From the beginning, nuclear weapons have both terrified and fascinated us. Fear of the bomb motivated the first atomic program; the allure of the bomb’s power later propelled national leaders to build ever-larger arsenals. Today, fear of a nuclear attack by terrorists or another country has made nuclear proliferation the number one security threat facing the United States and many other nations. Yet several countries still maintain extensive nuclear arsenals developed for another era, develop plans for new weapons, and postulate new nuclear missions. Leaders in several other nations—motivated by their own perceived security needs as well as by a desire for symbols of power and status—covet the weapons now denied them.
This is a book about those weapons. More specifically, it is about how and why nuclear weapons have multiplied, and what can be done to slow, stop, and reverse their spread. This discussion makes one very important assumption: the proliferation of nuclear weapons is undesirable.
This assumption is far from universal. Since the early days of the nuclear age, there has been a vigorous debate among scholars and policy makers on this issue. Nuclear optimists contend that nuclear weapons are beneficial, that their presence enhances international stability, and that their spread is inevitable. Nuclear pessimists warn that nuclear arsenals create instability, that the risk of nuclear weapon use—either by intention or accident—is too great to accept, and that there is nothing inevitable about nuclear proliferation.1
The optimists embrace the theory of nuclear deterrence, which holds that fear of a devastating nuclear counterstrike prevents states from attacking other nuclear states. Because of mutual deterrence, they argue, nuclear weapons prevent war between nuclear nations. Their presence enhances stability by discouraging rash or aggressive action. There is some compelling evidence to support this view. From 1900 to 1950, for example, one hundred million people died in wars. From 1951 to 2000, only some twenty million people suffered that same fate.2 “Well-managed proliferation,” some say, with perhaps double the number of today’s nuclear-armed states, would extend the benefits of nuclear deterrence to many areas of the world, helping to keep the peace in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere.3
The pessimists disagree. They believe that “we lucked out” during the Cold War, when the two nuclear superpowers stood “eyeball to eyeball,” in former secretary of state Dean Rusk’s famous description of the Cuban Missile Crisis.4 The spread of nuclear weapons, they argue, reduces real security. States are not always rational actors, for example. State leaders may act irrationally and initiate a nuclear strike. Nor are states monolithic. Substate actors with their own agendas, such as military commanders, may ignore orders and trigger a nuclear attack. Even with stable governments, they argue, the risk of an accidental launch is great because of technical failure, breakdown of command and control, bad intelligence, or false assumptions. Finally, the proliferation of nuclear weapons and their related technologies increases the risk of nuclear terrorism. Osama bin Laden has declared it a “religious duty” to acquire nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons; the multiplication of state arsenals and facilities would give him more possible sources of supply.5
While presenting both sides of the debate, this book clearly aligns with the nuclear pessimists. Though no nuclear weapons have been used in war since August 1945, no one can guarantee that this good fortune will continue. There have been too many close calls in the past sixty years to warrant such optimism. The physical, economic, and political consequences of a nuclear explosion in any major city would be far beyond anything seen since World War II. The physical damage from the blast, heat, and radiation of a nuclear weapon would be enormous. A small atomic weapon of 20 kilotons (similar to those used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki) would destroy or damage most buildings in a modern city and kill almost everyone within a 10-square-mile area, while a modern 1-megaton hydrogen bomb would kill most people within 150 to 600 square miles, depending on the ferocity of the firestorms created by the explosion. Radioactive fallout from the blast would kill thousands of others.
Profound societal damage would also occur. Physicist Charles Ferguson and scholar William Potter explain in a 2004 study:
Consequences stemming from a terrorist-detonated nuclear weapon in an American city would emanate beyond the immediate tens or hundreds of thousands of fatalities and the massive property and financial damage. Americans who were not killed or injured by the explosion would live in fear that they could die from future nuclear terrorist attacks. Such fear would erode public confidence in the government and could spark the downfall of the administration in power. The tightly interconnected economies of the United States and the rest of the world could sink into a depression as a result of a crude nuclear weapon destroying the heart of a city.6
This threat stems not only from the 27,000 nuclear weapons held by eight or nine nations today but also from the possibility that new nations or even terrorist groups will join this deadly club. Many therefore conclude that we must find a non-nuclear alternative to global security. Upon receiving the 2005 Nobel Peace, Prize Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said, “I have no doubt that, if we hope to escape self-destruction, then nuclear weapons should have no place in our collective conscience, and no role in our security.”7
This book reviews the history, theory, and current trends in nuclear proliferation before coming to several conclusions about current policy and how it can be improved to significantly reduce the global nuclear threats.
Our story begins with an historical look back for a very good reason: we forget most of what we learn. This is true of individuals and of nations. The first three chapters serve both as a narrative for an elaboration of the science and technology of nuclear weapons and as a reminder that many of today’s challenges are new in form, but not in substance, from those of the past. Policies to address these threats have been debated for over sixty years. We now have a solid historical record to use in judging which strategies worked and which did not. Just as the policy choices made in the early days of the nuclear age shaped the Cold War nuclear threats, the decisions we make in the next few years will determine whether we will roll back today’s challenges or launch instead into a new wave of proliferation.
This brief look at the history of nuclear weapons should help readers better understand the various policy options described in the second half of the book. To help navigate these nuclear waters, we have also included a glossary, and extensive footnotes provide ideas for further readings. With these tools, readers can come to their own insights and conclusions about what the future of these weapons should be. For these should be policy decisions decided not by a small group of officials behind closed doors but by an informed public with the full benefit of considered debate. We hope this study contributes to that discussion.