In January of 2021, the U.N. “Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons”, signed in 2017, came into effect with the view to become a widely accepted legally binding instrument that prohibits nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination. More specifically, the Treaty prohibits countries from producing, testing, acquiring,
possessing or stockpiling nuclear weapons. It also outlaws the transfer of the weapons and forbids signatories from allowing any nuclear explosive device to be stationed, installed or deployed in their territory (Chappell, 2021). Even though the Treaty constitutes a big step towards the elimination of nuclear weapons, however none of the nine nuclear powers signed it, threatening the effort to eliminate a nuclear war and to prevent the world from another nuclear arms race. So, how much of relevance are nuclear arsenals today?
A Deadly Equilibrium
The emergence of the nuclear bomb in the aftermath of the second world war, and the attacks of the United States in the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 changed not only the nature of the war per se but also its objectives. As Barash (2018) notes: “until then the overriding purpose of the military forces had ostensibly been to win wars. From now on (after 1945), its chief purpose must be to avert them”. Even though the appearance of the nuclear bomb did not immediately generated the idea of the nuclear deterrence doctrine, as the U.S. were the only power that could use them, the development of nuclear capabilities by the Soviet Union in 1949 undoubtedly affected the military doctrine of the former (Arbatov, 2019). The creation of Soviet nuclear weapons and intercontinental bombers and later missiles as delivery means deprived the U.S. forces from its brief monopoly of nuclear weapons and its territorial immunity behind the two oceans (Arbatov, 2019). Therefore, in the dawn of the Cold War and the early formation of the two poles, the idea of nuclear deterrence came at the forefront of policy makers across the two blocs. Since then the club of states that possess nuclear capabilities has been augmented significantly with the addition of China, United Kingdom, France, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea. Today, every government that has nuclear weapons insists that their possession deters attacks against them by the threat of catastrophic retaliation (Barash, 2018). This concept can be also described as the threat of mutual assured distraction (MAD) that despite its “madness” it has been stated that it actually prevents states from commencing wars and has contributed to preserve global peace (see Waltz, 1981). Therefore, the increase of national nuclear arsenals continued throughout the Cold War with the U.S. during the 1960s and the Soviet Union in the late 1980s (Arbatov, 2019).
Setting up the Rules
The rapid accumulation of nuclear weapons from the two blocs quickly alarmed not only the rest of the international community but the national elites of the U.S. and the U.S.S.R that foresaw the dangers and the vast capitals sacrificed for their development. What is more, the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, when by all accounts the world came closer to a nuclear catastrophe than any other time, also pushed forwards the negotiations of an international legally binding treaty that could at least limit the proliferation of nuclear weapons (Barash, 2018). Indeed some years later, in 1968, the United Nations voted upon the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), in order to prevent nuclear proliferation, to promote nuclear disarmament and to promote peaceful uses of nuclear energy. However, it was Gorbachev and Reagan in the end of the Cold War that succeeded in turning the tide of the arms race towards a significant redaction of the deployed long and intermediate range nuclear weapons (Schultz et al, 2007). The major changes that occurred globally in the end of the 1980s revealed the redundancies of the accumulation of nuclear weapons and created an impetus for negotiating their substantial reduction (Arbatov, 2019). The two adversaries thus signed a series of treaties from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) in 1987, from which the U.S. withdrew in 2019, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START- I) in 1991, the START-II in 1993 and the new START in 2010 that stays in effect until 2021.
MAD: What is it Good For?
In its famous article “The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: More May Better” Kenneth Waltz (1981) notes that “gradual spread of nuclear weapons is better than no spread and better than rapid spread” and that “new nuclear states will be more concerned for their safety and more mindful of dangers than some of the old ones have been”. As a result “The likelihood of war decreases as deterrent and defensive capabilities increase. Nuclear weapons, responsibly used, make wars hard to start”. Indeed nuclear weapons were essential to maintaining international security during the Cold War because they were a means of deterrence (Schultz et al, 2007).
Nevertheless, the end of the Cold War made the doctrine of mutual deterrence obsolete and reliance on nuclear weapons for this purpose is becoming increasingly hazardous and decreasingly effective (Schultz et al, 2007, p. 1). Especially nowadays, the augmented number of states with nuclear capabilities, the failure of JCPOA agreement with Iran and the deterioration of the relations between China and the U.S. underline the limited strength of the strategic deterrence argument.
Above all however, the most important position for the abolition of nuclear weapons is their devastating power. Detonating a nuclear weapon would pose grave implications for human survival, the environment, socioeconomic development, the global economy, food security and the health of current and future generations, and have a disproportionate impact on women and girls, including as a result of ionizing radiation (Chappell, 2018). In addition to that, as Barash (2018) signals: “there have also been numerous ‘broken arrow’ accidents – accidental launching, firing, theft or loss of a nuclear weapon – as well as circumstances in which such events as a flock of geese, a ruptured gas pipeline or faulty computer codes have been interpreted as a hostile missile launch”. Finally there is always the threat of non-state actors obtaining these weapons that would threaten stability and peace on a global level (Schultz et al, 2007).
As Arbatov (2019) underlines:
“Nuclear deterrence can serve as a pillar of international security with one crucial reservation: namely, that it can only work in conjunction with negotiations and agreements on the limitation, reduction, and nonproliferation of nuclear weapons. Without such checks, nuclear deterrence goes berserk. It endlessly fuels the arms race, brings the great powers to the brink of nuclear war in any serious crisis, and sometimes the very dynamics of nuclear deterrence can instigate confrontation.”
Therefore the U.N. and the international community should further accelerate and combine their actions to pursue the signature and the ratification of the recent U.N treaty from the nine states with nuclear arsenals. Some first steps however would be to enhance the power of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to further control of the uranium enrichment processes globally, to continue reducing the size of nuclear forces in all states that possess them and to increase bilateral cooperation and to promote early warnings in a future confrontation between nuclear powers. Nuclear deterrence doctrine may have served peace in the second half of the twentieth century, but in the new millennia where we pass from unipolarity to a multipolar system with elevated uncertainty and a reshaping of the global power equilibrium, nuclear force does not constitute a guarantor of global stability and peace, but a nightmare of the future annihilation of the human race.
References
Arbatov, A. 2019. Nuclear Deterrence: A Guarantee or Threat to Strategic Stability? Carnegie. Retrieved in 2021 June 7 from https://carnegie.ru/2019/03/22/nuclear-deterrence-guarantee-or-threat-to-strategic-stability-pub-78663
Barash, D. P. 2018 January 14. Nuclear deterrence is a myth. And a lethal one at that. The Guardian. Retrieved in 2021 June 7 from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/14/nuclear-deterrence-myth-lethal-david-barash
Chappell, B. 2021 January 22. U.N. Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapons Takes Effect, Without The U.S. And Other Powers. NRP. Retrieved in 2021 June 7 from https://www.npr.org/2021/01/22/959583731/u-n-treaty-banning-nuclear-weapons-takes-effect-without-the-u-s-and-others?t=1623164566617
Shultz, G. P., Perry, W. J., Kissinger, H. A. and Nunn, S. 2007 January 4.
A World Free of Nuclear Weapons. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved in 2021 June 7 from https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB116787515251566636
Waltz, K. N. 1981. The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: More May Be Better: Introduction. The Adelphi Papers, 21(171), 1–1.
By Mahmoud Refaat: The European Institute for International Law and International Relations.
