The World is Closer Than Ever To Nuclear Misfire

Dominic M. Lawson

This article originally appeared on Medium.

Nuclear Dance

A world in which every media story was not so intensely focused upon the COVID-19 may seem like a distant memory at the moment, yet it was only some weeks ago when the United States announced something that, had it not be drowned out by the emergence of this pandemic, could have become one of the major stories of the year.

This story was that the Pentagon had conducted a war game which simulated a nuclear exchange with Russia.

Whereas something like this would normally be kept secret for only the eyes of the US’ highest military and political leaders, the Pentagon took the unique position of being completely open about the simulation and American action taken within. Within the simulation, the US responded to a Russian attack in Europe by launching a ‘low yield,’ or tactical, nuclear weapon against the Russian military.

This is only the most visible example of how tactical nuclear weapons are playing a greater role in the thinking of the world’s most powerful people. These weapons have largely been ignored by the general public, yet the past decade has witnessed a quiet rise in their numbers.

What are these weapons, and how do they differ from the larger and more well-known variant?

When one thinks of a nuclear bomb, you likely think of the ones dropped on Japan in the closing days of the Second World War. They are terrifying and war-ending weapons which are designed just as much to shock and intimidate potential opponents as they are to destroy.

The larger of the two nuclear bomb dropped upon Japan equaled the power of some 1,200,000 tonnes of TNT. Since the development of these bombs, we know have far more advanced armaments. ICBMs (Inter Continental Ballistic Missiles), the B61 bomber and the nuclear armed submarines (such as the UK’s Trident nuclear system) are now regularly far more powerful than the WW2 era weapons.

As the technology has advanced so has the capacity to fit nuclear material into ever smaller devices. This has produced the so-called ‘tactical’ nuclear weapon. These are lower yield devices meant to be deployed over a shorter distance.

Their lower yield means that they produce much smaller explosions and radiation and can be deployed on the battlefield .

This is why they are so dangerous.

The bombing of Japan brought the world into the Atomic Age where powers had to maneuver with the knowledge of potential annihilation should they make the wrong step.

The logic of the Cold War between the United States and Soviet Union was based on the concept of mutual destruction. If one power launched it’s weapons, the theory stated, the other would respond and both powers would be destroyed in a storm of nuclear fire.

This policy of Mutually Assured Destruction (appropriately designated ‘M.A.D.’) is perverse but there is a certain logic to it. The threat of their enemies’ vast arsenals pointed torwards them was always in the minds of people of policy-makers in Washington and Moscow and it constrained their actions.

The new emphasis on tactical nuclear weapons disrupts this logic. If single nuclear weapons can be launched which are destructive but do not warrant a full nuclear response, then nuclear weapons have suddenly become ‘usable’ again.

The Slide Into Armageddon

The idea that a single nuclear weapon, however small, can be used in one environment without generating a massive retaliation in a another is immensely dangerous.

The global security system is fragile. It has been repeatedly shown that small sparks, black swans, can trigger a large-scale systemic shock, and something as disruptive as a nuke, is guaranteed to have profound implications which we cannot foresee.

If one power, say Russia, was to launch a battlefield nuclear missile out of desperation, as they have repeatedly war-gamed they would do, it would have implications which would ripple throughout the entire world.

A Princeton University computer modelling simulation tested what would happen should one power launch a single tactical nuke. Instead of ending the conflict, it sparked a chain reaction of retaliation which escalated into global nuclear exchange that killed and injured some 92 million people — within 3 hours.

This is to say nothing of the immense environmental damage — we would see famine, acid rain and global winter as the sun was blocked out — or the economic consequences of many of the world’s financial centres being destroyed.

Deaths would likely be in the hundreds of millions in the years following the initial exchange and the world would be irrecoverable changed. All from the launch of the single battlefield nuke.

The Only Way To Win Is Not To Play

The INF Treaty, signed toward the end of the 1980’s, was an agreement between Washington and Moscow to constrain the building and testing of medium-range nuclear weapons. The agreement was not perfect — both sides accused the other of breaching the treaty at various points throughout history — yet it achieved it’s goals. Moscow and Washington agreed to reduce their stockpiles.

The treaty was dissolved when the United States withdrew last year, but the issues with it been obvious for some time.

The INF was created at a time when there were relatively few nuclear powers and the vast majority of the globe’s stockpile was held by two nations. While that is still the case, it is becoming less so as we see more states adopting nuclear weapons. China, for instance, was never a signatory to the INF yet is one of the world’s most powerful nuclear states and it’s buildup of weaponry was one of the primary reasons for the breakup of the treaty.

Alongside China, we have the isolated outpost of North Korea, who repeatedly use their small arsenal to gain concessions from their neighbours. Throughout South Asia, two nuclear armed rivals, Pakistan and India, stand locked in a tense stalemate with their missiles pointed at each other’s capitals.

This says nothing of countries in the Middle East like Israel, which is suspected of having a secret stockpile, and Iran, which is accused of attempting to build their own.

All of this shows an Asian continent which is heavily armed and ripe for a misfire. There were numerous instances throughout the Cold War where the world came dangerously close to seeing another nuclear weapon launched.

These days there are less nukes but they are distributed among a wider number of countries throughout the globe, making the prospect that we will see the end of the century without one being launched, whether intentionally or accidentally, even more unlikely.

The Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University has estimated the possibility of nuclear conflict in the coming century, and the numbers are unnerving. They estimate that the possibility of human extinction as a result of nuclear conflict stands at 1%, a conflict which kills 1 billion people in the initial stages is estimated at 10%, and a ‘smaller’ conflict which sees one million people perish could be as high as 30%.

As we’ve already established, any one hoping to contain a nuclear conflict to one small area is foolish. In a hypothetical small-scale nuclear exchange, say between Pakistan and India, the entire world would suffer. We will see widespread collapse in agriculture and trade links. This means that even countries that are isolated from the area of conflict will see disruption to their food supply that would likely result in starvation and state collapse or a slide into tyranny all across the world.

100 Seconds To Midnight

There are an estimated 13,865 nuclear weapons in the world, some 23% of which are currently on a ‘hair trigger alert,’ meaning they are at an advanced state of readiness to be fired at a moment’s notice. On top of this, there is only one state in the world, China, which has rejected a policy of first-strike.

This precarious security dynamic is prone to miscalculation. Alongside climate change, it is the main factor which has led The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists to push the Doomsday Clock to the closest it has ever been to midnight, signalling that they believe we are closer to cataclysm than ever before.

There is hope, however. While the world may be home to a massive stockpile, it is only a sixth of the weapons we had at the height of the Cold War. Humanity has shown that we have the capacity to de-escalate when we need to. If we can find that resolve again, we can gradually lower the tension and chance of disaster.

The new START Treaty, signed in 2010, focuses on arms reduction by the two greatest nuclear powers, Russia and the United States. Unlike the INF, it has been mostly respected and recognised for it’s role in lowering the number of weapons in the globe.

It is due to expire in 2021, and the possibility of extension is uncertain.

With the INF gone, this is the final treaty constraining the stockpiles of the superpowers. Allowing the treaty to expire without a replacement will signal the coming of a far more dangerous world.

Vladimir Putin has indicated his interest in extending the New START Treaty, where as Donald Trump has mused that the treaty is inadequate if it doesn’t include China.

Trump does have a point here. But is it is worth remembering that China’s stockpile, while large, is dwarfed by that of Russia and the US.

If Moscow and Washington can find common ground, it could forge a path ahead in denuclearizing the world.

The chance of intentional nuclear conflict remains low (no leader wants to be responsible for being the first to launch) but if the stakes are as high as they would be, is it really a risk we want to take?

This article originally appeared on Medium