tag:theconversation.com,2011:/id/topics/nuclear-war-17464/articlesNuclear war – The Conversation2024-03-06T13:35:23Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2231482024-03-06T13:35:23Z2024-03-06T13:35:23ZOppenheimer feared nuclear annihilation – and only a chance pause by a Soviet submariner kept it from happening in 1962<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578712/original/file-20240228-16-283s2r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C8%2C5496%2C3899&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Onlookers at a Key West, Fla., beach where the Army's Hawk anti-aircraft missiles were positioned during the Cuban missile crisis. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/onlookers-gather-on-george-smathers-beach-in-key-west-news-photo/148266845?adppopup=true">Underwood Archives/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>History has often been shaped by chance and luck. </p>
<p>One of the blockbuster films of the <a href="https://www.oppenheimermovie.com/">past year, “Oppenheimer</a>,” tells the dramatic story of the development of the atomic bomb and the physicist who headed those efforts, J. Robert Oppenheimer. But despite the Manhattan Project’s success depicted in the film, in his latter years, Oppenheimer became increasingly worried about a nuclear holocaust resulting from the proliferation of these weapons.</p>
<p>Over the past 80 years, the threat of such nuclear annihilation was perhaps never greater than during the <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1961-1968/cuban-missile-crisis">Cuban missile crisis of 1962</a>. </p>
<p>President John F. Kennedy’s secretary of state, Dean Acheson, said that nuclear war was averted during that crisis by “<a href="https://academic.oup.com/jah/article/100/2/598/695452">just plain dumb luck</a>.” As I detail in my forthcoming book, “<a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520390966/the-random-factor">The Random Factor</a>,” nowhere was the influence of chance and luck more evident than on Oct. 27, 1962.</p>
<h2>Russian missiles next door</h2>
<p>To set the stage, a cold war of hostilities between the U.S. and the communist Soviet Union began almost immediately following World War II, resulting in <a href="https://www.cfr.org/timeline/us-russia-nuclear-arms-control">a nuclear arms race</a> between the two during the 1950s and continuing through the 1980s. </p>
<p>As a part of <a href="https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/jfk-in-history/the-cold-war">the Cold War</a>, the U.S. was extremely concerned about countries falling under the Soviet communist influence and umbrella. That fear was magnified in the case of Cuba.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578653/original/file-20240228-22-e9caga.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An aerial photo of a missile base in Cuba." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578653/original/file-20240228-22-e9caga.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578653/original/file-20240228-22-e9caga.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578653/original/file-20240228-22-e9caga.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578653/original/file-20240228-22-e9caga.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578653/original/file-20240228-22-e9caga.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=684&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578653/original/file-20240228-22-e9caga.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=684&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578653/original/file-20240228-22-e9caga.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=684&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Aerial spy photos from October 1962 of a medium-range ballistic missile base, with labels detailing various parts of the base during the Cuban missile crisis, San Cristobal, Cuba.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/aerial-spy-photos-of-a-medium-range-ballistic-missile-base-news-photo/3208373?adppopup=true">Hulton Archive/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Tensions between the U.S. and Cuba had dramatically escalated following the failed 1961 U.S. attempt to overthrow revolutionary leader Fidel Castro and his communist ruling party. Known as the <a href="https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/jfk-in-history/the-bay-of-pigs">Bay of Pigs invasion</a>, its failure proved to be a major embarrassment for the Kennedy administration and a warning to the Castro regime. </p>
<p>In May 1962, Castro and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev agreed to <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1961-1968/cuban-missile-crisis">secretly deploy strategic nuclear missiles</a> in Cuba, with the intention of providing a strong deterrent to any potential U.S. invasion in the future. The Russian missiles and equipment would be disassembled and shipped aboard freighters bound for Havana, then be reassembled on-site.</p>
<p>On Oct. 14, a <a href="https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/cuban-missile-crisis">high-flying U.S. U-2 spy plane</a> photographed the construction of a missile launch site in western Cuba. This marked the beginning of the 13 days in October known as the Cuban missile crisis. </p>
<p>After heated deliberations with his cabinet and advisers, Kennedy decided on a <a href="https://www.history.navy.mil/browse-by-topic/wars-conflicts-and-operations/cuban-missile.html">naval blockade</a> surrounding Cuba to prevent further Soviet ships from passing through. In addition, Kennedy demanded removal of all missiles and equipment already in Cuba.</p>
<p>This began a standoff between the U.S. and Russia. Ultimately, the missiles were disassembled and removed from Cuba. In exchange, the U.S. removed its Jupiter ballistic missiles from bases in Turkey and Italy. </p>
<p>But one utterly random – and utterly crucial – aspect of this resolution was not known until years later through the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390500088304">memoirs of, and interviews with, Soviet sailors</a>. </p>
<h2>‘Use the nuclear weapons first’</h2>
<p>During the crisis, the Soviet Union had sent four of its <a href="https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/foxtrot-class-old-russian-submarine-notorious-past-208458">Foxtrot-class submarines</a> to the crisis area. Each submarine carried 22 two-ton torpedoes.</p>
<p>Unbeknownst to the U.S., one of those 22 torpedoes aboard each of the four subs was nuclear-tipped with a warhead yielding 15 kilotons, or a force equivalent to the Hiroshima bomb. </p>
<p>In a briefing before the four submarine commanders set out for Cuba, <a href="https://cimsec.org/cuban-missile-crisis-soviet-submarines-attack/">Vice Admiral A.I. Rassokha</a> of the Soviet Northern Fleet gave instructions that if attacked by the American fleet, “I suggest to you commanders that you use the nuclear weapons first, and then you will figure out what to do after that.”</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578691/original/file-20240228-18-tdn122.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A map newspaper map from the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis shows the distances from Cuba of various cities on the North American Continent." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578691/original/file-20240228-18-tdn122.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578691/original/file-20240228-18-tdn122.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578691/original/file-20240228-18-tdn122.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578691/original/file-20240228-18-tdn122.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578691/original/file-20240228-18-tdn122.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578691/original/file-20240228-18-tdn122.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578691/original/file-20240228-18-tdn122.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">This newspaper map from the time of the Cuban missile crisis shows the distances from Cuba of various cities on the North American continent.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/this-newspaper-map-from-the-time-of-the-cuban-missile-news-photo/515016314?adppopup=true">Bettmann/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>His advice came alarmingly close to being carried out. </p>
<p>In approaching the blockade area on Oct. 27, Captain Valentin Savitsky’s submarine B-59 had been under prolonged harassment from an array of U.S. ships, aircraft and helicopters attempting to force it to the surface. Needing to recharge the boat’s electrical system, the B-59 did eventually resurface, at which point Savitsky thought he had emerged into a full-scale conflict – surrounded by naval ships and planes, shots being fired across his bow, depth charges dropped and powerful blinding searchlights aimed at the conning tower. Thinking he was under attack, Savitsky gave the order to immediately dive and prepare the nuclear torpedo for firing. </p>
<p>And here was where pure luck intervened. </p>
<h2>Stuck on a ladder</h2>
<p>Staff Captain Vasili Arkhipov and an unnamed sailor aboard B-59 likely <a href="https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2022-10-03/soviet-submarines-nuclear-torpedoes-cuban-missile-crisis">prevented World War III from occurring</a>.</p>
<p>As Savitsky tried to descend from the conning tower into the hull of the sub and begin the dive, he was momentarily blocked by a signaling officer who had accidentally gotten stuck on the conning tower ladder. During this split second delay, <a href="https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=8342&context=nwc-review">Arkhipov, who was on the conning tower as well</a>, realized that the chaos on the water’s surface was not an attack but rather an attempt to provide a warning. </p>
<p>Arkhipov, who had equal authority as Savitsky, immediately ordered the submarine to “cancel dive, they are signaling.”</p>
<p>World War III was very likely averted as a result of a brief delay in time caused by a sailor who happened to be stuck in the right place at the right time, along with a second-in-command who, when given a few extra seconds, perceptively realized that the boat was not under attack.</p>
<p>Had this not happened, Savitsky would have dived and in all likelihood within five minutes fired his nuclear-tipped torpedo, causing a cataclysmic reaction on the high seas and the world as a whole. </p>
<p>According to Martin Sherwin, co-author of the <a href="https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/kai-bird-and-martin-j-sherwin">Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Oppenheimer</a> that the recent movie was based on, “The extraordinary (and surely disconcerting) conclusion has to be that on October 27, 1962, a nuclear war was averted not because President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev were doing their best to avoid war (they were), but because Capt. Vasily Arkhipov had been <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/165952/gambling-with-armageddon-by-martin-j-sherwin/">randomly assigned to submarine B-59</a>.”</p>
<p>This is but one of countless examples where global and military history has been dramatically altered by chance and luck. On Oct. 27, 1962, the world was extremely lucky. The question that Robert Oppenheimer would surely ask is, will we be so lucky the next time?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223148/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Robert Rank does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>During the Cuban missile crisis, World War III was likely averted by what one US official called ‘just plain dumb luck.’Mark Robert Rank, Professor of Social Welfare, Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. LouisLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2193472023-12-08T15:25:48Z2023-12-08T15:25:48ZEisenhower’s Atoms for Peace speech on nuclear dangers has important lessons even after 70 years<p>Seventy years ago, on December 8 1953, US president Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered a <a href="https://www.iaea.org/about/history/atoms-for-peace-speech">speech</a> to the United Nations general assembly, setting out his concerns about “atomic warfare”. </p>
<p>In the speech, later known as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxGSfOd1Dpc">Atoms for Peace</a>, he outlined a plan for new forms of international cooperation around nuclear technology, calling for “lasting peace for all nations, and happiness and well-being for all men”.</p>
<p>In 2023, nuclear technology has been very much in the headlines, from the potential of nuclear <a href="https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9825/">threats</a> during the war in Ukraine to <a href="https://theconversation.com/oppenheimer-the-actor-the-curious-1946-film-atomic-power-featuring-the-scientist-as-himself-210498">cinematically capturing</a> the history behind the first atomic bomb in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/jul/22/oppenheimer-review-christopher-nolan-volatile-biopic-is-a-towering-achievement-cillian-murphy">Oppenheimer</a>. </p>
<p>The speech is largely forgotten but it fundamentally shaped the nuclear world we live in today, and remains highly relevant to how decision-makers engage with such cross-border developments as <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/06/19/ai-regulation-development-us-china-competition-technology/">generative AI</a>. For all their differences, when they were created both nuclear reactors and AI represented <a href="https://brandoncornett.medium.com/6-unsettling-similarities-between-ai-and-nuclear-weapons-932277f9f59e">newly emerging technologies</a> that “spurred a global race for dominance”, fundamentally challenging existing systems and with potential for both peaceful and military uses. </p>
<h2>Why the speech happened</h2>
<p>In 1953, eight years after the second world war, an armistice concluded the <a href="https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/research/online-documents/korean-war">Korean War</a> (1950-1953) but the wider cold war was characterised by an accelerating nuclear arms race. US nuclear technology was <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.2968/059006009">under tight control</a>, restricting any exports, even to wartime allies. </p>
<p>Nuclear reactors mainly created fuel for warheads. The <a href="https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/outline-history-of-nuclear-energy.aspx#:%7E:text=The%20PWR%20used%20enriched%20uranium,Nautilus%2C%20was%20launched%20in%201954.">first power plants</a> and first nuclear submarines were only just being constructed.</p>
<p>Eisenhower’s speech, and the US <a href="https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2003_12/Lavoy">Atoms for Peace</a> programme that followed, completely changed this, proposing a sharing of technology and nuclear material with different countries. There was <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.2968/059006009">wide dissemination</a> of Eisenhower’s words beyond the UN. </p>
<p>Hundreds of thousands of pamphlets of the speech were sent out, printed in ten languages. US and foreign media were inundated with <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.2968/059006009">information and advertising</a>.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">US president Eisenhower gave a speech about international cooperation around nuclear power in 1953.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Public spread of ideas</h2>
<p>One of the speech’s public legacies was encouraging wider public engagement with the idea of what “nuclear” actually was. This inspired new popular culture and educational materials promoting ideas of atomic-powered futures, such as the iconic Walt Disney 1956 <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11191-021-00284-1">science book</a> and TV programme <a href="https://expo.uoregon.edu/spotlight/tomorrows-scientists/feature/our-friend-the-atom">Our Friend the Atom</a>. </p>
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<p>Eisenhower’s speech called for a UN-based International Atomic Energy Agency (<a href="https://www.iaea.org/about/overview/history#:%7E:text=The%20Agency's%20genesis%20was%20U.S.,the%20International%20Atomic%20Energy%20Agency.">IAEA</a>), eventually founded in 1957, promoting peaceful nuclear use while discouraging weapons proliferation. It remains a crucial international entity in nuclear verification, nuclear safety, and promotion of peaceful uses of <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/2017/11/06/why-does-iaea-do-what-it-does-pub-74689">nuclear technology</a>, most recently through activities such as monitoring the safety of the <a href="https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/pressreleases/update-200-iaea-director-general-statement-on-situation-in-ukraine">Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant</a> during the Ukraine war. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.neimagazine.com/features/feature60-years-of-atoms-for-peace-4164653/">Paradoxically</a>, however, Atoms for Peace also had opposite effects. The reactors and technical expertise, supplied for civilian energy or research, provided crucial foundations for proliferation. </p>
<p>The tools and knowledge were repurposed by some countries to develop their own nuclear weapons, including, in the first instance, <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.2968/059006009">India and Pakistan</a>. Israel is <a href="https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9075/">widely believed</a> to have benefited, although it continues to deny it has nuclear weapons.</p>
<p>One of the speech’s most visible impacts was in signalling, both to domestic and international audiences, a significant change in US policy towards supplying other nations with nuclear science. </p>
<p>It paved the way for the restrictive <a href="https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2003_12/Lavoy">US Atomic Energy Act to be revised</a> the following year, to allow sharing of technology and building of reactors in different countries. This significantly increased global development of nuclear power and nuclear research in areas from <a href="https://www.neimagazine.com/features/feature60-years-of-atoms-for-peace-4164653/">agriculture to medicine</a>.</p>
<p>However, it’s worth remembering that Atoms for Peace took place in parallel with a wider US cold war strategy of pursuing nuclear superiority. Just over a month before his UN speech, Eisenhower approved a significant expansion in America’s nuclear arsenal. </p>
<p>Warhead numbers increased from around <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0096340213501363">1,100 to more than 18,000</a> during his presidency. He also considered the potential use of nuclear weapons in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1984/06/08/world/us-papers-tell-of-53-policy-to-use-a-bomb-in-korea.html">conventional conflicts</a>. </p>
<h2>Peaceful shared plans</h2>
<p>Eisenhower also tried to set up an international <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.2968/059006009">uranium bank</a>, with US and Soviet joint contributions from their stockpiles of “normal uranium and <a href="https://www.iaea.org/about/history/atoms-for-peace-speech">fissionable materials</a>”. These would be contributed to a pool, shared with other countries for peaceful purposes, both to help restrict the arms race and “provide abundant electrical energy in the power-starved <a href="https://www.iaea.org/about/history/atoms-for-peace-speech">areas of the world</a>”.</p>
<p>However, this bank was <a href="https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/neff.pdf">never created</a>, partly because of Soviet concerns that it would continue to allow US leadership of nuclear weapons technology. Instead, bilateral agreements were struck to supply nuclear energy and materials.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, spreading “peaceful” technology, supplying nuclear reactors and material for energy and civil research, became a cold war and commercial “<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00076791.2020.1845316">weapon</a>”, aiming to tie uranium and technology exports to fulfilling conditions or continued dependence on the selling countries to supply fuel.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/are-small-nuclear-reactors-the-solution-to-canadas-net-zero-ambitions-217354">Are small nuclear reactors the solution to Canada’s net-zero ambitions?</a>
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<p>Ironically, this echoed one US fear which had helped motivate Atoms for Peace: the prospect of the <a href="https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2003_12/Lavoy">Soviet Union sharing nuclear energy</a> as a way of influencing other countries and creating alliances.</p>
<p>These developments are particular relevant today. Russian attacks on Ukraine’s <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/2022/03/17/what-comes-after-russia-s-attack-on-ukrainian-nuclear-power-station-pub-86667">nuclear power plants</a> during the current war have received much attention, but what is less well known is Russia’s nuclear energy empire, with contracts and construction spanning 54 countries.</p>
<p>This has remained “largely below the <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-023-01228-5">sanctions radar</a>”, while remaining a significant source of international influence for Russia. </p>
<h2>Nuclear’s reach today</h2>
<p>As of <a href="https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/nuclear-power-in-the-world-today.aspx">November 2023</a>, approximately 10% of the world’s energy was supplied from more than 400 nuclear reactors, while 40 million nuclear medical procedures are <a href="https://www.ola.org/en/legislative-business/house-documents/parliament-42/session-2/2021-11-02/hansard-1">performed each year</a>, using radioactive materials to diagnose or treat different diseases.</p>
<p>In 2023, policymakers continue grappling with related nuclear issues, whether proposals for new small modular <a href="https://theconversation.com/are-small-nuclear-reactors-the-solution-to-canadas-net-zero-ambitions-217354">nuclear reactors</a>, <a href="https://www.space.com/moon-rolls-royce-nuclear-reactor-concept-unveiled">nuclear power in space</a>, debates around <a href="https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/explainers/role-nuclear-power-energy-mix-reducing-greenhouse-gas-emissions/">potential for nuclear power</a> in addressing climate change or fears of <a href="https://www.economist.com/international/2023/08/29/a-new-nuclear-arms-race-looms">new nuclear arms races</a>. </p>
<p>Faced with such challenges, <a href="https://www.iaea.org/about/history/atoms-for-peace-speech">Eisenhower’s words</a>: “If a danger exists in the world, it is a danger shared by all; and equally, that if hope exists in the mind of one nation, that hope should be shared by all” seem as relevant today, as they did in 1953.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219347/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Timothy Noël Peacock is a Lecturer in History and War studies, and Co-Director of the Games and Gaming Lab at the University of Glasgow.</span></em></p>A climate of fear about international war inspired Eisenhower’s Atoms of Peace speech in 1953, his words about global peace seem relevant to global peace today.Timothy Noël Peacock, Lecturer in History, University of GlasgowLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2174102023-11-15T17:45:15Z2023-11-15T17:45:15ZThe Doomsday Clock warns the world about catastrophe – here’s why it stands at 90 seconds to midnight<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559632/original/file-20231115-15-34tr14.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/close-twelve-oclock-gray-wall-clock-1733221646">Artstore/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Doomsday Clock, with its hands hovering close to midnight (“doomsday”), is a symbolic device that is <a href="https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/">designed to warn the world</a> how close it is to catastrophe. Midnight is said to represent the point at which the Earth becomes uninhabitable by humanity.</p>
<p>The clock dates back to the early days of the cold war. It was set up as an integral feature of a journal called the <a href="https://thebulletin.org/">Bulletin of Atomic Scientists</a>. This was established in 1947 by those <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project">Manhattan Project</a> scientists and engineers who were closely linked to the development of the atomic bomb. They were concerned about “<a href="https://www.atomicarchive.com/media/videos/oppenheimer.html">the destroyers of worlds</a>” they had created. Articles in the bulletin were largely devoted – as they still are today – to highlighting the perils of nuclear weapons.</p>
<p>At the beginning of 2023, the hands of the Doomsday Clock were set at a mere 90 seconds to the hour, <a href="https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/current-time/">the closest it has ever been</a> to midnight. There is no one overall reason for this move. Of course, with climate change now a major factor in the threat to humanity, the clock has to reflect this, and does. But it is, however, other more immediate factors that have largely caused the hands to be pushed forward.</p>
<p>The most significant influence has been the war in Ukraine and particularly the Russian threat of “<a href="https://www.usip.org/publications/2022/10/russia-escalating-de-escalate">escalating to de-escalate</a>”. This notion has been widely discussed in Russia, including by those <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/karaganovs-nuclear-rant-ought-to-scare-lukashenko/">with close ties to President Vladimir Putin</a>. </p>
<p>The idea here is that if Russian forces were about to suffer a major defeat in Ukraine, they would use tactical (low-yield) nuclear weapons on the battlefield (that is, to “escalate” the war). This would then <a href="https://thebulletin.org/2023/08/karaganovs-case-for-russian-nuclear-preemption-responsible-strategizing-or-dangerous-delusion/">create serious pause</a> among those western powers who were supporting Kyiv. </p>
<p>They would, the logic runs, be persuaded into withdrawing that support because they <a href="https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2023/07/24/what-we-learned-from-recent-calls-for-a-russian-nuclear-attack-a81943">would not want to risk</a> a wider war with Russia that might include the use of strategic nuclear weapons. Moscow would then “win” the war against a Ukraine now lacking western help. The war would be over – hence the “de-escalation”.</p>
<p>Beyond what might happen on actual battlefields in Ukraine, rising background tensions between Washington and Moscow have also contributed to the current position of the clock’s hands. </p>
<p>The bilateral treaties that once held in check developments in the field of nuclear weapons have now largely gone. The US itself withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty treaty <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/2021/12/13/u.s.-exit-from-anti-ballistic-missile-treaty-has-fueled-new-arms-race-pub-85977">in 2001</a> and the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty <a href="https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/article/article/1924779/us-withdraws-from-intermediate-range-nuclear-forces-treaty/">in 2019</a>. And while the end of these agreements would have played their part in the setting of the clock’s hands at 90 seconds at the start of 2023, there have been yet further concerning moves actually during 2023.</p>
<p>In February 2023, <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/2023/05/16/new-start-treaty-aggregate-numbers-of-strategic-offensive-arms-pub-89772">Russia withdrew</a> from the <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/publications/interactive/new-start">New Start Treaty</a> and early in November it was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/03/vladimir-putin-withdraws-russia-ratification-nuclear-test-ban-treaty-criticism">announced that it would also withdraw</a> from the <a href="https://www.ctbto.org/our-mission/the-treaty">Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty</a>. So all of the agreements related to limiting nuclear weapons that, in the past, had moved the hands away from midnight, have now gone.</p>
<h2>When the clock started</h2>
<p>The clock’s hands, since 1947, have been set at the beginning of every year by the bulletin. Originally, the clock was concerned with the threat of an actual nuclear war between the cold war superpowers, the US and the Soviet Union. Recently, however, the clock has also come to include and reflect the global threat from climate change, which was <a href="https://thebulletin.org/climate-change/#nav_menu">first included as a factor by the bulletin in 2007</a>.</p>
<p>At various points over the years, the clock has been adjusted to react to world events. In 1947, its original setting was at seven minutes to midnight. It moved up to just two minutes in 1953 when both the US and the Soviet Union <a href="https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/history/soviet-hydrogen-bomb-program/#:%7E:text=On%20August%208%2C%201953%2C%20Soviet,Soviet%20thermonuclear%20device%2C%20took%20place.">tested their new</a>, and more destructive, hydrogen bombs. The clock, though, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220119-how-to-read-the-doomsday-clock">never moved as close again</a> to midnight throughout the rest of the cold war.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
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<p>Whenever the hands were moved forward, they tended to be brought back again later to reflect any warming of relations between Washington and Moscow – such as with the detente of the early 1970s or following the signing of various arms limitation agreements. These agreements would include the likes of the <a href="https://treaties.un.org/pages/showDetails.aspx?objid=08000002801313d9">Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty</a> of 1963, the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Strategic-Arms-Limitation-Talks">Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (Salt</a>) of the 1960s and 1970s, the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Anti-Ballistic-Missile-Treaty">ABM treaty</a> of 1972, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermediate-Range_Nuclear_Forces_Treaty">INF</a> agreement of 1987, the <a href="https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/pcw/104210.htm#:%7E:text=In%201991%2C%20Presidents%20George%20H.%20W.,and%20bombs%20by%20one%20third.">Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start I</a>) of 1991, and the follow-on New Start of 2010. </p>
<p>Indeed, in 1991, and in the halcyon days – in tension-reduction terms – of the immediate post-cold war period, the Doomsday Clock’s hands were moved further away from the midnight hour than at any point since 1947: they stood at a comforting 17 minutes.</p>
<p>In 2023, the world, it seems – and if the Doomsday Clock is to be treated with credence – is not in a good place. But this clock is, though, a warning device, albeit symbolic. As such, it can hopefully serve to concentrate minds and to bring to bear wise counsels who can act to avert the catastrophe (whether nuclear- or climate-induced) that the clock’s founders had designed it to prevent.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217410/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rod Thornton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Since 1947 the clock’s hand have been set at the beginning of every year.Rod Thornton, Associate Professor/Senior Lecturer in International Studies, Defense and Security., King's College LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2106472023-08-02T19:59:26Z2023-08-02T19:59:26ZIf the world were coming to an end, what would be the most ethical way to rebuild humanity ‘off planet’?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540634/original/file-20230802-25-uh2308.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=14%2C0%2C4977%2C3330&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">NASA/AP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Last week, scientists announced that for the first time on record, Antarctic ice has failed to “substantially recover” over winter, in a “once in 7.5-million-year event”. Climate change is the <a href="https://theconversation.com/antarctica-is-missing-a-chunk-of-sea-ice-bigger-than-greenland-whats-going-on-210665">most likely culprit</a>. </p>
<p>Petra Heil, a sea ice physicist from the Australian Antarctic Division, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-07-24/antarctic-sea-ice-levels-nosedive-five-sigma-event/102635204">told the ABC</a> it could tip the world into a new state. “That would be quite concerning to the sustainability of human conditions on Earth, I suspect.”</p>
<p>And in March, a senior United Nations disarmament official <a href="https://press.un.org/en/2023/sc15250.doc.htm">told the Security Council</a> the risk of nuclear weapons being used today is higher than at any time since the end of the Cold War.</p>
<p>Both warnings speak to concerns about Earth’s security. Will our planet be able to support human life in the future? And if not, will humanity have another chance at survival in space? </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/this-is-the-way-the-world-ends-nevil-shutes-on-the-beach-warned-us-of-nuclear-annihilation-its-still-a-hot-button-issue-209243">'This is the way the world ends': Nevil Shute's On the Beach warned us of nuclear annihilation. It's still a hot-button issue</a>
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<h2>‘Billionauts’ and how to choose who goes</h2>
<p>Over the past few years, we’ve witnessed the rise of the “billionaut”. The ultra-wealthy are engaged in a <a href="https://theconversation.com/billionaire-space-race-the-ultimate-symbol-of-capitalisms-flawed-obsession-with-growth-164511">private space race</a> costing billions of dollars, while <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverwilliams1/2021/12/21/billionaire-space-race-turns-into-a-publicity-disaster/?sh=79056f7e5e4d">regular citizens often condemn</a> the wasted resources and contribution to global carbon emissions. </p>
<p>Space – described in the <a href="https://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/spacelaw/treaties/introouterspacetreaty.html">Outer Space Treaty</a> as being the “province of all mankind” – risks instead becoming the playground of the elite few, as they try to escape the consequences of environmental destruction. </p>
<p>But if we have to select humans to send into space for a species survival mission, how do we choose who gets to go? </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540631/original/file-20230802-29-z9e4e7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540631/original/file-20230802-29-z9e4e7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540631/original/file-20230802-29-z9e4e7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540631/original/file-20230802-29-z9e4e7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540631/original/file-20230802-29-z9e4e7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540631/original/file-20230802-29-z9e4e7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540631/original/file-20230802-29-z9e4e7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540631/original/file-20230802-29-z9e4e7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">How should we choose who we include in a species survival mission?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mikhail Nilov/Pexels</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>In Montreal last month, the <a href="https://irg.space/irg-2023/">Interstellar Research Group</a> explored the question: how would you select a crew for the first interstellar mission? </p>
<p>A panel led by <a href="https://www.erikanesvold.com/">Erika Nesvold</a>, a co-editor of the new book <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/reclaiming-space-9780197604793?cc=au&lang=en&#">Reclaiming Space</a>, discussed the perspectives of gender minorities, people with disabilities and First Nations groups regarding the ideal composition for an off-world crew. </p>
<p>I was on the panel to discuss my contribution to the book, which explores how we can promote procreation in our new off-world society, without diminishing the reproductive liberty of survivors.</p>
<h2>The ultra-wealthy and reproductive slavery</h2>
<p>The first step in deciding how to allocate limited spaces on our “lifeboat” is identifying and rejecting options that are practically or ethically unacceptable. </p>
<p>The first option I rejected was a user-pay system, whereby the wealthy can purchase a seat on the lifeboat. A 2022 Oxfam report showed the investments of just 125 billionaires collectively contribute 393 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year: <a href="https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/billionaire-emits-million-times-more-greenhouse-gases-average-person#:%7E:text=Recent%20data%20from%20Oxfam's%20research,%C2%B0C%20goal%20of%20the">a million times more</a> than the average for most global citizens.</p>
<p>If the ultra-wealthy are the only ones to survive an environmental apocalypse, there’s a risk they would just create another one, on another planet. This would undermine the species survival project.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540627/original/file-20230802-19-o2s08v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540627/original/file-20230802-19-o2s08v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540627/original/file-20230802-19-o2s08v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540627/original/file-20230802-19-o2s08v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540627/original/file-20230802-19-o2s08v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540627/original/file-20230802-19-o2s08v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540627/original/file-20230802-19-o2s08v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540627/original/file-20230802-19-o2s08v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Jeff Bezos (second from left), founder of Amazon and space tourism company Blue Origin.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tony Guitierrez/AP</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>The second option I rejected was allowing a reproductive slave class to develop, with some survivors compelled to populate the new community. This would disproportionately impact cis-gender women of reproductive capacity, demanding their gestational labour in exchange for a chance at survival. </p>
<p>Neither a user-pay system nor reproductive slave labour would achieve the goal of “saving humanity” in any meaningful way. </p>
<p>Many would argue preserving human values - including equality, reproductive liberty, and respect for diversity - is more important than saving human biology. If we lose what makes us unique as a species, that would be a kind of extinction anyway. </p>
<p>But if we want humanity to survive, we still need to build our population in our new home. So what other options do we have?</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/doomsday-bunkers-mars-and-the-mindset-the-tech-bros-trying-to-outsmart-the-end-of-the-world-188661">Doomsday bunkers, Mars and 'The Mindset': the tech bros trying to outsmart the end of the world</a>
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<h2>Reproduction and diversity</h2>
<p>How can we avoid discrimination on the basis of reproductive capacity – including age, sexuality, <a href="https://theconversation.com/infertility-through-the-ages-and-how-ivf-changed-the-way-we-think-about-it-87128">fertility status</a> or personal preference? </p>
<p>We could avoid any questions about family planning when selecting our crew. This would align with <a href="https://www.seek.com.au/career-advice/article/illegal-interview-questions-what-employers-have-no-right-to-ask">equal opportunity policies</a> in other areas, like employment. But we would then have to hope enough candidates selected on other merits happen to be willing and able to procreate. </p>
<p>Alternatively, we could reserve a certain number of places for those who agree to contribute to population growth. Fertility would then become an inherent job requirement. This might be similar to taking on a role as a <a href="https://theconversation.com/surrogacy-laws-why-a-global-approach-is-needed-to-stop-exploitation-of-women-98966">surrogate</a>, in which reproductive capacity is essential. </p>
<p>But what if, after accepting such a position on the mission, someone changed their mind about wanting children? Would they be expected to provide some sort of compensation? Would they be vulnerable to retaliation? </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540635/original/file-20230802-10044-kwy7jj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540635/original/file-20230802-10044-kwy7jj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540635/original/file-20230802-10044-kwy7jj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540635/original/file-20230802-10044-kwy7jj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540635/original/file-20230802-10044-kwy7jj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540635/original/file-20230802-10044-kwy7jj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540635/original/file-20230802-10044-kwy7jj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540635/original/file-20230802-10044-kwy7jj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fertility could potentially be a ‘job requirement’ for some space colonisers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Oleksandr Canary Islands/Pexels</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The more we focus on procreation, the less diversity we will preserve in the species as a whole – especially if we deliberately select against diverse sexualities, disabilities and older people. </p>
<p>A lack of diversity would also threaten the long-term viability of the new society. For example, even if we exclude all physiologically or socially infertile people from the initial crew, these traits will reappear in future generations.</p>
<p>The difference is: these children would be born into a less accepting community. Cooperation will be essential for the new human society – so promoting hostility would be counterproductive. </p>
<p>So, what options are left? Using a random global sample to select travellers might alleviate concerns about equity and fairness. But the ability of a random sample to maximise our survival as a species would depend on how large the sample can be. </p>
<p>A global sample would minimise bias. But there’s a risk it might yield a crew without doctors, engineers, farmers or other essential personnel. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/venus-the-trouble-with-sending-people-there-191534">Venus: the trouble with sending people there</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Random selection versus a points-based system</h2>
<p>The best balance between competing needs might be a stratified random sampling method, involving randomly selecting survivors from predetermined categories. Reproductive potential might be one category. Others might focus on other elements of practical usefulness or contribution to human diversity.</p>
<p>Another option is a points-based system, whereby different skills and characteristics are ranked in terms of their desirability. In this system, an elderly person who speaks multiple languages may score higher than a physiologically fertile young person, due to their ability to substantially contribute to language preservation and education. </p>
<p>This does not entirely eliminate the potential for discrimination, of course. Someone would need to decide which traits are most desirable and valuable to the new human society.</p>
<p>However we determine our lifeboat candidates, it should be carefully considered. In our attempt to “save humanity”, we must avoid sacrificing the very things that make us human. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Evie Kendal is a contributor to <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/reclaiming-space-9780197604793?cc=au&lang=en&#">Reclaiming Space: Progressive and Multicultural Visions of Space Exploration</a> (Oxford University Press)</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210647/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Evie Kendal does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Climate change and the nuclear threat are raising concerns about our planet’s future ability to support human life. If we launch a species survival mission, who should go?Evie Kendal, Senior lecturer of health promotion, Swinburne University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2105672023-08-01T15:42:09Z2023-08-01T15:42:09ZNuclear war would be more devastating for Earth’s climate than cold war predictions – even with fewer weapons<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540436/original/file-20230801-25-j40doe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5615%2C3000&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/missiles-aimed-sky-sunset-nuclear-bomb-2145373151">Hamara/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Christopher Nolan’s biopic of <a href="https://theconversation.com/now-i-am-become-death-the-destroyer-of-worlds-who-was-atom-bomb-pioneer-robert-oppenheimer-209398">J. Robert Oppenheimer</a> has revived morbid curiosity in the destructive power of nuclear weapons. There are now an estimated <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/12/number-of-nuclear-weapons-held-by-major-powers-rising-says-thinktank">12,512 nuclear warheads</a>. </p>
<p>A war in which even a fraction of these bombs were detonated would create blast waves and fires capable of killing millions of people almost instantly. The <a href="https://www.atomicarchive.com/resources/documents/effects/wenw/chapter-2.html">radiation-induced cancers and genetic damage</a> would affect the remaining population for generations.</p>
<p>But what sort of world would remain amid the radioactive fallout? For the last four decades, scientists modelling the Earth system have run computer simulations to find out. </p>
<p>Using their knowledge of chemistry and climate modelling, atmospheric scientists <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/1995/crutzen/facts/">Paul Crutzen</a> and <a href="https://twobtech.com/john-birks.html">John Birks</a> wrote a <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4312777">short paper</a> in 1982 which suggested a nuclear war would produce a smoke cloud so massive that it would cause what became known as a nuclear winter. This, they claimed, would devastate agriculture and with it, civilisation.</p>
<p>A year later, scientists from the <a href="https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/23/6691/2023/">US and Soviet Union confirmed</a> first that cities and industrial complexes hit by nuclear weapons would indeed produce much more smoke and dust than burning the equivalent area of forest. And second, this global layer of smog would block out sunlight, causing conditions at Earth’s surface to become rapidly colder, dryer and darker. </p>
<p>Climate modelling shows the reduced sunlight would plunge global temperatures by up to <a href="https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/23/6691/2023/">10˚C for nearly a decade</a>. These freezing conditions, combined with less sunlight for plants to photosynthesise, would have catastrophic consequences for global food production and lead to mass starvation worldwide.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/three-reasons-why-climate-change-models-are-our-best-hope-for-understanding-the-future-175936">Modern climate models</a> are much more sophisticated than those used in the 1980s. And while there are fewer nukes in working order today, more recent results from computer simulations suggest that the grim prophecy delivered by scientists 40 years ago may actually have been an underestimate.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A black-and-white photograph of a mushroom cloud." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540437/original/file-20230801-19-mlvhwo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540437/original/file-20230801-19-mlvhwo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540437/original/file-20230801-19-mlvhwo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540437/original/file-20230801-19-mlvhwo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540437/original/file-20230801-19-mlvhwo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540437/original/file-20230801-19-mlvhwo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540437/original/file-20230801-19-mlvhwo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The first detonation of a nuclear bomb: the Trinity test in New Mexico, US on July 16 1945.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/first-atomic-explosion-on-july-16-249574276">Everett Collection/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Clear and present danger</h2>
<p>Environmental scientists led by Alan Robock at Rutgers University in the US argued in <a href="https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/23/6691/2023/">a recent paper</a> that the nuclear winter theory helped end the proliferation of nuclear weapons during the cold war. In 1986, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1985/02/12/world/transcript-of-interview-with-president-on-a-range-of-issues.html?pagewanted=all">President Ronald Reagan</a> and <a href="https://www.salon.com/2000/09/07/gorbachev/">General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev</a> took the first steps in history to reduce the number of nuclear weapons while citing the predicted consequences of a nuclear winter for all life on Earth. </p>
<p>At the height of the arms race in the mid-1980s there were over 65,000 nuclear weapons. The reduction in the global nuclear arsenal to <a href="https://thebulletin.org/nuclear-notebook/">just over 12,000</a> (of which 4,000 are on operational standby) has ebbed the threat of all-out nuclear war, prompting some to question whether the <a href="https://thebulletin.org/2022/02/us-defense-to-its-workforce-nuclear-war-can-be-won/">limited climate models</a> used in the 1980s had understated the consequences of a global nuclear war. </p>
<p>Newer and more <a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2006JD008235">sophisticated climate models</a>, the ones used to <a href="https://theconversation.com/three-reasons-why-climate-change-models-are-our-best-hope-for-understanding-the-future-175936">model future climate changes</a> caused by the burning of fossil fuels, suggest the opposite is true.</p>
<p>With the largest possible nuclear exchange between the US and Russia, new models suggest the <a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2021AV000610">ocean would cool</a> so profoundly that the world would be thrust into a “nuclear little ice age” lasting thousands of years.</p>
<p>Of course, there are seven <a href="https://www.icanw.org/nuclear_arsenals">other nuclear states</a>: China, France, India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan and the UK. Scientists have modelled that even a limited nuclear war <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-64396138">between India and Pakistan</a> could kill 130 million people and deprive <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-022-00573-0">a further 2.5 billion</a> of food for at least two years.</p>
<p>A nuclear war is unlikely to remain limited, however. What starts with one tactical nuclear strike or a tit-for-tat exchange between two countries could <a href="https://sgs.princeton.edu/the-lab/plan-a">escalate</a> to an all-out nuclear war ending in utter destruction. A global nuclear war including the US, Europe and China could result in 360 million people dead and condemn nearly 5.3 billion people to starvation in the two years <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-022-00573-0">following the exchange</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2jy3JU-ORpo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<h2>The threat remains</h2>
<p>Scientific modelling allows us to peer into the abyss of a nuclear war without having to experience it. Forty years of scientific research into these <a href="https://thebulletin.org/2022/10/nowhere-to-hide-how-a-nuclear-war-would-kill-you-and-almost-everyone-else/">possibilities</a> encouraged the adoption of a United Nations treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons in 2017 – ratified by most countries but not the nine nuclear powers. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.icanw.org/nobel_prize">international campaign to abolish nuclear weapons</a> was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize that same year for its work in highlighting the catastrophe that would result from any use of nuclear weapons.</p>
<p>But the war in Ukraine has brought old fears to the surface. President Vladimir Putin of Russia has threatened a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/putin-update-russias-elite-ukraine-war-major-speech-2023-02-21/">limited use of nuclear weapons</a> as part of the conflict, and a single launch could escalate into a regional or even global exchange that would plunge billions of people into a world so harrowing we can barely comprehend it.</p>
<p>Robock said that it is now “even more urgent” for scientists to study the consequences of detonating nuclear weapons and ensure as many people as possible know about them. And, ultimately, to work for the elimination of these weapons. The threat of nuclear war has not gone away, and a nuclear ice age which would doom much of life on Earth for millennia is still a possibility.</p>
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<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Imagine weekly climate newsletter" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Maslin is the UNFCCC designated point of contact for UCL. He is co-director of the London NERC Doctoral Training Partnership and a member of the Climate Crisis Advisory Group. He is a member of the Sopra-Steria CSR Board, Sheep Included Ltd, Lansons and NetZeroNow advisory boards. He has received grant funding from the NERC, EPSRC, ESRC, DFG, Royal Society, DIFD, BEIS, DECC, FCO, Innovate UK, Carbon Trust, UK Space Agency, European Space Agency, Research England, Wellcome Trust, Leverhulme Trust, CIFF, Sprint2020, and British Council. He has received funding from the BBC, Lancet, Laithwaites, Seventh Generation, Channel 4, JLT Re, WWF, Hermes, CAFOD, HP and Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors. </span></em></p>Climate modelling in the 1980s offered the first glimpses of what might lie beyond a nuclear war.Mark Maslin, Professor of Earth System Science, UCLLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2101152023-07-31T12:23:52Z2023-07-31T12:23:52ZHiroshima attack marks its 78th anniversary – its lessons of unnecessary mass destruction could help guide future nuclear arms talks<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539797/original/file-20230727-15-m7op1g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Visitors to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum in Hiroshima view a large-scale panoramic photograph of the destruction following the 1945 bombing.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/visitors-to-hiroshima-peace-memorial-museum-view-a-large-news-photo/1227916055?adppopup=true">Carl Court/Getty Images </a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It was 8:15 on a Monday morning, Aug. 6, 1945. World War II was raging in Japan.</p>
<p>An American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first atomic bomb over <a href="https://www.ctbto.org/news-and-events/news/6-and-9-august-1945-hiroshima-nagasaki#:%7E:text=On%206%20August%201945%2C%20at,were%20confident%20it%20would%20work">Hiroshima, Japan</a> – an important military center with a civilian population close to 300,000 people. </p>
<p>The U.S. wanted to end the war, and Japan was unwilling to <a href="https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/education/presidential-inquiries/decision-drop-atomic-bomb">surrender unconditionally</a>. </p>
<p>The bomber plane was called the Enola Gay, named for Enola Gay Tibbets, <a href="https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/Events/1945/hiroshima.htm">the mother of the pilot</a>. </p>
<p>Its passenger was “Little Boy” – an atomic bomb that quickly killed <a href="https://www.icanw.org/hiroshima_and_nagasaki_bombings">80,000 people in Hiroshima</a>. Tens of thousands more would later die of the excruciating effects of radiation exposure. </p>
<p>Three days later, U.S. soldiers in a second B-29 bomber plane dropped another <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/bombing-of-hiroshima-and-nagasaki">atomic bomb on Nagasaki</a>, killing an estimated 40,000 people. </p>
<p>It was the first – and so far, only – time atomic bombs were used against civilians. But U.S. scientists were confident it would work, because they <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/the-manhattan-project-and-its-cold-war-legacy?gad=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwtO-kBhDIARIsAL6LorcawhIylSgwAJ1ta5ttJ0OYLVVmSsYKK7Ti3vG9MXUHix5jhCkH_q8aAtgxEALw_wcB">had tested one just like it in New Mexico</a> a month before. This was part of the <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-was-the-manhattan-project/">Manhattan Project</a>, a secret, federally funded science effort that produced the first nuclear weapons. </p>
<p>What might have been a single year of nuclear weapons development ushered in decades and decades of <a href="https://www.iaea.org/topics/non-proliferation-treaty">nuclear proliferation</a> – a challenge across countries and professions.</p>
<p>Having worked on nuclear weapons both as a journalist covering the Pentagon and then as a White House special assistant on the National Security Council and undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, <a href="https://fletcher.tufts.edu/people/faculty/tara-sonenshine">I understand how critical it is</a> to educate and inform citizens about the dangers of nuclear war and how to control the development of nuclear weapons. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539641/original/file-20230726-17-h4r1mh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white photo shows a massive cloud of smoke in the air." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539641/original/file-20230726-17-h4r1mh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539641/original/file-20230726-17-h4r1mh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539641/original/file-20230726-17-h4r1mh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539641/original/file-20230726-17-h4r1mh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539641/original/file-20230726-17-h4r1mh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539641/original/file-20230726-17-h4r1mh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539641/original/file-20230726-17-h4r1mh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An aerial photograph shows the mushroom cloud that ballooned after U.S. soldiers dropped the ‘Little Boy’ atomic bomb over Hiroshima in 1945.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/an-aerial-photograph-of-hiroshima-japan-shortly-after-the-news-photo/513666223?adppopup=true">Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The man who started it all</h2>
<p>Nobel Prize-winning physicist Albert Einstein warned then-President Franklin Roosevelt in 1939 that the Nazis might be <a href="https://time.com/5641891/einstein-szilard-letter/#">developing nuclear weapons</a>. Einstein urged the U.S. to stockpile uranium and begin developing an atomic bomb – a warning he would later regret.</p>
<p>Einstein <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/11/ive-created-a-monster-on-the-regrets-of-inventors/249044/">wrote a letter</a> to Newsweek, published in 1947, headlined “The Man Who Started It All.” In it, he made a confession. “Had I known that the Germans would not succeed in producing an atomic bomb, I would never have lifted a finger,” Einstein wrote. </p>
<p>Einstein repeated <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/einstein-regret-video">his regret in 1954</a>, writing that the letter to Roosevelt was his “one great mistake in life.”</p>
<p>But by then it was too late. </p>
<p>The Soviet Union began its own <a href="https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/history/hydrogen-bomb-1950/">bomb development program in the late 1940s</a>, partly in response to Hiroshima and Nagasaki but also as a response to the Nazi invasion of their country in the 1940s. The Soviet Union secretly conducted its first atomic <a href="https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/history/soviet-atomic-program-1946/">weapons test in 1949</a>.</p>
<p>The U.S. responded by <a href="https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/history/hydrogen-bomb-1950/">testing more advanced nuclear weapons</a> in November 1952. The result was a hydrogen bomb explosion with approximately 700 times the power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. </p>
<p>A nuclear arms race had begun.</p>
<h2>Arms control</h2>
<p>The U.S. atomic bomb attacks on Japan remain the only military use of nuclear weapons.</p>
<p>But today <a href="https://www.sipri.org/media/press-release/2023/states-invest-nuclear-arsenals-geopolitical-relations-deteriorate-new-sipri-yearbook-out-now">there are nine countries</a> that have nuclear weapons – the U.S., Russia, France, China, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea. The U.S. and Russia jointly have about <a href="https://rb.gy/gbfq7">90% of the nuclear warheads</a> in the world. </p>
<p>There has been progress over the past few decades in <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/experts-assess-the-nuclear-non-proliferation-treaty-50-years-after-it-went-into-effect/">reducing the global stockpile of nuclear weapons</a> while preventing the development of new ones. But that momentum has been uneven and oftentimes rocky. </p>
<p>The U.S. and the Soviet Union first agreed to limit their respective countries’ nuclear weapons stockpile and to prevent further development of <a href="https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/INFtreaty">new weapons in 1986</a>.</p>
<p>And in 1991 the U.S. and the Soviet Union signed on to another <a href="https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/history/reagan-and-gorbachev-reykjavik-summit/">legally binding international treaty</a> that required the countries to destroy 2,693 nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of about 300 to more than 3,400 miles (500-5,500 kilometers). </p>
<p>The two countries signed another well-known <a href="https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/start1">international agreement called START I</a> in 1994, not long after the fall of the Soviet Union. </p>
<p>That treaty is <a href="https://armscontrolcenter.org/strategic-arms-reduction-treaty-start-i/#:%7E:text=The%20treaty%20is%20considered%20one,eight%20years%20after%20full%20implementation.">considered by experts one of the most successful</a> arms control agreements. It resulted in the U.S. and Russia’s dismantling 80% of all the world’s <a href="https://armscontrolcenter.org/strategic-arms-reduction-treaty-start-i/">strategic nuclear weapons</a> by 2001.</p>
<p>Russia and the U.S. signed on to a new START treaty in 2011, restricting the countries to each keep 1,550 nuclear weapons.</p>
<p>START II, as it is known, will expire in February 2026. There are no <a href="https://www.state.gov/new-start/">current plans</a> for the countries to renew the deal, and it is not clear what comes next. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539813/original/file-20230727-23-o73a1r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white photo shows two men toasting each other, surrounded by other men at a table." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539813/original/file-20230727-23-o73a1r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539813/original/file-20230727-23-o73a1r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=324&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539813/original/file-20230727-23-o73a1r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=324&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539813/original/file-20230727-23-o73a1r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=324&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539813/original/file-20230727-23-o73a1r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539813/original/file-20230727-23-o73a1r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539813/original/file-20230727-23-o73a1r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Former U.S. President Gerald Ford and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev toast following nuclear nonproliferation talks in 1974.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/american-statesman-gerald-ford-the-38th-president-of-the-news-photo/3277304?adppopup=true">Keystone/CNP/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Complicating factors</h2>
<p>Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine – and Russian President <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/putin-nuclear-weapons-threat-real-biden-warns-rcna90114">Vladimir Putin’s repeated threats</a> to strike Ukraine and Western countries with nuclear weapons – has complicated plans to renew the new START deal. </p>
<p>Although Putin has not formally ended Russian adherence to the START II agreement, Russia has <a href="https://geneva.usmission.gov/2023/05/16/cessation-of-the-nuclear-arms-race-and-nuclear-disarmament/">stopped participating</a> in the nuclear inspection checks that the deal requires. This lack of transparency makes <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/31/politics/us-russia-nuclear-arms-control-treaty/index.html">diplomacy over the deal more difficult</a>.</p>
<p>Another complicating factor is that <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2022/02/china-russia-nuclear-weapons/622089/">China has made it clear</a> that it is not interested in an arms control agreement until it has the same number of nuclear weapons that the U.S. and Russia have. </p>
<p>Indeed, since 2019, China has increased the size, readiness, accuracy and <a href="https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2023-01/news/pentagon-chinese-nuclear-arsenal-exceeds-400-warheads#:%7E:text=The%20report%20projects%20that%20China,timeline%2C%22%20the%20report%20states">diversity of its nuclear arsenal</a>.</p>
<p>The U.S. Department of Defense reported in 2022 that <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/does-the-pentagon-report-on-chinas-military-correctly-judge-the-threat/">China was on course to have 1,500 nuclear weapons</a> within the next decade – roughly matching the stockpile that the U.S. and Russia each have. In 2015, China had an estimated <a href="https://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/china-nuclear">260 nuclear warheads</a>, and by 2023 that number rose to <a href="https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2023-01/news/pentagon-chinese-nuclear-arsenal-exceeds-400-warheads#:%7E:text=The%20report%20projects%20that%20China,timeline%2C%22%20the%20report%20states">more than 400.</a> </p>
<p>At the same time, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/04/13/1169878514/north-korea-missile-test-solid-fuel">North Korea continues testing</a> its ballistic nuclear missiles. </p>
<p>Iran is <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/iran-enriching-uranium-weapons-grade-nuclear-iaea-rcna72753">enriching uranium</a> to near-weapons-grade levels. Some observers have voiced concern that Iran could soon reach <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/iran-enriching-uranium-weapons-grade-nuclear-iaea-rcna72753">90% enrichment levels</a>, meaning it would then just be a few months before Iran develops a nuclear bomb. </p>
<p>In a world of potential nuclear terrorism and conflicts that risk the unthinkable use of nuclear weapons, I think that the need to control proliferation and double down on arms control is a useful starting point.</p>
<p>So, what else can be done to contain the real threat of nuclear war?</p>
<h2>Diplomacy is the way forward</h2>
<p>Diplomacy matters, as was clear in the early years of U.S.-Soviet agreements. </p>
<p>In my view, a formal agreement between the U.S. and Iran to slow down its nuclear development would be valuable. Creating a better relationship between the U.S. and China might reduce the chances of a confrontation over Taiwan with the potential for a nuclear conflagration. </p>
<p>The U.S. can also use public diplomacy tools – everything from official speeches to international educational exchanges – to warn the world of the escalating dangers of unchecked nuclear weapons use. This is one way to get ordinary citizens to put pressure on their governments to work on disarmament, similar to how young activists have moved public opinion on climate change. </p>
<p>The U.S. could potentially <a href="https://press.un.org/en/2023/sc15250.doc.htm">use its global podium</a> to underscore the horrific nature of threats that come with the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/25/politics/biden-russia-dirty-bomb/index.html">use of nuclear weapons</a> and make clear such use is inadmissible. </p>
<p>Remembering Aug. 6, 1945, is painful. But the best way to honor history is not to repeat it. </p>
<p><em>This article was updated to correct where World War II fighting continued on August 6, 1945.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210115/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tara Sonenshine does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The United States and Russia, the two biggest nuclear powers, have no imminent plans for talks on a nuclear deal. That should change, writes a former US diplomat.Tara Sonenshine, Edward R. Murrow Professor of Practice in Public Diplomacy, Tufts UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2084752023-07-20T20:04:01Z2023-07-20T20:04:01ZCurious Kids: what does a nuclear bomb actually do?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537993/original/file-20230718-17-19622i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=107%2C161%2C11874%2C7814&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><blockquote>
<p>I would like to know what a nuclear bomb actually does – Rafael, age 11, Melbourne</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Hi Rafael! </p>
<p>A nuclear bomb, like any bomb, makes an explosion by releasing an enormous amount of energy at once. Nuclear bombs just use a different process from other bombs. </p>
<p>You may have heard of atoms. These are the super-tiny particles that make up matter – which in turn makes everything around us (and us). </p>
<p>Nuclear bombs work by changing the cores of atoms to turn them into other types of atoms. This process releases a lot of heat energy, which quickly gets converted into a big wave of pressure: an explosion! </p>
<h2>What are nuclei?</h2>
<p>Nuclear bombs release much more energy than normal bombs that use chemicals such as TNT. This is because the cores of atoms are held together very strongly. But before I get into that, let me explain some of the basics.</p>
<p>Atoms themselves are made up of even smaller particles called protons, neutrons and electrons. A cloud of electrons surrounds a tiny inner core made of protons and neutrons. This core is called the nucleus, and more than one nucleus are called nuclei.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Diagram of an atom, showing electrons surrounding a core of protons and neutrons." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534738/original/file-20230629-15-jbymfg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534738/original/file-20230629-15-jbymfg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534738/original/file-20230629-15-jbymfg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534738/original/file-20230629-15-jbymfg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534738/original/file-20230629-15-jbymfg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534738/original/file-20230629-15-jbymfg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534738/original/file-20230629-15-jbymfg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An atom is made up of electrons surrounding a central core of protons and neutrons. The core is about one-hundred thousand times smaller than the atom.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AG Caesar/Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Chemical reactions happen when electrons are rearranged, whereas nuclear reactions happen when protons and neutrons inside the nucleus are rearranged. </p>
<p>There are two types of nuclear bombs. In the case of “fission” bombs, nuclei that have a lot of protons and neutrons – such as those in a very dense metal called uranium – are split apart.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537983/original/file-20230718-29-c9r54d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537983/original/file-20230718-29-c9r54d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537983/original/file-20230718-29-c9r54d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537983/original/file-20230718-29-c9r54d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537983/original/file-20230718-29-c9r54d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537983/original/file-20230718-29-c9r54d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537983/original/file-20230718-29-c9r54d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537983/original/file-20230718-29-c9r54d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Uranium is a chemical element with the atomic number 92. It has 92 protons and electrons.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In another type of nuclear bomb called a “fusion” bomb, two very small nuclei – such as the cores of two hydrogen atoms – are stuck together. </p>
<p>But fission bombs are simpler and more common, so let’s talk about those. </p>
<h2>Chain reactions</h2>
<p>Some nuclei don’t take very much energy at all to split apart, such as those in some types of uranium or plutonium atoms (plutonium is another dense metal which has 94 protons in its nuclei). </p>
<p>These nuclei will sometimes fission even when they’re just sitting around. When a nucleus fissions, it turns into two smaller nuclei and spits out a few neutrons. </p>
<p>However, one nucleus doing this isn’t a big deal. To make an explosion, you need to have a certain amount of uranium together in one spot.</p>
<p>For instance, a fission bomb would usually use a very purified sphere of uranium weighing about 52kg. Even this would have to use certain types of uranium in which the atoms have a specific number of neutrons. </p>
<p>If you have enough of these atoms together in one spot, the neutrons that are spit out during fission will hit other nuclei, which then also fission and spit out more neutrons – and so it continues in a chain reaction that sets off a massive explosion.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Diagram of one atom fissioning, showing two smaller nuclei and three neutrons, which cause two more nuclei to fission producing neutrons in a chain reaction" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534739/original/file-20230629-19-gpdggj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534739/original/file-20230629-19-gpdggj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534739/original/file-20230629-19-gpdggj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534739/original/file-20230629-19-gpdggj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534739/original/file-20230629-19-gpdggj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=651&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534739/original/file-20230629-19-gpdggj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=651&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534739/original/file-20230629-19-gpdggj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=651&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A nuclear chain reaction happens when one nucleus fissions, releasing neutrons which cause another nucleus to fission, and so on.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Adapted from MikeRun/Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>An unexploded fission bomb will usually be holding separate pieces of uranium (or plutonium) that are too small to start the chain reaction on their own. A chemical explosive is used to smash the pieces together – triggering the chain reaction that sets the bomb off.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two different types of fission bombs -- one where two small pieces of uranium are pushed together by a chemical explosive, and another where plutonium is compressed by a chemical explosive." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534740/original/file-20230629-25-6pa2c7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534740/original/file-20230629-25-6pa2c7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=655&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534740/original/file-20230629-25-6pa2c7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=655&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534740/original/file-20230629-25-6pa2c7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=655&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534740/original/file-20230629-25-6pa2c7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=823&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534740/original/file-20230629-25-6pa2c7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=823&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534740/original/file-20230629-25-6pa2c7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=823&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fission bombs work by taking pieces of uranium or plutonium that are too small to make a chain reaction on their own, and using a chemical explosive to push them together until a chain reaction starts.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Adapted from Fastfission/Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Fallout</h2>
<p>After fission happens, the two smaller nuclei that are left over are radioactive. Having enough of them in one spot can be very harmful to human health. </p>
<p>These leftovers after a nuclear explosion are called “fallout”. Besides the huge size of the explosion itself, the fallout in particular is what makes nuclear bombs more dangerous than other bombs. The technology used to make nuclear weapons is some of the most secret information in the world.</p>
<p>Nuclear bombs have only ever been used twice. Both of these bombs were detonated during World War II, by the United States against Japan. People around the world are working hard to make sure they are never used again.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208475/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kaitlin Cook receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>A nuclear bomb is a bomb that makes explosions by changing the nucleus of an atom in a way that releases a lot of energy.Kaitlin Cook, DECRA Fellow, Department of Nuclear Physics and Accelerator Applications, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2092432023-07-18T20:01:59Z2023-07-18T20:01:59Z‘This is the way the world ends’: Nevil Shute’s On the Beach warned us of nuclear annihilation. It’s still a hot-button issue<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537941/original/file-20230718-17-afp9e7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=10%2C3%2C1179%2C622&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A 1946 nuclear weapon test by the US military at Bikini Atoll, Micronesia.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">rawpixel</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>One of the most haunting poems of the 20th century, <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/t-s-eliot">T.S. Eliot</a>’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hollow_Men">The Hollow Men</a> (1925), concludes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This is the way the world ends<br>
Not with a bang but a whimper.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In 1958, on his 70th birthday, Eliot was asked whether he would consider writing these lines, probably his most quoted, again. His answer was both noteworthy and categorical. </p>
<p>He <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/mono/10.4324/9780203197479-81/henry-hewes-eliot-seventy-interview-eliot-saturday-review-13-september-1958-vol-xli-30%E2%80%932-michael-grant">admitted</a> he would not. He said that “while the association of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermonuclear_weapon">H-bomb</a> is irrelevant to it, it would today come to everyone’s mind”. (And he was “not sure that the world will end with either”.)</p>
<p>Indeed, Nevil Shute’s classic novel of nuclear annihilation, On the Beach, published in June 1957, used Eliot’s famous lines as an epigraph. And the nuclear threat is still very much at the top of our collective mind.</p>
<p>The Sydney Theatre Company is <a href="https://www.sydneytheatre.com.au/whats-on/productions/2023/on-the-beach">staging</a> the very first stage adaptation of Shute’s novel. And <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15398776/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Oppenheimer</a>, one of 2023’s two most-hyped films, tells the story of the man referred to as “the father of the atomic bomb”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537743/original/file-20230717-243937-93bviy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537743/original/file-20230717-243937-93bviy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537743/original/file-20230717-243937-93bviy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=307&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537743/original/file-20230717-243937-93bviy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=307&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537743/original/file-20230717-243937-93bviy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=307&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537743/original/file-20230717-243937-93bviy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537743/original/file-20230717-243937-93bviy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537743/original/file-20230717-243937-93bviy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sydney Theatre Company is staging the first stage adaptation of On the Beach.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sydney Theatre Company</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘Australia’s most important novel’</h2>
<p>Journalist <a href="https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2007/june/1268876839/gideon-haigh/shute-messenger#mtr">Gideon Haigh</a> calls On the Beach “arguably Australia’s most important novel – important in the sense of confronting a mass international audience with the defining issue of the age”. </p>
<p>British-born Shute emigrated in 1950 to Australia, where he lived outside Melbourne. As well as writing novels, he worked as an aeronautical engineer. </p>
<p>The title of On the Beach – which started life as a four-part story called The Last Days on Earth – ostensibly referred to a Royal Navy expression for reassignment. (Shute spent time in the Royal Naval Reserve during the second world war.) However, as readers of Eliot’s poetry will know, the phrase also appears late in The Hollow Men: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>In this last of meeting places<br>
We grope together<br>
And avoid speech<br>
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river.<br></p>
</blockquote>
<p>As in Eliot’s poem, the characters that cluster together in the pages of Shute’s novel, set in and around Melbourne between 1962 and 1963, tend on occasion to avoid speech. </p>
<p>This comes to the fore in the following passage, which focuses on a dinner party hosted by Lieutenant Commander Peter Holmes of the Royal Australian Navy. The atmosphere is both claustrophobic and delirious: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>For three hours they danced and drank together, sedulously avoiding any serious topic of conversation. In the warm night the room grew hotter and hotter, coats and ties were jettisoned at an early stage, and the gramophone went on working through an enormous pile of records, half of which Peter had borrowed for the evening. In spite of the wide-open windows behind the fly wire, the room grew full of cigarette smoke.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The reason why the guests at Peter’s party are so keen to avoid serious talk is both simple and depressing. They are trying very hard to forget that they are all going to be dead from radiation poisoning in a matter of months. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537750/original/file-20230717-234969-hkfcq9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537750/original/file-20230717-234969-hkfcq9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537750/original/file-20230717-234969-hkfcq9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=732&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537750/original/file-20230717-234969-hkfcq9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=732&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537750/original/file-20230717-234969-hkfcq9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=732&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537750/original/file-20230717-234969-hkfcq9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537750/original/file-20230717-234969-hkfcq9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537750/original/file-20230717-234969-hkfcq9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Original cover.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AbeBooks</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Shute brings the reader up to speed after the dinner party wraps up. A massive nuclear war has devastated the entire northern hemisphere, wiping out all forms of life there. And the radioactive fallout generated during the conflict is now creeping – slowly but surely – into the southern hemisphere. </p>
<p>Shute makes it clear there is absolutely nothing anyone can do about this. In tonally dispassionate prose, he reveals that vast swathes of Australia have already been rendered uninhabitable due to radiation poisoning. The only thing the characters who remain can do is wait. </p>
<p>As Moira Davidson says to the American submarine captain, Dwight Towers: “It’s like waiting to be hung.” Hence the desperate need for moments of temporary respite and distraction.</p>
<p>Different characters deal with the situation in different ways. Those who still have jobs go to work. Those who don’t, stay at home or go shopping. Some, like Moira, take to drink and rail uselessly against the unfairness of it all:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>‘I won’t take it,’ she said vehemently. ‘It’s not fair. No one in the Southern Hemisphere ever dropped a bomb, a hydrogen bomb or a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_bomb">cobalt bomb</a> or any other sort of bomb. We had nothing to do with it. Why should we have to die because other countries nine or ten thousand miles away from us wanted to have a war? It’s so bloody unfair.’</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Moira’s anger eventually gives way to something approaching resignation. “A tear trickled down beside her nose and she wiped it away irritably; self-pity was a stupid thing, or was it the brandy?” She comes to accept this is “the end of it, the very, very end.” </p>
<p>Moments after this, Moira, who is already gravely ill with radiation poisoning, ends her life. She takes a couple of suicide tablets, puts them in her mouth, and washes them down “with a mouthful of brandy, sitting behind the wheel of her big car”.</p>
<p>This is the way Shute’s novel of nuclear extinction ends: not with a bang but with a whimper. Released at the height of <a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-a-cold-war-a-historian-explains-how-rivals-us-and-soviet-union-competed-off-the-battlefield-192238">the Cold War</a>, On the Beach struck a chord with millions of concerned readers. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/even-a-limited-nuclear-war-would-starve-millions-of-people-new-study-reveals-188602">Even a 'limited' nuclear war would starve millions of people, new study reveals</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Usefully entertaining</h2>
<p>By the September of 1957, Shute’s novel – which sold over 100,000 copies within six weeks of initial publication – had been serialised by dozens of American newspapers. A copy had found its way to the desk of John F. Kennedy, the next president of the United States. And Hollywood was about to call. </p>
<p>Directed by Stanley Kramer, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Beach_(1959_film)">cinematic adaptation</a> of On the Beach – which was filmed on location in Victoria and showcased the talents of Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner and Fred Astaire – hit the big screen in December 1959. </p>
<p>Shute famously detested the movie, which received decidedly mixed reviews. In a sense, Shute’s response is surprising, as the novelist clearly wanted to get his message about the perils of nuclear war across to as wide an audience as possible. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537722/original/file-20230717-228160-61j6oo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537722/original/file-20230717-228160-61j6oo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537722/original/file-20230717-228160-61j6oo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537722/original/file-20230717-228160-61j6oo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537722/original/file-20230717-228160-61j6oo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537722/original/file-20230717-228160-61j6oo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537722/original/file-20230717-228160-61j6oo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537722/original/file-20230717-228160-61j6oo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gregory Peck (left) and Ava Gardner (right) in Stanley Kramer’s film of On the Beach.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">IMDB</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Shute’s didactic inclinations are evident towards the end of the novel. “Peter,” the character Mary asks, “why did this all this happen to us?” Even at this late stage, Mary, whose radiation-racked body is spasming uncontrollably, wants to know whether things might have panned out differently. Her husband’s reply is revealing: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>‘I don’t know […] Some kinds of silliness you just can’t stop,’ he said. ‘I mean, if a couple of hundred million people all decide that their national honour requires them to drop cobalt bombs upon their neighbour, well, there’s not much that you or I can do about it. The only possible hope would have been to educate them out of their silliness.’</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Shute makes a similar point in a letter he wrote in 1960. He holds that a popular writer </p>
<blockquote>
<p>can often play the part of the <em>enfant terrible</em> in raising for the first time subjects which ought to be discussed in public and which no statesman cares to approach. In this way, an entertainer may serve a useful purpose.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Knowing this, it seems likely Shute would have been delighted to read <a href="https://archive.org/details/galaxymagazine-1958-03/page/n119/mode/2up?view=theater">reviews</a> that praised the book’s “emotional wallop” while simultaneously demanding it “be made mandatory reading for all professional diplomats and politicians”. </p>
<p>While the science in the novel was somewhat flawed, Shute’s cautionary tale undoubtedly spoke to the collective zeitgeist. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537755/original/file-20230717-129345-bsbbnu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537755/original/file-20230717-129345-bsbbnu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537755/original/file-20230717-129345-bsbbnu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537755/original/file-20230717-129345-bsbbnu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537755/original/file-20230717-129345-bsbbnu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537755/original/file-20230717-129345-bsbbnu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537755/original/file-20230717-129345-bsbbnu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537755/original/file-20230717-129345-bsbbnu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Shute’s tale spoke to the collective zeitgeist of its time. Pictured: an old Soviet missile in Cuba.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ismael Franciscol/AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-if-growing-us-china-rivalry-leads-to-the-worst-war-ever-what-should-australia-do-185294">Friday essay: if growing US-China rivalry leads to 'the worst war ever', what should Australia do?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Enduring influence</h2>
<p>On the Beach was released mere months after the creation of the <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/national-committee-sane-nuclear-policy-sane">National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy</a> in the United States, and just before the founding of the <a href="https://cnduk.org/">Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament</a> in the United Kingdom.</p>
<p>Though it seems fair to say Nevil Shute’s general literary standing has diminished in recent years, On the Beach continues to exert a pull on the popular cultural imagination. </p>
<p>The influence of Shute’s novel, which was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Beach_(2000_film)">remade</a> in 2000 as a film for Australian television, can be observed in various post-apocalyptic works, including George Miller’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Max">Mad Max</a> franchise and the late Cormac McCarthy’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6288.The_Road">The Road</a>. (If anything, the ending of On the Beach is even bleaker than in McCarthy’s masterpiece.) </p>
<p>Shute’s vision of humanity’s self-inflicted destruction is eerily resonant in our time of climate emergency. The nuclear threat remains, too, in our perilous historical moment of <a href="https://theconversation.com/many-once-democratic-countries-continue-to-backslide-becoming-less-free-but-their-leaders-continue-to-enjoy-popular-support-206919">democratic backsliding</a> and <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/10/russia-risks-becoming-a-failed-state-in-next-10-years-analysts-say.html">failing nuclear states</a>.</p>
<p>It seems increasingly likely the world as we know it is coming to an end – if it hasn’t already. The question remains: will it be with a bang or a whimper?</p>
<hr>
<p><em><a href="https://www.sydneytheatre.com.au/whats-on/productions/2023/on-the-beach">On The Beach</a> runs at the Sydney Theatre Company 24 July to 12 August 2023, with previews 18–21 July.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209243/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexander Howard does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In the 1957 worldwide bestseller, Australia is – briefly – the last habitable place on earth, following a nuclear world war. One character asks, as they wait to die: ‘Why did all this happen to us?’Alexander Howard, Senior Lecturer, Discipline of English, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2076802023-07-05T12:24:46Z2023-07-05T12:24:46ZAI is an existential threat – just not the way you think<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534922/original/file-20230629-25452-lnyw5m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C0%2C2991%2C1482&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">AI isn't likely to enslave humanity, but it could take over many aspects of our lives.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/humanoid-robot-controlling-business-people-royalty-free-illustration/1363296681">elenabs/iStock via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The rise of ChatGPT and similar artificial intelligence systems has been accompanied by a sharp <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2023/06/21/as-ai-spreads-experts-predict-the-best-and-worst-changes-in-digital-life-by-2035/">increase in anxiety about AI</a>. For the past few months, executives and AI safety researchers have been offering predictions, dubbed “<a href="https://venturebeat.com/ai/ai-doom-ai-boom-and-the-possible-destruction-of-humanity/">P(doom)</a>,” about the probability that AI will bring about a large-scale catastrophe.</p>
<p>Worries peaked in May 2023 when the nonprofit research and advocacy organization Center for AI Safety released <a href="https://www.safe.ai/statement-on-ai-risk">a one-sentence statement</a>: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from A.I. should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks, such as pandemics and nuclear war.” The statement was signed by many key players in the field, including the leaders of OpenAI, Google and Anthropic, as well as two of the so-called “godfathers” of AI: <a href="https://amturing.acm.org/award_winners/hinton_4791679.cfm">Geoffrey Hinton</a> and <a href="https://amturing.acm.org/award_winners/bengio_3406375.cfm">Yoshua Bengio</a>.</p>
<p>You might ask how such existential fears are supposed to play out. One famous scenario is the “<a href="https://www.economist.com/special-report/2016/06/23/frankensteins-paperclips">paper clip maximizer</a>” thought experiment articulated by Oxford philosopher <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=oQwpz3QAAAAJ&hl=en">Nick Bostrom</a>. The idea is that an AI system tasked with producing as many paper clips as possible might go to extraordinary lengths to find raw materials, like destroying factories and causing car accidents. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.lawfareblog.com/cyberlaw-podcast-how-worried-should-we-be-about-existential-ai-risk">less resource-intensive variation</a> has an AI tasked with procuring a reservation to a popular restaurant shutting down cellular networks and traffic lights in order to prevent other patrons from getting a table.</p>
<p>Office supplies or dinner, the basic idea is the same: AI is fast becoming an alien intelligence, good at accomplishing goals but dangerous because it won’t necessarily align with the moral values of its creators. And, in its most extreme version, this argument morphs into explicit anxieties about AIs <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2023/05/03/should-we-stop-developing-ai-for-the-good-of-humanity/">enslaving or destroying the human race</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/eQ6Q6HINX7I?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A paper clip-making AI runs amok is one variant of the AI apocalypse scenario.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Actual harm</h2>
<p>In the past few years, my colleagues and I at <a href="http://umb.edu/ethics">UMass Boston’s Applied Ethics Center</a> have been studying the impact of engagement with AI on people’s understanding of themselves, and I believe these catastrophic anxieties are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-02094-7">overblown and misdirected</a>.</p>
<p>Yes, AI’s ability to create convincing deep-fake video and audio is frightening, and it can be abused by people with bad intent. In fact, that is already happening: Russian operatives likely attempted to embarrass Kremlin critic <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/25/kremlin-critic-bill-browder-says-he-was-targeted-by-deepfake-hoax-video-call">Bill Browder</a> by ensnaring him in a conversation with an avatar for former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. Cybercriminals have been using AI voice cloning for a variety of crimes – from <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2021/10/14/huge-bank-fraud-uses-deep-fake-voice-tech-to-steal-millions/">high-tech heists</a> to <a href="https://theconversation.com/voice-deepfakes-are-calling-heres-what-they-are-and-how-to-avoid-getting-scammed-201449">ordinary scams</a>. </p>
<p>AI decision-making systems that <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Weapons-Math-Destruction-Increases-Inequality/dp/0553418815">offer loan approval and hiring recommendations</a> carry the risk of algorithmic bias, since the training data and decision models they run on reflect long-standing social prejudices.</p>
<p>These are big problems, and they require the attention of policymakers. But they have been around for a while, and they are hardly cataclysmic. </p>
<h2>Not in the same league</h2>
<p>The statement from the Center for AI Safety lumped AI in with pandemics and nuclear weapons as a major risk to civilization. There are problems with that comparison. COVID-19 resulted in almost <a href="https://covid19.who.int/">7 million deaths worldwide</a>, brought on a <a href="https://www.who.int/news/item/02-03-2022-covid-19-pandemic-triggers-25-increase-in-prevalence-of-anxiety-and-depression-worldwide">massive and continuing mental health crisis</a> and created <a href="https://unctad.org/meeting/world-economic-situation-after-covid-19-shock-and-policy-challenges-ahead">economic challenges</a>, including chronic supply chain shortages and runaway inflation. </p>
<p>Nuclear weapons probably killed <a href="https://www.aasc.ucla.edu/cab/200708230009.html">more than 200,000 people</a> in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, claimed many more lives from cancer in the years that followed, generated decades of profound anxiety during the Cold War and brought the world to the brink of annihilation during the Cuban Missile crisis in 1962. They have also <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/2023/05/04/rattling-nuclear-saber-what-russia-s-nuclear-threats-really-mean-pub-89689">changed the calculations of national leaders</a> on how to respond to international aggression, as currently playing out with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.</p>
<p>AI is simply nowhere near gaining the ability to do this kind of damage. The paper clip scenario and others like it are science fiction. Existing AI applications execute specific tasks rather than making broad judgments. The technology is <a href="https://www.lawfareblog.com/cyberlaw-podcast-how-worried-should-we-be-about-existential-ai-risk">far from being able to decide on and then plan out</a> the goals and subordinate goals necessary for shutting down traffic in order to get you a seat in a restaurant, or blowing up a car factory in order to satisfy your itch for paper clips. </p>
<p>Not only does the technology lack the complicated capacity for multilayer judgment that’s involved in these scenarios, it also does not have autonomous access to sufficient parts of our critical infrastructure to start causing that kind of damage.</p>
<h2>What it means to be human</h2>
<p>Actually, there is an existential danger inherent in using AI, but that risk is existential in the philosophical rather than apocalyptic sense. AI in its current form can alter the way people view themselves. It can degrade abilities and experiences that people consider essential to being human. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534924/original/file-20230629-23-zxgy6s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="a robot hand points to one of four photographs on a shiny black surface" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534924/original/file-20230629-23-zxgy6s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534924/original/file-20230629-23-zxgy6s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534924/original/file-20230629-23-zxgy6s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534924/original/file-20230629-23-zxgy6s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534924/original/file-20230629-23-zxgy6s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534924/original/file-20230629-23-zxgy6s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534924/original/file-20230629-23-zxgy6s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">As algorithms take over many decisions, such as hiring, people could gradually lose the capacity to make them.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/robot-selecting-candidate-photograph-royalty-free-image/924555488">AndreyPopov/iStock via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For example, humans are judgment-making creatures. People rationally weigh particulars and make daily judgment calls at work and during leisure time about whom to hire, who should get a loan, what to watch and so on. But more and more of these judgments are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1515/mopp-2021-0026">being automated and farmed out to algorithms</a>. As that happens, the world won’t end. But people will gradually lose the capacity to make these judgments themselves. The fewer of them people make, the worse they are likely to become at making them.</p>
<p>Or consider the role of chance in people’s lives. Humans value serendipitous encounters: coming across a place, person or activity by accident, being drawn into it and retrospectively appreciating the role accident played in these meaningful finds. But the role of algorithmic recommendation engines is to <a href="https://theconversation.com/ai-is-killing-choice-and-chance-which-means-changing-what-it-means-to-be-human-151826">reduce that kind of serendipity</a> and replace it with planning and prediction.</p>
<p>Finally, consider ChatGPT’s writing capabilities. The technology is in the process of eliminating the role of writing assignments in higher education. If it does, educators will lose a key tool for teaching students <a href="https://doi.org/10.1187%2Fcbe.06-11-0203">how to think critically</a>. </p>
<h2>Not dead but diminished</h2>
<p>So, no, AI won’t blow up the world. But the increasingly uncritical embrace of it, in a variety of narrow contexts, means the gradual erosion of some of humans’ most important skills. Algorithms are already undermining people’s capacity to make judgments, enjoy serendipitous encounters and hone critical thinking. </p>
<p>The human species will survive such losses. But our way of existing will be impoverished in the process. The fantastic anxieties around the coming AI cataclysm, singularity, Skynet, or however you might think of it, obscure these more subtle costs. Recall T.S. Eliot’s famous closing lines of “<a href="https://allpoetry.com/the-hollow-men">The Hollow Men</a>”: “This is the way the world ends,” he wrote, “not with a bang but a whimper.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/207680/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The Applied Ethics Center at UMass Boston receives funding from the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies.
Nir Eisikovits serves as the data ethics advisor to Hour25AI, a startup dedicated to reducing digital distractions.
</span></em></p>From open letters to congressional testimony, some AI leaders have stoked fears that the technology is a direct threat to humanity. The reality is less dramatic but perhaps more insidious.Nir Eisikovits, Professor of Philosophy and Director, Applied Ethics Center, UMass BostonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1997372023-06-12T12:24:46Z2023-06-12T12:24:46ZIf humans went extinct, what would the Earth look like one year later?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523673/original/file-20230501-28-b9wqpt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=58%2C0%2C9664%2C5116&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A glimpse of a post-apocalyptic world.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/post-apocalyptic-urban-landscape-royalty-free-image/1331834934?phrase=post+apocalypse+city&adppopup=true">Bulgar/E+ via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/curious-kids-us-74795">Curious Kids</a> is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to <a href="mailto:curiouskidsus@theconversation.com">curiouskidsus@theconversation.com</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>If humans went extinct, what would the Earth look like one year later? – Essie, age 11, Michigan</strong> </p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>Have you ever wondered what the world would be like if everyone suddenly disappeared? </p>
<p>What would happen to all our stuff? What would happen to our houses, our schools, our neighborhoods, our cities? Who would feed the dog? Who would cut the grass? Although it’s a common theme in movies, TV shows and books, the end of humanity is still a strange thing to think about. </p>
<p>But as <a href="https://www.design.iastate.edu/faculty/carlton/">an associate professor of urban design</a> – that is, someone who helps towns and cities plan what their communities will look like – it’s sometimes my job to think about prospects like this. </p>
<h2>So much silence</h2>
<p>If humans just disappeared from the world, and you could come back to Earth to see what had happened one year later, the first thing you’d notice wouldn’t be with your eyes. </p>
<p>It would be with your ears. </p>
<p>The world would be quiet. And you would realize <a href="https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/noise-pollution/">how much noise people make</a>. Our buildings are noisy. Our cars are noisy. Our sky is noisy. All of that noise would stop.</p>
<p>You’d notice the weather. After a year without people, the sky would be bluer, the air clearer. The wind and the rain would scrub clean the surface of the Earth; all the <a href="https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/blogpost/young-and-old-air-pollution-affects-most-vulnerable">smog and dust that humans make</a> would be gone.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523677/original/file-20230501-22-fqdsd2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An illustration of a large city park with a deer standing in the middle of a tree-lined path." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523677/original/file-20230501-22-fqdsd2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523677/original/file-20230501-22-fqdsd2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523677/original/file-20230501-22-fqdsd2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523677/original/file-20230501-22-fqdsd2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523677/original/file-20230501-22-fqdsd2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523677/original/file-20230501-22-fqdsd2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523677/original/file-20230501-22-fqdsd2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">It wouldn’t be long before wild animals visited our once well-trodden cities.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/life-after-people-royalty-free-image/1078643476?phrase=post+apocalypse+city&adppopup=true">Boris SV/Moment via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Home sweet home</h2>
<p>Imagine that first year, when your house would sit unbothered by anyone. </p>
<p>Go inside your house – and hope you’re not thirsty, because no water would be in your faucets. Water systems require constant pumping. If no one’s at the public water supply to <a href="https://wonderopolis.org/wonder/how-does-water-get-to-my-faucet">manage the machines that pump water</a>, then there’s no water.</p>
<p>But the water that was in the pipes when everyone disappeared would still be there when the first winter came – so on the first cold snap, the frigid air would freeze the water in the pipes and burst them. </p>
<p>There would be no electricity. Power plants would stop working because no one would <a href="https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-how-does-electricity-work-118686">monitor them and maintain a supply of fuel</a>. So your house would be dark, with no lights, TV, phones or computers. </p>
<p>Your house would be dusty. Actually, there’s dust <a href="https://www.highlightskids.com/explore/science-questions/what-is-dust-made-of#:%7E">in the air all the time</a>, but we don’t notice it because our air conditioning systems and heaters blow air around. And as you move through the rooms in your house, you keep dust on the move too. But once all that stops, the air inside your house would be still and the dust would settle all over.</p>
<p>The grass in your yard would grow – and grow and grow until it got so long and floppy it would stop growing. New weeds would appear, and they would be everywhere. </p>
<p>Lots of plants that you’ve never seen before would take root in your yard. Every time a tree drops a seed, a little sapling might grow. No one would be there to pull it out or cut it down. </p>
<p>You’d notice a lot more <a href="https://www.pestworldforkids.org/pest-guide/mosquitoes/">bugs buzzing around</a>. Remember, people tend to do everything they can to get rid of bugs. They spray the air and the ground with bug spray. They remove bug habitat. They put screens on the windows. And if that doesn’t work, they swat them. </p>
<p>Without people doing all these things, the bugs would come back. They would have free rein of the world again.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524515/original/file-20230504-25-39fi1z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Surrounded by hills and mountains is an isolated two-lane road, cracked and crumbling." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524515/original/file-20230504-25-39fi1z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524515/original/file-20230504-25-39fi1z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524515/original/file-20230504-25-39fi1z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524515/original/file-20230504-25-39fi1z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524515/original/file-20230504-25-39fi1z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524515/original/file-20230504-25-39fi1z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524515/original/file-20230504-25-39fi1z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Given enough time, roads would start to crumble.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/destroyed-asphalt-road-earthquake-consequences-royalty-free-image/1284881863?phrase=apocalypse%2B">Armastas/iStock via Getty Images Plus</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>On the street where you live</h2>
<p>In your neighborhood, critters would <a href="https://sciencetrek.org/sciencetrek/topics/urban_wildlife/facts.cfm">wander around, looking and wondering</a>. </p>
<p>First the little ones: mice, groundhogs, raccoons, skunks, foxes and beavers. That last one might surprise you, but North America <a href="https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/facts/beaver">was once rich with beavers</a>. </p>
<p>Bigger animals would come later – deer, coyotes and the occasional bear. Not in the first year, maybe, but eventually.</p>
<p>With no electric lights, the rhythm of the natural world would return. The only light would be from the Sun, the Moon and the stars. The night critters would feel good they got their dark sky back.</p>
<p>Fires would happen frequently. Lightning might <a href="https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/lightning-">strike a tree or a field</a> and set brush on fire, or hit the houses and buildings. Without people to put them out, those fires would keeping going until they burned themselves out. </p>
<h2>Around your city</h2>
<p>After just one year, the concrete stuff – roads, highways, bridges and buildings – would look about the same. </p>
<p>Come back, say, a decade later, and cracks in them would have appeared, with little plants wiggling up through them. This happens because the Earth is constantly moving. With this motion comes pressure, and with this pressure come cracks. Eventually, the roads would crack so much they would look like broken glass, and <a href="https://www.weekand.com/home-garden/article/science-trees-breaking-sidewalks-18025841.php">even trees would grow through them</a>.</p>
<p>Bridges with metal legs would slowly rust. The beams and bolts that hold the bridges up would rust too. But the big concrete bridges, and the <a href="https://kids.kiddle.co/Interstate_Highway_System">interstate highways, also concrete, would last for centuries</a>.</p>
<p>The dams and levees that people have <a href="https://damsafety.org/kids#:%7E:">built on the rivers and streams of the world</a> would erode. Farms would fall back to nature. The plants we eat would begin to disappear. Not much corn or potatoes or tomatoes anymore. </p>
<p>Farm animals would be easy prey for bears, coyotes, wolves and panthers. And pets? The cats would go feral – that is, they would become wild, though many would be preyed upon by larger animals. Most dogs wouldn’t survive, either. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ItYE6y0zMgI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">An asteroid hit and a solar flare are two of the ways the world could end.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Like ancient Rome</h2>
<p>In a thousand years, the world you remember would still be vaguely recognizable. Some things would remain; it would depend on the materials they were made of, the climate they’re in, and just plain luck. An apartment building here, a movie theater there, or a crumbling shopping mall would stand as monuments to a lost civilization. The Roman Empire collapsed more than 1,500 years ago, yet you can see <a href="https://www.headout.com/blog/ruins-in-rome/#:%7E">some remnants even today</a>.</p>
<p>If nothing else, humans’ suddenly vanishing from the world would reveal something about the way we treated the Earth. It would also show us that the world we have today can’t survive without us and that we can’t survive if we don’t care for it. To keep it working, civilization – like anything else – requires constant upkeep. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to <a href="mailto:curiouskidsus@theconversation.com">CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com</a>. Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live.</em></p>
<p><em>And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you’re wondering, too. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199737/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carlton Basmajian does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Maybe it was a nuclear war, devastating climate change, or a killer virus. But if something caused people to disappear, imagine what would happen afterward.Carlton Basmajian, Associate Professor of Community and Regional Planning, Urban Design, Iowa State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1984572023-01-25T16:51:32Z2023-01-25T16:51:32ZThe Doomsday Clock is now at 90 seconds to midnight — the closest we have ever been to global catastrophe<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506257/original/file-20230125-20-t4ybn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5953%2C3966&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">At 90 seconds to midnight, the Doomsday Clock indicates the level of human-made threats.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On Jan. 24, history was again made when the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ organization moved the seconds hand of the Doomsday Clock closer to midnight. It is now at ‘90 seconds to midnight,’ the closest it has ever been to the symbolic midnight hour of global catastrophe.</p>
<p>The announcement, made during a news conference held in Washington D.C., was delivered in English, Ukrainian and Russian. The released statement described our current moment in history as “<a href="https://storage.pardot.com/878782/1674512728rAkm0Vt3/2023_doomsday_clock_statement.pdf">a time of unprecedented danger</a>.”</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KxB9dM0u4mU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The virtual news conference hosted by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists for the Doomsday Clock Announcement.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The hands of the Doomsday Clock are set by the <a href="https://thebulletin.org/about-us/science-and-security-board/">Science and Security Board</a> of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. These leading experts focus on the perils posed by human-made disaster threats, which emanate from <a href="https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/current-time/nuclear-risk/">nuclear risk</a>, <a href="https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/current-time/climate-change/">climate change</a>, <a href="https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/current-time/biological-threats/">biological threats</a> and <a href="https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/current-time/disruptive-technologies/">disruptive technologies</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-the-doomsday-clock-and-why-should-we-keep-track-of-the-time-71990">What is the Doomsday Clock and why should we keep track of the time?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<p>The Doomsday Clock is the most graphic depiction of human-made threats, and the act of moving the clock forward communicates a clear and urgent need for vigilance. </p>
<p>For 2021 and 2022, the clock’s hands were set at 100 seconds to midnight. Since this <a href="https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/timeline/">time-keeping exercise began in 1947</a>, the announcement on Jan. 24, 2023 represents the closest the clock has ever been to midnight — a clear wake-up call. </p>
<h2>Threats over time</h2>
<p>In 1945, a group of scientists who worked on the <a href="https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/The%20Manhattan%20Project.pdf">Manhattan Project</a> — a United States research project into atomic weapons — joined together to form the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. </p>
<p>In the late 1940s, the new threat of atomic weapons cast a dark cloud over the world. The Doomsday Clock was meant to be a warning to humanity about the dangers of nuclear weapons; later in the 20th century it was expanded to consider other human-made threats.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506268/original/file-20230125-22-6yb4mn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="a bright white dome against a grey background" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506268/original/file-20230125-22-6yb4mn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506268/original/file-20230125-22-6yb4mn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506268/original/file-20230125-22-6yb4mn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506268/original/file-20230125-22-6yb4mn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506268/original/file-20230125-22-6yb4mn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506268/original/file-20230125-22-6yb4mn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506268/original/file-20230125-22-6yb4mn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A plasma dome produced by the first detonation of an atomic weapon on July 16, 1945 during the Manhattan Project’s research in New Mexico.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1991, the clock was set at 17 minutes to midnight, the furthest the clock has ever been from doomsday. This move followed <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/fall-of-soviet-union">the collapse of the Soviet Union</a> and the signing of the <a href="https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/start1">Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty by the United States and Russia</a>. In the 1990s, the world felt somewhat safer for a few years.</p>
<p>The 2010s brought the world closer to the brink of nuclear war than at any time other than the present. </p>
<p>U.S. relations with other global nuclear powers like <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/12/nuclear-weapons-russia-china-us-national-security-strategy">Russia and China</a> became increasingly tense. The <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/what-iran-nuclear-deal">Iran nuclear deal was abandoned</a>, affecting the <a href="https://www.thecairoreview.com/essays/what-losing-the-iran-deal-could-mean-for-the-region/">geopolitics of the Middle East</a>. The threat from North Korea’s nuclear arsenal <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/12/08/north-korea-tactical-nuclear-threat/">entered an alarming new phase</a>. Along with the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/mar/23/donald-trump-nuclear-weapons-russia">dangerous rhetoric of former President Donald Trump</a> and the global rise of the far right, the stage was set for the 2020s to be a tumultuous decade.</p>
<p>In 2023, the global crises we are currently contending with have devastatingly broad consequences and potentially longer-lasting effects. Our current moment is unsustainable, especially as catastrophic threats multiply and intensify. </p>
<p>Layered crises range from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine involving <a href="https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/putins-nuclear-blackmail-must-not-prevent-the-liberation-of-crimea/">Vladimir Putin’s thinly veiled nuclear threats</a> to the social and economic strains still present at the <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/friday-marks-2nd-anniversary-of-covid-pandemic/6480486.html">third year of the COVID-19 pandemic</a>. These are unprecedented challenges to human survival.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506271/original/file-20230125-20-102fb3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="an armed soldier in Russian military uniform stands guard outside a factory" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506271/original/file-20230125-20-102fb3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506271/original/file-20230125-20-102fb3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506271/original/file-20230125-20-102fb3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506271/original/file-20230125-20-102fb3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506271/original/file-20230125-20-102fb3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506271/original/file-20230125-20-102fb3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506271/original/file-20230125-20-102fb3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station in southeastern Ukraine was in Russian-controlled territory when a Russian missile damaged a distant electrical substation, increasing the risk of radiation disaster.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/File)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Apocalyptic anxieties</h2>
<p>As the Doomsday Clock is now set at 90 seconds to midnight, the situation adds stress to an already anxious global populace. </p>
<p>In Europe, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/12/world/europe/ukraine-europe-nuclear-war-anxiety.html">fears of COVID-19 were rapidly replaced by fears of a nuclear war</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.2190/H1EP-3HHW-3NYW-FXQ9">Death anxiety — produced by a fear of dying — is related to nuclear anxiety</a>, and the threat of nuclear war provoked by daily headlines <a href="https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20220929-the-unsettling-power-of-existential-dread">could shape the way we think and act</a>. </p>
<p>Nuclear weapons prompt a <a href="https://www.icanw.org/dealing_with_nuclear_anxiety">special existential anxiety</a>, as weapons of mass destruction have the potential to eradicate entire cultures, lands, languages and lives. In the case of a nuclear attack, the future would be altered in a way that becomes inconceivable for us to process.</p>
<p>Philosopher Langdon Winner wrote that “during the post-World War II era, in a sense <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/W/bo49911830.html">all of us became unwitting subjects for a vast series of biological and social experiments</a>, the results of which became apparent very slowly.”</p>
<p>For those who grew up during the mid-20th century peak of the Cold War, and into the early 1980s, <a href="https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/nuclear-anxiety-is-nothing-new-heres-how-to-handle-it">the resurgence of these worries carries a distinct tinge of déjà vu</a>. To counter this recurring dread, <a href="https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/war-anxiety-how-to-cope-202205232748">coping tools include</a> limiting media exposure, reaching out to others, cultivating compassion and changing your routine.</p>
<h2>The time to act is now</h2>
<p>The significance of the Doomsday Clock as a metaphorical time-keeping exercise serves as a graphic symbol of human-made multiplying perils. As the time to midnight has drawn closer, the urgency of the threat is intensified. </p>
<p>Whether or not one lives in one of the <a href="https://fas.org/issues/nuclear-weapons/status-world-nuclear-forces/">nine nations in possession of nuclear weapons</a>, we have all become unwitting subjects of the experiment that began with <a href="https://www.energy.gov/lm/doe-history/manhattan-project-background-information-and-preservation-work/manhattan-project-1">the detonation of the first atomic weapon</a>.</p>
<p>In 2023, the Doomsday Clock tells us that we are now 90 metaphorical seconds away from self-produced extinction. Time is of the essence.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/198457/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jack L. Rozdilsky is a Professor at York University who receives external funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research as a co-investigator on a project supported under operating grant Canadian 2019 Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) Rapid Research Funding.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christian Faize Canaan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In 1945, nuclear scientists established the Doomsday Clock to warn against human-made threats. This week, the clock’s display has brought us the closest we have ever been to global disaster.Jack L. Rozdilsky, Associate Professor of Disaster and Emergency Management, York University, CanadaChristian Faize Canaan, Master’s student, Disaster and Emergency Management, York University, CanadaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1950492022-11-28T18:17:57Z2022-11-28T18:17:57ZAs the Ukraine war derails efforts to solve the climate crisis, a new one looms — the fight for peace<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497264/original/file-20221124-12-zgqigf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3315%2C2176&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Germany passed an emergency legislation in July to reopen coal-powered plants in the face of gas shortages.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Michael Probst)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In his opening remarks at the COP27 meeting in Egypt, UN secretary general António Guterres put it this way: “<a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/11/1130247">Humanity has a choice</a>: co-operate or perish. It’s either a climate solidarity pact or a collective suicide pact.”</p>
<p>The only way to <a href="https://theconversation.com/after-cop27-all-signs-point-to-world-blowing-past-the-1-5-degrees-global-warming-limit-heres-what-we-can-still-do-about-it-195080">prevent global warming</a> is by increasing the level of global co-operation to reduce and eliminate greenhouse gas emissions. But global co-operation requires global peace, and with the ongoing war in Ukraine, it’s in short supply.</p>
<p>On Feb. 24, 2022 — the very day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine — Alberta <a href="https://edmonton.ctvnews.ca/kenney-denounces-putin-s-aggression-as-he-renews-calls-to-build-keystone-xl-1.5792901">Premier Jason Kenney pressed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau</a> to relaunch the Keystone XL pipeline. Soon after, to help Europeans survive their own sanctions, Trudeau promised to increase Canadian oil production by <a href="https://calgary.ctvnews.ca/canada-pledges-to-increase-oil-exports-by-up-to-300-000-barrels-per-day-in-response-to-european-supply-shortages-1.5833318">300,000 barrels per day</a>. </p>
<p>Environmentalists have highlighted the current <a href="https://priceofoil.org/2022/06/13/ukraine-war-amid-fossil-fuel-gold-rush-canadas-dirty-tar-sands-back-in-hot-demand/">“fossil fuel gold rush”</a> with <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/276ecc11-15cd-45ef-8e10-5f64dcde77da">Canada’s oilsands in hot demand</a>. In an effort to wean themselves off Russian oil and gas, countries have turned to other fossil fuel sources to supplement their energy requirements, including Canada’s oilsands. </p>
<p>Rather than taking the opportunity to invest in non-fossil fuel energy sources, some countries are doubling down on fossil fuels. In Germany, for example, previously closed <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/08/germany-reactivate-coal-power-plants-russia-curbs-gas-flow">coal-fired power plants</a> have been reopened and are now back in business. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A pumpjack drawing oil out of the ground with the sun setting behind it" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497262/original/file-20221124-18-oe1eoe.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497262/original/file-20221124-18-oe1eoe.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497262/original/file-20221124-18-oe1eoe.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497262/original/file-20221124-18-oe1eoe.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497262/original/file-20221124-18-oe1eoe.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497262/original/file-20221124-18-oe1eoe.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497262/original/file-20221124-18-oe1eoe.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A pumpjack draws out oil and gas from a well head as the sun sets near Calgary, Alta., in October 2022. Canada has pledged to increase its oil and gas exports by up to 300,000 barrels per day in response to supply shortages.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The return of business as usual is bad enough, but more ominous is the ending of climate co-operation between the world’s two largest CO2 emitters: the United States and China. In <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/6/30/nato-names-china-a-strategic-priority-for-the-first-time">June, the NATO summit</a> prioritized its <a href="https://www.economist.com/international/2022/03/14/america-returns-to-containment-to-deal-with-russia-and-china">China containment strategy</a> followed shortly by the <a href="https://focustaiwan.tw/cross-strait/202208100021">U.S. effectively ending its 51-year-old “one China policy”</a> that recognizes Taiwan as a part of China.</p>
<p>China retaliated with large-scale military manoeuvres and the scrapping of <a href="https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/08/05/world/china-scraps-cooperation-us/">China-U.S. climate co-operation</a>. Although <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/14/business/china-us-climate-change.html">the COP27 meeting ostensibly restarted climate talks</a>, no bilateral negotiations were held in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.</p>
<h2>Threat of nuclear winter</h2>
<p>But more sinister climate threats are brewing. As the Ukraine war escalates into a NATO-Russia proxy war, we face the <a href="https://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/WiresClimateChangeNW.pdf">looming catastrophe of a nuclear winter</a>. Our leaders seem to have forgotten that nuclear war — even a “small one” limited to Europe — would result in severe and prolonged global climatic cooling and have long-term global climate consequences. </p>
<p>Also known as “twilight at noon” — a term coined by atmospheric chemists <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236736050_The_Atmosphere_after_a_Nuclear_War_Twilight_at_Noon">Paul Crutzen and John Birks 40 years ago</a> — a nuclear winter would be a consequence of the huge quantities of soot and dust emitted by the cities and forests that would burn following nuclear attacks. No matter which country initiated it, the subsequent global cooling would be catastrophic. </p>
<p>Modern climate models show that even a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aay5478">“small” nuclear war between India and Pakistan</a> involving 100 bombs could lead to 2 C to 5 C of global cooling that would last a decade or more. In comparison, at the height of the last ice age, <a href="https://news.ucar.edu/132755/scientists-nail-down-average-temperature-last-ice-age">the Earth average was only 5 C cooler</a>. </p>
<p>There would be massive starvation, several hundred million dead and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-02219-4">ecosystem disruption far outside the war zone itself</a>. A full scale U.S.-Russia nuclear war would lead to below freezing temperatures even in the summer and five billion or more deaths. </p>
<h2>NATO torn over Ukraine</h2>
<p>The U.S. and Russia each possess <a href="https://fas.org/issues/nuclear-weapons/status-world-nuclear-forces/">6,000 nuclear weapons</a>. In July, the UN’s Guterres warned that the world was <a href="https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-covid-health-antonio-guterres-2871563e530f9a676d7884b3e2d871c3">close to nuclear war</a> and urgently called for diplomacy. </p>
<p>Despite this warning, U.S. President <a href="https://apnews.com/article/biden-nuclear-risk-1d0f1e40cff3a92c662c57f274ce0e25">Joe Biden increased tensions by promising “armageddon”</a> — presumably massive nuclear retaliation — if Russia used nuclear weapons in Ukraine.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A man in a suit speaking from behind a podium that said COP27 on it. The UN flag and Egypt flag stand behind him" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497261/original/file-20221124-16-z0qg17.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497261/original/file-20221124-16-z0qg17.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497261/original/file-20221124-16-z0qg17.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497261/original/file-20221124-16-z0qg17.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497261/original/file-20221124-16-z0qg17.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497261/original/file-20221124-16-z0qg17.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497261/original/file-20221124-16-z0qg17.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres speaks during a session at the COP27 UN Climate Summit, on Nov. 9, 2022, in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Peter Dejong)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In Europe, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/14/west-plans-avoid-panic-if-russia-nuclear-bomb-ukraine-putin">some countries are reacting by preparing to survive such a war</a>, but others are following France <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/france-emmanuel-macron-nuclear-attack-russia-ukraine/">President Emmanuel Macron’s attempt</a> to avoid one: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“France has a nuclear doctrine that is based on the vital interests of the country and which are clearly defined. These would not be at stake if there was a nuclear ballistic attack in Ukraine or in the region.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>NATO is split as to whether it’s worth risking the future of humanity over Ukraine. With calculated ambiguity, the EU foreign policy chief <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/en/european-union/article/2022/10/13/top-eu-diplomat-says-russian-army-be-annihilated-if-putin-nukes-ukraine_6000230_156.html">Josep Borrel was vague:</a> </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Any nuclear attack against Ukraine will create an answer, not a nuclear answer but such a powerful answer from the military side that the Russian army will be annihilated.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Left unexplained was how the EU — which doesn’t even have its own military — could annihilate the Russian army. And how this could be done without using French or NATO nuclear weapons.</p>
<h2>Diplomacy is the solution</h2>
<p>The only alternative to today’s escalation spiral is diplomacy. Rather than promoting further escalation, Canada must promote peace, starting with realizing that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/28/nato-expansion-war-russia-ukraine">NATO’s gamble on expanding towards Russia’s border</a> backfired. This war could have been <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/b5886606-4d7d-41af-87c1-8d9993722e51">prevented if NATO provided long-overdue written assurances</a> that it will not add Ukraine as a member and this would have been concrete step towards peace. </p>
<p>Now, Canada must join 91 other countries and sign the <a href="https://www.un.org/disarmament/wmd/nuclear/tpnw/">UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons</a>. It must press NATO to declare “no first use,” meaning nuclear weapons will only be used in retaliation to an enemy’s use of nuclear weapons, and lobby to end the <a href="https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2019-06-11/launch-warning-nuclear-strategy-its-insider-critics">Cold War, hair-trigger, launch-on-warning policy</a> that puts nuclear missiles on permanent alert.</p>
<p>Canada must also advocate for a return to the <a href="https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/INFtreaty">Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces</a> treaty that former U.S. president Donald Trump tore up in 2019, now permitting American nuclear missiles to be stationed minutes from Moscow on the Polish border. Canada must pressure NATO to ratchet down tensions and remove U.S. nuclear weapons from the <a href="https://cnduk.org/resources/united-states-nuclear-weapons-europe/">five European countries currently hosting them</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/195049/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shaun Lovejoy and co-authors Phyllis Creighton, Boris Kyrychenko, Arnd Jurgensen, Richard Sandbrook, and Adnan Zuberi are affiliated with the Critical NATO Studies Working Group <a href="https://www.scienceforpeace.org/nato-working-group">https://www.scienceforpeace.org/nato-working-group</a>, Science for Peace, University College, 355-15 King’s College Circle,Toronto, Ontario, M5S 3H7
</span></em></p>Canada and its allies must advocate for international peaceful diplomacy to stop the threat of nuclear war and prevent further climate devastation.Shaun Lovejoy, Professor of Physics, McGill UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1939002022-11-17T07:16:08Z2022-11-17T07:16:08ZEven a limited nuclear war could devastate the world’s oceans: here’s what our modelling shows<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495355/original/file-20221115-13-tww3fi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C0%2C1488%2C1145&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">On 3 July 1970, France carried out the "Licorne" nuclear test on the atoll of Muroroa, French Polynesia.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/7969902@N07/510672745">Creative Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The US and Russia have recently <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/russia-us-discuss-first-nuclear-talks-since-ukraine-conflict-kommersant-2022-11-08/">agreed to hold talks</a> on the New START Treaty, the only accord left regulating the two largest nuclear arsenals in the world. While this is undoubtedly good news, we must not allow it to lull us into complacency. Global events this year, most notably in Ukraine, have raised <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2022-09-29/survey-fears-about-world-war-iii-are-growing-amid-russia-ukraine-war">fears of a nuclear conflict</a> to levels not seen since the cold war. There are more than 10,000 nuclear warheads remaining in the world, and the Kremlin’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/09/world/europe/russia-putin-nuclear-threat.html">language</a> regarding weapons of mass destruction has became increasingly threatening in 2022.</p>
<p>Beyond the <a href="https://time.com/after-the-bomb/">horrible fates of victims in the strike zones</a>, a large-scale nuclear exchange would profoundly alter the climate system as we know it, while more limited scenarios could have a devastating impact. An ever-growing body of work has shown that even a local nuclear conflict could usher in a climate catastrophe. As marine scientists, we have considered what this could specifically mean for the world’s oceans.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Nuclear test on Bikini Island" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495336/original/file-20221115-21-6tshfe.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C7%2C2516%2C1312&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495336/original/file-20221115-21-6tshfe.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=315&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495336/original/file-20221115-21-6tshfe.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=315&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495336/original/file-20221115-21-6tshfe.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=315&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495336/original/file-20221115-21-6tshfe.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495336/original/file-20221115-21-6tshfe.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495336/original/file-20221115-21-6tshfe.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Between 1946 and 1958 the United States carried out a series of nuclear weapons tests on Bikini Island in the Pacific.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.pexels.com/photo/grayscale-photo-of-explosion-on-the-beach-73909/">Wikipedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Global famine and climate breakdown</h2>
<p>In 1982, a group of scientists including Carl Sagan began to raise the alarm on a climate apocalypse that could follow nuclear war. Using simple computer simulations and historic volcanic eruptions as natural analogues, they <a href="https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/atsc/45/15/1520-0469_1988_045_2123_ammfad_2_0_co_2.xml">showed</a> how smoke that lofted into the stratosphere from urban firestorms could block out the sun for years.</p>
<p>They found that this “nuclear winter”, as it came to be called, could trigger catastrophic famine far from the location of the war. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1985/02/12/world/transcript-of-interview-with-president-on-a-range-of-issues.html">Ronald Reagan</a> and <a href="https://www.salon.com/2000/09/07/gorbachev/">Mikhail Gorbachev</a>, leaders of the United States and Soviet Union in the 1980s, both cited this work when they declared that a nuclear war could not be won.</p>
<p>The contemporary threat has prompted a new era of research into the potential climate impact of a nuclear war. Using the latest computational tools, we have investigated what the consequences would be for all life on Earth. In our most recent research, we show that a nuclear conflict would massively <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-020-00088-1">disrupt the climate system</a> and cause <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-022-00573-0">global famine</a>. It could also dramatically disturb the <a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2021AV000610">ocean and its ecosystems</a> for decades and potentially thousands of years after a conflict.</p>
<h2>How a nuclear war could ice over the Baltic Sea</h2>
<p>We explored the scenario of a nuclear war between the US and Russia that results in 150 billion tons of soot from burning cities reaching the upper atmosphere. We found that the low light and rapid cooling would cause large physical changes to the ocean, including a dramatic expansion of Artic sea ice. Critically, this ice would grow to block normally ice-free coastal regions essential for fishing, aquaculture, and shipping all across Europe.</p>
<p>Three years after such a war, arctic sea ice expands by 50%, icing over the Baltic sea year-round and closing major ports such as Copenhagen and St. Petersburg. Even in the scenario of a more limited conflict between India and Pakistan, 27 to 47 billion tons of soot would be ejected into the upper atmosphere, and the resulting cooling would severely compromise shipping through northern Europe.</p>
<p>Worse, the sudden drop in light and ocean temperatures would decimate marine algae, which are the foundation of the marine food web, creating a years-long ocean famine. While the whole ocean would be affected, the worst effects would be concentrated at higher latitudes, including all of Europe and especially in the Baltic states, where ocean light is already in short supply.</p>
<p>The waters in the Arctic and North Atlantic would bear the brunt, likely triggering the collapse of the entire ecosystem. Although fisheries are currently a relatively small sector of the European economy, there might be added pressure to look toward the sea for food should <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-022-00573-0">land-based agricultural systems collapse</a>, leaving the continent with few options for food security.</p>
<h2>A changed ocean</h2>
<p>We expected that a reduction in sunlight and lower temperatures would cause more sea ice and less algae in the oceans. However, we were shocked that our model ocean remained materially transformed for decades after a war, long after temperature and light conditions returned to their pre-war state. Sea ice would settle into to a new expanded state where it would likely remain for hundreds of years.</p>
<p>Ten years after the conflicts, global marine productivity recovers, and even overshoots its initial state. This occurs because enduring changes to ocean circulation push nutrients up to the surface from depth. Once the soot clears and light recovers, phytoplankton can use these nutrients to grow rapidly.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495357/original/file-20221115-16-2vyp1q.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495357/original/file-20221115-16-2vyp1q.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495357/original/file-20221115-16-2vyp1q.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495357/original/file-20221115-16-2vyp1q.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495357/original/file-20221115-16-2vyp1q.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495357/original/file-20221115-16-2vyp1q.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495357/original/file-20221115-16-2vyp1q.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Phytoplankton blooms in the Barents Sea.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Phytoplankton_Bloom_in_the_Barents_Sea_(Detail)_(4971318856).jpg">Creative Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Unfortunately, such “good news” never reaches Europe, as marine productivity remains compromised in the Arctic and north Atlantic relative to the rest of the world. This occurs because the new environmental state favours a different, larger, type of marine algae that can actually strip nutrients from the surface ocean once they die and sink, counteracting the physical surplus.</p>
<p>Why would the ocean be so slow to recover from a nuclear conflict? Water heats and cools very slowly, and the ocean is strongly stratified with different water masses layered on top of each other. This gives the ocean a much longer “memory” than the atmosphere. Once disturbed, many changes are either not reversible on human timescales or are unlikely to return to their initial state.</p>
<p>These findings add a new perspective on just how much humanity can affect the Earth system. While we are grappling with the fact that our greenhouse gas emissions can reshape the climate in a blink of geological time, it is worth remembering that nuclear arsenals remain large enough to fundamentally shift the Earth system in the blink of an eye.</p>
<h2>The long and the short of it</h2>
<p>Given these stark insights, there is a moral imperative to ask what could and should be done to prevent a nuclear conflict. Recently, a new take on an old philosophy has begun to percolate out of Oxford. The idea, known as <a href="https://www.williammacaskill.com/longtermism">“longtermism”</a>, posits that proper accounting for the sheer number of possible future human lives should prioritise nearly any action that even slightly reduces the risk of a human extinction. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="A nuclear warhead" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495358/original/file-20221115-22-jf2f4f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495358/original/file-20221115-22-jf2f4f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495358/original/file-20221115-22-jf2f4f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495358/original/file-20221115-22-jf2f4f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495358/original/file-20221115-22-jf2f4f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495358/original/file-20221115-22-jf2f4f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495358/original/file-20221115-22-jf2f4f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Mark 7 nuclear weapon at the US Air Force museum in Dayton, Ohio.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mark_7_nuclear_bomb_at_USAF_Museum.jpg">Creative Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This logic comes with all the standard <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23298870/effective-altruism-longtermism-will-macaskill-future">trappings</a> of trying to do maths with morality, but it starts to make a lot more sense when you realise that the risk of an extinction-level event – and thus the chance we could avert it – isn’t actually unimaginably low.</p>
<p>Even a more limited conflict could push our oceans into a fundamentally new state that lasts much, much longer than we would have expected. Understanding the length, and the weight, of these timescales should be forefront in our calculus of ongoing diplomacy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/193900/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cheryl Harrison a reçu des financements de Open Philanthropy, NSF. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kim Scherrer a reçu des financements de European Research Council and the Research Council of Norway. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ryan Heneghan et Tyler Rohr ne travaillent pas, ne conseillent pas, ne possèdent pas de parts, ne reçoivent pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'ont déclaré aucune autre affiliation que leur poste universitaire.</span></em></p>In Europe, a large-scale war could cause the Baltic Sea to freeze over and severely compromise food security – potentially for decades and even centuries to come.Tyler Rohr, Lecturer in Southern Ocean Biogeochemical Modelling, IMAS, University of TasmaniaCheryl Harrison, Assistant professor in oceanography and coastal sciences, Louisiana State University Kim Scherrer, Postdoctoral fellow at the department of Biological Sciences, University of BergenRyan Heneghan, Lecturer in Mathematical Ecology, Queensland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1914592022-11-14T18:29:21Z2022-11-14T18:29:21ZI visited nuclear shelters in Prague to see how cities could prepare for nuclear war<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495168/original/file-20221114-18-zz2vmw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C4%2C1000%2C724&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Bunker tourism in Prague with a display of children in gas masks inside of the Bezovka nuclear bunker.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(J. Rozdilsky)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/i-visited-nuclear-shelters-in-prague-to-see-how-cities-could-prepare-for-nuclear-war" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>With the ongoing Ukraine war, tensions in Europe are on the rise. This is both due to an <a href="https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2022/09/29/while-ukrainian-refugees-accepted-new-fears-in-central-europe-over-middle-eastern-migrants">influx of war related-refugees</a> to Central European cities, and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/28/world/europe/prague-protests-economy.html">discontent over the related rising cost of energy</a>. </p>
<p>As bombs fall on Ukraine, European nations are <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/05/08/europe-public-bunkers-nuclear-war-russia-ukraine-civil-defense/">waking up to the sorry state of their own civil defence</a>. Currently in Kyiv, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/02/world/europe/kyiv-ukraine-shelters-nuclear-attack.html">emergency workers are preparing 425 shelters for use during a nuclear war</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/would-putin-use-nuclear-weapons-an-arms-control-expert-explains-what-has-and-hasnt-changed-since-the-invasion-of-ukraine-178509">Would Putin use nuclear weapons? An arms control expert explains what has and hasn't changed since the invasion of Ukraine</a>
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<p>My research on civil defence for nuclear war led me to explore how central European cities are preparing. I recently returned from a faculty exchange in the Czech Republic, where I investigated the availability of nuclear fallout shelters in Prague.</p>
<p>Current events show that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/25/us/politics/biden-russia-ukraine-nuclear.html">Russia is searching for a pretext to unleash nuclear weapons</a>. The C.I.A. director met with his Russian counterpart on Monday to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/14/world/europe/cia-burns-ukraine-russia-nuclear.html">warn against the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine</a>. In Europe, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/12/world/europe/ukraine-europe-nuclear-war-anxiety.html">fears of bunking down for COVID-19 lockdowns are being replaced with fears of bunking down in shelters for nuclear attacks</a>. </p>
<p>In the Czech Republic, my findings from a case study of preparedness in the capitol city of Prague have shown that leftover Cold War-era bunkers are currently kept in a state of readiness to protect the population from nuclear war. </p>
<h2>Czech infrastructure</h2>
<p>Born out of the <a href="https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/resource/sport-in-the-cold-war/czechoslovakia-s-velvet-revolution">Velvet Revolution in 1989</a>, for much of the 20th century, what is now the Czech Republic existed as Czechoslovakia under the Soviet sphere of influence. </p>
<p>In the context of the Cold War, belief in the duty to defend against external enemies and ideologies of militarism resulted in massive civil works projects building underground bunkers. </p>
<p>The development of Czechoslovak civil defence included not only the building of bunkers, but also <a href="https://doi.org/10.5817/cphpj-2021-008">school education focused on topics of moral awareness, physical fitness and civil defence training</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2014/01/02/world/how-the-iron-curtain-collapsed">After the Iron Curtain fell</a>, citizens of the Czech Republic rejected communism in favour of parliamentary democracy. However, the leftover communist era physical infrastructure for civil defence remains mostly intact. </p>
<h2>Prague’s nuclear bunkers</h2>
<p>In 2019, it was estimated that there were <a href="https://www.expats.cz/czech-news/article/city-wants-to-decommission-cold-war-era-anti-nuclear-shelters-to-save-money">768 permanent shelters in Prague</a>, with a total capacity for about 150,000 people. </p>
<p>Municipal authorities are <a href="https://bezpecnost.praha.eu/clanky/ukryti">obliged by law to provide shelters</a>, and Prague’s <a href="https://bezpecnost.praha.eu/mapy/ukryti-a-sireny">nuclear bunkers</a> take on many forms. Blast and fallout shelters are built into hillsides, found in various tunnels, located in deep sections of the subway, and installed in reinforced basements of buildings. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493738/original/file-20221107-3659-ao0nsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="graffiti-covered wall" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493738/original/file-20221107-3659-ao0nsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493738/original/file-20221107-3659-ao0nsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493738/original/file-20221107-3659-ao0nsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493738/original/file-20221107-3659-ao0nsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493738/original/file-20221107-3659-ao0nsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493738/original/file-20221107-3659-ao0nsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493738/original/file-20221107-3659-ao0nsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Door to enter the Bezovka nuclear bunker which is built into a hill at Prague’s Parukářka Park.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(J. Rozdilsky)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I visited the <a href="https://europe-cities.com/2022/03/17/photo-gallery-take-a-look-at-the-largest-anti-nuclear-shelter-in-prague-company-news-prazska-drbna/">Bezovka Shelter</a> in Prague’s Žižkov district. To enter it, I had to enter through a graffiti covered reinforced steel door at <a href="https://www.prague.eu/en/object/places/2685/parukarka-park">Parukářka Park</a>.</p>
<p>The Bezovka shelter was built in the mid-1950s, and can hold more than 2,000 people. Currently, it is a site for commercial tourism and a venue for nightlife. Part of the shelter is open to the public for <a href="https://prague-nuclear-bunker.webnode.cz/">nuclear bunker tours</a> that highlight aspects of life during the Cold War — sights include life-size dioramas depicting stereotypical life in a bunker during nuclear Armageddon, complete with mannequins of children in rubber gas masks. </p>
<p>I also visited the <a href="https://krytfolimanka.cz/p/kryt-folimanka">Folimanka Bunker</a>, located in the Prague 2 district. This underground complex was an example of a public shelter designed for a neighbourhood. Corridors measuring 125 meters connected a labyrinth of underground rooms, totalling 1,332 square metres in area. </p>
<p>Completed in 1962, with its own power generator, running water and ventilation system, this bunker is still operational today for sheltering 1,300 people for a duration of 72 hours. The city agency for the <a href="https://www.sshmp.cz/ochrana-obyvatel/">Administration of Services of the Capital City of Prague</a> runs the shelter and opens it to the public on occasional weekends for a self-guided walk through. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493734/original/file-20221107-18-21928y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Picture inside a nuclear bunker" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493734/original/file-20221107-18-21928y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493734/original/file-20221107-18-21928y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493734/original/file-20221107-18-21928y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493734/original/file-20221107-18-21928y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493734/original/file-20221107-18-21928y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493734/original/file-20221107-18-21928y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493734/original/file-20221107-18-21928y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Shelter space inside of the Folimanka Nuclear Bunker in Prague.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(J. Rozdilsky)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Obsolete equipment</h2>
<p>The underground bunkers were a material embodiment of a <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Post-Communist-Aesthetics-Revolutions-capitalism-violence/Pusca/p/book/9780367597696">post-communist aesthetic</a>. Surrounded by obsolete equipment in decaying mazes of tunnels, I felt like I was in a dystopian subterranean wasteland. </p>
<p>Despite their appearance, however, the bunkers are not just relics of a past era. </p>
<p>Over the years, some of Prague’s nuclear bunkers have been adapted to new and creative reuses. Rather than abandonment, new uses have prevailed like <a href="https://prague-nuclear-bunker.webnode.cz/">museum spaces</a>, <a href="https://www.prague-communism-tour.com/">tourist attractions</a>, <a href="https://breakoutprague.com/en/">spots for escape room games</a>, <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/the-czech-republic-clubbing-in-a-nuclear-bunker-in-prague/a-2796745">places for nightlife and music</a>, <a href="https://elbedock.cz/en/events/vystava-v-bunkru/">creative arts spaces</a>, or storage sites.</p>
<p>I am not suggesting that having shelters available would reduce the overall horror of nuclear war. <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-putin-nuclear-weapons-russia-ukraine/">Should Putin risk using nuclear weapons</a>, no state or international body could <a href="https://www.icrc.org/en/document/humanitarian-impacts-and-risks-use-nuclear-weapons">adequately address the immediate humanitarian emergency</a>.</p>
<p>In Prague, at this very moment, tens of thousands of residents may have access to sheltering options available to them in case of a nuclear war. But if atomic weapons are used, only then will people worldwide fully realize that we have no reasonable way of protecting ourselves.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/191459/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jack L. Rozdilsky is a Professor at York University who receives external funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research as a co-investigator on a project supported under operating grant Canadian 2019 Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) Rapid Research Funding.</span></em></p>Cold War-era bunkers in Prague have been repurposed as tourist sites and nightlife venues. With war in Ukraine bringing renewed nuclear threats, could these bunkers revert to their original purpose?Jack L. Rozdilsky, Associate Professor of Disaster and Emergency Management, York University, CanadaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1920642022-10-20T13:14:32Z2022-10-20T13:14:32ZThe US isn’t at war with Russia, technically – but its support for Ukraine offers a classic case of a proxy war<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490452/original/file-20221018-14-2bc3lz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, left, stands near a damaged residential building in Irpin, Ukraine, on Sept. 8, 2022. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/secretary-of-state-antony-blinken-stands-near-a-damaged-residential-picture-id1243043572">Genya Savilov/Pool/AFP via Getty Images </a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The United States and European countries continue to pledge their support to Ukraine as Russia’s invasion drags on into its ninth month – and have backed their alliance with recurrent deliveries of advanced weaponry and money.</p>
<p>But despite Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threats to Western powers of <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-signs-decree-mobilisation-says-west-wants-destroy-russia-2022-09-21/">nuclear strikes</a>, neither the U.S. nor any Western European country, unified under the <a href="https://www.nato.int/nato-welcome/index.html">military coalition NATO</a>, has actually declared it is part of the war.</p>
<p>The U.S. has provided US$17.6 billion in security assistance to Ukraine <a href="https://www.state.gov/u-s-security-cooperation-with-ukraine/">since Russia first invaded Ukraine</a> in February 2022. But it can be difficult to track foreign aid and to distinguish between money that governments have promised and actually delivered. Some unofficial estimates place U.S. commitments to Ukraine made in 2022 much higher, at <a href="https://theintercept.com/2022/09/10/ukraine-military-aid-weapons-oversight/">$40 billion</a>.</p>
<p>European countries, meanwhile, have collectively donated an estimated 29 billion euros – or more than $28.3 billion – in <a href="https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-support-tracker/">security, financial and humanitarian aid</a> in 2022 – not including additional aid to <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/ua/wp-content/uploads/sites/38/2022/10/UNHCR-Ukraine-Weekly-Update-12-October-2022-2.pdf">Ukrainian refugees</a>. </p>
<p>This support has made it possible for Ukraine to fend off a Russian conquest of the country. Without Western aid, equipment and training, Ukraine would likely have already suffered defeat to the Russian incursion. </p>
<p>As a scholar of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/00220027221117546">war and military interventions</a>, <a href="https://facultyprofiles.tufts.edu/monica-toft">I think</a> the situation in Ukraine represents a classic case of a proxy war, in which outsiders give allies money, weapons and other kinds of support – but not at the risk of their own soldiers’ or civilians’ lives. </p>
<p>A better understanding of what proxy wars actually are, and what purpose they serve, provides useful context for the the U.S. and NATO’s current unofficial involvement in the Ukraine war.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490451/original/file-20221018-8262-hccuob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An older white man wearing a gray suit is seen talking to a middle-aged Black woman, who is wearing a yellow jacket and a blue shirt." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490451/original/file-20221018-8262-hccuob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490451/original/file-20221018-8262-hccuob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490451/original/file-20221018-8262-hccuob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490451/original/file-20221018-8262-hccuob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490451/original/file-20221018-8262-hccuob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490451/original/file-20221018-8262-hccuob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490451/original/file-20221018-8262-hccuob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sergiy Kyslytsa, Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Nations, and Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, speak on Aug. 24, 2022, in New York.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/ambassador-sergiy-kyslytsa-permanent-representative-of-ukraine-to-the-picture-id1417682186">Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<h2>What proxy wars are</h2>
<p>Proxy wars are armed conflicts in which one nation sends resources other than its own military personnel – like weapons, trainers, advisers, surveillance drones, money or even mercenaries – to support another country fighting in a war. This is often done to achieve a political objective, like regime change in another country. </p>
<p>Most proxy wars feature a government trying to determine an outcome in another country’s war. The U.S., for example, supported France with aircraft, vehicles, and weapons in France’s effort to reestablish control of what was then known as <a href="https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/educational-resources/age-of-eisenhower/americas-vietnam">Indochina from 1946 to 1954</a>. The Vietnam War started just one year after, in 1955. </p>
<p>Proxy wars allow governments to hurt an adversary without actually declaring war and sending in troops.</p>
<p>Of course, not every government has an equal capacity to financially support other wars. This is why relatively powerful governments with global reach, like the U.S. and the United Kingdom, tend to sponsor proxy wars.</p>
<h2>Why proxy wars are taken on</h2>
<p>Proxy wars became especially useful for the U.S. and other major powers after World War II, because the 1945 United Nations charter outlawed war except <a href="https://www.un.org/en/about-us/un-charter/chapter-7">in cases of self-defense</a>. </p>
<p>They also gained prominence because the U.S. and the Soviet Union <a href="https://www.cfr.org/timeline/us-russia-nuclear-arms-control">each possessed</a> nuclear weapons during the Cold War. </p>
<p>That meant any direct clash came with a very large risk of escalating from conventional fighting to a species-ending nuclear war. </p>
<p>Both the U.S. and Soviet Union sponsored proxy wars in places <a href="https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/proxy-wars-during-cold-war-africa">like Angola</a>, where communism and oil were both factors, and <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/united-states-calls-situation-in-el-salvador-a-communist-plot">El Salvador</a>, where the rise of communism was also a concern for the U.S., during the 1970s and 1980s. This involvement was a way for each government to hurt the other’s interests without significantly risking further military escalation. </p>
<p>Proxy wars may also help establish a foreign government’s legitimacy. If the U.S. directly supports one side in a smaller country’s civil war, it may look like a bully. But if the U.S. defends its engagement by saying it is trying to oppose major foreign adversaries like the Soviet Union or China, then meddling in a third country’s affairs can look necessary and vital. </p>
<p>After his initial February 2022 assault of Ukraine <a href="https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/us-steps-up-pressure-russia-over-ukraine-invasion-2022-03-11/">faltered in March</a>, Putin increased his attacks on Western countries, saying that economic sanctions Western countries approved shortly after the invasion were like a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-says-western-sanctions-are-akin-declaration-war-2022-03-05/">declaration of war</a>.</p>
<p>Putin says that Russia is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/30/world/europe/putin-speech-ukraine-russia.html">fighting the West and the U.S.</a> – this could help justify Russia’s losses and maintain domestic support for the war.</p>
<h2>Other kinds of proxy wars</h2>
<p>There are two other main kinds of proxy wars, both intended to accomplish political goals without risking a country’s own people. </p>
<p>The first kind is government support of terrorist groups that attack other governments. Iran’s financial and political <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/what-hezbollah">support of Hezbollah</a> – a Muslim political party and militant group in Lebanon that seeks Israel’s destruction – <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/hezbollah-revolutionary-irans-most-successful-export/">is an example</a>. </p>
<p>But while Iran’s use of Hezbollah to attack Israel is by proxy, this wouldn’t exactly count as proxy war. Although terrorism involves lethal armed violence, it doesn’t rise to the level of war, in terms of loss of life and control of territory, for example.</p>
<p>The second form involves supporting an internationally recognized government engaged an international war. This is a rare occurrence, mainly because wars between different countries are more rare than internal conflicts.</p>
<p>Russia’s assault on Ukraine in 2022 is an international war, but NATO cannot <a href="https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_192648.htm">easily risk</a> a direct attack on Russia, since Russia has nuclear weapons and is also a permanent member of the <a href="https://www.un.org/securitycouncil/content/current-members">U.N. Security Council</a>. Russia is also <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/why-ukraine-must-defeat-putin-russia/629940/">unlikely to withdraw</a> from Ukraine short of defeat on the battlefield, making Ukraine an ideal proxy client – or, at least, ideal for NATO, but very costly in terms of human life for Ukraine and Russia.</p>
<p>If <a href="https://carnegieeurope.eu/strategiceurope/87799">NATO succeeds in helping</a> Ukraine defeat Russia, powerful governments are likely to see proxy wars as a useful tool. But if Russia escalates to attacking NATO countries directly, or uses nuclear weapons in Ukraine, proxy wars may be replaced by direct confrontation and, by extension, a third world war. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen. </p>
<p><em>This article has been updated to correct the conversion of euros to dollars.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192064/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Monica Duffy Toft does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Giving Ukraine large amounts of money while not actually declaring war on Russia has various benefits for the US and other countries. Chiefly, it could protect US soldiers and civilians.Monica Duffy Toft, Professor of International Politics and Director of the Center for Strategic Studies at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1920592022-10-06T16:46:28Z2022-10-06T16:46:28ZUkraine recap: bad news from the battlefield for Putin, renewed nuclear threats from Russia<p>Vladimir Putin had barely finished his speech last Friday welcoming four new regions into Mother Russia, when his mouthpiece, Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov admitted that they didn’t actually know where the borders of these regions were. “We will clarify everything today,” he said, when quizzed as to whether Russia was laying claim to those parts of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions still under Ukrainian control.</p>
<p>But Putin and his advisers are no clearer now as to how much of their neighbour’s land they have claimed than they were a week ago. The stunning success of Ukraine’s counteroffensives in the south and east have pushed Russian troops out of thousands of square kilometres of territory, in the process taking large numbers of prisoners and capturing huge amounts of Russian military equipment.</p>
<p>Precious Chatterje-Doody, who researches politics and international affairs at the Open University, believes the sham referendums and annexations were as much for <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-putin-announces-annexation-of-four-regions-but-his-hold-on-them-may-be-flimsy-191641">domestic consumption</a> as anything else. Support for the war in Russia, despite what polling might suggest, appears to be waning – particularly since the Kremlin announced its partial mobilisation last month. You’ve only got to look at the numbers of military-age Russians flooding across the borders of neighbouring countries to see that the urge to risk life and limb for the motherland is not exactly irresistible for many. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-putin-announces-annexation-of-four-regions-but-his-hold-on-them-may-be-flimsy-191641">Ukraine war: Putin announces annexation of four regions, but his hold on them may be flimsy</a>
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<p>For the Russian president, bad news on the battlefield has been compounded by political pressure from the right wing. There has been growing criticism of the way Putin has been conducting the campaign, which many feel should have long ago been upgraded from “special military operation” to all-out war.</p>
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<p>Jules Sergei Fediunin, a political scientist at the Raymond Aron Centre for Sociological and Political Studies in France, <a href="https://theconversation.com/has-vladimir-putin-been-outflanked-by-the-russian-far-right-191781">has identified</a> some of the prime movers in Russia’s far-right, who range from military veterans, to ultra-nationalists to the increasingly visible military bloggers (<em>milbloggers</em>). These people represent an increasingly powerful tendency in Russian politics, writes Fediunin – and it’s uncertain to what extent Putin will be able to keep them onside.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/has-vladimir-putin-been-outflanked-by-the-russian-far-right-191781">Has Vladimir Putin been outflanked by the Russian far right?</a>
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<p><strong><em>This is our weekly recap of expert analysis of the Ukraine conflict.</em></strong>
<em>The Conversation, a not-for-profit newsgroup, works with a wide range of academics across its global network to produce evidence-based analysis. Get these recaps in your inbox every Thursday. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/ukraine-recap-114?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+Newsletter+Ukraine+Recap+2022+Mar&utm_content=WeeklyRecapTop">Subscribe here</a>.</em></p>
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<h2>Nuclear sabre rattling</h2>
<p>Another of Putin’s allies who has been urging an escalation in Ukraine is the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who is urging the Russian president to make good on his threat to defend Russia with “all available means” at their disposal, meaning tactical nuclear weapons. The Russian leadership has hinted several times over the past seven months that it might be prepared to resort to its nuclear arsenal if it feels there is an existential threat to Russia. And, since the annexations, fighting is mainly taking place on what the Kremlin considers to be Russian soil.</p>
<p>As Christoph Bluth of the University of Bradford <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-how-the-biden-administration-is-responding-to-putins-threats-to-go-nuclear-191889">notes here</a>, the US and Nato have taken pains to play down these threats as so much bluster. But the US secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, recently revealed that Washington had “been war-gaming” its response. Bluth has looked into a variety of ways in which Russia might deploy its nuclear arsenal and talks us through the possible US response. We must hope that cool heads prevail on both sides of the Atlantic.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-how-the-biden-administration-is-responding-to-putins-threats-to-go-nuclear-191889">Ukraine war: how the Biden administration is responding to Putin's threats to go nuclear</a>
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<p>Coincidentally, we’re not far off the 60th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis, 13 days during which the world stood on the brink of nuclear war after Russia deployed medium-range nuclear missiles to Cuba and the US blockaded the island and demanded their removal. The crisis deepened after Soviet anti-aircraft missiles shot down a US spy plane over Cuba.</p>
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<p>The crisis pitted a relatively inexperienced US president, John F. Kennedy, against a hardheaded Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, both of whom were reportedly under pressure to escalate from influential hawks in their respective administrations. Tom Vaughan, who researches nuclear politics at Aberystwyth University, <a href="https://theconversation.com/nuclear-war-does-it-take-luck-or-reasoning-to-avoid-it-lessons-from-the-cuban-missile-crisis-60-years-on-191239">recounts the crisis</a> and draws parallels with today’s situation.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/nuclear-war-does-it-take-luck-or-reasoning-to-avoid-it-lessons-from-the-cuban-missile-crisis-60-years-on-191239">Nuclear war: does it take luck or reasoning to avoid it? Lessons from the Cuban missile crisis, 60 years on</a>
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<h2>Away from the battlefield</h2>
<p>With his eyes firmly on the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing in about ten days, the last thing Xi Jinping must want is to become embroiled in nuclear brinkmanship in Europe. Xi has consistently backed Putin, but has tempered his position with a degree of ambiguity, simultaneously refusing to condemn Russia’s actions while at the same time restating his firmly held position on the sanctity of the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity.</p>
<p>The University of Birmingham’s Stefan Wolff and Tatyana Malyarenko of the National University Odesa, believe that Xi’s support for Putin is finite, with one of the main red lines being any use of nuclear weapons on Russia’s part. For Xi, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-chinas-lukewarm-support-for-russia-is-likely-to-benefit-kyiv-heres-why-191790">increasing asymmetry of the two countries’ relationship</a>, in which Russia is increasingly the junior partner, is not such an undesirable outcome. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-chinas-lukewarm-support-for-russia-is-likely-to-benefit-kyiv-heres-why-191790">Ukraine war: China's lukewarm support for Russia is likely to benefit Kyiv – here's why</a>
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<p>Meanwhile the perpetrator of what looks likely to have been deliberate sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea remains unclear. But the episode is a sobering pointer for the damage that could be done by a mischievous power bent on wreaking real havoc with vital infrastructure. </p>
<p>As Christian Bueger, a professor of international relations at the University of Copenhagen, points out, this raises the question of the vulnerabilities of European pipelines, electricity and internet cables. This, says Bueger, appears to be what is known as a <a href="https://theconversation.com/nord-stream-pipeline-sabotage-how-an-attack-could-have-been-carried-out-and-why-europe-was-defenceless-191895">“grey-zone” attack</a>, so called because it could either have been perpetrated by a rogue state or by a group acting indirectly on behalf of state interests. What makes it all the more tricky is that it’s the first carried out underwater, where at present there is little surveillance in place. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/nord-stream-pipeline-sabotage-how-an-attack-could-have-been-carried-out-and-why-europe-was-defenceless-191895">Nord Stream pipeline sabotage: how an attack could have been carried out and why Europe was defenceless</a>
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<h2>The trouble with conscription</h2>
<p>We mentioned earlier that some of Putin’s right-wing allies want him to double down on the war and call for mass mobilisation, which implies a general conscription of fighting-age men. This has rarely been a popular move, particularly when the cause is not an existential one as it was for many of the allied countries in the second world war. </p>
<p>And it appears that nobody is immune to a degree of cynicism when it comes to making hard political choices as to who to send off to risk life and limb. Kevin Fahey, a political scientist at the University of Nottingham, has analysed archival information about how the US conducted conscription in the second world war. He reveals that the Democratic Roosevelt administration <a href="https://theconversation.com/russia-what-the-history-of-wwii-conscription-shows-us-about-who-gets-sent-to-the-front-lines-191607">systematically rigged</a> the call up to favour their party at the next election, taking fewer conscripts from swing states where sending people’s boys off to fight might have boosted the chances of their Republican rivals. <em>Plus ça change,</em> you might say.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/russia-what-the-history-of-wwii-conscription-shows-us-about-who-gets-sent-to-the-front-lines-191607">Russia: what the history of WWII conscription shows us about who gets sent to the front lines</a>
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<p><em>Ukraine Recap is available as a weekly email newsletter. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/ukraine-recap-114?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+Newsletter+Ukraine+Recap+2022+Mar&utm_content=WeeklyRecapBottom">Click here to get our recaps directly in your inbox.</a></em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192059/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Some of the key articles from our coverage of the war in Ukraine over the past week.Jonathan Este, Senior International Affairs Editor, Associate EditorLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1918892022-10-06T12:52:23Z2022-10-06T12:52:23ZUkraine war: how the Biden administration is responding to Putin’s threats to go nuclear<p>Joe Biden <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/oct/07/biden-warns-world-would-face-armageddon-if-putin-uses-a-tactical-nuclear-weapon-in-ukraine">has warned</a> that any use of tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine by Russia could lead to “Armageddon”. Speaking at a Democratic fundraising event in New York on October 6, the US president said the crisis was the closest the world had come to nuclear catastrophe for sixty years.</p>
<p>“We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis,” he said, going on to talk about Putin’s repeated threats to resort to Russia’s nuclear arsenal if he felt Russia was under threat: “We’ve got a guy I know fairly well. He’s not joking when he talks about potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons because his military is, you might say, significantly underperforming.”</p>
<p>The possibility of Russia <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-putin-calls-up-more-troops-and-threatens-nuclear-option-in-a-speech-which-ups-the-ante-but-shows-russias-weakness-191044">using weapons of mass destruction</a> has hung over the conflict since Russian troops invaded Ukraine in late February.
Several times – most recently after Russia annexed four Ukrainian provinces and declared them part of the federation – the Kremlin leadership has dropped heavy hints that they would use “all available means” at their disposal to defend themselves, particularly against any intervention from Nato. </p>
<p>This fits in with a key element of the theory of <a href="https://www.nato.int/docu/review/articles/2020/06/08/nuclear-deterrence-today/index.html">nuclear deterrence</a> – the use of nuclear weapons as a threat, in this case to deter Nato from getting involved. When <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-11/biden-says-he-d-fight-world-war-iii-for-nato-but-not-for-ukraine?leadSource=uverify%20wall">Biden declared in March</a> he would not start “world war III” over Ukraine, this was taken as a clear reference to the risk of nuclear war.</p>
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<p>But while Russia has been able to deter Nato from intervening, it has been unable to stop western countries from imposing harsh sanctions, supplying advanced weaponry, training the Ukrainian military and providing intelligence. Now, having experienced a series of big setbacks in the field which has led many observers to declare that Russia is losing the war, there have been various signals that it might use low-yield <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-are-tactical-nuclear-weapons-an-international-security-expert-explains-and-assesses-what-they-mean-for-the-war-in-ukraine-191167">tactical nuclear weapons</a> to turn the conflict back in its favour.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-are-tactical-nuclear-weapons-an-international-security-expert-explains-and-assesses-what-they-mean-for-the-war-in-ukraine-191167">What are tactical nuclear weapons? An international security expert explains and assesses what they mean for the war in Ukraine</a>
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<p>Even as the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, was signing the formal annexation of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia into the Russian Federation, Ukrainian troops were forcing their military back in rapid counterattacks in the south and east of the country which have regained significant swaths of territory and captured or killed thousands of Russian troops. </p>
<p>It has <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/putin-orders-nuclear-military-train-to-ukraine-front-line-tswzv2v50">been reported recently</a> that Russia has moved a train to the Ukraine border carrying equipment for the 12th main directorate of the Russian ministry of defence, which is responsible for nuclear munitions. Details as to exactly what it carried have yet to emerge. There have also been rumours that Russia plans a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/kremlin-dismisses-uk-media-report-russian-nuclear-test-2022-10-04/">nuclear test</a> – although these were dismissed by the Kremlin.</p>
<p>Influential Kremlin leader and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has been highly critical recently of Russia’s conduct of the war, which he believes has not gone far enough, said, “In my personal opinion, more drastic measures should be taken, right up to the declaration of martial law in the border areas and the use of low-yield nuclear weapons,” suggesting that such weapons <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-says-its-troops-left-lyman-avoid-encirclement-2022-10-01/">should be used</a>.</p>
<p>The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists magazine has <a href="https://thebulletin.org/2022/05/potential-us-responses-to-the-russian-use-of-non-strategic-nuclear-weapons-in-ukraine/">laid out several ways</a> in which Russia could use its non-strategic nuclear weapons for demonstration purposes. This would mean not targeting anything and not creating casualties but to coerce Ukraine and/or the west to accept a situation acceptable to Russia or to turn the tide in a particular battlefield situation. </p>
<p>This might mean the use of multiple warheads. Or, most worryingly, as the Bulletin noted, the level of Russian barbarity and willingness to decimate urban areas: “It is also conceivable that they could be used against a city as a form of ultimate coercion.” </p>
<h2>War-gaming: a US response</h2>
<p>US secretary of defense Lloyd Austin has said that Putin may not be bluffing in his threats to resort to Russia’s nuclear arsenal and revealed that the US had “been war-gaming” its response. “There are no checks on Mr Putin,” he told CNN. “He made the irresponsible decision to invade Ukraine, he could make another decision.”</p>
<p>The official White House line is that Russia risks devastating consequences in response to any use of nuclear weapons. It is generally thought that this would stop short of retaliating with the US nuclear arsenal but with the full use of all the conventional weapons use to strike key targets. </p>
<p>David Petreaus, the former commander of the US forces in Afghanistan, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/02/us-russia-putin-ukraine-war-david-petraeus">suggested that</a> the US would systematically annihilate all Russian conventional forces in Ukraine and sink the Black Sea fleet. </p>
<p>Russia’s use of nuclear weapons would not necessarily be considered in contravention of Article 5 of the Nato treaty, whereby an attack on one is considered an attack on all and requires collective military defence. But he said that a case could be made that if radiation from use of a nuclear warhead were to spill over into a Nato country, this could be construed as an attack.</p>
<p>“You don’t want to, again, get into a nuclear escalation here. But you have to show that this cannot be accepted in any way,” said Petreaus.</p>
<p>In his conversations with the US and international media, the US national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/25/us/politics/us-russia-nuclear.html">been careful</a> not to spell out exactly what the “catastrophic consequences” of Russia’s use of nuclear weapons might be. But he said the Biden administration had been clear in its dealings with the Kremlin about strength of the US response: </p>
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<p>We have communicated to the Russians what the consequences would be, but we’ve been careful in how we talk about this publicly, because from our perspective we want to lay down the principle that there would be catastrophic consequences, but not engage in a game of rhetorical tit for tat.</p>
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<p>For now, the US policy remains to downplay the significance of Russia’s threatening rhetoric about nuclear weapons while making it clear of the strength of the consequences. The Biden administration is convinced that this “strategic ambiguity” is the best way to deter Russia from going along the nuclear path. We can only hope that they are right.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/191889/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christoph Bluth received funding from the Volkswagen Foundation. </span></em></p>The White House has told the Kremlin there will be ‘devastating consequences’ if Russia uses nuclear weapons in Ukraine.Christoph Bluth, Professor of International Relations and Security, University of BradfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1912392022-10-04T11:57:56Z2022-10-04T11:57:56ZNuclear war: does it take luck or reasoning to avoid it? Lessons from the Cuban missile crisis, 60 years on<p>The United States and the Soviet Union came dangerously close to war in October 1962 during the Cuban missile crisis. Just ahead of its 60th anniversary, Russian president Vladimir Putin is <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-63016675">issuing nuclear threats</a> following the unexpectedly poor performance of his troops in Ukraine. The invasion poses a new kind of challenge to European security, but as in 1962, tensions between Russia and the west are rising.</p>
<p>Talking of use of nuclear weapons, the US defence secretary <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2022/10/02/lloyd-austin-russia-nuclear-putin-00059917">Lloyd Austin</a> recently said that Putin could make “another decision”. US teams have been exploring possible responses to a nuclear attack, it has emerged.</p>
<p>Journalists ask: “<a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2022/9/22/23366499/putin-russia-ukraine-war-nuclear-threat-expert">How close we are to nuclear war?</a>.” It’s hard to tell. Deliberate escalation may be unlikely, and we may avoid the worst-case scenario. However, there are <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/ukraine/2022-07-18/what-if-war-in-ukraine-spins-out-control">many situations</a> that could unintentionally lead to disaster. </p>
<p>The Cuban missile crisis cannot teach us how to avert war – it shows us that, once tensions are ratcheted up, this comes down to luck. Instead, we should learn from the crisis, the nearest the world has got to nuclear war, that the very existence of nuclear weapons always invites catastrophe.</p>
<p>We have been lucky to avoid nuclear war so far. If the nuclear crisis in Ukraine is averted, we will have been lucky again. The key lesson of Cuba is don’t mistake luck in Ukraine for reassurance that nuclear war in the 21st century is impossible.</p>
<h2>Learning from history</h2>
<p>On October 14 1962, a US spy plane captured <a href="https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/nsa/cuba_mis_cri/photos.htm">photographs</a> of Soviet missile launch sites under construction in Cuba. Missiles launched from Cuba would be within range of much of the US mainland. In response, US president John F. Kennedy imposed a <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2009/10/kennedy-imposes-naval-blockade-of-cuba-oct-22-1962-028584">naval blockade of Cuba</a>. </p>
<p>This was intended to prevent Soviet nuclear weapons reaching the Caribbean island. Kennedy demanded that Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev remove the weapons. Khrushchev refused. </p>
<p>Over the days that followed, the two leaders traded private appeals and public demands, urging each other to back down. On October 26, Cuban prime minister Fidel Castro <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/jfk-attack/">wrote to Khrushchev</a>, asking him to attack the US. On October 27, Soviet antiaircraft missiles shot down a US spy plane over Cuba. </p>
<p>Realising that war was imminent, Kennedy and Khrushchev offered concessions. Kennedy agreed to remove US intermediate range nuclear missiles from Turkey - within range of the Soviet Union. In return, Khrushchev agreed to remove the offending Soviet missiles if the US promised not to invade Cuba afterwards. By October 28, the crisis was over. Global thermonuclear war was avoided - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/10/12/the-day-nuclear-war-almost-broke-out">but only narrowly</a>.</p>
<h2>Creating an illusion of safety</h2>
<p>Despite the close call, many analysts were over optimistic about lessons from the crisis. Influential US political scientist <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-organization/article/nuclear-learning-and-ussoviet-security-regimes/2A417B0A9B6F236DFE4BBA8A7FADE2AA">Joseph Nye argued</a> that the crisis produced a sense of vulnerability and fear among policymakers and strategists. US and Soviet leaders learned from this experience <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/1/25/18196416/nuclear-war-boris-yeltsin-1995-norway-rocket">(and other near misses)</a> that they had been lucky to avoid war, and that measures were needed to prevent future crises. In response, they created arms control agreements and lines of communication, intended to make future crises less likely. These can be helpful, but they contribute to an <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/303337/command-and-control-by-eric-schlosser/">illusion of safety</a>.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">President Kennedy’s speech on the Cuban missile crisis.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Alternatively, others <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2012/10/16/the-cuban-missile-misunderstanding-how-cultural-misreadings-almost-led-to-global-annihilation/">including US historian John Lewis Gaddis </a> have argued that the crisis showed that nuclear deterrence works: the Soviet Union was deterred from attacking by the prospect of a devastating nuclear response from the US. Under this argument, the crisis was under control, despite misunderstandings between the leaders. Kennedy and Khrushchev calculated that the other wanted to avoid conflict, and the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2538793#metadata_info_tab_contents">prospect of nuclear retaliation lowered the risk</a> that either would attack.</p>
<p>These lessons have influenced how we interpret the nuclear dangers of the war in Ukraine. Most western officials act as if Russia’s nuclear threats <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/340dacce-10c8-45bc-a157-5aeb0a443b5e">are a bluff</a>, because Putin is well aware of the devastating potential of nuclear escalation. Furthermore, conventional wisdom still tells us that possessing nuclear weapons – or being under the nuclear umbrella of <a href="https://www.nti.org/atomic-pulse/natos-new-strategic-concept-what-it-is-and-why-it-matters/">an alliance such as Nato</a> – is a reliable way of deterring Russian aggression.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/shelling-of-europes-biggest-nuclear-power-plant-exposes-multiple-risks-a-nuclear-expert-tells-us-what-they-are-189078">Shelling of Europe's biggest nuclear power plant exposes multiple risks – a nuclear expert tells us what they are</a>
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<p>Some would argue that these lessons come from a fallacious interpretation of the Cuban missile crisis: because we avoided nuclear war then, nuclear war in the future must be unlikely. On the contrary, <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1758-5899.13142">over a long enough timeline, it is inevitable</a>. Some people tell us that the continued existence of nuclear weapons isn’t really dangerous, because we’ve learned how to minimise the risk of war, and even that <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/05679328108457394">nuclear weapons themselves make war less probable</a>. They encourage us to believe that we can control nuclear escalation and accurately calculate nuclear risks.</p>
<p>Recent research and reviews of Cuban missile crisis documents has shown that many global leaders believed that the nuclear risks were under control during the crisis. Nuclear history expert <a href="https://www.sciencespo.fr/nk/en/membre/benoit-pelopidas">Benoît Pelopidas</a> shows that, even at the height of tensions, French and Chinese leaders were less <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/european-journal-of-international-security/article/unbearable-lightness-of-luck-three-sources-of-overconfidence-in-the-manageability-of-nuclear-crises/BDE95895C04E7E7988D15DB4F217D1E4">fearful of nuclear war</a> than many might expect. For them, the fact that war was avoided simply proved that it is possible to reliably “manage” the danger of nuclear weapons.</p>
<p>In addition, <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00471178221094726">most scholars now agree</a> that nuclear war was only avoided during the crisis by sheer luck, not rational decision making. For example, on October 27, 1962, a Soviet submarine captain believed that war had begun. He decided to fire his nuclear torpedo at US ships, but was convinced otherwise by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/oct/27/vasili-arkhipov-soviet-submarine-captain-who-averted-nuclear-war-awarded-future-of-life-prize">a fellow officer.</a> On October 28 1962, US forces in Okinawa, Japan, received a mistaken order to <a href="https://theintercept.com/2015/10/28/how-one-air-force-captain-saved-the-world-from-accidental-nuclear-war-53-years-ago-today/">launch 32 nuclear missiles</a>, again only being stopped by one quick thinking captain. </p>
<p>Remember that Putin could invade Ukraine without worrying about a western military response <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/21/science/russia-nuclear-ukraine.html">because of Russia’s ability to threaten nuclear retaliation</a>. He may yet calculate that he can use tactical nuclear weapons to defend against a Ukrainian counter-attack without provoking a Nato nuclear retaliation, because western leaders will not risk nuclear war. He may be mistaken. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/politics/foreign/mearsh.htm">Comforting stories about the cold war</a> have encouraged people to believe that nuclear deterrence keeps the peace. This is not true. We have <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/12/forgetting-the-apocalypse-why-our-nuclear-fears-faded-and-why-thats-dangerous">forgotten</a> the dangers of states holding large nuclear arsenals. Assuming nuclear war in Ukraine is avoided, the lesson from Cuba? Don’t <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2071179">forget </a> again.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/191239/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tom Vaughan has previously received funding from the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).</span></em></p>Because the west avoided a nuclear war over the Cuban missile crisis it should not be overconfident about Russia’s nuclear threats.Tom Vaughan, Lecturer, Aberystwyth UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1911672022-09-28T12:32:01Z2022-09-28T12:32:01ZWhat are tactical nuclear weapons? An international security expert explains and assesses what they mean for the war in Ukraine<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/486650/original/file-20220926-22-i4bgaa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4546%2C2726&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">This Russian short-range cruise missile, the Iskander-K, can carry nuclear warheads for several hundred miles.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/RussiaUkraine/6671b4bbaa8b47119e6dc89d0a121409/photo">Russian Defense Ministry Press Service photo via AP</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Tactical nuclear weapons have burst onto the international stage as Russian President Vladimir Putin, facing battlefield losses in eastern Ukraine, has threatened that Russia will “<a href="http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/69390">make use of all weapon systems available to us</a>” if Russia’s territorial integrity is threatened. Putin has characterized the war in Ukraine as an <a href="https://tass.com/politics/1511161">existential battle against the West</a>, which he said wants to weaken, divide and destroy Russia. </p>
<p>U.S. President Joe Biden <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/21/biden-condemns-putins-irresponsible-nuclear-threats/">criticized Putin’s overt nuclear threats against Europe</a>. Meanwhile, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg <a href="https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1572571639774343169">downplayed the threat</a>, saying Putin “knows very well that a nuclear war should never be fought and cannot be won.” This is <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/41fc6e5d-6e39-440d-97f2-cf7c517fc99b">not the first time</a> Putin has invoked nuclear weapons in an attempt to deter NATO.</p>
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<p>I am an international security scholar who has <a href="https://dornsife.usc.edu/cf/faculty-and-staff/faculty.cfm?pid=1022718">worked on</a> and researched <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-90978-3">nuclear restraint</a>, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Behavior-Nuclear-Nonproliferation-Security-International/dp/0820347299">nonproliferation</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818319000328">costly signaling</a> theory applied to international relations for two decades. Russia’s large arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons, which are not governed by international treaties, and Putin’s doctrine of threatening their use have raised tensions, but tactical nuclear weapons are not simply another type of battlefield weapon.</p>
<h2>Tactical by the numbers</h2>
<p>Tactical nuclear weapons, sometimes called battlefield or nonstrategic nuclear weapons, were designed to be used on the battlefield – for example, to counter overwhelming conventional forces like large formations of infantry and armor. They are smaller than strategic nuclear weapons like the warheads carried on intercontinental ballistic missiles.</p>
<p>While experts <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00963402.2019.1654273">disagree about precise definitions</a> of tactical nuclear weapons, lower explosive yields, measured in kilotons, and shorter-range delivery vehicles are commonly identified characteristics. Tactical nuclear weapons vary in yields from fractions of 1 kiloton to about 50 kilotons, compared with strategic nuclear weapons, which have yields that range from about 100 kilotons to over a megaton, though much more powerful warheads were developed during the Cold War. </p>
<p>For reference, the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima was 15 kilotons, so some tactical nuclear weapons are capable of causing widespread destruction. The <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2017/04/13/politics/afghanistan-isis-moab-bomb">largest conventional bomb</a>, the Mother of All Bombs or MOAB, that the U.S. has dropped has a 0.011-kiloton yield.</p>
<p>Delivery systems for tactical nuclear weapons also tend to have shorter ranges, typically under 310 miles (500 kilometers) compared with strategic nuclear weapons, which are typically designed to cross continents. </p>
<p>Because low-yield nuclear weapons’ explosive force is not much greater than that of increasingly powerful conventional weapons, the U.S. military has reduced its reliance on them. Most of its remaining stockpile, about 150 <a href="https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/19263/get-to-know-americas-long-serving-b61-family-of-nuclear-bombs">B61 gravity bombs</a>, is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00963402.2019.1654273">deployed in Europe</a>. The U.K. and France have completely eliminated their tactical stockpiles. Pakistan, China, India, Israel and North Korea all have several types of tactical nuclear weaponry. </p>
<p>Russia has retained more tactical nuclear weapons, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00963402.2019.1654273">estimated to be around 2,000</a>, and relied more heavily on them in its nuclear strategy than the U.S. has, mostly due to Russia’s less advanced conventional weaponry and capabilities. </p>
<p>Russia’s tactical nuclear weapons can be deployed by ships, planes and ground forces. Most are deployed on air-to-surface missiles, short-range ballistic missiles, gravity bombs and depth charges delivered by medium-range and tactical bombers, or naval anti-ship and anti-submarine torpedoes. These missiles are mostly held in reserve in central depots in Russia. </p>
<p>Russia has updated its delivery systems to be able to carry either nuclear or conventional bombs. There is heightened concern over these dual capability delivery systems because Russia has used many of these short-range missile systems, particularly the Iskander-M, to bombard Ukraine.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Russia’s Iskander-M mobile short-range ballistic missile can carry conventional or nuclear warheads. Russia has used the missile with conventional warheads in the war in Ukraine.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Tactical nuclear weapons are substantially more destructive than their conventional counterparts even at the same explosive energy. Nuclear explosions are <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Nuclear-Arms-Race-Technology-Society/dp/0070133476">more powerful by factors of 10 million to 100 million</a> than chemical explosions, and leave deadly radiation fallout that would contaminate air, soil, water and food supplies, similar to the disastrous Chernobyl nuclear reactor meltdown in 1986. The interactive simulation site <a href="https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/">NUKEMAP</a> by Alex Wellerstein depicts the multiple effects of nuclear explosions at various yields. </p>
<h2>Can any nuke be tactical?</h2>
<p>Unlike strategic nuclear weapons, tactical weapons are not focused on mutually assured destruction through overwhelming retaliation or nuclear umbrella deterrence to protect allies. While tactical nuclear weapons have not been included in arms control agreements, medium-range weapons were included in the now-defunct <a href="https://2009-2017.state.gov/t/avc/trty/102360.htm">Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty</a> (1987-2018), which reduced nuclear weapons in Europe. </p>
<p>Both the U.S. and Russia reduced their total nuclear arsenals from about <a href="https://doi.org/10.2968/066004008">19,000 and 35,000 respectively</a> at the end of the Cold War to about <a href="https://sipri.org/sites/default/files/YB22%2010%20World%20Nuclear%20Forces.pdf">3,700 and 4,480 as of January 2022</a>. Russia’s reluctance to negotiate over its nonstrategic nuclear weapons has stymied further nuclear arms control efforts.</p>
<p>The fundamental question is whether tactical nuclear weapons are more “useable” and therefore could potentially trigger a full-scale nuclear war. Their development was part of an effort to overcome concerns that because large-scale nuclear attacks were widely seen as unthinkable, strategic nuclear weapons were losing their value as a deterrent to war between the superpowers. The nuclear powers would be more likely to use tactical nuclear weapons, in theory, and so the weapons would bolster a nation’s nuclear deterrence. </p>
<p>Yet, any use of tactical nuclear weapons would invoke defensive nuclear strategies. In fact, then-Secretary of Defense James Mattis notably <a href="https://docs.house.gov/meetings/AS/AS00/20180206/106833/HHRG-115-AS00-Wstate-MattisJ-20180206.pdf">stated in 2018</a>: “I do not think there is any such thing as a tactical nuclear weapon. Any nuclear weapon use any time is a strategic game changer.” </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">This documentary explores how the risk of nuclear war has changed – and possibly increased – since the end of the Cold War.</span></figcaption>
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<p>The U.S. has criticized Russia’s nuclear strategy of <a href="https://globalsecurityreview.com/nuclear-de-escalation-russias-deterrence-strategy/">escalate to de-escalate</a>, in which tactical nuclear weapons could be used to deter a widening of the war to include NATO. </p>
<p>While there is disagreement among experts, Russian and U.S. nuclear strategies focus on deterrence, and so involve large-scale retaliatory nuclear attacks in the face of any first-nuclear weapon use. This means that Russia’s threat to use nuclear weapons as a deterrent to conventional war is threatening an action that would, under nuclear warfare doctrine, invite a retaliatory nuclear strike if aimed at the U.S. or NATO.</p>
<h2>Nukes and Ukraine</h2>
<p>I believe Russian use of tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine would not achieve any military goal. It would contaminate the territory that Russia claims as part of its historic empire and possibly drift into Russia itself. It would increase the likelihood of direct NATO intervention and destroy Russia’s image in the world. </p>
<p>Putin aims to deter Ukraine’s continued successes in regaining territory by preemptively <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/27/russia-ukraine-war-referendum/">annexing regions in the east of the country</a> after holding staged referendums. He could then declare that Russia would use nuclear weapons to defend the new territory as though the existence of the Russian state were threatened. But I believe this claim stretches Russia’s nuclear strategy beyond belief.</p>
<p>Putin has explicitly claimed that his threat to use tactical nuclear weapons <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/340dacce-10c8-45bc-a157-5aeb0a443b5e">is not a bluff</a> precisely because, from a strategic standpoint, <a href="https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/russias-nonstrategic-nuclear-weapons-and-its-views-limited-nuclear-war">using them is not credible</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/191167/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nina Srinivasan Rathbun does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Tactical nuclear weapons were designed to be used on the battlefield rather than for strategic defense, but that doesn’t mean there’s a plausible case for using them.Nina Srinivasan Rathbun, Professor of International Relations, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and SciencesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1911032022-09-21T16:02:06Z2022-09-21T16:02:06ZPutin’s mobilisation speech: what he said and what he meant<p>When Vladimir Putin took to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/21/putin-announces-partial-mobilisation-in-russia-in-escalation-of-ukraine-war">Russian television</a> on September 21 he wanted to send three clear headline messages.</p>
<p>The first is that the threat of nuclear war is credible and serious. The second is <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/text-vladimir-putin-mobilization-decree-war-ukraine-russia/">that partial mobilisation</a> and <a href="https://www.rbc.ru/politics/20/09/2022/632a114d9a79475e951fea93?from=from_main_1">rapid changes to military desertion laws</a> is a sign of intent and intractability and a stepping stone to full mobilisation. And the third is that Russian annexation of Donetsk and Luhansk are non-negotiable. </p>
<p>On the question of annexation, Putin suggested that his immediate war goals are now limited to these two regions. This provides an opportunity to contain the conflict and allow Putin the off-ramp that he requires <a href="https://twitter.com/mjluxmoore/status/1572563474747883525?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1572563474747883525%7Ctwgr%5E585f5df1a57374236bcf743d66846fbae4d123e8%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2Flive%2F2022%2Fsep%2F21%2Frussia-ukraine-war-live-updates-blinken-calls-moscows-referendum-attempts-a-sham-zelenskiy-to-speak-at-un">for his domestic public audience</a> and the more important audience of the policy elites for his own survival. </p>
<p>Importantly, there were secondary signals contained in Putin’s speech that policy makers in the west need to understand if they are to navigate the next few weeks and months safely. </p>
<p>Underlying Putin’s speech this morning was <a href="http://scrf.gov.ru/security/docs/document133/">Russia’s 2021 national security strategy</a>, which contains plans ranging as far forward as 2035. Focusing on the Ukrainian conflict or Putin’s writings on Ukraine last year is a mistake: these come second to <a href="https://andrewmonaghan.net/dealing-with-the-russians/">Russian grand strategy</a>.</p>
<h2>The west isn’t listening</h2>
<p>The Russian government is articulating what it wants to achieve but the west is less effective in hearing and understanding these messages. Russia’s policy machine then works through these ambitions and tests at what cost they can be achieved. </p>
<p>All too often western commentators dismiss Russian positioning and rhetoric as sabre rattling. This is because they are often conveyed in a way that jars with how western political classes speak. </p>
<p>The west needs to take these Russian positions more seriously and create barriers to stop Russia achieving them. This should come in the form of incentives as well as penalties. </p>
<p>Supplying billions of dollars of weaponry to Ukraine post-invasion is an example of a belated western response. Ideally this needed to occur prior to an invasion that Russia had clearly signalled it planned.</p>
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<p>The <a href="https://www.ndc.nato.int/research/research.php?icode=704&lang=fr">2021 national security strategy placed technological change</a>, economic wealth and national security as tied objectives. It referenced concerns about US military technology appearing in Russia’s near-abroad (one pretext to the Ukrainian invasion) and Russian culture being diluted by western cultural imports. </p>
<p>All of these strategic inputs had been triggered before the invasion of Ukraine and have been amplified since.** Putin’s speech has to be read within this context. </p>
<p>The fundamental disjuncture between the positions of Russia and the west have centred on one philosophical and one practical element. Philosophically, both sides have been <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/6C926733D93FF9F7B1ABD136CD6D5440/S0260210506007054a.pdf/the-postcolonial-moment-in-security-studies.pdf">caught in a trap of thinking</a> that everything they do and say is value neutral (so, perfectly reasonable, logical and as it should be). While everything the other side does is seen as value laden (unreasonable, illogical and hostile). </p>
<h2>Breaches of trust</h2>
<p>This makes it very difficult for Russia and the west to negotiate with each other and to try and meet each other’s needs. For the UK, attacks on expat Russians in London and <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51722301">in Salisbury</a> signal a fundamental breach of accepted rules of the game. </p>
<p>In the case of the assassination attempt on <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02684527.2020.1746127">Sergei Skripal and his daughter in 2018</a>, the amount of nerve agent used had the potential to kill thousands of people in Salisbury. This placed Russia outside the boundary of a reliable, or reasonable, negotiating partner. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-putin-calls-up-more-troops-and-threatens-nuclear-option-in-a-speech-which-ups-the-ante-but-shows-russias-weakness-191044">Ukraine war: Putin calls up more troops and threatens nuclear option in a speech which ups the ante but shows Russia's weakness</a>
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<p>Practically speaking, the Russian authorities see their war in Ukraine as an existential war, while the west sees it as a war of choice. For Putin, Ukraine is a buffer zone between Russia and nuclearised Nato, a crucial access point to the Black Sea, and a country of kindred Russian siblings converting to hostile western orthodoxies. </p>
<p>The fracture between the <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/europe/live-news/ukraine-russia-putin-news-03-08-22/h_de0516e0f59ac2214af21bbb0aaf152e">Russian Orthodox Church and Ukrainian laws concerning gay rights</a> has been underexposed in the rationale for Russia’s Ukrainian invasion. These “traditional values” were articulated as touchstone issues in the 2021 national security strategy for all those in the wider Russian community. </p>
<p>This language extends the writ to Russian-speaking communities, including those in Ukraine who do not see themselves as Russian. It is a co-option of people based on the language they speak. </p>
<p>The second world war, known in Russia as the patriotic war, dominates the way Russians characterise conflict, in the same way that the British focus on the “spirit” of the blitz. Putin’s description of the enemy as the “collective west” tells observers that he is moving the conflict into a patriotic war frame and as a defence of the fatherland. </p>
<p>Similarly, Putin’s references to territorial integrity should be read as being aligned to sovereignty and independence, which again are strong themes of the national security strategy. </p>
<p>This is highly relevant in Ukraine as it raises the question of the control of the Black Sea and its transit routes. Access to these routes was the precursor to the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014. </p>
<h2>Nuclear plans</h2>
<p>In viewing the Ukrainian situation as an existential conflict, Putin has underlined his resolve to it by placing nuclear weapons on the table. His line, “The territorial integrity of our motherland, our independence and freedom will be secured, I repeat, with all the means we have … Those who try to blackmail us with nuclear weapons should know that the prevailing winds can turn in their direction,” is a near direct threat. </p>
<p>The referendums that are being <a href="https://www.euronews.com/2022/09/21/ukraine-crisis-referendums-donetsk">hastily arranged</a> in Donetsk and Luhansk will allow Russia to make a claim on them, and then attempts to bring them back into Ukraine will meet the threshold for a nuclear response. Putin’s former advisor and general, and now media pundit, Sergei Markov strongly suggested this morning <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/putin-russia-nuclear-weapons-uk-warning-b2171854.html">on BBC Radio 4</a> that this threat applies to those outside of Ukraine. </p>
<p>The narrative shift towards this as a defensive war of survival for Russia is under way. There is little the west can do to shift this narrative in Russia. But it helps to understand how serious the threat is.</p>
<p>If a catastrophic continental war is to be avoided then the west needs to think seriously about how de-escalation can occur and what it is prepared to concede to achieve it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/191103/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert M. Dover has previously received funding from the ESRC and AHRC in the UK. </span></em></p>The west needs to understand the messages coming from Russia, not ignore them.Robert M. Dover, Professor of Intelligence and National Security, University of HullLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1901002022-09-12T12:14:26Z2022-09-12T12:14:26ZIran and the US appear unlikely to reach a new nuclear deal – leaving everyone more unsafe<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483764/original/file-20220909-22-qg7ha0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=335%2C73%2C5111%2C3456&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A man reads an Iranian newspaper with a headline in Farsi that says, 'The night of the end of the JCPOA,' or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/man-reads-the-iranian-newspaper-etemad-with-the-front-page-title-in-picture-id1242542718">Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images </a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Iran’s standoff with the United States over its potential nuclear weapons program is unlikely to ease anytime soon. </p>
<p>The U.S. and Iran launched talks in 2021 to renew a <a href="https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Timeline-of-Nuclear-Diplomacy-With-Iran">now-defunct political deal</a> that would curb Iran’s nuclear program. </p>
<p>But the window for Iran and the U.S. to rejoin and return to compliance of the <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/what-iran-nuclear-deal">lapsed 2015 nuclear deal</a>, called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, is quickly closing. China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the U.S. all agreed to the plan with Iran in 2015. The U.S. pulled out of the deal in 2018, effectively derailing it.</p>
<p>But U.S. officials told Israel’s Prime Minister Yair Lapid <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-07/us-told-israel-that-iran-nuclear-deal-unlikely-soon-report-says">on Sept. 7, 2022</a>, that despite ongoing talks in Vienna, it was unlikely the group of countries would sign a deal anytime soon. </p>
<p>European Union Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell previously emphasized <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/004f0d5a-0eca-4ea0-a423-0184481d033c">on Sept. 5, 2022</a>, that efforts to reach a new agreement are “in danger” due to recent divergences between the U.S. and Iranian positions. </p>
<p>I have <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/nina-srinivasan-rathbun-1333993">worked</a> and <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-organization/article/abs/price-of-peace-motivated-reasoning-and-costly-signaling-in-international-relations/931AC830FEB7D24D26800E22558D9F9D">researched</a> nuclear nonproliferation and <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-90978-3">U.S. national security</a> for two decades. When diplomacy fails to prevent nuclear proliferation, particularly by a state like Iran that engages in <a href="https://www.csis.org/analysis/regional-perspectives-iran-0">malicious acts</a> throughout the region, everyone in the world is less safe. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483763/original/file-20220909-20-libduz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A middle aged man with salt and pepper hair and a beard wears a dark suit and waves." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483763/original/file-20220909-20-libduz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483763/original/file-20220909-20-libduz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483763/original/file-20220909-20-libduz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483763/original/file-20220909-20-libduz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483763/original/file-20220909-20-libduz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483763/original/file-20220909-20-libduz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483763/original/file-20220909-20-libduz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Bagheri Kani, waves in Vienna on Aug. 4, 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/irans-chief-nuclear-negotiator-ali-bagheri-kani-waves-as-he-leaves-picture-id1242298742">Alex Halada/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>US and Iran reach a deal – temporarily</h2>
<p>The U.S. and its allies have been concerned about Iran’s possible pursuit of nuclear weapons since intelligence uncovered its covert nuclear program, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/04/world/middleeast/04intel.html">suspended since 2003</a>. Iran’s possession of nuclear weapons would undermine U.S. and its allies’ security and destabilize the Middle East, likely encouraging more Middle Eastern countries to try to develop the weapons themselves.</p>
<p>After decades of disagreement, the U.S. and Iran signed <a href="https://2009-2017.state.gov/e/eb/tfs/spi/iran/jcpoa/index.htm">a deal in 2015</a> that halted Iran’s development of nuclear technology and stockpiling of nuclear material in exchange for lifting multiple <a href="https://www.un.org/securitycouncil/s/res/1737-%282006%29">international economic</a> sanctions <a href="https://www.un.org/securitycouncil/s/res/1929-%282010%29">placed on</a> Iran.</p>
<p>This was significant because it lengthened the amount of time it would take Iran to stockpile the nuclear material to build a nuclear bomb to over a year. It halted Iran’s development of more advanced enrichment capabilities.</p>
<p>It also gave the <a href="https://www.iaea.org">International Atomic Energy Agency</a>, a nuclear watchdog organization that is part of the United Nations, more oversight over Iranian nuclear activity, letting U.N. inspectors regularly observe all of Iran’s nuclear sites. </p>
<p>But the deal <a href="https://www.cfr.org/article/new-iran-deal-means-old-chaos">fell through in 2018</a> when the U.S. withdrew from the agreement under former President <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/08/world/middleeast/trump-iran-nuclear-deal.html">Donald Trump</a> and reimposed hundreds of <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/11/05/664275967/new-u-s-sanctions-against-iran-go-into-effect">economic sanctions</a> on Iran. </p>
<p>Iran waited until 2019 before it officially <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-nuclear-iaea/iran-has-gone-beyond-nuclear-deals-uranium-enrichment-limit-iaea-idUSKCN1U31Y1">broke the 2015 agreement</a> by enriching uranium enrichment above the permitted 3.67% purity levels set by the deal. This alone did not substantially rule out eventually returning to the 2015 agreement. </p>
<p>Since then, however, Iran has developed its nuclear technology – but has <a href="https://iranprimer.usip.org/blog/2021/jan/27/bill-burns-iran">not developed actual nuclear bombs</a>. </p>
<h2>Returning to the 2015 deal</h2>
<p>If Iran rejoined a nuclear agreement with the U.S., it would need to export its stockpile of enriched uranium, allow the U.N. nuclear watchdogs to oversee all of its nuclear facilities and stop research into nuclear weapons. </p>
<p>It is extremely difficult to return to a diplomatic agreement in which one side has to make additional concessions and return to a previous status quo.</p>
<p>When I worked in multilateral nuclear diplomacy for the U.S. State Department, we saw talks fail regarding North Korea’s nuclear weapons program in <a href="https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/6partytalks">2009, after six years</a> of on-and-off progress. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, Iran seems to be on a similar path. </p>
<p>In April 2021, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/11/world/middleeast/iran-nuclear-natanz.html">an explosion</a> that caused a blackout occurred in Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment facilities. Iran then began enriching uranium to its highest level of purity ever documented, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/iran-uranium-enrichment-60-percent-ed89e322595004fddc65fd4e31c1131b">above 60%</a> – a level that is very close to what is required to get weapons-grade uranium.</p>
<p>Iran’s decision <a href="https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/focus/iran/chronology-of-key-events">over the past few years</a> to reduce access to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s monitoring equipment and to begin research into uranium metals, necessary for weaponization, also moved it further away from the possibility of returning to the 2015 deal.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483767/original/file-20220909-12282-fhiptf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The backs of two men in suits are shown as they have their arms around each other. The European Union and Iran flags are on either side of them." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483767/original/file-20220909-12282-fhiptf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483767/original/file-20220909-12282-fhiptf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483767/original/file-20220909-12282-fhiptf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483767/original/file-20220909-12282-fhiptf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483767/original/file-20220909-12282-fhiptf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483767/original/file-20220909-12282-fhiptf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483767/original/file-20220909-12282-fhiptf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Iran Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, left, welcomes Josep Borell, the European Union’s foreign affairs and security representative, in Tehran in June 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/irans-foreign-minister-hossein-amirabdollahian-welcomes-josep-borell-picture-id1241518184">Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Iran today</h2>
<p>Iran currently has the <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/iran-nuclear-bomb-claims-technical-ability-to-build-israel-us/">technical ability</a> to produce a nuclear bomb within a few weeks, though not the weaponization knowledge necessary to build it. <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00254-7">A different kind of technology</a> is needed to actually design and manufacture a bomb, which may take Iran about two years to develop.</p>
<p>Iran’s technical ability to develop a nuclear weapon <a href="https://www.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-at-the-fran-eizenstat-and-eizenstat-family-memorial-lecture-series/">reduces the value</a> for the U.S. government of returning to the 2015 deal since Iran’s knowledge cannot be put back into Pandora’s box. </p>
<p>A return to the agreement, however, could help the U.S. and Iran step back from the edge, build trust and perhaps develop better political relations. Both sides would benefit from this stabilization: Iran economically from being reintegrated into the international system, and the U.S. from a verifiable lengthening of the time it would take Iran to break out.</p>
<p>None of this is guaranteed.</p>
<p>While both sides <a href="https://www.thechicagocouncil.org/sites/default/files/2021-03/report_iranians-americans-support-mutual-JCPOA-return.pdf">expressed support</a> for a return to the 2015 deal in early 2021, and continue to do so, there remain a number of sticking points that prevent progress. </p>
<p>Priorities for Iran include the U.S. removing the Iranian paramilitary group <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/irans-revolutionary-guards">Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps</a> from its list of foreign terrorist organizations and getting a guarantee that no future U.S. president would renege on the renewed nuclear deal. </p>
<p>The main issues for the U.S. center around the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/06/17/iran-still-has-three-american-hostages-so-far-trump-has-done-little-free-them/">American hostages</a> currently held in Iran and the desire to lengthen the time it would take Iran to stockpile material for a nuclear bomb. </p>
<p>The European Union’s <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/iran-nuclear-deal-eu-text-responses/31980637.html">final text for the proposed agreement</a> from August 2022 presents a last-ditch attempt to map out a return to the advantages of the nuclear deal. </p>
<p>Unless Iran accepts European reassurances, a deal seems increasingly unlikely. Unfortunately, Iran is then likely to increase its nuclear capabilities toward weaponization and further undermine the International Atomic Energy Agency’s monitoring of its program. Such escalations would precipitate increasingly confrontational responses, making any new agreement extremely unlikely, while heightening tensions and increasing the possibility of regional conflict.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/190100/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nina Srinivasan Rathbun does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A nuclear nonproliferation expert explains why Iran was always unlikely to return to the 2015 international agreement that limited its nuclear weapon development.Nina Srinivasan Rathbun, Professor of international relations, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and SciencesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1886022022-08-15T20:03:55Z2022-08-15T20:03:55ZEven a ‘limited’ nuclear war would starve millions of people, new study reveals<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479050/original/file-20220814-50256-sbk9ok.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C459%2C2396%2C1997&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20160416214257/http://www.nv.doe.gov/library/photos/photodetails.aspx?ID=1047">US Department of Energy</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Even a relatively small nuclear war would create a worldwide food crisis lasting at least a decade in which hundreds of millions would starve, according to our new modelling <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-022-00573-0">published in Nature Food</a>.</p>
<p>In a nuclear war, bombs dropped on cities and industrial areas would start firestorms, injecting large amounts of soot into the upper atmosphere. This soot would spread globally and rapidly cool the planet. </p>
<p>Although the war might only last days or weeks, the impacts on Earth’s climate could persist for more than ten years. We used advanced climate and food production models to explore what this would mean for the world’s food supply.</p>
<hr>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/as-putin-puts-nuclear-forces-on-high-alert-here-are-5-genuine-nuclear-dangers-for-us-all-177923">As Putin puts nuclear forces on high alert, here are 5 genuine nuclear dangers for us all</a>
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</em>
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<h2>Catastrophic scenarios</h2>
<p>Conflicts between nuclear-armed powers are an ongoing concern in multiple parts of the world. If one of these conflicts escalated to nuclear war, how would it affect the world’s food supply? And how would the impacts on global food production and trade scale with the size of such a war?</p>
<p>To try to answer these questions, we used simulations of the global climate coupled with models of major crops, fisheries and livestock production. These simulations let us assess the impacts of nuclear war on global food supply for 15 years after the conflict. </p>
<p>We simulated six different war scenarios, because the amount of soot injected into the upper atmosphere would depend on the number of weapons used. </p>
<p>The smallest war in our scenarios was a “limited” conflict between India and Pakistan, involving 100 Hiroshima-sized weapons (less than 3% of the global nuclear arsenal). The largest was a global nuclear holocaust, in which Russia and the United States detonate 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479059/original/file-20220815-56152-a48z4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479059/original/file-20220815-56152-a48z4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479059/original/file-20220815-56152-a48z4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479059/original/file-20220815-56152-a48z4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479059/original/file-20220815-56152-a48z4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479059/original/file-20220815-56152-a48z4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479059/original/file-20220815-56152-a48z4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479059/original/file-20220815-56152-a48z4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Australian bushfires of 2019–20 injected a million tonnes of soot into the upper atmosphere, but even a ‘limited’ nuclear war would have a much greater impact.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/146110/fires-and-smoke-engulf-southeastern-australia">NASA Earth Observatory</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>The six scenarios injected between 5 million and 150 million tonnes of soot into the upper atmosphere. For context, the Australian summer bushfires of 2019–20, which burned an area greater than the United Kingdom, injected about one million tonnes of smoke into the stratosphere.</p>
<p>Although we focused on India and Pakistan for our regional-scale war scenarios, nuclear conflict involving other nations could result in similar amounts of smoke and thus similar climate impacts.</p>
<h2>Widespread starvation</h2>
<p>Across all scenarios, impacts on the world’s climate would be significant for about a decade after a nuclear war. As a consequence, global food production would decline. </p>
<p>Even under the smallest war scenario we considered, sunlight over global crop regions would initially fall by about 10%, and global average temperatures would drop by up to 1-2°C. For a decade or so, this would cancel out all human-induced warming since the Industrial Revolution. </p>
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<p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-countries-have-nuclear-weapons-and-where-are-they-180382">What countries have nuclear weapons, and where are they?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<p>In response, global food production would decrease by 7% in the first five years after a small-scale regional nuclear war. Although this sounds minor, a 7% fall is almost double the largest recorded drop in food production since <a href="https://www.fao.org/faostat/">records</a> began in 1961. As a result, more than 250 million people would be without food two years after the war.</p>
<p>Unsurprisingly, a global nuclear war would be a civilisation-level threat, leaving over five billion people starving. </p>
<p>In this scenario, average global temperatures would fall by 10-15°C for the first five years after the war, while sunlight would crash by between 50–80% and rainfall over crop regions would drop by over 50%. As a result, global food production from land and sea would fall to less than 20% of pre-war levels and take over a decade to recover.</p>
<h2>No such thing as a limited nuclear war</h2>
<p>Behavioural change could avert some starvation after a relatively small nuclear war, but only regionally. We found that reducing household food waste and diverting feed from livestock to humans would lessen a regional nuclear war’s effect on food supply, but only in major food-exporting countries such as Russia, the United States and Australia. </p>
<p>Although great improvements have been made in recent decades, global food distribution remains a major challenge. Despite present-day food production being more than sufficient to nourish the world’s population, <a href="https://www.fao.org/publications/sofi/2021/en/">over 700 million people</a> suffered from undernutrition worldwide in 2020. </p>
<p>In a post-nuclear-war world, we expect global food distribution would cease entirely for several years, as exporting countries suspend trade and focus on feeding their own populations. This would make war-induced shortages even worse in food-importing countries, especially in Asia, Europe and the Middle East. </p>
<p>Our results point to a stark and clear conclusion: there is no such thing as a limited nuclear war, where impacts are confined to warring countries. </p>
<p>Our findings provide further support for the <a href="https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/joint-soviet-united-states-statement-summit-meeting-geneva">1985 statement</a> by US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/01/03/p5-statement-on-preventing-nuclear-war-and-avoiding-arms-races/">reaffirmed by the current leaders of China, France, the UK, Russia and the US</a> this year:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. </p>
</blockquote>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/i-still-cannot-get-over-it-75-years-after-japan-atomic-bombs-a-nuclear-weapons-ban-treaty-is-finally-realised-147851">'I still cannot get over it': 75 years after Japan atomic bombs, a nuclear weapons ban treaty is finally realised</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/188602/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ryan Heneghan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Nuclear war would trigger a global food crisis lasting at least a decade, in which hundreds of millions or more would be likely to starve.Ryan Heneghan, Lecturer in Mathematical Ecology, Queensland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1882572022-08-04T16:22:20Z2022-08-04T16:22:20ZUkraine Recap: grain and gas were problems the west should have seen coming<p>There was a perceptible sense of relief on Monday when the Razoni, a Sierra Leone-flagged vessel, left the port of Odesa with 26,000 tons of grain bound for Tripoli in Lebanon. This was the first ship out of the port city since Vladimir Putin sent his military machine into Ukraine and Russian ships began its blockade.</p>
<p>The deal, negotiated by UN secretary general António Guterres and Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, was struck on July 23 and was followed the very next day with Russian airstrikes on Odesa. They struck what a Russian foreign ministry spokesperson said were legitimate military targets including a stockpile of US-supplied missiles.</p>
<p>It’s now reported that there are a further 17 ships in dock in Odesa loaded with grain and awaiting permission to leave. It’s not yet known what is causing the delay, but obviously outgoing vessels need to be checked to ensure they carry only grain, fertiliser or food and not any other commodities. Incoming ships need to be checked for weapons.</p>
<p>But, assuming that the deal holds and that a regular supply of grain is able to leave Ukraine – where there is 22 million tonnes of wheat, maize, sunflower seed and other grains in silos waiting for export – the benefits will be immediate, <a href="https://theconversation.com/russia-ukraine-grain-export-deal-promises-major-benefits-for-poor-countries-if-it-holds-187595">writes Wandile Sihlobo</a>, a senior fellow in agricultural economics at Stellenbosch University in South Africa.</p>
<p>He believes there will be a softening in prices as more grain supplies become available to the world market. But he says grain prices are unlikely to return to pre-war levels, thanks to a number of other factors including drought in South America, east Africa and Indonesia and rising demand for grains in China.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/russia-ukraine-grain-export-deal-promises-major-benefits-for-poor-countries-if-it-holds-187595">Russia/Ukraine grain export deal promises major benefits for poor countries. If it holds</a>
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<p>But why didn’t the west see this coming years ago, asks Anna-Sophie Maass, who specialises in international relations and diplomacy at Lancaster University. She believes Russia’s intentions towards Ukraine <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-first-grain-ship-leaves-odesa-but-eu-should-have-seen-food-and-energy-crises-coming-187886">have been pretty clear</a> since it annexed Crimea and 2014 and started insurgences in the Donbas region (which have now escalated – as we know – into an all-out and bloody offensive). Ukraine’s huge harvests were always going to represent a valuable opportunity for Putin to leverage the west. Here’s hoping the deal holds and the food crisis is alleviated.</p>
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<p><strong><em>This is our weekly recap of expert analysis of the Ukraine conflict.</em></strong>
<em>The Conversation, a not-for-profit newsgroup, works with a wide range of academics across its global network to produce evidence-based analysis. Get these recaps in your inbox every Thursday. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/ukraine-recap-114?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+Newsletter+Ukraine+Recap+2022+Mar&utm_content=WeeklyRecapTop">Subscribe here</a>.</em></p>
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<p>Of course, it isn’t just the food shortage which is a direct consequence of the invasion of Ukraine, there is also a looming shortage of gas which will affect pretty much everyone. The flow of gas through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline from Russia into Germany was switched back on after being out of commission for ten days. But the flow is at 20% of its pre-war levels – due, Moscow says – to “technical problems”. </p>
<p>Again, says Maass, we’ve known about this danger since as far back as 2006, when the state-owned Russian gas monopoly Gazprom cut off supply to Ukraine, sounding a warning to EU institutions and member states about the problem of relying on Russia as a supplier.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-first-grain-ship-leaves-odesa-but-eu-should-have-seen-food-and-energy-crises-coming-187886">Ukraine war: first grain ship leaves Odesa, but EU should have seen food and energy crises coming</a>
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<h2>Prospect of escalation?</h2>
<p>As if Ukraine wasn’t enough to worry about (and don’t get me started about China’s recent sabre rattling over Taiwan, which is not – in the geopolitical scheme of things – entirely unadjacent from the Ukraine crisis), there has been unrest recently in the Balkans between Kosovo and Serbia.</p>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Olinchuk via Shutterstock</span></span>
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<p>It’s a seemingly trivial yet complex issue which revolves around car numberplates and entry and exit permits for people travelling from Serbia into Kosovo and vice-versa. Stefan Wolff, an expert in security issues at the University of Birmingham, explains the <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-nato-and-the-eu-can-turn-kosovo-border-crisis-into-an-opportunity-to-put-more-pressure-on-russia-188078">causes of the conflict</a> and considers its implications for Russia and the west in a region where both sides are competing for influence. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-nato-and-the-eu-can-turn-kosovo-border-crisis-into-an-opportunity-to-put-more-pressure-on-russia-188078">Ukraine war: Nato and the EU can turn Kosovo border crisis into an opportunity to put more pressure on Russia</a>
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<p>All the while in the back of everone’s mind is still the threat that Putin might resort to using nuclear weapons if he feels backed into a corner, or to turn the tide of the war. This possibility has certainly figured in Nato’s calculations, particularly after Putin ally, Dmitry Medvedev, recently invoked the possibility of resorting to a nuclear response if Russian soldiers are punished for war crimes in Ukraine. He said: “The idea to punish a country that has the largest nuclear arsenal is absurd in and of itself … And potentially creates a threat to the existence of mankind.”</p>
<p>But Matthew Sussex, a fellow at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University, remains convinced that it <a href="https://theconversation.com/are-vladimir-putins-nuclear-threats-a-bluff-in-a-word-probably-187689">would make no sense</a> for Russia to resort to using its nuclear weapons and says the Russian military doctrine around their use is quite clear that they are weapons of last resort in an existential crisis. But, adds Sussex, the threat of using them has proved to be a useful tool for the Kremlin.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/are-vladimir-putins-nuclear-threats-a-bluff-in-a-word-probably-187689">Are Vladimir Putin’s nuclear threats a bluff? In a word – probably</a>
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<h2>Where does this leave Ukraine’s economy?</h2>
<p>As you would expect, this war has been crippling for Ukraine’s economy. According to a forecast by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the country’s GDP could shrink by 35% as a result of the war. An inability to export grain has hit Ukraine hard, a problem which which may now begin to ease if shipments are allowed to pass freely through its ports. But the cost of this war has been enormous already and Ukraine’s ministry of finance has estimated its public sector deficit increased from US$2 billion (£1.64 billion) in March 2022 to as much as US$7 billion by May.</p>
<p>This is where the international community can come in, <a href="https://theconversation.com/war-is-stopping-ukraine-from-paying-its-debts-heres-how-international-powers-can-continue-to-support-its-recovery-187939">writes Matt Qvortrup</a>
the chair of Applied Political Science at Coventry University. Ukraine already asked for permission to freeze around US$20 billion in debt earlier this month, a request which was immediately granted by western governments.</p>
<p>Qvortrup believes that the west will continue to do whatever it can to ease the financial strain on Ukraine’s economy while it fights for its existence. And, he reminds us, it hasn’t all been a bed of roses for Russia’s economy, either.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/war-is-stopping-ukraine-from-paying-its-debts-heres-how-international-powers-can-continue-to-support-its-recovery-187939">War is stopping Ukraine from paying its debts -- here's how international powers can continue to support its recovery</a>
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<p><em>Ukraine Recap is available as a weekly email newsletter. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/ukraine-recap-114?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+Newsletter+Ukraine+Recap+2022+Mar&utm_content=WeeklyRecapBottom">Click here to get our recaps directly in your inbox.</a></em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/188257/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
The deal to restart grain shipments won’t bring food prices back to pre-war levels.Jonathan Este, Senior International Affairs Editor, Associate EditorLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1876892022-07-28T20:05:33Z2022-07-28T20:05:33ZAre Vladimir Putin’s nuclear threats a bluff? In a word – probably<p>Russian President Vladimir Putin habitually rattles his nuclear sabres when things start looking grim for Moscow, and has done so long before his ill-advised invasion of Ukraine.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/feb/13/russia.putin">February 2008</a>, he promised to target Ukraine with nuclear weapons if the United States stationed missile defences there. In August the same year, he threatened a nuclear war if <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/aug/15/russia.poland.nuclear.missiles.threat">Poland</a> hosted the same system. In 2014, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned that Russia would <a href="https://thediplomat.com/2014/07/russia-threatens-nuclear-strikes-over-crimea/">consider nuclear strikes</a> if Ukraine tried to retake Crimea.</p>
<p>A year later, the Kremlin said it would <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-denmark-russia-idUSKBN0MI0ML20150322">target Danish warships</a> with nuclear missiles if they participated in NATO defence systems. And within the space of a few months – in December 2018 and February 2019 – Putin warned the US that <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/20/putin-warns-the-threat-of-nuclear-war-should-not-be-underestimated-.html">nuclear war</a> was possible, and then promised to <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/putin-russia-parliament-economy/29779491.html">target</a> the American mainland if it deployed nuclear weapons in Europe.</p>
<p>Since the invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin has waggled its nuclear arsenal so many times it’s starting to become tedious. Even the most peripheral slight is apparently fair game, like former President Dmitry Medvedev’s <a href="https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/07/06/russia-ex-president-invokes-nuclear-war-if-moscow-punished-by-icc-a78219">invocation of nuclear retaliation</a> if the International Criminal Court (ICC) pursued war crimes investigations against Russian soldiers.</p>
<h2>Deterrence</h2>
<p>One explanation for Russia’s behaviour is that it’s attempting to deter NATO from attacking it. For nuclear deterrence to be effective, states possessing such weapons require three things, commonly referred to as the “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/26326457#metadata_info_tab_contents">Three Cs</a>”: capability, communication and credibility.</p>
<p>Russia certainly has the first of these. With <a href="https://fas.org/issues/nuclear-weapons/status-world-nuclear-forces/">nearly 6,000 nuclear warheads</a> it’s the world’s most heavily armed nuclear state. It also communicates – loudly and with regularity – those capabilities.</p>
<p>But the question of credibility remains an open one, reliant on the perceptions of others. Put simply, the US and other nuclear states must believe Russia will use nuclear weapons under a certain set of conditions, usually in retaliation for a similar attack or when it faces a threat to its survival.</p>
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<h2>But will it really use them?</h2>
<p>Russia’s declared <a href="https://thediplomat.com/2020/06/whats-in-russias-new-nuclear-deterrence-basic-principles/">nuclear doctrine</a> identifies the circumstances under which it would employ nuclear weapons in a fairly rational and sensible manner.</p>
<p>Its 2020 <a href="https://archive.mid.ru/en/web/guest/foreign_policy/international_safety/disarmament/-/asset_publisher/rp0fiUBmANaH/content/id/4152094">Basic Principles on Nuclear Deterrence</a> stresses that Russia will reserve the right to use nuclear weapons “in response to the use of nuclear and other types of weapons of mass destruction against it and/or its allies”. Or, if Russia comes under such severe conventional attack that “the very existence of the state is in jeopardy”.</p>
<p>Putin’s spokesman <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/kremlin-spokesman-russia-would-use-nuclear-weapons-only-case-threat-existence-2022-03-28/">Dmitry Peskov</a> addressed this directly on March 28, stating “any outcome of the operation [in Ukraine] of course isn’t a reason for usage of a nuclear weapon”.</p>
<p>Yet this has not prevented widespread acceptance of the view that Russia would use nuclear weapons in order to seize the advantage in escalation control. This idea, commonly referred to as “escalate to de-escalate” is even embedded in the US 2018 <a href="https://media.defense.gov/2018/Feb/02/2001872877/-1/-1/1/EXECUTIVE-SUMMARY.PDF">Nuclear Posture Review’s</a> assessment of Russian intentions.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/weapons-of-mass-destruction-what-are-the-chances-russia-will-use-a-nuclear-or-chemical-attack-on-ukraine-179098">Weapons of mass destruction: what are the chances Russia will use a nuclear or chemical attack on Ukraine?</a>
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<p>But the Kremlin’s perpetual nuclear signalling has much more to do with its attempts to intimidate and attain <a href="https://nipp.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/IS-525.pdf">reflexive control</a> over the West. In other words, it’s seeking to get the US and other NATO members to so fear the prospect of nuclear war that they will accede to Russian demands. That makes it a coercive strategy, but crucially one that relies on never actually being tested.</p>
<p>There are plenty of signs this is working. In April 2022, Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz based his decision not to supply heavy weapons to Ukraine with the <a href="https://ecfr.eu/article/shadow-of-the-bomb-russias-nuclear-threats/">justification</a> that “there must not be a nuclear war”.</p>
<p>A number of Western commentators have also begun reconsidering the “<a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/07/01/nuclear-war-taboo-arms-control-russia-ukraine-deterrence/">nuclear taboo</a>”, worrying Putin might <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-why-moscow-could-go-nuclear-over-kyivs-threats-to-crimea-187188">resort to nuclear weapons</a> in Ukraine if he feels backed into a corner, or to <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/06/russia-ukraine-nuclear-weapon-us-response/661315/">turn the tide</a> of the war. One <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/27/opinion/ukraine-russia-us-diplomacy.html">particularly agitated opinion piece</a> in the New York Times called for immediate talks before major power war became inevitable.</p>
<h2>It makes little sense for Russia to go nuclear in Ukraine</h2>
<p>But what if the Kremlin’s recent nuclear threats are aimed less at NATO and more at Kyiv? Under those conditions, the logic of nuclear deterrence (threatening a non-nuclear country) do not apply.</p>
<p>There are several reasons Putin might seek to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine: a decapitating strike, to destroy a large portion of Ukraine’s armed forces, to cripple Ukrainian infrastructure and communications, or as a warning. </p>
<p>This also generally means <a href="https://www.lowyinstitute.org/publications/tactical-nuclear-weapons-modern-nuclear-era">using different types</a> of nuclear weapons. Rather than large city-busting bombs, Russia would employ smaller non-strategic nuclear warheads. It certainly has plenty of them: about <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-60664169">2,000 warheads</a> in Russia’s stockpile are tactical nuclear weapons.</p>
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<p>But none of these scenarios make sense for Russia. While Moscow has returned to <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/russia-seeks-regime-change-in-ukraine-says-kremlin-s-top-diplomat-20220726-p5b4i5.html">regime change</a> in Ukraine as a war aim, using a nuclear weapon to take out Volodymyr Zelenskyy would be difficult and risky. It presupposes ironclad intelligence about his location, entails significant loss of civilian life, and requires Moscow to accept significant destruction wherever Zelenskyy might be. It would hardly look good for victorious Russian forces to be unable to enter an irradiated Kyiv, for instance. </p>
<p>Punching nuclear holes in Ukrainian lines is equally risky. Ukraine’s army has deliberately decentralised so it can operate with maximum mobility (often referred to as “<a href="https://www.forces.net/ukraine/news/ukraine-what-are-shoot-and-scoot-tactics-being-used-ukrainian-forces">shoot and scoot</a>”). Putin would have to order numerous nuclear attacks for such a tactic to be effective. And he would be unable to prevent <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/05/16/scenarios-putin-nukes-00032505">radioactive fallout</a> from potentially blowing over “liberated” portions of Donbas under Russian control, not to mention Western Russia itself. </p>
<p>Another possibility is a high-altitude detonation over a city, doing no damage but causing a massive electromagnetic pulse (EMP). An <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/18_1009_EMP_GMD_Strategy-Non-Embargoed.pdf">EMP attack</a> would fry electrical systems and electronics, bringing critical infrastructure to a standstill. But again, it would be difficult to limit EMP burst effects to Ukraine alone, and it would leave Moscow with very little remaining usable industry.</p>
<p>Finally, the Kremlin might seek a <a href="https://www.heritage.org/defense/report/the-us-should-address-the-threat-russias-non-strategic-nuclear-weapons">demonstration effect</a> by detonating a nuclear device away from populated areas, or even over the Black Sea. This would certainly attract attention, but would ultimately be of psychological value, without any practical battlefield utility. And Russia would join the US as the only countries to have used such weapons in anger.</p>
<h2>Is Russia rational?</h2>
<p>In all this, there’s naturally a big caveat: the assumption Russia’s regime is <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2010465">rational</a>.</p>
<p>Having accrued vast personal fortunes and a taste for luxury, Russia’s rulers are likely in no hurry to commit suicide in a major nuclear cascade.</p>
<p>However, since there’s no way of being certain, the West must continue to take Russian nuclear posturing seriously – but also with healthy scepticism. Indeed, if the West capitulates to Russian demands due to fears of nuclear war, it will further embolden Putin and show other nations nuclear brinkmanship is appealing. </p>
<p>But Russia arguably faces the bigger risk here. If Putin uses nuclear weapons against Ukraine or a NATO member it would also make it very difficult for states that have quietly supported it (such as China) or sought to benefit from its pariah status through trade (like India) to continue to do so. It would also likely engender a broader war that he has tried hard to avoid.</p>
<p>Let’s continue to hope Moscow, although often misguided, remains rational.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187689/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Sussex has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council, the Carnegie Foundation, the Lowy Institute, and various Australian government agencies.</span></em></p>Using nuclear weapons in Ukraine would be difficult and risky for Russia.Matthew Sussex, Fellow, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1873892022-07-22T14:35:18Z2022-07-22T14:35:18ZRussian aggression in Ukraine may prompt Japan and South Korea to abandon nuclear non-proliferation – here’s why<p>The war in Ukraine called into question many of the fundamental pillars of the international order. The European security system that has developed since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact has received a shattering blow. A war of aggression by a major power intent to destroy a neighbouring state and annex significant territories has <a href="https://www.cfr.org/article/how-russias-invasion-ukraine-violates-international-law">broken with major taboos</a>, not to mention international law. </p>
<p>Apart from the obvious tragedy for the people of Ukraine, another potential casualty is the nuclear nonproliferation system which has existed since 1970. Putin’s blatant breach of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-what-is-the-budapest-memorandum-and-why-has-russias-invasion-torn-it-up-178184">Budapest Memorandum</a>, signed in 1994 by Russia, the UK and US relating to the accession of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), has upended security guarantees in Europe. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-what-is-the-budapest-memorandum-and-why-has-russias-invasion-torn-it-up-178184">Ukraine war: what is the Budapest Memorandum and why has Russia's invasion torn it up?</a>
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<p>The memorandum was an assurance of territorial integrity for Ukraine after it agreed to dismantle the large nuclear arsenal that remained on its territory after the break up of the Soviet Union. By signing the memorandum, Russia – along with the US and the UK – agreed not to threaten Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan with military force or economic coercion. This has proved to be worthless.</p>
<p>And there’s the danger. If we now live in a world where major powers are fully prepared to embark on a full-scale war to achieve their territorial ambitions, then the assumptions of the NPT, according to which non-nuclear states can rely on the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvqsdm64?turn_away=true">security assurances</a> from the major powers, may no longer be valid. Many countries may think it prudent to go nuclear to avoid Ukraine’s fate.</p>
<h2>Anxiety in Asia</h2>
<p>This doesn’t stop in Europe. Allies of the US in Asia are wondering the extent to which the principle of “<a href="https://www.stimson.org/2021/walking-the-tightrope-u-s-extended-deterrence-in-northeast-asia-under-president-biden/">extended deterrence</a>” (the protection afforded by America’s nuclear umbrella) is still viable. China’s increasingly aggressive pursuit its foreign policy aims in recent years has been a major concern for Taiwan, where many question Washington’s policy of “<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-ukraine-war-could-boost-tensions-between-us-and-china-over-future-of-taiwan-183745">strategic ambiguity</a>” about how and to what extent the US would support the country. </p>
<p>China’s activities in the <a href="https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/territorial-disputes-south-china-sea">South China Sea</a>, where it pursues its claims on maritime territories not accepted in international law, have also raised major concerns throughout the region. Japan and China have been at loggerheads for some years over a number of disputed territories including the <a href="https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/tensions-east-china-sea">Senkaku/Diaoyu islands</a>.</p>
<p>Another concern is obviously North Korea’s nuclear programme and its regular testing of ballistic missiles which could carry nuclear warheads and have a range which could easily threaten Japan and South Korea. If and when Pyongyang develops the capacity to hit targets in <a href="https://docs.house.gov/meetings/AP/AP02/20210527/112682/HHRG-117-AP02-Wstate-MilleyM-20210527.pdf">continental US</a>, this could well test America’s nuclear guarantee in Asia.</p>
<h2>A nuclear South Korea?</h2>
<p>There is increasing support within South Korea for the development of its own nuclear deterrent. A <a href="https://www.thechicagocouncil.org/sites/default/files/2022-02/Korea%20Nuclear%20Report%20PDF.pdf">survey taken earlier this year</a> found that 71% approved of South Korea going nuclear. This was in line with similar polls over <a href="https://www.nknews.org/2021/09/south-koreans-have-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-bomb-polling-suggests/">recent years</a>. While the new South Korean government led by
<a href="https://www.france24.com/en/asia-pacific/20220510-who-is-south-korea-s-new-president-yoon-suk-yeol">Yoon Suk-yeoul</a> does not endorse such a policy and remains committed to the US-ROK alliance, there have been persistent voices in South Korea supporting a shift towards nuclear <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/09/09/south-korea-nuclear-deterrent-north-korea/">self-reliance</a>. </p>
<p>There is also considerable pressure in Japan to abandon the post-war “Peace Constitution” which banned the country from maintaining anything stronger than a self-defence force – and the country recently <a href="https://theconversation.com/japans-doubling-of-its-defence-budget-will-make-the-world-a-more-dangerous-place-heres-why-182625">doubled its military budget</a>. Japan has the technological capacity to <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/asia/2019-10-03/how-japan-could-go-nuclear">develop nuclear weapons quickly</a> – but the experience of US atomic attacks during the second world war remain a powerful restraint.</p>
<p>In March 2022 the late prime minister, Shinzo Abe, called for US nuclear weapons to be based on Japanese territory, presumably to deter both China and North Korea. This – predictably enough – provoked an <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/01/china-rattled-by-calls-for-japan-to-host-us-nuclear-weapons">angry reaction from Beijing</a>, which asked Japan to “reflect on its history”. </p>
<h2>Fragile security</h2>
<p>For now, the US nuclear guarantee remains credible in the eyes of its Asian partners and the strategic situation on the Korean peninsula remains stable – despite the wrangling already described. It’s a very different situation from what is happening in Ukraine. The US already has forces on the Korean peninsula and is <a href="https://sgp.fas.org/crs/row/R41481.pdf">committed to South Korea’s defence</a>. North Korea is much more vulnerable than the US under any nuclear war scenario. If Pyongyang ever launched a nuclear strike, it would risk rapid and complete obliteration. </p>
<p>An obvious way to address the extended deterrence problem would be to redeploy US nuclear forces in South Korea, similar to Abe’s suggestion for Japan. That would considerably enhance the credibility of a US security guarantee and would complicate China’s calculations, even with respect to Taiwan – despite all the noises from Beijing about reunification. </p>
<p>But South Korea faces the European dilemma – which is that the more credible its own capabilities become, the less the US will feel the need to commit its resources. While South Korea’s conventional capabilities are more than a match for the North Korean army and its <a href="https://www.iiss.org/blogs/research-paper/2018/06/military-balance-korean-peninsula">obsolete equipment</a>, it has no answer to the North’s weapons of mass destruction. So far South Korea seems to have struck a sensible balance – going nuclear could upend all of that as it may cause Washington to withdraw entirely. </p>
<p>It seems that despite the flagrant violations of the security assurances by Russia and the increasing capabilities of the North Korean nuclear arsenal, the commitment to the NPT remains firm. But this could change if the security environment in Europe and Asia continues to deteriorate and Russia and China become increasingly perceived as a serious and realistic military threats. </p>
<p>If the reliability of the US as a security guarantor is weakened it could result in a fatal erosion of the assumptions of the NPT. This would make the pressure for indigenous nuclear arsenals – both in Asia and the Middle East – irresistible. This is something the “Great Powers” have taken pains to prevent since 1945.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187389/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christoph Bluth received funding from the Korean Foundation.</span></em></p>Concerns about aggression from North Korea and China might drive some Asian countries to develop their own nuclear arsenals.Christoph Bluth, Professor of International Relations and Security, University of BradfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.