meaningful public debate.
Thirty years ago America won the Cold War. Somehow we never collected on the promised peace dividend. It’s time we picked up Reagan’s torch for a nuclear-free world and finished the job.
Keir is dreaming, the US still hasn’t disposed of its chemical weapons, Russia has disposed of theirs and other former Soviet nations at great expense. And by the amount of comments here no one even cares.
I had suspicions you might be the one respondent, Tony.
Keir also neglects to mention the reason there’s only one surviving nuclear treaty – the Yanks have refused to even discuss the others as they have come up for renewal.
On the chemical and biological weapons, it’s worth noting they haven’t been rigorously kept up to date with more recent ‘scientific developments’.
It also doesn’t help when outfits like the OPCW have been completely corrupted – see Aaron Mate’s ‘crusade’, and Clare Daly in the European Parliament.
OPCW is as corrupt as the Olympics.
No mention of the Brits wanting to modernise Trident. Russia has reactivated the dead mans switch that’s how much they trust Washington.
The massive upsurge in defence spending in Australia as America gets us to purchase more of their weaponry from them & develop more of the technology they are not permitted to develop in their own country. Not the same scrutiny here. South Australia becoming the home of the death merchants. Not to mention the provision of bases & bombing ranges the size of a small American state….
Waste of time for us when one Russian sub can nuke every decent size city and town from over a 1000 km away.
When the US gives itself the exclusive right to make a first pre-emotive nuclear strike anywhere its not surprising rivals are arming to the teeth as a deterrent. The US refuses to participate in UNCLOS yet expects other countries to do so and have hundreds of military bases positioned to menace rivals around the world. There will no meaningful reduction whilst the US adheres to their over aggressive military doctrine.
It’s a toss-up whether nuclear weapons or climate change will wipe us out first. Either way, humans will be responsible.
World leaders are reluctant to launch into nuclear war because there’s a good chance they, & their trusty serfs, won’t survive. They are less fussed about climate change, assuming to be already deceased by the time it takes a fatal grip on humanity.
A few comments:
* DETERRENCE: Question: which would be more effective in deterring a nuclear first strike, a strategic competitor that had a reliable nuclear weapons system, or a strategic competitor with an unreliable one? Which country would feel more able to make a finely balanced strategic assessment of the threat landscape facing it, a country with a reliable nuclear weapons system or a country with an unreliable one? Looking say at the land-based element of the US Nuclear Triad, as I understand it the purpose of the US’s current upgrade of the US Air Force Global Strike Command’s LGM-30G Minuteman III missiles, and their eventual replacement by the Northrop Grumman GBSD ICBM, is partly driven by the need to ensure that the US nuclear deterrent does what it says on the tin. The current Minuteman III fleet is ageing, having first entered service since I believe the 1980s or possibly 1970s.
* NUCLEAR TRIAD: The article states “One submarine alone can already destroy 24 cities, but apparently that just won’t do.” Actually, in deterrence terms, no it won’t. Why? Because, in simple terms, the sub containing all the sea launched ballistic missiles and respective warheads etc., and all of your other subs, could be sunk in the opening stages of a conflict. (This could occur for example if the enemy had secretly developed and deployed an asymmetric weapons system, such as a quantum sensing capability, against which your subs have no effective defence.) (Similar considerations could apply to land-based ICBMs and the strategic bomber fleet). On my understanding, the whole point of having multiple parts to the nuclear triad is to ensure that the nation’s second strike and counter-counter-strike capability will remain enough of a deterrent in any contingency to prevent a strategic competitor from believing that it can “win” a nuclear war using a first strike in a kind of Pearl Harbour-style knockout blow.
* EXISTING ARMS REDUCTION EFFORTS: the article does not really get to grips with the scale of nuclear force reduction that has occurred since the end of the Cold War. For example, according to Wikipedia the US Minuteman fleet is now down to 400 missiles, from 1000 in the 1970s.
* STATEMENTS ATTRIBUTED TO PRESIDENT TRUMP: the article refers to some statements by former President Donald Trump and implies that these statements were akin to the President threatening to use nuclear weapons. However, I am not aware that such a threat was ever explicitly made. As Operations Desert Storm, Enduring Freedom, and Iraqi Freedom should have made patently obvious to the United States’ strategic competitors (to whom Trump’s statements were addressed), the US and its allies are quite capable of bringing significant firepower to bear on enemy positions when required, and of doing so without resorting to the use of nuclear weapons.
* NO EQUIVALENCE WITH BIOLOGICAL OR CHEMICAL WEAPNONS: Finally, the article implies that the seemingly successful control of chemical weapons and similar could form a template for the arms reduction in the nuclear weapons space. But chemical or biological weapons, as far as I am aware, cannot currently be deployed with the same speed or deliver the same massive destructive effect as nuclear weapons. In short, nuclear weapons can be “state killers”; chemical and biological weapons, so far, (thankfully) can not. So, in simple strategic terms, it could be said that the stakes are higher with nuclear weapons. This means that successful nuclear arms control requires, in my view, a carefully choreographed “lock step” series of reductions that all relevant strategic competitors can execute in unison, along with relevant trust building measures.
If every nation had nukes there wouldn’t be any wars.
Having nukes AND delivery systems is clearly a threat to ones neighbours on the planet.
I think that every nation should have nuke, preferably built into the basements of all important civic buildings.
It would certainly dissuade invasion.
That’s a good point but I don’t see it getting much traction.
If only the development of neutron bombs had not fizzled out – it’d be perfect, no damage to the furniture whilst getting rid of the annoying inhabitants.
Just on the QT, Tone and ban, if the rumours are right – and they’re a bit more than mere rumours, the Russians and Chinamen might just have this under control.
Some time back, various bleatings started out of Wash D.C. – Russians and/or Chinamen were looking to use satellite control to to launch nuclear weapons. Various trousers were being back filled at the prospect, and heightened degrees of outrage were on display.
But, what if a Russian – Chinamen JV was working on how to use satellites to STOP nuclear weapons before they hit their intended targets?
If I was to suggest that JV is a ‘mixing of minds’ of the smartest scientists in the field, what would you think?
It’s ON! How far they’ve advanced is not fully known. But, does it need to be?
When Vladimir Vladimirovich said, when asked on Russian telly, in his annual 4 hour chat with the Russkie peeps, last week; ‘If we’d sunk the Brit boat, the Defender, when it intruded into Crimean waters, would it have kicked off WWIII’, and he answered, to paraphrase; ‘Nah, they know we’re capable of, and why we do what we do’, do people in the West think that’s a response they should ignore?”
This is simple: currently there are 31 nations involved in Op ‘Sea Breeze’ in the Black sea’ (it was 32, but Sth Korea said ‘we’re outta here’, after the ‘Defender incident’), and one of those 31 is Straya.
31 nations when added together cannot get within a bulls roar of the Russian military capability, particularly when they’re ‘playing at home’ – which is what they always do.
This is a joke, a farce. The most professional military, strategically and operationally, on the planet, is the Russian. They have NO peer. And, the Yanks (the ‘residual’ professionals) know it, and have admitted it.
And, by golly! They know have a partnership with the Chinamen, meaning this is the ‘Eurasian Century’.
People need to get the f*** used to it. They’re just smarter, that’s all.
The Russian military are more proficient than the US? Are you serious?
Are YOU serious?! The Russians spend around $60B on the military a year, and every Yank lickspittle barks about the dangers of Russian ‘aggression’.?!
The Yanks spend more than all others combined, yet the Russians are the problem?
Listen whizzkid, do you know of Ron Ridenour? Even more, do you know of Andrei Martynov? Ridenour’s Yank – look him up, and Martynov’s a Yank – Russian
Ridenour, April 4 2019, at Counterpunchdotorg;
“When I first heard of Andrei Martyanov, I was skeptical about his intentions. Born in Baku, Azerbaijan, USSR, 1963, he became a naval officer and expert on Russian military and naval issues. He took part in conflicts in the Caucasus. In mid-1990s, he moved to the US for reasons unstated in print. He currently works as laboratory director of a commercial aerospace group, and blogs on the US Naval Institute Blog and one on the other side of the fence, unz.com.
This is not a typical leftist or peace activist, but after reading his book and a piece on the website of the world’s most aggressive naval institution, I surmise that this Russian-American seeks to influence the avaricious eagle into realizing that warring against the cautious bear would not achieve success for anyone……..
I do not have the knowledge nor the space to detail and judge the many weapons that Martyanov includes in his book to show that the US is not capable of winning a conventional war, or that many weapons Russia has are aimed at preventing US weapons from reaching their goals……..”
Never, ever bring a shallow opinion to a ‘gun fight’ about which big power might be able to win a major blue, champ – you are way, way outta you depth.
The Russians are THE most powerful military in the world.
But, you need to understand this, Whizzkid – the Russian capability is purely about their ability to defend themselves – not wander around the globe killing oodles of black and brown people, via the 800+ foreign bases the Yanks operate around the world.
So, you come back with your ‘the West is great’ arguments, Champ, and I’ll freakin’ destroy you and your ilk.
You speak pig ignorant garbage, Bob. But, you are typical, so congrats.
Could you name a conflict the US has won since 1945. Please don’t mention Grenada.
That’s right, if every nation had nukes some tinpot country would have started a nuclear war years ago, which would have cascaded into a larger conflict, and turned the Earth into the galaxy’s largest parking lot. So no more wars.
You are way short of informed, or clever, Bob – you’re the 2 ‘D’s – dope and dunce.
‘So no more wars’, eh? And, what dya think might be the best protection against such wars, ya wizard?
Dozey, dumb, uninformed twits, like you Bob, are a major danger, Ranger.
Didya know, Bob, that the ‘quantum’ of heat trapped within the earth’s ‘dome’ has doubled in the last 14 years?
‘D-O-U-B-L-E-D I-N 14 Y-E-A-R-S, B-O-B’
So, every which way, Bob, f*** off – you know nothing.
P.S. ‘Some tinpot country’ Wot? Like Algeria, who are still trying to get the Frogs to fess up to where they did their ‘bigger than Nagasaki’ nuclear tests in the ’60’s?
Just this week, the Frogs refused to tell the Algerians where they’d buried the waste from 15 odd nuclear tests they conducted in the ’60’s, in Algeria.
Bob, Bob, Bob, you’re just a pig ignorant dumb f***.
But, come back any time, I love the ‘debate’.
North Korea is a good example of a tin pot country, they seem very restrained to date.
Why do rage against a multipolar world Rob, is this the best of all possibilities?