The Wikipedia article on countries with nuclear weapons is sobering reading. This map is from the article, although the color-coding is a bit misleading. (3quarksdaily points to more maps.)
- The United States, Russia, United Kingdom, France and the People’s Republic of China are the five nuclear powers recognized by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Not coincidentally, they are also the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. The US and Russia have about 6,000 active warheads each, while the others have a few hundred each. According to the NPT, only these countries are permitted to have nuclear weapons, and they are prohibited from sharing weapons technology with other countries.
- India did not sign the NPT, and exploded its first nuclear weapon in 1974 (in a test perversely named “Smiling Buddha“). In 1998 they tested “weaponized” nuclear warheads (I don’t know what that means) in Pokhran-II. Numerous complaints and sanctions followed, none of which had any appreciable effect, and the controversy eventually died down. Possession of nuclear weaponry is considered to be a crucial part of India’s self-image as a world power. They are now recognized by the US as a “responsible nuclear state.”
- Pakistan is also not an NPT signatory. They performed their first nuclear test in 1998, in response to India’s test. In 1999 they signed accords with India, agreeing to a bilateral moratorium on nuclear testing. A.Q. Kahn, leader of the Pakistani program, confessed to being involved in a clandestine network to share nuclear weapons technology with Libya, Iran, and North Korea; he was pardoned by President Perez Musharraf in 2004. There is some evidence that his network was also collaborating with the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
- Israel has not acknowledged possessing a nuclear arsenal, but it is an open secret; Israel is not an NPT signatory. (In fact, India, Pakistan, and Israel are the only sovereign states not to ratify the NPT — although see below.) They probably have several hundred warheads, comparable to the stockpiles of China, France, and the UK.
- North Korea, in contrast to Israel, has publicly claimed to have nuclear weapons, although some analysts remain skeptical. After ratifying the NPT in 1985, they withdrew in 2003; no other countries have ever withdrawn from the treaty. In September 2005 they agreed to scrap their existing nuclear weapons and rejoin the NPT, but later stated that no such steps would be taken unless they were supplied with a light water reactor.
- Iran is of course an interesting question.
- South Africa produced a few nuclear weapons in the 1980’s, but later dismantled them. They are the only nation to build nuclear weapons themselves and later give up the capability.
- Saudi Arabia has stated that they might need to develop nuclear weapons, although they deny actually having done so. Some recent reports claim that the Saudis have embarked on a weapons-development program, with aid from the Pakistani nuclear program.
- Several republics of the former Soviet Union found themselves in possession of nuclear missiles upon the collapse of the USSR in 1991: Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. All have subsequently transferred the weapons to Russia and signed the NPT, and are currently nuclear-free. Concerns persist over the possibility that weapons technology was sold through the black market; Ukraine, in particular, was known to be active in selling at least conventional technology.
- Several industrialized nations are thought to be capable of putting together nuclear weapons with very little effort, including Canada, Italy, Germany, Lithuania, and Japan. For the most part there is no evidence that these countries have any desire to pursue such a course. However, former German defense minister Rupert Scholz has argued that Germany should consider nuclear weapons as a way to respond to terrorist attacks.
- Iraq, of course, had a program to develop nuclear weapons that suffered a number of setbacks, notably the Israeli air strike on the Osirak nuclear facility in 1981. After the 2003 invasion, the Iraq Survey Group concluded that the nuclear program had been abandoned in 1991, along with most other WMD programs, but that Saddam Hussein had plans to re-start the program once multilateral sanctions were lifted.
- As part of NATO agreements, the US provides tactical nuclear weapons for use by Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey.
- A number of countries are known to have begun programs to develop nuclear weapons, only to abandon them and eventually sign the NPT; these include Sweden, Switzerland, Egypt, Philippines, Libya, Australia, Poland, Romania, South Korea, Brazil, Argentina, Taiwan, and Yugoslavia.
What are the chances, with all those weapons out there, that someone will use one, say in the next fifty years? Extremely high, I would guess. None has been used in the last fifty years, it’s true, but for most of that time we lived in a bipolar world with clearly defined lines of engagement and relatively symmetrical capabilities and liabilities. (The above list doesn’t even mention non-state groups, of course.) A more fragmented situation exponentially increases the number of events that could lead to a nuclear strike, including the possibility of accidents. And the number of nuclear-capable states shows little signs of decreasing in the near future.
For what it’s worth, Russia, India and China have officially adopted a No-First-Use policy regarding nuclear weapons; the United States, United Kingdom, France, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea have declined to do so. In the 2005 revised Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations, the Pentagon listed the conditions under which a nuclear first strike could be requested, which includes basically any situation in which someone might want to use them. The Doctrine itself was originally published freely on the Pentagon web site, before being cancelled — that is, removed from the site, but not necessarily revised as doctrine. The original document can be read here. Britain and France have similarly asserted the right to nuclear first-use. It is hard to imagine that countries generally thought of as less responsible than the US, UK and France would feel much compulsion against using nuclear weapons if they felt threatened.
Once any country strikes another using nuclear weapons, the presumption against further use will be considerably lowered. The consequences are hard to imagine, simply for being so terrifying.
I have the .pdf of the National Strategic Security policy released in March of 2006 into which the DJNO was folded, calling for the pre-emptive use of both strategic and tactical nuclear weapons to eliminate possible threats. The US is now officially on record as advocating its intention to threaten the rest of the planet with nuclear weapons simply because someone in our government perceives a threat. Since we are also the only nation to have used these weapons against another, as well as one of the two nations (Soviet Union) who, for a number of years, felt no compulsion to not detonate them in the Earth’s atmosphere, it is likely that there are many in the leadership positions who would be more, rather than less, inclined to use them again.
The quest by China, India, Iran, Israel, and North Korea to establish their own submarine nuclear threat matrix represents the furtherance of the efforts around the planet to increase, rather than decrease, the dangers. UK and France have nuclear missle submarines, few, but it does only take one. Russia and the US have many subs, with MIRV’d warhead strategic missles numbering in the hundreds and in the hundreds of megatons of potential threat; and also hundreds of tactically-designed, single, nuclear warhead torpedos and cruise missles. Mutually assured destruction is no longer considered to be the greatest danger. It is now apparent that the policies and strategies are linked to increasing the survivability of specific populations of leaders and their ilk.
If you believe in gods and goddesses you might start praying.
Correction – Possession of nuclear weaponry is considered to be a crucial part of India’s national security.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB6/index.html
Here is a Pakistani perspective –
http://politicalpakistan.blogspot.com/2005/08/messrsdr-no-and-dr-khan-little-matter.html
While I don’t disagree, I’m fascinated by why that would be — a proportionate response to a nuclear attack does not necessarily have to be nuclear. While nuclear war has its own particular kind of horror, there is nothing more inherently horrific about one action over another if they have the same tactical or strategic impacts.
I harp on this because we would focus on nuclear war preferentially over any war at our peril.
Now, one can argue that nuclear technology can give a country an awesome destructive potential (presently for US and peers, and for the future for others). This is true, and makes non-proliferation the highest priority — I wouldn’t bet on countries like Iran being the stewards that the NATO states have been.
An important element to this program would be finding alternatives to current nuclear power technology. Not necessarily solar, wind, etc., but even novel nuclear technologies that are cleaner, easier to deploy and happen to present a more arduous path to weapons-grade enrichment of fuel. (If anyone knows anything about this, I would appreciate the info.)
To respond to Sourav’s question, I once wondered why Canada has one of the world’s biggest supplies of heavy water (D2O). This, among other reasons, is why the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, with its kiloton of D2O, was built in Canada.
It turns out that all of Canada’s nuclear power facilities use the CANDU reactor design. This kind of reactor can operate with natural uranium (0.72% U-235), unlike many other reactor designs which require enrichment of the fuel to around 4% U-235. (Weapons need >85% U-235.) The difficult part is obtaining enough 99.75% pure D2O to use as a neutron moderator between the fuel rods. I can’t find a good quote for how much D2O costs in bulk, but the CANDU site says that heavy water is 20% of the capital cost of a new reactor.
After the initial expense, you save money operating the reactor because you can use natural uranium directly.
When you refer to nuclear weapons, are we talking about fission, fusion or both?
From Wikipedia:
The article goes on to discuss the differences more thoroughly under “Types of nuclear weapons”.
Sean ends up with this horror alarmist story:
“Once any country attacks… standards will be lowered… everything will be terrifying.”
Well, one country has already attacked another (non-nuclear) country using nuclear weapons, namely in Summer 1945. I think it was a good decision, it had saved many lives, ended the worst world war we have ever seen, and ideas that wars with nuclear weapons must always be worse than those without nuclear weapons is just an artifact of anti-scientific sentiments.
Nuclear weapons may be more effective in achieving a certain goal, less painful, and they have the power to discourage anyone – both sides – from continuing the war. But they are powerful and if they’re used properly, they can also lead to relatively positive consequences, not just negative consequences. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are examples.
Tactical nukes would be necessary if it became inevitable to eliminate the Iranian nuclear labs, for example.
Moreover, I think that Sean does not realize that what remained in Pandora’s box is hope. When Pandora, the first woman who has received gifts from all Gods (Pan = all, dora = gifts), opened the gift from Zeus, she released plague, sorrow, poverty, crime, and other misfortunes of mankind. Then she closed the box, before hope evaporated from the box. Then she apparently opened the box again, releasing hope and ending a long bad period of history. So what you get from Pandora’s box depends on the timing.
Lubos: Of course, no one will ever know for sure, but it’s not necessarily true that dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and (especially) Nagasaki saved lives. By the summer of 1945, Japan was virtually helpless–no navy, no air force, little oil to wage war, not much food for soldiers, and even less for civilians. Peace feelers were afloat, but the the sticking point was that the US insisted on unconditional surrender while Japan wanted to keep Hirohito as emperor. Ironically, Douglas MacArthur kept Hirohito in place so the Japanese would be more managable, and the US wouldn’t be bogged down in a guerilla war forever. Who knows how Japan would have responded had the US demonstrated the destructive power of the atomic bomb on a deserted island?
A thought experiment for everyone else: If you were Iranian and could make the decision, would you build the bomb?
Lubos–
Hiroshima is an example
Nagasaki is not. Nagasaki was pointless. Perhaps forgivably so, since Truman likely had no idea how powerful nuclear weaposn actually were. The Japanese hadn’t actually established what had happened at Hiroshima by the time that the Nagasaki bombing occurred
And using nuclear weapons against Iran might be all that wise or effective, even.
Lubos, I will take your phrase “Pandora’s box depends on timing” and extend it a step further: Pandora’s box heavily depends on timing. Just as one cannot time the chaotic stockmarket, one cannot time the chaotic Pandora’s box. Therefore, one cannot accurately predict the “perfectly timed” closing of Pandora’s box: a “perfectly timed” closing enabling hope to live forever, at the same time, despair to die forever.
Dear Philip,
I agree that we won’t ever know what would happen otherwise, and whether Nagasaki was necessary, as bittergradstudent suggests. And yes, they could have waited a bit longer after Nagasaki whether it was enough. My guess is that an explosion on a deserted island would not have solved anything. Even an explosion in an unpopulated area of Japan would likely probably have meant nothing. The first bomb that was detonated in New Mexico had a vanishing impact on the Japanese, too.
While it’s true that the Japanese were very weak, they were not ready to give up. A long-lasting war such as the Vietnam war could follow. The Japanese were a bit mad with their kamikaze sentiments but not infinitely mad, and the bomb has returned them common sense. I have no idea how Hirohito’s career is correlated with the place where the bomb was detonated.
Dear bittergradstudent, your animation is nice but I think that the content is misleading. B61-11 is the state-of-the-art bunker buster that was developed in 1997 under Clinton by improving the very best previous technology – namely B61v7 – that was available. I don’t understand the criticism of that particular technology. What better tools to destroy highly fortificated bunkers do you have? How do you destroy such bunkers without fallout? I don’t understand this way of thinking.
Best
Lubos
Dear Cynthia, I agree that one can’t accurately predict what will come out of Pandora’s boxes. One can only try to estimate.
One more comment about the bunker busters: the concerned scientists have no alternative for these bunker busters. That’s perfectly OK as long as such weapons are not needed, as long as there is no real crisis situation. But in crisis, concerned scientists must be replaced by concerned generals and concerned Pentagon officials – and they may need tools, preferrably good ones.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki didn’t end the war. Germany has given up by then, and it was only a matter of time before Japan followed the suit.
It wasn’t a message to Japanese, it was a message to Soviets – “We have the Nukes. Give up Western Europe or else”. Maybe payback for Pearl Harbor.
Very expensive message in terms of how many lives were lost, either way.
Of all people, you, Lubos, should know this part of history…
Lubos:
The point is manyfold:
1) it is not clear that bunker busters would be able to disable the iranian nuclear program, for the reasons stated in the animation
2) There would be serious environmental side effects of such an attack
3) These effects would not be limited to military targets, nor to iran
To this I would add:
4) The Iranians are, at minimum, five years away from having weaponizable uranium
5) Thanks to the connotations of nuclear weaponry, a nuclear strike on Iran of any size would do more to mobilize the anti-US forces in the middle east than anything else. Iran could actually claim that the US used nuclear bombs against them. It would validate every paranoid peice of nonsense ever spread by Osama and his ilk. Of course their analysis would still be completely wrong on a trillion levels, but it would damn sure sound right to the people getting bombed, and anyone who would be inclined to agree with them.
6) Thanks to 2) and 3), I doubt that, post-strike, the governmetns/domestic populations of Pakistan and Afghanistan would be all that inclined to support us in any further actions against iran. Note that Pakistan has been increasingly leery of letting the US root out the taliban already
7) Nuclear first strike = US going it alone. I doubt even Tony Blair would be able to get away with doing anything in support of the US after such an action was made, either with Labour or with the british public. And if Blair is out, then pretty much every country in the world would not be on our side on this one. A nuclear first strike without evidence of an immanment attack, or, at the minimum, an indication that some sort of actual nuclear weapon is on the brink of being developed would essentially turn the US into a rogue state.
Really, I think that it’s probably right that Bush is just trying to ressurect Nixon’s old “madman” trick with all this nuclear talk. But let’s not pretend that there won’t be very real consequences to acting in this way. I would actually almost favor reinstating the draft with a ground invasion of iran to follow over the use of tactical nuclear weapons. The mullahs are smart, calculating and evil. They aren’t insane enough to get themselves bombed.
As an aside, would you have supported US nuclear bombing campaigns against Soviet targets in Eastern Europe and Russia during the period between 1945 and 1949 when there was no balance of terror? What about MacArthur’s demands to use nuclear bombs in the Korean War?
Additionally, I would add this Iran “crisis” as being easily predicted in 2002, and one of the main reasons I held the Iraq war to be folly–Iran was, and is, a much, much bigger threat, and now our military is unable to deal with this threat, without a)pulling out of Iraq, b) using NUCLEAR WEAPONS, c) instituting a draft, and thereby guaranteeing a massive electoral loss for the republicans in 2006 or d) relying on diplomacy
Just how do you measure strategic or tactical impact?
E.g, in 1971, India had to accomplish certain things to end West Pakistani effectiveness in the war theater over East Pakistan. E.g., a sum total of some 30 to 35 war planes had to be destroyed. If that same war was fought today, 35 years later, the horror to achieve exactly the same tactical/strategic impact is much much greater. Now India would have to take out all Pakistani long-range missiles also, and the damage would be proportionately greter. So that is one sense in which the horror is not invariant.
But you say, you’re talking of something different. Your claim may be that the horror involved in taking out Iran’s nuke capabilities (the strategic impact) is the same whatever the weapon system used. That too is dubious, because how do you predetermine the minimum damage required to achieve a strategic objective? E.g., not that this is likely, but taking out Iran’s oil production capability and keeping them out of production, with a minimum of human casualties might be sufficient to cause the Iranian leadership to surrender within three years, thus achieving the strategic objective, well before they have nukes.
Ah, you say, what you mean is that if you’re going to destroy Dresden, does it matter if it is with napalm or with a nuke? But what is the strategic objective in such a case?
Dear Ponderer,
in some sense, it was indeed a “matter of time” when Japan surrenders. It could also have been a matter of five extra years. I also agree with you that it was also a message to the Soviets – look how strong we are. In 1952, the Soviets replied by Joe One, named after Stalin (the Russian official name RDS-1 is more boring). Why do you exactly think that I disagree? The bombs were life-expensive but compared to other options, they may have been a good choice.
Dear bittergradstudent,
1) the hypothetical inability to nuke the bunkers is a fantasy. If it fails for the first time, you can send one more.
2) under certain circumstances, environmentalist perfectionism and luxury becomes secondary.
3) of course that such a bombing would have impact beyond military targets. If the whole Iranian nation were innocent in this story, I would also find such a suffering of innocent people unacceptable. I don’t think that the guilt and potential guilt is localized to Iranian military. Of course that the people who elect XY are partially responsible for his extermination of Israel, if it is hypothetically planned.
4) dreaming that the foe was 5 years from the bomb also occured in 1952 about the Soviets – and suddenly Boom, they had it in 1952.
5) I have doubts about the speculations that a nuclear attack would reinforce anti-US fighters. You don’t know what power the nukes show. When you see a certain power on the enemy’s side, you better surrender. This happened to the Japanese and the Muslims are, to some extent, similar. The anti-US fighters are only self-confident because they “know” that a democratic state can’t really use any of these gadgets against them.
6) as hinted above, I don’t think that the politicians of Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan should be the ones to decide about the fate of the region in the case of a hypothetical conflict, so I find your comment irrelevant.
7) the main reason why Tony Blair declared that he won’t join any attacks on Iran is that he feels that the U.K. can’t afford it. I don’t know whether I would have supported bombing of Soviet targets in the late 1940s. It could have been difficult to justify etc. But if I knew that it would have stopped communism in the rest of Eastern Europe, I would have probably said Yes. (Incidentally, I would not be born then because I was born because of the communist extra support of newborns in 1973-4.) No idea about the Korean war – I don’t know much about the situation.
I think that the Pentagon guys always considered Iran to be a bigger threat than Iraq, and it is conceivable that the war in Iraq (and perhaps even Afghanistan) was mainly a preparation to get a better access to Iran from both sides.
Many of the comments above seem to assume that the decision on nuclear use in the future would be made by the United States. This need not be the case. After all, if President Ahmedinijad is serious, he intends to use whatever weapons are in his possession to attack Israel. This creates a situation where the decision makers are in the Middle East . Local security conditions in that region will therefore probably be more important than the preferences of the United States.
A more pointed question might be: What is a proportionate response if there is unambiguous evidence that Iran is about to: (a) mate a nuclear warhead with a missile (cruise or ballistic); (b) transfer nuclear weapons to a terrorist group; or (c) begins to make nuclear threats against its neighbors?
Morality aside, would a destructive conventional attack that preemptively destroys a part of Iran’s nuclear capability be justifiable? What will the likely reprisals be from Iran? If U.S. preemptive attack removes the likelihood of nuclear weapons use by Israel or Iran, is it justifiable?
Questions like these illustrate the “no-win” character of these decisions – even if on assumes rationality or wisdom on the part of leaders – which is not something that I would rely upon.
I, for one, hope that diplomacy removes some of the crisis-oriented decision dynamics that seem to be growing. Perhpas cooler heads will prevail if we have more time to contemplate potentially negative futures.
Dear David M. #20
take a gander at yon site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Leader_of_Iran
then tell me that ahmedinijad will have any control over the nukes when they show up. if khameini wishes to nuke someone, then i will wonder about it but methinks he is not stupid. you may proudly wear your ayatollah blanka-blanka shirts, but the religious councils are pretty smart about retaining their power, which they wouldn’t if they got nuked by the Great Satan.
iran had been very supportive of america in the aftermath of 9/11, offering intelligence and all sorts of things but buscheney had to start with that axis of evil claptrap and then invade the 2 countries bordering it, so what are they gonna do?
happy dance? i think not.
Arun,
I agree that the brutality of achieving an objective is not time invariant.
However, I was referring to the differences between alternative classes of weaponry. Military planners do this calculus all the time: time for development, logistics, and deployment; opportunity cost; ability to achieve the objective in the theater; civilian casualities and the attendant political costs; etc. etc.
AFAIK, the strategic objective in Dresden was to destroy industrial capacity in the city, as well as aiding the Russians by disrupting the movement of reinforcements eastward and the evacuation westward. This required total destruction of the city’s infrastructure, esp. the railyards.
“Lubos: Of course, no one will ever know for sure, but it’s not necessarily true that dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and (especially) Nagasaki saved lives. By the summer of 1945, Japan was virtually helpless—no navy, no air force, little oil to wage war, not much food for soldiers, and even less for civilians.” – Philip #10
#10 and #11 above, the facts are easy to establish:
Japan continued to fight (in desperation with Kamikaze attacks, very bad treatment of POWs, etc.) in the hope that Russia would mediate a settlement. If they hadn’t been shocked into immediate surrender by Hiroshima, why would they surrender when things became more desperate?
The exact provable mechanism for the end of the war was this:
(1) 8 August: Hiroshima (1st nuclear bomb), convinces Stalin that America will win the war soon. So Stalin declares war on Japan.
(2) 9 August: Nagasaki (2nd nuclear bomb) convinces Japan that Hiroshima was not a once-off.
Hiroshima did nothing compared to the firebombing of Tokyo. In WWII a total of 2 megatons of conventional bombs were dropped, equal to 167 Hiroshima’s in energy equivalent. So why go on about the horrific effects of a nuclear weapon, which unlike the far greater destruction from conventional bombs, actually did what it said on the tin and ended the war?
In fact, if you take account of the fact that the damage range scales as the cube-root of the energy release, then in terms of the amount of area damage, then the 2 megatons of conventional bombs (about 20 million conventional bombs of an average of 100 kg) caused 20,000,000 x (0.100/12,000)^(2/3) = 8,220 times the actual damage in Hiroshima.
Even if a 2 megaton bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima, the 2 megatons of conventional damage of WWII is equivalent to 271 of such 2-megaton bombs, assuming no overlap in damage areas.
This is because the same amount of explosive, divided into a large number of small bombs, is more efficient at causing destruction. Most of the energy is wasted as close-in overkill in big bombs. So conventional weapons are far more effective than nuclear ones. (Forget about a small long-delayed rise cancers from delayed radioactivity, that is trivial compared to the effects of conventional weapons.)
Lubos:
The US could have simply decided to stop fighting and impose a blockade. They didn’t do that because of an earlier agreement made with Stalin: The Soviets had agreed to fight the Japanese. The US was afraid that if Japan didn’t surrender to them, the Soviets might be able to occupy Japan.
It is therefore no surprise that the atomic bombs were dropped just a few days before the Soviets occupied Manchuria and the Kurile Islands.
I cannot believe you wrote that. Islamic terrorists would say that the bombing of American civilians would be acceptable for the same reasons. Americans elected a president who has botched the liberation of a country and used cluster bombs and torture to do it. Then they re-elected him. The difference is that the US president was elected in a free election. The Iranian president was not.
Civilians losses must always be minimised. To fail to do that is immoral. Just because a country can get away with it in the legal channels, doesn’t mean that it won’t whip up a lot of hatred towards it among… *gasp* civilians. Not to mention that passing judgement on a whole population of people is racism, plain and simple.
Furthermore, you neglected to notice where bittergradstudent mentioned that these effects would not be limited to Iran. The Chernobyl incident was not a nuclear explosion, but it resulted in increased death rates across Europe for decades. It may be fine for you on the other side of the Atlantic, but the people in this vague geographical area are liable to get seriously pissed off. Speaking of which…
How do you use nuclear weapons against terrorists and guerillas without exterminating a whole population? And if we encourage that population to believe that we are going to exterminate them, what logical reason do they have not to become anti-US fighters? Finally, we’re not just talking about the opinions of Iraqi insurgents. We are talking about the way the whole world views America, and, believe it or not, the US does actually need other countries.
I’m sure he says that, but seriously, we’d eat him alive.