Military Monday: Nuclear Showdown

In?Friday’s roundup, there was a fair amount of talk about nuclear weapons and growing hostilities.

Sino-American relations are increasingly tense.

Iran?acknowledged to enriching uranium to 84%, nearing the ~90% enrichment required to make a weapon.

Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin announced that he was?suspending the country’s participation in the New START treaty?framework, claiming the?West is seeking to destroy Russia?and that Russia most consider the threats posed by all of NATO?and not just the United States.

U.S. Secretary of State?Anthony Blinken suggested?that Putin may have already considered using nukes in Ukraine, but that China and India likely talked him down.

With these sorts of headlines, it’s easy to think that we’re marching towards a nuclear Armageddon.?

In fact, last month,?the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists reset the “Doomsday Clock”?which represents their assessment on the risk of nuclear Armageddon to 90 seconds before Midnight—and that was before Putin’s announced suspension of New START.

That time represents the closest to nuclear Armageddon that the Bulletin has ever assessed the world as being; even during the Cuban Missile Crisis,?the clock remained no closer to midnight than 7 minutes.

The Bulletin typically only resets the clock one time per year, and so, if the war in Ukraine persists and Russia doesn’t return to New START, it is likely that next year, the Bulletin will inch us even closer to midnight.

What even is New START?

New START is a bilateral treaty between the United States and the Russian Federation that allows for mutual inspection of weapons and materials.

So, if Russia refuses to participate, it means that the world will lose visibility on how many nuclear-capable and nuclear-armed weapons they have, where they’re deployed, and other critical information for ensuring a safe world.

The origins of the treaty go back to the waning days of the Cold War, when Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev and American president Ronald Reagan?jointly stated that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.

The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (or START) was signed in 1991, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and resulted in significant reductions in nuclear stockpiles and an inspection regime.

There were several attempts at continuing START, before its expiration in 2009, all of which failed. Then, a breakthrough occurred in 2010, and New START was signed.

What happens now?

The most likely thing to happen is that Russia will not allow U.S. inspectors into the country to monitor or verify its nuclear armaments.?

It is possible, although unlikely, that Putin will deploy significantly increased numbers of nuclear weapons within Russia.

We should assume that New START is dead, and immediately begin working to get Russia and other countries (including China) to the table to design and adopt a new inspection and verification regime.

Getting China to the able as part of these future conversations is critical as it rises in prominence and rapidly expands its own nuclear arsenal. Estimates suggest they could have upwards of 1,500 in the next decade.

In the meantime, we must leverage all of the intelligence collection tools available at our disposal to remotely monitor that particular arsenal.

And as we prepare, we must…

Keep building!

Andrew

#nuclearweapons #defense #military