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A New nuclear weapon station that is going to be used in Belarus and the risk of using the bombs is the highest its been since the cold war. This is the first nuclear sharing agreement that has been used since the treaty was made in the 1970's.

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Many Speakers Condemn Russian Federation's Dangerous Rhetoric, Veiled Threats

The Russian Federation's recent announcement of plans to station non-strategic nuclear weapons in Belarus represents the first "nuclear sharing" agreement made since the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons entered into force in 1970, the senior United Nations disarmament official told the Security Council today, emphasizing that - against the backdrop of the Ukraine conflict - the risk such arms will be used is higher today than at any time since the end of the cold war.

Izumi Nakamitsu, Under-Secretary-General and High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, reported that on 25 March, Moscow announced its agreement with Minsk to station its non-strategic nuclear weapons in Belarus. "I wish to be clear at the outset - all States must avoid taking any actions that could lead to escalation, mistake or miscalculation," she stressed, adding that all States parties must strictly adhere to their obligations under the landmark Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which is also known as the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

While the issue of the hosting by a non-nuclear-weapon State of a nuclear-weapon State's nuclear arms is one that has existed for decades, she said all such arrangements predate the Non-Proliferation Treaty - "with the exception of the recent announcement [by the Russian Federation]". Stressing that the risk of a nuclear weapon being used is currently higher than at any time since the depths of the cold war, she said the war in Ukraine represents "the most acute example of that risk". The absence of dialogue and the erosion of the disarmament and arms control architecture, combined with dangerous rhetoric and veiled threats, are key drivers of this potentially existential risk, she added.

As Council members took the floor, the representative of the United States described the Russian Federation's suggestion that its intention to deploy nuclear weapons in Belarus is somehow justified as "ludicrous". The 25 March announcement was not about nuclear burden-sharing, as some have claimed, and there is no credible reason for Moscow to station nuclear weapons in Belarus. Rather, he stressed that "the Kremlin is attempting to manipulate the spectre of nuclear conflict to help win its illegal war against Ukraine, while it further tramples on the UN Charter". He called on Moscow to cease its war of aggression against Ukraine and on the regime of Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko to cease its complicity.

Albania's representative said that the latest provocative announcement by the Russian Federation that it plans to transfer tactical nuclear weapons to another country would, at any time, be troubling news; however, in the context of that country's war of aggression against Ukraine, it is "a clear and irresponsible threat". Emphasizing Moscow's lack of respect for international commitments, he turned to Belarus' role in recent developments, noting that its citizens will judge whether the change in its nuclear policy will make them more secure or "just turn their country into a nuclear hostage, becoming more and more a Russian appendix".

The representative of Japan joined other speakers in condemning Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin's recent announcement, adding that Moscow is abusing its status as a nuclear-weapons State with its irresponsible rhetoric. As the only country that has ever suffered atomic bombings during war, Japan is strongly committed to leading international efforts towards a world without nuclear weapons. "The record of 77 years of non-use of nuclear weapons must not be broken by Russia," he stressed, calling on all Member States to renew their commitment to the global disarmament and non-proliferation regime.

Ukraine's representative said the movement of nuclear weapons to Belarussian soil is a matter of concern for the entire international community. Noting that "nuclear blackmail" is a tool the Russian Federation has exploited since the start of the war - along with threats of attacks at nuclear power facilities - he said that, in contrast, Ukraine has always been a responsible member of the international community, having fully abandoned the world's third-largest nuclear arsenal. By its recent actions, the Russian Federation is indicating once again that it regards nuclear weapons as tools of threats and intimidation, not deterrence, he said, declaring: "The Kremlin is ready to threaten the world with nuclear apocalypse."

Meanwhile, the representative of the Russian Federation said recent years have seen a severe erosion of the global security architecture and noted efforts by the United States and its allies - "those that proclaim themselves victors in the cold war" - to systematically dismantle key arms-control agreements and confidence-building structures. Also citing the United States decisions over recent years to withdraw from several strategic security agreements, he said President Putin has made clear that Moscow is not transferring nuclear weapons. Rather, "we are talking about" the transfer of tactical missile systems, the retrofitting of Belarusian aircraft, the training of teams and the construction of a storage facility for tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, he said.

Striking a similar tone, the delegate of Belarus said his country has been a consistent advocate for nuclear disarmament, recalling its conscious choice in 1993 to renounce nuclear weapons and join the Non-Proliferation Treaty - making it the first post-Soviet State to refuse the possession of such arms without preconditions. Citing trade and banking bans, as well as other restrictions, recently imposed on his country by some other States - a "direct, gross interference" into its domestic affairs - he said Belarus is taking actions to shore up its own defensive capacity, in line with international law, in response to legitimate security concerns.

The representative of Brazil said nuclear disarmament seems to have gone into reverse since the 2020 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference. All nuclear-weapons States are upgrading their arsenals, either quantitatively or qualitatively, or both. Brazil has long maintained that any nuclear sharing arrangement is inconsistent with Articles I and II of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, he stressed, voicing concern about any such arrangements - including those by North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries - and emphasized that "two wrongs do not make a right".

Also speaking today were the representatives of Switzerland, Gabon, China, Malta, United Kingdom, Ghana, Ecuador, United Arab Emirates, France, Mozambique, Poland and Estonia (speaking also on behalf of Latvia and Lithuania).

The representative of the European Union, in its capacity as observer, also participated.

The meeting began at 10:04 a.m. and ended at 12:13 p.m.

IZUMI NAKAMITSU, Under-Secretary-General and High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, reported that on 25 March, the Russian Federation announced that it reached an agreement with Minsk to station its non-strategic nuclear weapons in Belarusian territory. "I wish to be clear at the outset - all States must avoid taking any actions that could lead to escalation, mistake or miscalculation," she stressed. All States parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, also known as the Non-Proliferation Treaty, must strictly adhere to their commitments and obligations under that instrument. She emphasized that the fulfilment of those commitments lies at the core of the maintenance of international peace and security, adding that the elimination of nuclear weapons remains the highest disarmament priority of the United Nations and a goal to which all its Member States remain committed.

The issue of the hosting by a non-nuclear weapon State of a nuclear-weapon State's nuclear weapons is one that has existed for decades, she continued. Such arrangements predate the Non-Proliferation Treaty, "with the exception of the recent announcement [by the Russian Federation]". The issue of so-called "nuclear sharing" was debated intensely during the negotiation of the that Treaty, and has been the subject of subsequent discussions, including at the Treaty's Review Conferences. States parties' have taken different positions and interpretations on that issue, and those positions are well-known to all.

Emphasizing that the risk of a nuclear weapon being used is currently higher than at any time since the depths of the cold war, she said the war in Ukraine represents "the most acute example of that risk". The absence of dialogue and the erosion of the disarmament and arms control architecture, combined with dangerous rhetoric and veiled threats, are key drivers of this potentially existential risk. Calling on States to return to dialogue to urgently de-escalate tensions, she said that, for the sake of human security, the Russian Federation and the United States should return to full implementation of the New Treaty on the Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (START) Treaty and commence negotiations on its successor. She also appealed to all States parties of the Non-Proliferation Treaty to fully adhere to their obligations and immediately engage in serious efforts to reduce nuclear risk and de-escalate tensions.
Statements
FERIT HOXHA ( Albania) said that the latest provocative announcement by the Russian Federation to transfer tactical nuclear weapons to another country would, at any time, be troubling news; however, in the context of that country's war of aggression against Ukraine, it is "a clear and irresponsible threat". Such actions are coherent with the Russian Federation's persistent, stubborn course of actions from February 2022 onwards, when it placed its nuclear weapons on "war alert", to the suspension of its obligations under the New START Treaty in February 2023, which threaten its neighbours and endanger regional and global stability. Saying that the Russian Federation does not respect its commitments is "just an understatement", he stressed, pointing to its lack of respect for the Charter of the United Nations, violations of international law since the start of the conflict and its paying no heed to the call of the International Court of Justice to halt its invasion of Ukraine. Turning to Belarus' role in these developments, he noted that its citizens would judge whether this change in its nuclear policy will make them more secure or "just turn their country into a nuclear hostage, becoming more and more a Russian appendix". Such behaviour is meant to instil fear among the European public, he said, calling "laughable" Belarus' justification that it needs such weapons to protect itself against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The Russian Federation's actions contribute to proliferation, which contradicts its role as a permanent member of the Council.

ROBERT A. WOOD ( United States) underscored that the Russian Federation's suggestion that its intended deployment of nuclear weapons in Belarus is somehow justified because of the use of armour-piercing ammunition is "ludicrous". The announced deployment has nothing to do with such ammunition - which has been in use for decades and is possessed by Moscow itself - but has everything to do with the Kremlin's attempts to limit or deter international security assistance for Ukraine. He went on to point out that, while Moscow does not want Ukraine to be able to defend itself against Russian tanks, the reality is that "Russian tanks would not come into contact with these armour-piercing munitions if Russian tanks were not within Ukraine's sovereign territory in the first place". Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin's 25 March announcement was not about nuclear burden-sharing, as there is no credible reason for Moscow to station nuclear weapons in Belarus. Rather, he stressed that "the Kremlin is attempting to manipulate the spectre of nuclear conflict to help win its illegal war against Ukraine while it further tramples on the UN Charter". He therefore called on the Russian Federation to cease its war of aggression against Ukraine, and on the Lukashenko regime to cease its complicity in the same.

ADRIAN DOMINIK HAURI ( Switzerland) stressed that statements regarding the intention to deploy nuclear weapons in Belarus are particularly troubling when they come from a party to an international armed conflict. If the Russian Federation were to establish a nuclear sharing system, this would contradict its repeated condemnations of this practice and raise questions regarding its commitment to implement measures leading to nuclear disarmament. All nuclear-weapon States are required to advance disarmament and reduce nuclear risks, he reminded, calling also on Belarus to show responsibility by refraining from hosting such arms on its territory. As any use of nuclear weapons would have catastrophic humanitarian consequences and risk uncontrolled escalation - whether intentionally or through miscalculation, misunderstanding or accident - and must be avoided. In that regard, Switzerland calls on all States with nuclear weapons to reduce their role in military and security doctrines; work towards nuclear disarmament as well as the reduction of any associated risks; and strengthen the Council's role and responsibility. All parties to the New START Treaty must also redouble their efforts to conclude a new agreement before its expiration in 2026, he added.

MICHEL XAVIER BIANG ( Gabon) said the rhetoric of using nuclear weapons makes the world feel worse, especially the people most directly affected by this war. It also goes against the international goals of disarmament and the goals of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. "It is a step back from making the world more secure," he said. It also sends a contradictory statement to countries without nuclear weapons. Making nuclear weapons acceptable is dangerous for humankind. His delegation never supports the use, or the threat of use, of nuclear weapons. He affirmed his delegation's opposition to this absurd war that has lasted for far too long. The Council must be an epicentre of new ideas to find solutions and bring peace and security to Ukraine. All countries must respect international humanitarian law and refrain from any escalating actions. It is unacceptable to threaten the use of nuclear weapons. "The channels of diplomacy must replace the use of force," he said.

GENG SHUANG ( China) said nuclear weapons are the "sword of Damocles hanging over our head". Since its first day as a possessor of such weapons, China has honoured the pledge of non-first use under any circumstances and has committed unconditionally not to use such weapons against any non-nuclear-weapons States or zones - the only nuclear weapons-possessing State to have done so. China supports the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the gradual, complete elimination of nuclear weapons. He called for the abolition of nuclear-sharing arrangements, as well as for the withdrawal of all such weapons deployed abroad. In 2002, five nuclear-weapon States reaffirmed that none of their nuclear weapons are targeted at each other, or at any non-nuclear-weapons States. Urging all nuclear weapons possessors to abide strictly by that statement and avoid any conflict between them, he added that China's position on Ukraine is clear and consistent. It has put forward a proposal for a political settlement, which rejects any attacks against nuclear weapons facilities or power plants, and stresses that "nuclear wars must not be fought". He reiterated that dialogue towards a political settlement should happen "sooner than later" and called for the urgent resumption of dialogue.

DARREN CAMILLERI ( Malta), affirming his country's commitment to nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament and to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, said the world has held its breath since the start of the Russian Federation's aggression against Ukraine just over a year ago as it conducts reckless military activity within and around Ukraine's civilian nuclear facilities and continues to occupy Europe's largest nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia, creating a significant risk of a radiological incident. Moscow has wielded nuclear threats against its neighbour, a non-nuclear-weapon State that voluntarily gave up its nuclear arsenal almost 30 years ago, he said, adding: "Ukraine did this in good faith and in exchange for security assurances from Russia, assurances which have been betrayed." Recalling that, at the start of 2022, the five permanent members of the Council, including the Russian Federation, declared that "a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought", he pointed out that that country's "reckless nuclear rhetoric contradicts this declaration". He urged Minsk to understand the repercussions of its actions if it chose to accommodate Moscow's plans, pointing out that the storage or deployment of the Russian Federation's nuclear weapons on Belarusian territory would raise nuclear tensions and drastically increase the possibility of an escalation to nuclear war. "Such risks are unacceptable. They should never be considered, let alone taken," he stressed.

JAMES KARIUKI ( United Kingdom), noting that no other country has raised the prospect of nuclear use in the conflict against Ukraine, emphasized that no one is threatening the Russian Federation's sovereignty. Rather, it is Moscow who has violated the Charter of the United Nations by invading another sovereign country. Mr. Putin's 25 March announcement is his latest attempt to intimate and coerce, he said, stressing that "this has not worked and will not work - we will continue to support Ukraine to defend itself." That leader's claim - that the trigger for this announcement was London supplying depleted uranium munitions to Ukraine alongside challenger tanks - is yet another example of a deliberate attempt to mislead. The Russian Federation is well aware that this is conventional ammunition and not nuclear munitions, he underscored before spotlighting that Government's steady undermining of the arms control architecture, its persistent violations of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and its suspended participation in the New START Treaty. He then called on Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko - who has made no secret of his wish to see Moscow base nuclear weapons in his country - to stop enabling the Russian Federation's reckless and escalatory actions.

HAROLD ADLAI AGYEMAN ( Ghana) reiterated his delegation's principled position that the ongoing aggression is a serious violation of international law and contradicts the prohibition against the use of force under article 2(4) of the Charter of the United Nations. While the Ukrainian people bear the primary brunt of this brutal war, the war's repercussions are reverberating far beyond the borders of Ukraine. Many countries in the Global South are greatly concerned about the situation and the global economic system's incapacity to respond to their overwhelming needs. The ongoing war is undermining relations between States and creating disruptive and undesirable consequences. His delegation has always stood against the possession of nuclear weapons and opposes emerging strategic doctrines for the modernization of arsenals. "All of us should be aware of the danger that arises when we blur the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons and the abyss it can drive the world into," he said. "We must pull back and change course." He advocated for the peaceful settlement of disputes through the pursuit of negotiations on the basis of the Charter and international law.

VASSILY A. NEBENZIA ( Russian Federation) said that recent years have seen severe erosion of the global security architecture, noting efforts by the United States and its allies - "those that proclaim themselves victors in the cold war" - to systematically dismantle key arms-control agreements and confidence-building structures. This was dictated exclusively by the aspirations of the United States to cement its own geopolitical domination and oppose the emergence of a multipolar world. He confirmed that "a nuclear war cannot be won", but recalled the fate of several strategic stability agreements, including the withdrawal by the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2018, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 2019 and the Treaty on Open Skies in 2020. Further, the United States has refused to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty and the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe and has yet to implement its commitments under the Chemical Weapons Convention. He also stressed that NATO's expansion "effectively buried" the principle of indivisible security enshrined in the 1999 Charter for European Security.

He went on to recall that, in 2021, his country initiated dialogue with the United States regarding strategic stability, proposing consideration of all security issues and possible avenues for their regulation - including arms-control mechanisms. However, the United States rejected this, and a similar fate befell Moscow's proposals on establishing a European security architecture based on Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) principles. Stressing that there are no objective reasons to convene today's meeting, he recalled that his country repatriated all nuclear weapons from the countries of the former Soviet Union and called on the United States to return all nuclear weapons to its national territory. The Russian Federation also called on the United States to eliminate nuclear-sharing missions, which are at odds with both the letter and the spirit of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Underscoring that his country is pursuing cooperation with Belarus without violating international non-proliferation obligations, he said that President Putin has made clear that the Russian Federation is not transferring nuclear weapons. Rather, "we are talking about" the transfer of tactical missile systems, the retrofitting of Belarusian aircraft, the training of teams and the construction of a storage facility for tactical nuclear weapons on the territory of Belarus, he said.

RONALDO COSTA FILHO ( Brazil) said it seems that nuclear disarmament has gone into reverse since the 2020 Review Conference and all nuclear weapons States are upgrading their arsenals, either quantitatively or qualitatively or both. When Brazil ratified the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1998, its Parliament understood that the decision to join the Treaty was linked to the fulfilment of Article VI disarmament obligations by nuclear weapons States. Yet Article VI is not the only article that has not been fully observed. His delegation has long maintained that any nuclear sharing arrangement is inconsistent with both Articles I and II of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Brazil is not persuaded by arguments that seek to carve loopholes around the Treaty's language. "We take both of these articles very seriously and we have long been opposed to any nuclear-sharing arrangements," he said. He is also concerned with the nuclear-sharing arrangements of NATO and stressed that "two wrongs do not make a right". The Article VI obligation is to curb the arms race and engage in disarmament. Most importantly, the risks in this area are higher than those in almost any other. "Tit-for-tat breaches of obligations in nuclear arms control and disarmament threaten to set off unpredictable processes of arms racing that greatly increase the risks of voluntary and involuntary escalation," he added.

ANDRÉS EFREN MONTALVO SOSA ( Ecuador), stressing that the only way to resolve the issue of nuclear weapons is through their total elimination, voiced his regret that the Russian Federation's narrative and actions have continued to escalate global concerns. Any measure involving a nuclear threat must not only consider the consequences for the region and the world - especially any misinterpretation or miscalculation - but also end. Expressing his regret over the Russian Federation's suspension of its participation in the New START Treaty, he urged that country to resume its obligations within the international security architecture. Ecuador, as part of the first densely populated nuclear-weapon-free zone established by the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean and as a State party to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, rejects nuclear weapons wherever they are found and their modernization. In that vein, his Government condemns the announcement by the Russian Federation to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus; cautions that Moscow's actions and narrative fuel the risk of nuclear war; and calls for de-escalation to reduce risks and avoid accidents. Moscow must end the invasion, return to legality and honour the security assurances in connection with Ukraine's accession to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, he stressed.

MOHAMED ISSA ABUSHAHAB ( United Arab Emirates), noting many of the horrors of the war in Ukraine, said the conflict has also forced the international community to confront the dangers and complexities associated with nuclear weapons, inactive nuclear material and armed conflict at and near nuclear power plant sites. On their own, such activities pose significant risks, but taken together, they perpetuate a dangerously escalatory cycle with potentially unfathomable repercussions. "Responsible States need not limit themselves to parsing the legality of each individual action, when it is the sum total of these actions that brings us ever closer to a nuclear catastrophe," he stressed. All States must exercise prudence and caution. The Russian Federation and Ukraine's recent agreement to extend the Black Sea Grain Initiative illustrates the benefits of dialogue, he said, urging that same spirit to drive more focused diplomacy, including in the vital arenas of nuclear safety and security. "We must begin to lay the foundation for the conflict's resolution," he said, noting that the United Arab Emirates stands ready to support diplomatic efforts.

NICOLAS DE RIVIÈRE ( France), voicing his condemnation of the agreement between the Russian Federation and Belarus to deploy nuclear weapons in the latter, said that this is a further blow to the arms control architecture, Europe's strategic stability and international peace and security. Since 2018, Moscow has violated the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which directly led to its demise. It also suspended its participation in the New START Treaty in February, he reminded, calling on that Government to revisit this decision. By announcing its intention to deploy nuclear weapons outside its borders, it is once again contravening its international commitments - particularly those of the Budapest Memorandum - and aggravating an already unstable situation. The Russian Federation must demonstrate the responsibility that is expected of a nuclear-weapon State and reverse this destabilizing agreement with Belarus, he insisted. As nuclear weapons must only be used for defensive purposes, deterrence and war prevention, it is unacceptable for that Government to threaten nuclear weapon use for the purposes of coercion as part of its war of aggression against Ukraine. Reiterating his support to that embattled country, he condemned the use of Belarus' territory as a launching pad for Russian Federation strikes on Ukraine's civilian infrastructure and called on Minsk to reconsider its decision.

ISHIKANE KIMIHIRO ( Japan) condemned remarks by Mr. Putin regarding his decision to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, which further increases tensions even as Moscow continues its aggression against Ukraine. The Russian Federation is abusing its status as a nuclear-weapons State with its irresponsible rhetoric, he stressed, calling on all States to refrain from supporting such actions either directly or indirectly. He also voiced regret over Moscow's recent announcement of a suspension of the New Treaty on the Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (START) Treaty and called upon it to immediately reverse that decision. As the only country that has ever suffered atomic bombings during war, Japan is strongly committed to leading international efforts towards a world without nuclear weapons. "The record of 77 years of non-use of nuclear weapons must not be broken by Russia," he stressed, calling on all Member States to renew their commitment to the Non-Proliferation Treaty regime, nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation, as well as arms control.

PEDRO COMISSÁRIO AFONSO ( Mozambique), Council President for March, spoke in his national capacity, recalling that his country has consistently sounded alarm about the risk of strategic miscalculation and the potential of the war in Ukraine to escalate into a wider and more dangerous situation. Asking the Council to reflect upon the example set by the African continent - where a nuclear-weapon-free zone exists under the Treaty of Pelindaba - he said the continent does not possess any nuclear weapons and is committed to preserving that status. A nuclear war cannot be won, and must never be fought, he stressed, calling on all parties involved to engage in constructive dialogue and to work together to find peaceful solutions in line with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations, which among other things prohibits the use or threat of use of force in international relations.

Mr. WOOD ( United States), taking the floor again, said the representative of the Russian Federation totally distorted the facts around the unfortunate demise of several nuclear treaties. Regarding the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, he recalled that, in 2013, the United States engaged Moscow and made clear that it had evidence that the Russian Federation was in violation of the treaty through its deployment of an out-of-range missile. Moscow denied the existence of such a missile, and the United States worked hard to bring the Russian Federation back into compliance with the treaty. In 2017, Moscow finally acknowledged the existence of such a missile, and the United States ruled that the Russian Federation was in breach of the treaty. The United States therefore "had no choice" but to withdraw from the treaty, he said. Regarding the issue of nuclear-sharing, he said the Russian Federation never fundamentally objected to NATO's existing arrangements, for many decades. It was only after Moscow's invasion of Crimea that it sought a reason to accuse the United States of violating the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Emphasizing that the United States is in full compliance with that instrument, he rejected any allegations to the contrary as "patently false".

Mr. NEBENZIA ( Russian Federation), also taking the floor again, responded that the United States withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 2019, as the country's delegate just admitted. The Russian Federation will send a letter to the Security Council describing the series of steps that led to that outcome, he said, noting that the United States and other NATO States ignored several past invitations to dialogue on those matters in an attempt to conceal their violations. Finally, he asked the representative of the United States to clarify once and for all whether his country has nuclear weapons stationed on European soil.

SERGIY KYSLYTSYA ( Ukraine) said his delegation requested today's meeting in response to the recent announcement by the Russian Federation of its provocative decision to station nuclear weapons on the territory of a non-nuclear-weapon State, namely Belarus. That matter is a concern for the entire international community, he said, noting that "nuclear blackmail" is one tool the Russian Federation has exploited since the start of the war, along with threats of attacks at nuclear power facilities. Moscow continues to demonstrate its failure to prevail on the battlefield, so it is once again resorting to waiving its nuclear bludgeon. "The Kremlin is ready to threaten the world with nuclear apocalypse," he stressed, noting that the recent announcement provided yet more proof that "papers that Putin signs mean nothing to him" - including a 2022 joint statement by put forward by five nuclear-weapons States committing to certain strategic reductions.

He noted that Moscow also violated another nuclear pledge made recently alongside China, which declared that all nuclear-weapons States should refrain from deploying nuclear weapons outside their territory. China sensibly reminded Moscow of the need to pursue nuclear proliferation, and Beijing's commitment to the agreement is firm and clear. However, in February, Moscow also announced its decision to suspend its participation in the New START Treaty. Its recent actions speak volumes about the Russian Federation's willingness to engage meaningfully. For its part, Ukraine has always been a responsible member of the international community, having joined the Non-Proliferation Treaty and signed the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, and having fully abandoned the world's third-largest nuclear arsenal. In contrast, the Russian Federation is indicating once again that it regards nuclear weapons as tools of threats and intimidation, not deterrence, he said.

VALENTIN RYBAKOV ( Belarus) said that his country has been a consistent advocate for the process of nuclear disarmament, recalling its conscious choice in 1993 to renounce nuclear weapons and join the Non-Proliferation Treaty, making it the first post-Soviet State to refuse the possession of such arms without preconditions. Also recalling the Budapest Memorandum, whose signatories promised to refrain from the use of political or economic coercive measures, he said that his country has been subjected to pressure for a long time, in violation of the agreements' provisions. Trade and banking bans and other restrictions have been introduced against the Belarus Government, and on legal and natural persons, by the United States, United Kingdom and European Union States. Such measures constitute a "direct, gross interference" into his country's domestic affairs and are aimed at changing its domestic configuration, he stressed. Belarus is undertaking actions to shore up its own defensive capacity in stringent compliance with international law in response to legitimate national security concerns around the ramping up of military capacity in direct proximity to its territory. His country has therefore felt "compelled" to cooperate with its "main military and political ally", the Russian Federation, in response to these national security risks. Cooperation in the context of the Non-Proliferation Treaty is "nothing new", he said, adding that the international community must focus on the "real threat" posed by NATO's nuclear-sharing missions and the deployment by the United States of weapons outside its borders, in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey.

OLOF SKOOG, Head of Delegation of the European Union, in its capacity as observer, said the bloc condemns the Russian Federation's 25 March announcement of its intention to deploy nuclear weapons on the territory of Belarus and that an agreement to this end has been reached with Minsk. This announcement is yet another irresponsible step that is escalating an already tense situation, in view of the Russian Federation's illegal and unjustified war of aggression against Ukraine. Just one month ago, the General Assembly adopted a resolution on a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in Ukraine, calling on all Member States to cooperate in the spirit of solidarity to address the global impacts of the war, including on nuclear security and safety. The Belarusian regime is an accomplice in the Russian Federation's war of aggression against Ukraine. The deletion of Belarus' declared stance as a non-nuclear territory from the revised Constitution adopted in 2022 was a worrying development. The announcement last week that the Russian Federation intends to deploy nuclear weapons on Belarusian territory would be yet another dangerous step. "Threats with and use of nuclear weapons are inadmissible," he said.

He recalled that on 3 January 2022, the Russian Federation signed a joint statement by the nuclear weapon States in the Non-Proliferation Treaty that reaffirmed that "a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought". It reiterated this commitment just three days before its 25 March announcement in a 22 March joint statement with China. Yet through its unacceptable and dangerous nuclear rhetoric, and its 25 March announcement on deploying nuclear weapons on the territory of Belarus, the Russian Federation starkly contradicts the commitments of which it has undertaken to be a guardian. This announced step also runs counter to Belarus' commitment in the Budapest Memorandum "to eliminate all nuclear weapons from its territory". The European Union calls on the Russian Federation and Belarus to reverse this decision and to abide by all their aforementioned commitments. The Union also calls on the Russian Federation to resume implementation of the Treaty on the Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms. The bloc and its member States will continue to monitor the situation closely, coordinating with like-minded partners.

KRZYSZTOF MARIA SZCZERSKI ( Poland) underscored his country's desire for its region to be one in which all nations can make free choices regarding their domestic and foreign policy, free from domination, suppression and external threats. He therefore expressed serious concern over the Russian Federation's plans to deploy tactical nuclear weapons, and their means of delivery, to Belarus. Such a decision would constitute an irresponsible escalation and would only further increase ongoing tensions in Europe stemming from Moscow's aggression against Ukraine. Further, it would pose a major risk to the integrity of the global non-proliferation system. He went on to emphasize that Moscow's strategy - echoed today by Mr. Lukashenko - is clear. The Russian Federation intends to intimidate, to provoke and to impede efforts aimed at ending its war on Ukraine. "It is clearly the rhetoric of confrontation," he observed, as it undermines efforts to find a successful peace formula. He also spotlighted the Russian Federation's continued efforts to "fully subordinate" Belarus, stating that it is "deplorable" that the authorities in Minsk chose to enable Moscow's illegal war in Ukraine in the first place and, now, have decided to further pursue this role "to the detriment of the security of us all".

REIN TAMMSAAR ( Estonia), speaking also on behalf of Latvia and Lithuania, said "nuclear blackmail does not work - we will not be intimidated nor deterred; we will continue to support Ukraine as long as it takes." Just days after the joint statement with China in which the Russian Federation committed to reduce the risk of nuclear war and ease tensions, Moscow resorted again to dangerous and irresponsible nuclear rhetoric by revealing its alleged plan to deploy nuclear weapons to Belarus. "The masks were off again," he observed, adding that this latest statement signals that Government's desperation on the battlefield. Under the threat of nuclear escalation, the Kremlin is hoping to deter Ukraine form exercising its inherent right to self-defence and intimidate States from helping that embattled country. Mr. Putin's statement proves once again how unreliable, untrustworthy and worthless the Russian Federation's commitments to its partners and the international community are. The world has watched how Moscow has systematically undermined international arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation. It is now time for the international community to recognize this destructive pattern and stand firmly against it, he insisted, urging that State to return to full compliance with the New START Treaty.

He then voiced his regret that Belarus is increasingly losing its sovereignty as it becomes more integrated into the Russian Federation's military plans. Mr. Lukashenko must stop being an accomplice to Moscow's desperate moves to threaten its neighbours and destabilize Europe, he stressed. For its part, the Belarusian democratic movement and civil society must prevent their country from becoming another victim of the Russian Federation's imperial ambitions by continuing to stand up for a free, independent and democratic Belarus. Turning to the Russian Federation's assumption of the Council's presidency on 1 April, he stressed that this is shameful, humiliating and dangerous to the organ's credibility and effective functioning. A country that fights a war of aggression against its neighbour, commits the most horrendous atrocities, threatens the world with nuclear weapons and has a war criminal with a standing arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court as its leader should have no place leading a body whose primary purpose is to preserve international peace and security. Responsible Council members must counter the Russian Federation's attempts to transform the primary venue of international diplomacy into a mockery and a platform of disinformation, he emphasized.

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Risk of Nuclear Weapons Use Higher Than at Any Time Since Cold War, Disarmament Affairs Chief Warns Security Council

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Many Speakers Condemn Russian Federation's Dangerous Rhetoric, Veiled Threats The Russian Federation's recent announcement of plans to station non-strategic nuclear weapons in Belarus represents the first "nuclear sharing" agreement made since the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons entered into force in 1970, the senior United Nations disarmament official told the Security Council today, emphasizing that - against the backdrop of the Ukraine conflict - the risk such arms will be used is higher today than at any time since the end of the cold war.

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Here’s How Bad a Nuclear War Would Actually Be

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We know that an all-out U.S.-Russia nuclear war would be bad. But how bad, exactly?

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The Consequences of Nuclear War: An Economic and Social Perspective - The Medical Implications of Nuclear War - NCBI Bookshelf

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Hal Cochrane, PH.D., and Dennis Mileti, PH.D.

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Richard Wolfson and Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress reveal the most horrifying realities of nuclear war.

Image source: U.S. Department of Energy

What can nuclear weapons do? How do they achieve their destructive purpose? What would a nuclear war - and its aftermath - look like? In the article that follows, excerpted from Richard Wolfson and Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress's book "Nuclear Choices for the Twenty-First Century," the authors explore these and related questions that reveal the most horrifying realities of nuclear war.
A Bomb Explodes: Short-Term Effects

The most immediate effect of a nuclear explosion is an intense burst of nuclear radiation, primarily gamma rays and neutrons. This direct radiation is produced in the weapon's nuclear reactions themselves, and lasts well under a second. Lethal direct radiation extends nearly a mile from a 10-kiloton explosion. With most weapons, though, direct radiation is of little significance because other lethal effects generally encompass greater distances. An important exception is the enhanced-radiation weapon, or neutron bomb, which maximizes direct radiation and minimizes other destructive effects.

An exploding nuclear weapon instantly vaporizes itself. What was cold, solid material microseconds earlier becomes a gas hotter than the Sun's 15-million-degree core. This hot gas radiates its energy in the form of X-rays, which heat the surrounding air. A fireball of superheated air forms and grows rapidly; 10 seconds after a 1-megaton explosion, the fireball is a mile in diameter. The fireball glows visibly from its own heat - so visibly that the early stages of a 1-megaton fireball are many times brighter than the Sun even at a distance of 50 miles. Besides light, the glowing fireball radiates heat.

This thermal flash lasts many seconds and accounts for more than one-third of the weapon's explosive energy. The intense heat can ignite fires and cause severe burns on exposed flesh as far as 20 miles from a large thermonuclear explosion. Two-thirds of injured Hiroshima survivors showed evidence of such flash burns. You can think of the incendiary effect of thermal flash as analogous to starting a fire using a magnifying glass to concentrate the Sun's rays. The difference is that rays from a nuclear explosion are so intense that they don't need concentration to ignite flammable materials.

The intense heat can ignite fires and cause severe burns on exposed flesh as far as 20 miles from a large thermonuclear explosion.

As the rapidly expanding fireball pushes into the surrounding air, it creates a blast wave consisting of an abrupt jump in air pressure. The blast wave moves outward initially at thousands of miles per hour but slows as it spreads. It carries about half the bomb's explosive energy and is responsible for most of the physical destruction. Normal air pressure is about 15 pounds per square inch (psi). That means every square inch of your body or your house experiences a force of 15 pounds. You don't usually feel that force, because air pressure is normally exerted equally in all directions, so the 15 pounds pushing a square inch of your body one way is counterbalanced by 15 pounds pushing the other way. What you do feel is overpressure, caused by a greater air pressure on one side of an object.

If you've ever tried to open a door against a strong wind, you've experienced overpressure. An overpressure of even 1/100 psi could make a door almost impossible to open. That's because a door has lots of square inches - about 3,000 or more. So 1/100 psi adds up to a lot of pounds. The blast wave of a nuclear explosion may create overpressures of several psi many miles from the explosion site. Think about that! There are about 50,000 square inches in the front wall of a modest house - and that means 50,000 pounds or 25 tons of force even at 1 psi overpressure. Overpressures of 5 psi are enough to destroy most residential buildings. An overpressure of 10 psi collapses most factories and commercial buildings, and 20 psi will level even reinforced concrete structures.

Flash burns on a Hiroshima victim's skin. The skin wasn't burned where dark clothing blocked the thermal flash. (Defense Nuclear Agency)

People, remarkably, are relatively immune to overpressure itself. But they aren't immune to collapsing buildings or to pieces of glass hurtling through the air at hundreds of miles per hour or to having themselves hurled into concrete walls - all of which are direct consequences of a blast wave's overpressure. Blast effects therefore cause a great many fatalities. Blast effects depend in part on where a weapon is detonated. The most widespread damage to buildings occurs in an air burst, a detonation thousands of feet above the target. The blast wave from an air burst reflects off the ground, which enhances its destructive power. A ground burst, in contrast, digs a huge crater and pulverizes everything in the immediate vicinity, but its blast effects don't extend as far. Nuclear attacks on cities would probably employ air bursts, whereas ground bursts would be used on hardened military targets such as underground missile silos. As you'll soon see, the two types of blasts have different implications for radioactive fallout.

How far do a weapon's destructive effects extend? That distance - the radius of destruction - depends on the explosive yield. The volume encompassing a given level of destruction depends directly on the weapon's yield. Because volume is proportional to the radius cubed, that means the destructive radius grows approximately as the cube root of the yield. A 10-fold increase in yield then increases the radius of destruction by a factor of only a little over two. The area of destruction grows faster but still not in direct proportion to the yield. That relatively slow increase in destruction with increasing yield is one reason why multiple smaller weapons are more effective than a single larger one. Twenty 50-kiloton warheads, for example, destroy nearly three times the area leveled by a numerically equivalent 1-megaton weapon.

Destructive radii of 100-kiloton, 1-megaton, and 10-megaton weapons superimposed on a map of the New York City area. The destructive radius is defined as the distance within which blast overpressure exceeds 5 pounds per square inch, and it measures 2 miles, 4.4 miles, and 9.4 miles for the weapon yields shown. These values assume air-burst explosions at optimum altitudes over Central Park. (U.S. Office of Technology Assessment, The Effects of Nuclear War)

What constitutes the radius of destruction also depends on the level of destruction you want to achieve. Roughly speaking, though, the distance at which overpressure has fallen to about 5 psi is a good definition of destructive radius. Many of the people within this distance would be killed, although some wouldn't. But some would be killed beyond the 5-psi distance, making the situation roughly equivalent to having everyone within the 5-psi circle killed and everyone outside surviving. The image to the left shows how the destructive zone varies with explosive yield for a hypothetical explosion. This is a simplified picture; a more careful calculation of the effects of nuclear weapons on entire populations requires detailed simulations that include many environmental and geographic variables.

The blast wave is over in a minute or so, but the immediate destruction may not be. Fires started by the thermal flash or by blast effects still rage, and under some circumstances they may coalesce into a single gigantic blaze called a firestorm that can develop its own winds and thus cause the fire to spread. Hot gases rise from the firestorm, replaced by air rushing inward along the surface at hundreds of miles per hour. Winds and fire compound the blast damage, and the fire consumes enough oxygen to suffocate any remaining survivors.

During World War II, bombing of Hamburg with incendiary chemicals resulted in a firestorm that claimed 45,000 lives. The nuclear bombing of Hiroshima resulted in a firestorm; that of Nagasaki did not, likely because of Nagasaki's rougher terrain. The question of firestorms is important not only to the residents of a target area: Firestorms might also have significant long-term effects on the global climate, as we'll discuss later.

Fallout

Both nuclear and conventional weapons produce destructive blast effects, although of vastly different magnitudes. But radioactive fallout is unique to nuclear weapons. Fallout consists primarily of fission products, although neutron capture and other nuclear reactions contribute additional radioactive material. The term fallout generally applies to those isotopes whose half-lives exceed the time scale of the blast and other short-term effects. Although fallout contamination may linger for years and even decades, the dominant lethal effects last from days to weeks, and contemporary civil defense recommendations are for survivors to stay inside for at least 48 hours while the radiation decreases.

The fallout produced in a nuclear explosion depends greatly on the type of weapon, its explosive yield, and where it's exploded. The neutron bomb, although it produces intense direct radiation, is primarily a fusion device and generates only slight fallout from its fission trigger. Small fission weapons like those used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki produce locally significant fallout. But the fission-fusion-fission design used in today's thermonuclear weapons introduces the new phenomenon of global fallout. Most of this fallout comes from fission of the U-238 jacket that surrounds the fusion fuel. The global effect of these huge weapons comes partly from the sheer quantity of radioactive material and partly from the fact that the radioactive cloud rises well into the stratosphere, where it may take months or even years to reach the ground. Even though we've had no nuclear war since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, fallout is one weapons effect with which we have experience. Atmospheric nuclear testing before the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty resulted in detectable levels of radioactive fission products across the globe, and some of that radiation is still with us.

Fallout differs greatly depending on whether a weapon is exploded at ground level or high in the atmosphere. In an air burst, the fireball never touches the ground, and radioactivity rises into the stratosphere. This reduces local fallout but enhances global fallout. In a ground burst, the explosion digs a huge crater and entrains tons of soil, rock, and other pulverized material into its rising cloud. Radioactive materials cling to these heavier particles, which drop back the ground in a relatively short time. Rain may wash down particularly large amounts of radioactive material, producing local hot spots of especially intense radioactivity. A hot spot in Albany, New York, thousands of miles from the 1953 Nevada test that produced it, exposed area residents to some 10 times their annual background radiation dose. The exact distribution of fallout depends crucially on wind speed and direction; under some conditions, lethal fallout may extend several hundred miles downwind of an explosion. However, it's important to recognize that the lethality of fallout quickly decreases as short-lived isotopes decay.

Recommended Response to a Nuclear Explosion

The United States government has recently provided guidance on how to respond to a nuclear detonation. One recommendation is to divide the region of destruction due to blast effects into three separate damage zones. This division provides guidance for first responders in assessing the situation. Outermost is the light damage zone, characterized by "broken windows and easily managed injuries." Next is the moderate damage zone with "significant building damage, rubble, downed utility lines and some downed poles, overturned automobiles, fires, and serious injuries." Finally, there's the severe damage zone, where buildings will be completely collapsed, radiation levels high, and survivors unlikely.

The recommendations also define a dangerous fallout zone spanning different structural damage zones. This is the region where dose rates exceed a whole-body external dose of about 0.1 Sv/hour. First responders must exercise special precautions as they approach the fallout zone in order to limit their own radiation exposure. The dangerous fallout zone can easily stretch 10 to 20 miles (15 to 30 kilometers) from the detonation depending on explosive yield and weather conditions.

Dangerous fallout zone for a 10-kiloton detonation. The pattern will vary depending on wind speed and direction, and the zone will shrink substantially over a day or so.

Electromagnetic Pulse

A nuclear weapon exploded at very high altitude produces none of the blast or local fallout effects we've just described. But intense gamma rays knock electrons out of atoms in the surrounding air, and when the explosion takes place in the rarefied air at high altitude this effect may extend hundreds of miles. As they gyrate in Earth's magnetic field, the electrons generate an intense pulse of radio waves known as an electromagnetic pulse (EMP).

A single large weapon exploded some 200 miles over the central United States could blanket the entire country with an electromagnetic pulse intense enough to damage computers, communication systems, and other electronic devices. It could also affect satellites used for military communications, reconnaissance, and attack warning. The EMP phenomenon thus has profound implications for a military that depends on sophisticated electronics. In 1962, the United States detonated a 1.4-megaton warhead 250 miles above Johnston Island in the Pacific Ocean. People as far as Australia and New Zealand witnessed the explosion as a red aurora appearing in the night sky. Hawaiians, only 800 miles from the island, experienced a bright flash followed by a green sky and the failure of hundreds of street lights. In total, the Soviet Union and the United States conducted 20 tests of EMP from nuclear detonations. However, it's unclear how to extrapolate the results to today's more sensitive and more pervasive electronic equipment.

Since the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963 it has been virtually impossible to study EMP effects directly, although elaborate devices have been developed to mimic the electronic impact of nuclear weapons. Increasingly, crucial electronic systems are "hardened" to minimize the impact of EMP. Nevertheless, the use of EMP in a war could wreak havoc with systems for communication and control of military forces.

Many countries are around the world are developing high-powered microwave weapons which, although not nuclear devices, are designed to produce EMPs. These directed-energy weapons, also called e-bombs, emit large pulses of microwaves to destroy electronics on missiles, to stop cars, to detonate explosives remotely, and to down swarms of drones. Despite these EMP weapons being nonlethal in the sense that there's no bang or blast wave, an enemy may be unable to distinguish their effects from those of nuclear weapons.

Would the high-altitude detonation of a nuclear weapon to produce EMP or the use of a directed-beam EMP weapon be an act of war warranting nuclear retaliation? With its electronic warning systems in disarray, should the EMPed nation launch a nuclear strike on the chance that it was about to be attacked? How are nuclear decisions to be made in a climate of EMP-crippled communications? These are difficult questions, but military strategists need to have answers.

Nuclear War

So far we've examined the effects of single nuclear explosions. But a nuclear war would involve hundreds to thousands of explosions, creating a situation for which we simply have no relevant experience. Despite decades of arms reduction treaties, there are still thousands of nuclear weapons in the world's arsenals. Detonating only a tiny fraction of these would cause mass casualties.

What would a nuclear war be like? When you think of nuclear war, you probably envision an all-out holocaust in which adversaries unleash their arsenals in an attempt to inflict the most damage. Many people - including your authors - believe that misfortune to be the likely outcome of almost any use of nuclear weapons among the superpowers. But nuclear strategists have explored many scenarios that fall short of the all-out nuclear exchange. What might these limited nuclear wars be like? Could they really remain limited?

Limited Nuclear War

One form of limited nuclear war would be like a conventional battlefield conflict but using low-yield tactical nuclear weapons. Here's a hypothetical scenario: After its 2014 annexation of Crimea, Russia attacks a Baltic country with tanks and ground forces while the United States is distracted by a domestic crisis. NATO responds with decisive counterforce, destroying Russian tanks with fighter jets, but this doesn't quell Russian resolve. Russia responds with even more tanks and by bombing NATO installations, killing several hundred troops. NATO cannot tolerate such aggression and to prevent further Russian advance launches low-yield tactical nuclear weapons with their dial-a-yield positions set to the lowest settings of only 300 tons TNT equivalent. The goal is to signal Russia that it has crossed a line and to deescalate the situation. NATO's actions are based on fear that if the Russian aggression weren't stopped the result would be all-out war in northern Europe.

This strategy is actually being discussed in the higher echelons of the Pentagon. The catchy concept is that use of a few low-yield nuclear weapons could show resolve, with the hoped-for outcome that the other party will back down from its aggressive behavior (this concept is known as escalate to deescalate). The assumption is that the nuclear attack would remain limited, that parties would go back to the negotiating table, and that saner voices would prevail. However, this assumes a chain of events where everything unfolds as expected. It neglects the incontrovertible fact that, as the Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz observed in the 19th century, "Three quarters of the factors on which action in war is based are wrapped in a fog of greater or lesser uncertainty." Often coined fog of war, this describes the lack of clarity in wartime situations on which decisions must nevertheless be based. In the scenario described, sensors could have been damaged or lines of communication severed that would have reported the low-yield nature of the nuclear weapons. As a result, Russia might feel its homeland threatened and respond with an all-out attack using strategic nuclear weapons, resulting in millions of deaths.

There is every reason to believe that a limited nuclear war wouldn't remain limited.

There is every reason to believe that a limited nuclear war wouldn't remain limited. A 1983 war game known as Proud Prophet involved top-secret nuclear war plans and had as participants high-level decision makers including President Reagan's Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. The war game followed actual plans but unexpectedly ended in total nuclear annihilation with more than half a billion fatalities in the initial onslaught - not including subsequent deaths from starvation. The exercise revealed that a limited nuclear strike may not achieve the desired results! In this case, that was because the team playing the Soviet Union responded to a limited U.S. nuclear strike with a massive all-out nuclear attack.

What about an attack on North Korea? In 2017, some in the U.S. cabinet advocated for a "bloody nose" strategy in dealing with North Korea's flagrant violations of international law. This is the notion that in response to a threatening action by North Korea, the U.S. would destroy a significant site to "bloody Pyongyang's nose." This might employ a low-yield nuclear attack or a conventional attack. The "bloody nose" strategy relies on the expectation that Pyongyang would be so overwhelmed by U.S. might that they would immediately back down and not retaliate. However, North Korea might see any type of aggression as an attack aimed at overthrowing their regime, and could retaliate with an all-or-nothing response using weapons of mass destruction (including but not necessarily limited to nuclear weapons) as well as their vast conventional force.

In September 2017, during the height of verbal exchanges between President Trump and the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, the U.S. flew B-1B Lancer bombers along the North Korean coast, further north of the demilitarized zone than the U.S. had ever done, while still staying over international waters. However, North Korea didn't respond at all, making analysts wonder whether the bombers were even detected. Uncertainty in North Korea's ability to discriminate different weapon systems might exacerbate a situation like this one and could lead the North Koreans viewing any intrusion as an "attack on their nation, their way of life and their honor." This is exactly how the Soviet team in the Proud Prophet war game interpreted it.

What about a limited attack on the United States? Suppose a nuclear adversary decided to cripple the U.S. nuclear retaliatory forces (a virtual impossibility, given nuclear missile submarines, but a scenario considered with deadly seriousness by nuclear planners). Many of the 48 contiguous states have at least one target - a nuclear bomber base, a submarine support base, or intercontinental missile silos - that would warrant destruction in such an attack. The attack, which would require only a tiny fraction of the strategic nuclear weapons in the Russian arsenal, could kill millions of civilians. Those living near targeted bomber and submarine bases would suffer blast and local radiation effects. Intense fallout from ground-burst explosions on missile silos in the Midwest would extend all the way to the Atlantic coast. Fallout would also contaminate a significant fraction of U.S. cropland for up to year and would kill livestock. On the other hand, the U.S. industrial base would remain relatively unscathed, if no further hostilities occurred.

In contrast to attacking military targets, an adversary might seek to cripple the U.S. economy by destroying a vital industry. In one hypothetical attack considered by the congressional Office of Technology Assessment, ten Soviet SS-18 missiles, each with eight 1-megaton warheads, attack United States' oil refineries. The result is destruction of two-thirds of the U.S. oil-refining capability. And even with some evacuation of major cities in the hypothetical crisis leading to the attack, 5 million Americans are killed.

Each of these "limited" nuclear attack scenarios kills millions of Americans - many, many times the 1.2 million killed in all the wars in our nation's history. Do we want to entertain limited nuclear war as a realistic possibility? Do we believe nuclear war could be limited to "only" a few million casualties? Do we trust the professional strategic planners who prepare our possible nuclear responses to an adversary's threats? What level of nuclear preparedness do we need to deter attack?

All-Out Nuclear War

Whether from escalation of a limited nuclear conflict or as an outright full-scale attack, an all-out nuclear war remains possible as long as nuclear nations have hundreds to thousands of weapons aimed at one another. What would be the consequences of all-out nuclear war?

Within individual target cities, conditions described earlier for single explosions would prevail. (Most cities, though, would likely be targeted with multiple weapons.) Government estimates suggest that over half of the United States' population could be killed by the prompt effects of an all-out nuclear war. For those within the appropriate radii of destruction, it would make little difference whether theirs was an isolated explosion or part of a war. But for the survivors in the less damaged areas, the difference could be dramatic.

Consider the injured. Thermal flash burns extend well beyond the 5-psi radius of destruction. A single nuclear explosion might produce 10,000 cases of severe burns requiring specialized medical treatment; in an all-out war there could be several million such cases. Yet the United States has facilities to treat fewer than 2,000 burn cases - virtually all of them in urban areas that would be leveled by nuclear blasts. Burn victims who might be saved, had their injuries resulted from some isolated cause, would succumb in the aftermath of nuclear war. The same goes for fractures, lacerations, missing limbs, crushed skulls, punctured lungs, and myriad other injuries suffered as a result of nuclear blast. Where would be the doctors, the hospitals, the medicines, the equipment needed for their treatment? Most would lie in ruin, and those that remained would be inadequate to the overwhelming numbers of injured. Again, many would die whom modern medicine could normally save.

A single nuclear explosion might produce 10,000 cases of severe burns requiring specialized medical treatment; in an all-out war there could be several million such cases.

In an all-out war, lethal fallout would cover much of the United States. Survivors could avoid fatal radiation exposure only when sheltered with adequate food, water, and medical supplies. Even then, millions would be exposed to radiation high enough to cause lowered disease resistance and greater incidence of subsequent fatal cancer. Lowered disease resistance could lead to death from everyday infections in a population deprived of adequate medical facilities. And the spread of diseases from contaminated water supplies, nonexistent sanitary facilities, lack of medicines, and the millions of dead could reach epidemic proportions. Small wonder that the international group Physicians for Social Responsibility has called nuclear war "the last epidemic."

After all-out nuclear war, unsheltered persons in the shaded areas would receive weekly radiation doses in excess of 1 Sv (1,000 mSv or 100 rem), some 200 times annual background; 60 percent would receive fatal doses in excess of 10 Sv.

Attempts to contain damage to cities, suburbs, and industries would suffer analogously to the treatment of injured people. Firefighting equipment, water supplies, electric power, heavy equipment, fuel supplies, and emergency communications would be gone. Transportation into and out of stricken cities would be blocked by debris. The scarcity of radiation-monitoring equipment and of personnel trained to operate it would make it difficult to know where emergency crews could safely work. Most of all, there would be no healthy neighboring cities to call on for help; all would be crippled in an all-out war.

Is Nuclear War Survivable?

We've noted that more than half the United States' population might be killed outright in an all-out nuclear war. What about the survivors?

Recent studies have used detailed three-dimensional, block-by-block urban terrain models to study the effects of 10-kiloton detonations on Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles. The results settle an earlier controversy about whether survivors should evacuate or shelter in place: Staying indoors for 48 hours after a nuclear blast is now recommended. That time allows fallout levels to decay by a factor of 100. Furthermore, buildings between a survivor and the blast can block the worst of the fallout, and going deep inside an urban building can lower fallout levels still further. The same shelter-in-place arguments apply to survivors in the non-urban areas blanketed by fallout.

These new studies, however, consider only single detonations as might occur in a terrorist or rogue attack. In considering all-out nuclear war, we have to ask a further question: Then what?

Individuals might survive for a while, but what about longer term, and what about society as a whole? Extreme and cooperative efforts would be needed for long-term survival, but would the shocked and weakened survivors be up to those efforts? How would individuals react to watching their loved ones die of radiation sickness or untreated injuries? Would an "everyone for themselves" attitude prevail, preventing the cooperation necessary to rebuild society? How would residents of undamaged rural areas react to the streams of urban refugees flooding their communities? What governmental structures could function in the postwar climate? How could people know what was happening throughout the country? Would international organizations be able to cope?

Staying indoors for 48 hours after a nuclear blast is now recommended. That time allows fallout levels to decay by a factor of 100.

Some students of nuclear war see postwar society in a race against time. An all-out war would have destroyed much of the nation's productive capacity and would have killed many of the experts who could help guide social and physical reconstruction. The war also would have destroyed stocks of food and other materials needed for survival.

On the other hand, the remaining supplies would have to support only the much smaller postwar population. The challenge to the survivors would be to establish production of food and other necessities before the supplies left from before the war were exhausted. Could the war-shocked survivors, their social and governmental structure shattered, meet that challenge? That is a very big nuclear question - so big that it's best left unanswered, since only an all-out nuclear war could decide it definitively.

Climatic Effects

A large-scale nuclear war would pump huge quantities of chemicals and dust into the upper atmosphere. Humanity was well into the nuclear age before scientists took a good look at the possible consequences of this. What they found was not reassuring.

The upper atmosphere includes a layer enhanced in ozone gas, an unusual form of oxygen that vigorously absorbs the Sun's ultraviolet radiation. In the absence of this ozone layer, more ultraviolet radiation would reach Earth's surface, with a variety of harmful effects. A nuclear war would produce huge quantities of ozone-consuming chemicals, and studies suggest that even a modest nuclear exchange would result in unprecedented increases in ultraviolet exposure. Marine life might be damaged by the increased ultraviolet radiation, and humans could receive blistering sunburns. More UV radiation would also lead to a greater incidence of fatal skin cancers and to general weakening of the human immune system.

Even more alarming is the fact that soot from the fires of burning cities after a nuclear exchange would be injected high into the atmosphere. A 1983 study by Richard Turco, Carl Sagan, and others (the so-called TTAPS paper) shocked the world with the suggestion that even a modest nuclear exchange - as few as 100 warheads - could trigger drastic global cooling as airborne soot blocked incoming sunlight. In its most extreme form, this nuclear winter hypothesis raised the possibility of extinction of the human species. (This is not the first dust-induced extinction pondered by science. Current thinking holds that the dinosaurs went extinct as a result of climate change brought about by atmospheric dust from an asteroid impact; indeed, that hypothesis helped prompt the nuclear winter research.)

The original nuclear winter study used a computer model that was unsophisticated compared to present-day climate models, and it spurred vigorous controversy among atmospheric scientists. Although not the primary researcher on the publication, Sagan lent his name in order to publicize the work. Two months before Science would publish the paper, he decided to introduce the results in the popular press. This backfired, as Sagan was derided by hawkish physicists like Edward Teller who had a stake in perpetuating the myth that nuclear war could be won and the belief that a missile defense system could protect the United States from nuclear attack. Teller called Sagan an "excellent propagandist" and suggested that the concept of nuclear winter was "highly speculative." The damage was done, and many considered the nuclear winter phenomenon discredited.

But research on nuclear winter continued. Recent studies with modern climate models show that an all-out nuclear war between the United States and Russia, even with today's reduced arsenals, could put over 150 million tons of smoke and soot into the upper atmosphere. That's roughly the equivalent of all the garbage the U.S. produces in a year! The result would be a drop in global temperature of some 8°C (more than the difference between today's temperature and the depths of the last ice age), and even after a decade the temperature would have recovered only 4°C. In the world's "breadbasket" agricultural regions, the temperature could remain below freezing for a year or more, and precipitation would drop by 90 percent. The effect on the world's food supply would be devastating.

Even a much smaller nuclear exchange could have catastrophic climate consequences. The research cited above also suggests that a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan, involving 100 Hiroshima-sized weapons, would shorten growing seasons and threaten annual monsoon rains, jeopardizing the food supply of a billion people. The image below shows the global picture one month after this hypothetical 100-warhead nuclear exchange.

Global smoke distribution from a 100-warhead nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan one month after the event. Darker shading indicates greater sunlight absorption. This map assumes that 5 million tons of soot was injected into the air, almost the same mass as the Great Pyramid of Giza.

Summary

Nuclear weapons have devastating effects. Destructive blast effects extend miles from the detonation point of a typical nuclear weapon, and lethal fallout may blanket communities hundreds of miles downwind of a single nuclear explosion. An all-out nuclear war would leave survivors with few means of recovery, and could lead to a total breakdown of society. Fallout from an all-out war would expose most of the belligerent nations' surviving populations to radiation levels ranging from harmful to fatal. And the effects of nuclear war would extend well beyond the warring nations, possibly including climate change severe enough to threaten much of the planet's human population.

Debate about national and global effects of nuclear war continues, and the issues are unlikely to be decided conclusively without the unfortunate experiment of an actual nuclear war. But enough is known about nuclear war's possible effects that there is near universal agreement on the need to avoid them. As the great science communicator and astronomer Carl Sagan once said, "It's elementary planetary hygiene to clean the world of these nuclear weapons." But can we eliminate nuclear weapons? Should we? What risks might such elimination entail? Those are the real issues in the ongoing debates about the future of nuclear weaponry.

Richard Wolfson is Benjamin F. Wissler Professor of Physics at Middlebury College. Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress is Scientist-in-Residence at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. This article is excerpted from their book "Nuclear Choices for the Twenty-First Century: A Citizen's Guide."

Glossary

air burst A nuclear explosion detonated at an altitude-typically, thousands of feet-that maximizes blast damage. Because its fireball never touches the ground, an air burst produces less radioactive fallout than a ground burst.

blast wave An abrupt jump in air pressure that propagates outward from a nuclear explosion, damaging or destroying whatever it encounters.

direct radiation Nuclear radiation produced in the actual detonation of a nuclear weapon and constituting the most immediate effect on the surrounding environment.

electromagnetic pulse (EMP) An intense burst of radio waves produced by a high-altitude nuclear explosion, capable of damaging electronic equipment over thousands of miles.

fallout Radioactive material, mostly fission products, released into the environment by nuclear explosions.

fireball A mass of air surrounding a nuclear explosion and heated to luminous temperatures.

firestorm A massive fire formed by coalescence of numerous smaller fires.

ground burst A nuclear explosion detonated at ground level, producing a crater and significant fallout but less widespread damage than an air burst.

nuclear difference Phrase we use to describe the roughly million-fold difference in energy released in nuclear reactions versus chemical reactions.

nuclear winter A substantial reduction in global temperature that might result from soot injected into the atmosphere during a nuclear war.

overpressure Excess air pressure encountered in the blast wave of a nuclear explosion. Overpressure of a few pounds per square inch is sufficient to destroy typical wooden houses.

radius of destruction The distance from a nuclear blast within which destruction is near total, often taken as the zone of 5-pound-per-square-inch overpressure.

thermal flash An intense burst of heat radiation in the seconds following a nuclear explosion. The thermal flash of a large weapon can ignite fires and cause third-degree burns tens of miles from the explosion.

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The Devastating Effects of Nuclear Weapons

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Richard Wolfson and Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress reveal the most horrifying realities of nuclear war. What can nuclear weapons do? How do they achieve their destructive purpose? What would a nuclear war - and its aftermath - look like?

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Annie Jacobsen on Nuclear War - a Second by Second Timeline

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How Would the United States Fight a Nuclear War?

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Nuclear policy for war and peace | CiNii Research

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CiNii 国立情報学研究所 学術情報ナビゲータ[サイニィ] 詳細へ移動 検索フォームへ移動

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Notice: This is only a preliminary collection of relevant material

The data and research currently presented here is a preliminary collection or relevant material. We will further develop our work on this topic in the future (to cover it in the same detail as for example our entry on World Population Growth).

If you have expertise in this area and would like to contribute, apply here to join us as a researcher.

The world's nuclear powers have more than 10,000 nuclear warheads in their arsenals. These weapons have the capacity to kill millions directly and through their impact on agriculture have likely the potential to kill billions.¹

Nuclear weapons technology was developed during the 1930s and 1940s. The first nuclear weapons were detonated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Since then, controlling the proliferation of nuclear weapons has been an important issue in international relations and the two detonations in Japan remained the only ever usage in warfare

All our charts on Nuclear Weapons

Stockpiles of nuclear weapons

One way of quantifying the proliferation of nuclear weapons is to look at the stockpiles countries have. The number of states with confirmed nuclear capabilities now includes the US, Russia, UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea.²

This chart shows that the total number of nuclear weapons in the world peaked in 1986. It is, however, worth remembering that the destructive power of each nuclear warhead has increased significantly since the first atomic weapons used in the Second World War.

If we consider the number of nuclear weapons tests, we can see that the Cold War was a very active period of nuclear weapons development. Although nuclear weapons were only ever used in warfare during the Second World War, there have been over 2000 nuclear weapons tests since then. Most recently North Korea conducted nuclear weapons tests in 2006, 2009 and 2013.

World map of nuclear weapons test

The location of these nuclear weapons tests is shown on this world map by cartographer Bill Rankin.

World map of nuclear explosions, 1945-2007 - Bill Rankin (2007)³

It is a common misconception that more and more nations are exploring and developing nuclear weapons since the Second World War. As the graph demonstrates, there have been peaks in nuclear weapon development in the past few decades. By the late 1980s, the number of nations developing nuclear weapons started falling and has remained steady since the mid-1990s.

The names in the graph represent nations developing weapons, and countries marked with "-" represent the year in which development in that country ceased.

Non-nuclear states that started and stopped exploring nuclear weapons, 1945-2010 - Pinker⁴

Data Quality & Definitions

Obtaining an accurate count of the nuclear warheads possessed by each country today is difficult, since each country controls the publicly available information relating to its nuclear capabilities for security reasons. The data presented here is taken from the Federation of American Scientists Nuclear Notebook and should be taken as a best-estimate of the capabilities of each country. In addition to this, Israel maintains a policy of nuclear ambiguity and refuses to confirm or deny its nuclear capabilities.

The data on nuclear weapons tests come from the Oklohoma Geological Survey and can be considered an accurate count of nuclear weapons tests.

Federation of American Scientists: Nuclear Notebook

Data: Estimate of the nuclear warhead inventory and capability of each nuclear power

Geographical coverage: Confirmed and suspected nuclear powers

Time span: 1945-2014

Available at: Online here

Johnston's Archive of Nuclear Tests

Data: Nuclear tests, above ground nuclear detonations, high-altitude nuclear explosions and fatalities

Geographical coverage: Global

Time span: Since 1945

Available at: Online here

Oklahoma Geological Survey Nuclear Explosion Catalog

Data: Depth, magnitude, latitude and longitude of nuclear explosions

Geographical coverage: Global

Time span: 1945-1998

Available at: Online here

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The data and research currently presented here is a preliminary collection or relevant material. We will further develop our work on this topic in the future (to cover it in the same detail as for example our entry on World Population Growth).

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This is a revised and expanded version of a note originally prepared for the Department of Energy, August 1998, as part of a project on the future of US-South Asian relations.

How did India reach the point where four or five men could and did step across an important threshold and order the detonation of nuclear devices that were unashamedly designed as weapons and then publicly declare that India was a nuclear weapon state?

Reconstructing the events that led to the May tests is not merely an historical exercise. The decision to test these weapons was important. It tenuously set India on the path of nuclear weaponization (tenuously because there is no consensus in India as to what weaponization means). The Indian tests led directly to the subsequent Pakistani tests. The decision to test may also have dealt a death blow to the American-led process of containing proliferation by a strategy of treaty adherence.

The tests certainly made South Asia a more dangerous place, and possibly a less-stable one. It has been known for some time that even a small-scale nuclear incident would produce casualties of unprecedented magnitude given the region's weak medical and emergency infrastructure and the close proximity of urban areas to likely targets. Even a single nuclear detonation over a major South Asian city would produce considerable devastation. A 'small' nuclear war would be an unprecedented catastrophe for the region, a major one would have global physical, environmental and biological repercussions.

Further, there will be future thresholds to cross and perhaps even a reconsideration of India's nuclear policy. The decision to conduct these tests was initially greeted with widespread praise, but this has given way to an increasingly sober consideration of the new risks and costs that they engendered.

While we do not know all of the details we can draw the broad contours of the history of decision and indecision that led to these tests. Aristotle suggests that the beginning of wisdom is to classify, followed by the development of theories that more fully explain events, decisions, and actions. Our approach is primarily an attempt at classification: to sort out the major variables and trends that made possible the final decision to test. Whether India and Pakistan convert their present devices into deliverable weapons, develop a command and control structure and doctrine and deploy them are questions beyond the immediate scope of this paper.

Our framework derives from the literature that tries to systematically explain why complex events occur. Such events as military coups, airplane crashes, or championship basketball seasons do not happen randomly or by accident, and are usually the product of a complex chain of factors, variables and decisions (or the absence of decision).

In the case of important decisions by states key long term factors typically include geography, the economic and human resources available its leaders, and the deepest assumptions and beliefs held by the Indian policy -making community. The latter is especially important in the decision to test because it was least understood by many foreign observers.

There are also a number of intermediate, mid-term factors, such as economic circumstances, security considerations, and domestic politics that influence foreign and security policy. Such factors do not usually change rapidly and (like the weather) predictions of tomorrow's events, if based upon today's policies, are frequently correct.

Finally, there is the short-term: a matter of hours, days, or weeks during which the play of events might lead decision-down one path or another. The coup takes place, the plane crashes, the final basket is scored.

Our overall conclusion is that the decision to test or at least to break out of India's strategic cul de sac had been influenced by medium-term events that took place largely over the last six to ten years. Most, but not all, of what we call medium-term factors pointed in the direction of a strategic 'breakout,' although not necessarily in the shape it finally assumed. For example, immediately before the tests took place the head of the BJP's foreign policy cell suggested that India might not test but could still declare itself to be a nuclear weapon state-until the tests actually took place this seemed at the time to be the most plausible step that the government might take.

The long term factors that framed this decision had not significantly changed, nor were the short term calculations that critical. The decision may not have been prudent, and certainly its implementation left much to be desired (India's post-test diplomacy has been roundly criticized by many of those who supported the test itself), but this only highlights the significance of the medium term, over the long or short term.

The long term: a frustrated great state
Several nearly immutable factors influence New Delhi's foreign and security policy. India's geographical location, its relative paucity of energy and other natural resources, its environmental circumstances and the uneven level of its technology are all background variables that have been slow to change. So, also, are the civilizational variables of culture and self-image: the way in which Indians see their own country, and the way in which India is believed to have a special place into the larger world.

Two such attitudinal/cultural factors are closely linked to nuclear decisions and have partnered those decisions at critical historical junctures. The first is the way in which nuclear weapons and nuclear energy, might contribute to India's domestic strength, especially its economic growth; the second is the way in which Indians see nuclear weapons as helping or hindering India's 'emergence' as a great state.

Reborn India
Nuclear technology-and now, by extension-nuclear weapons have long been seen as contributing to an economic and technical base that could transform India from a poor country to a modern, relatively rich state. This theme long predates the Chinese test in 1964, and is at the core of the scientists' recent arguments in favor of weaponization. Their central proposition is that the technologies underlying nuclear weapons can help make India a great scientific and 'modern' power. Even if his views have been adapted (and distorted) by the Hindu right, Nehru led the way in developing this argument. It is gospel within India's government-supported strategic/scientific enclave, although the newly emerged environmentalists, as well as the remnants of the Gandhian movement, would challenge it.

Jawaharlal Nehru saw nuclear power, in its peaceful capacity, as providing India with the ability to leapfrog many technologies. India could go from dung power to nuclear power in a single step. He proclaimed India's new dams and power stations as modern 'temples.' Nehru, and the Indian government, set out to create one of the finest science training systems in the non-Western world (neglecting primary and secondary education in the process).

Without much of a sense of irony, Indians worship science, particularly nuclear science. This worship of science and the adulation of scientists is widespread among the Indian strategic elite. The Nehruvians see science as salvation, the more rustic BJP-inclined backwaters of the political and security elite agree and argue , as did Nehru, that India was a supremely advanced scientific state when the West and the Islamic world were mired in ignorance. For both groups, the nuclear program only reclaims India's birthright.

Nehru was strongly opposed to an Indian nuclear weapons program, although he did not foreclose the possibility of the 'option' strategy. His closest confidant and advisor, V.K. Krishna Menon, was even more anti-bomb. Menon scorned K.C. Pant's advocacy of nuclear weapons and in 1965 told me that Pant was reading from a text figuratively and literally prepared by Homi Bhabha (the head of the Indian nuclear program). Nehru and Menon could keep Bhabha and the scientists in check by diverting their energy to the civilian (i.e. 'peaceful') program with a bit of fudging on the side. While the full story of the sheltering of the bomb program within the Indian nuclear establishment has yet to be told, a forthcoming book by George Perkovich will provide an initial overview.

However, the civilian nuclear energy program staggered under its own conceptual limitations. India's badly conceived and d worse-implemented power program was hard-put to compete with cheaper energy sources, and was crippled by restrictions on the transfer of technology from Canada, the US and other states. At this point, beginning about fifteen years ago, support for the weapons program began to draw upon existing support for the rebirth of India through a number of new and seemingly marvelous science and technology programs. This was one reason why India made technology cooperation the central focus in its attempt to develop a new relationship with the United States in 1984-86, and even today technology transfer is singled out as a key demand made of the United States in exchange for future restraint on the weapons program.

The overall strategy for high-technology programs was that they would produce spin-offs that would benefit the development effort. The nuclear program, the space program, and other dual-use technologies were all assumed to be cost-effective when these spin-offs were taken into account. However, when various technologies were denied by others, as in the case of the second US supercomputer, the enhanced effort put into developing an indigenous technology was thought to make India that much stronger, because the country was forced to be self-reliant. The scientific/strategic enclave, and their publicists, boast that technology denial thus helps India. Additionally, these efforts at self-reliance have become important rallying points for nationalist sentiments, as India is portrayed as defying the combined might of the West (and Japan), standing on principle.

Lacking an accurate understanding of how little such advanced technologies actually contribute to development, and the opportunity costs incurred by trying to cobble together advanced systems given India's poor industrial and technology base, the programs have become totems, and are patriotically supported and defended by a wide variety of scientists, journalists, and politicians. Thus, support for civilian programs, including the defunct power program mutated into support for the nuclear weapons program and academic critics of the civilian nuclear program have been harshly dealt with by the government while critics of the test have been accused of being foreign agents. Ominously, the BJP's Home Minister (L.K. Advani) has stated that the new 'threat' to India comes not from the 'secularists' (by which he meant Indians not sympathetic with the BJP's notion of Hindutva), but from 'liberals,' i.e. those few Indians who dared to speak out openly against the tests.

The BJP understood perfectly how nuclear weapons had come to stand for much more than a military device. The tests were gleefully welcomed as evidence of the great accomplishments of Indian culture. From the beginning, a prominent theme surrounding the tests was that they demonstrated how outside powers tried, but failed, to keep these technologies out of Indian hands. The fact that one of the key scientists was a Muslim reinforced the linkage between national integration, national unity, national pride the atom, and science. Ironically, the Hindu-oriented BJP's greatest public triumph came through an event which was widely seen as an accomplishment of India's secular identity.

India as a great state
Most Indians, especially those in the Delhi-centered strategic and political community strongly believe that their country is once again destined to become a great state, one that matches the historical and civilizational accomplishments of the Indian people. To varying degrees this view is shared at nearly all points along the Indian political spectrum.

Over the years, there developed a complex linkage between the greatness of India and the nuclear question. Nuclear weapons were first seen as an evil badge worn by Cold War great powers. This position, first and best expressed by Jawaharlal Nehru, concluded that India would demonstrate its global leadership by rising above and attempting to end the global nuclear arms race.

At the other extreme, the militant Hindu nationalists, such as the Jana Sangh (the BJP's precursor party), and some of the secular nationalists, such as those inspired by Subhas Chandra Bose and Ram Manohar Lohia (George Fernandes' mentor) favored nuclear weapons because they would demonstrate Indian civilizational superiority through the acquisition of the most destructive and advanced form of military power known to mankind. They assured their followers that because of India's inherent civilizational greatness that such weapons would only be used for peaceful and defensive purposes, an argument that is prominent in the Government's White Paper and all recent official statements on the bomb.

For thirty years the compromise between these pro- and anti-nuclear positions was maintained by the inherently ambivalent 'nuclear option' policy. The hawks could be assured that work would continue on the bomb, the doves could hope that the problem would go away, or that political progress would make the bomb unnecessary.

In the end both anti-nuclear and pro-nuclear positions have been merged. Although the secularists and modernizers and the BJP come at the nuclear question from two different perspectives-the former began with a faith in the peaceful use of atomic energy, the latter had always emphasized the military use of the atom. The two positions have been synthesized in the writings of several Indian strategic writers, most notably K. Subrahmanyam and the person of George Fernandes, the Minister of Defense in the BJP-led coalition government.

Subrahmanyam is a secularist but spent much of his career trying to prove that Nehru really would have favored nuclear weapons; like many of his generation he respected Nehru's commitments to a democratic, secular state, but felt that Nehru had been too weak and pliable, and bore some of the responsibility for both the disaster of 1962 and India's failure to deal decisively with Pakistan (and Kashmir) at an early stage. More recently Subrahmanyam has tried to make the case that Gandhi, also, would have favored nuclear weapons. The formula he and others developed thirty years ago has now become fairly widely accepted: India would acquire nuclear weapons in order to pressure the nuclear 'haves' to disarm (a theory reminiscent of the notion that the village in Vietnam had to be destroyed to be saved). Indians could have their nuclear cake and eat it: an Indian nuclear program came to be seen as an instrument of resistance to the blackmail tactics of the nuclear weapons states-and thus entirely justified. Further, if nuclear weapons were evil, then the so-called disarmament plans by the nuclear weapons states (whose hands were dirtied by their use or threat of use) of nuclear weapons) were also evil, and such arrangements as the NPT and even the CTBT could be opposed on moral grounds.

Some Indian advocates of nuclearization have always seen nuclear weapons in terms of realpolitik. In a world based on self-help, nuclear weapons were both a mark of a nation's greatness and an instrument of power because of their deterrent effect. Such long-standing advocates of weaponization, such as K.C. Pant (who gave his first public speech in 1965 advocating the acquisition of nuclear weapons, and who was Defense Minister at the time of India's 1974 test) have favored nuclear weapons for military and strategic purposes. While Pant and the BJP leadership speak of the moral, defensive and principled qualities of an Indian weapons program, their primary perspective is that these are devices which bring status, power and military capability to India vis a vis its neighbors and other states, especially the United States The most articulate proponent of this position is the conservative strategist, Bharat Karnad, who has argued that the supporters of 'minimum deterrence' are short-sighted, and that India needs a deterrent capability that will be able to reach all countries in the world, including the United States-only then will it be taken seriously.

The argument in favor of a large scale nuclear capability was long and successfully opposed until recent years by some of India's leading strategists. "What purpose would weaponization serve," they asked, "if India only became the sixth or seventh nuclear weapon state, with a nuclear capability far weaker than all of its likely rivals except Pakistan." A number of mainstream India strategists (most prominently retired Gen. V.R. Raghavan and a retired Chief of the Navy Staff, Admiral L. Ramdas, certainly not doves, pointed out after the tests that overt weaponization has done Pakistan more good than India, and has brought Delhi down to Islamabad's level rather than raising it to Beijing's. This group, which includes a number of foreign policy specialists associated with the Congress party and Janata Dal, would have preferred a continuation of the option strategy, preferring to delay weaponization until India could be taken seriously, i.e. , when India had already developed an IRBM and perhaps a blue water nuclear capability.

To summarize,
The original moral impetus against nuclear weapons that dominated Indian thinking from 1947 onward has not disappeared, but has been projected upon those states that are regarded as nuclear 'haves.' This, in turn, made it possible for Indians to argue that their own acquisition of nuclear weapons was a moral act, in that it was one way in which Delhi could pressure the nuclear weapons states into eliminating nuclear weapons.

The number of Indians who saw nuclear weapons as instruments and symbols of national power has increased gradually over the years. As we shall see, their ranks were swelled by the diplomacy surrounding the extension of the NPT and the passage of the CTBT, which were effectively portrayed as treaties that would forever keep India as a second rate state.

The original faith in nuclear technology as a way in which India could leapfrog intermediate technologies and dramatically improve the lot of the average citizen was appropriated by the nuclear weapons lobby: they have turned the argument of non-proliferationists inside out. Instead of arguing that nuclear weapons were closely linked to nuclear technology, and the latter must be controlled in order to eliminate or reduce the former, they argue that the nuclear weapons option, or actual weaponization, is necessary for India to maintain an independent civilian nuclear program.

Thus, there has been a gradual shift in Indian attitudes towards weaponization over the past thirty years. From widespread hostility a majority of Indians came to believe, by 1990, that because of considerations of both idealism and self interest the weapons option had to be preserved. But a majority of both the strategic elite and the broader public did not believe that the option had to be immediately exercised. Several events in the past six to eight years eroded significantly this long-standing Indian opposition to exercising the option.

Four Medium-Range Variables
While cultural assumptions do not change quickly, it is possible for a state's economic, political, and strategic environment to alter within a matter of months or years. India's strategic position seemed (to many Indians ) to have dramatically worsened after 1990; its political system underwent important changes, making the bomb issue politically salient for the first time in decades, and the calculation of the economic price of 'going nuclear' seemed, in the minds of many Indians, a rather minor issue. Thus, strategy and politics, and to a lesser extent economic calculations, changed rather quickly from 1988 to 1998, and in such a way as to strengthen markedly the pro-bomb position in the strategic elite and the larger public.

The Strategic Environment: Pakistan, China, the United States
Many observers, especially in India, have stressed the worsening of India's strategic position as critical in leading to the decision to test. They also argue that this explains the enthusiasm with which the tests were received. However, a review of the strategic situation in the years and months before the decision to test reveal a more complicated situation, one of ebb and flow rather than a sharp deterioration. Indeed, if a disadvantaged security position was the critical factor then India should have tested much earlier than 1998.

India emerged from the 1971 war with Pakistan as the dominant power of South Asia. The nuclear test, three years later, demonstrated Delhi's potential for nuclear weapons status. However, an unsettled domestic political order, plus an unwillingness to press the advantage over Pakistan, turned India away from the nuclear option and into a period of strategic stagnation. Yet neither China nor Pakistan were standing still, and by 1979 China had put its economic house in order and was actively assisting Pakistan in the latter's attempt to acquire a nuclear weapon.

Direct Chinese nuclear assistance to Islamabad was paralleled by a revival of the US-Pakistan alliance after the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union on Christmas day, 1979. Washington was suddenly willing to overlook Islamabad's nuclear program, and the Carter administration reversed its policy of sanctions.

Suddenly India was relegated to a back-bench in South Asia. From a position of supreme dominance in 1971, India had fallen to the position of a strategic (and nuclear) also-ran in 1981, Delhi saw its relative position vis a vis Pakistan or China rapidly deteriorate. The United States, which had moved closer to both of India's adversaries, appeared to be an additional enemy.

New Delhi attempted to meet this situation by increasing its dependence on Moscow and embarking on the largest arms-buying spree in the Subcontinent's history. Fully aware of Islamabad's nuclear weapons program, there is evidence that Delhi contemplated direct action against Kahuta in the mid-1980s, and it is very likely that the Brasstacks crisis was conceived in part to provide cover for an attack on Pakistan before its nuclear program reached fruition. There was also in 1984-87 an attempt to 'wean' the Americans away from Pakistan. This was mirrored by an American attempt to wean India away from the USSR and led to a brief conjunction of policies, if not of strategic objectives.

The threat of military action against Pakistan, as epitomized by the Brasstacks crisis, only hastened the Pakistani nuclear program. India's two other military gambits in 1987-88 also led nowhere: there was a brief inconclusive confrontation with China at Somdurong Cho, and a catastrophic military intervention in Sri Lanka, an operation which came to be regarded by the Indian army as their 'Vietnam.'

The confrontation with China raised the issue of what response was available to the Indian army should the Chinese threaten to use tactical nuclear weapons in the Himalayas. The story, heard from several military sources, is that the local division and corps commanders, and ultimately the Eastern Corps Commander, all asked what response India would have to the Chinese use of tactical nuclear weapons, or even a nuclear threat-and that there was no specific response from New Delhi.

Thus, even before the fall of the Soviet Union, India's expectations that it would emerge as South Asia's truly dominant and unchallenged power went unfulfilled. The final calamity was the 1989 outbreak of insurgency in Kashmir, which, coming after several years of bloody struggle with Sikh and Naga separatists, drove home the lesson that internal security problems had become acute. Hitherto, domestic insurrectionary or separatist groups were active in the far South or the inaccessible Northeast, but Punjab and Kashmir were closer to home, and turned the Indian capitol into one of the most insecure cities in the world.

Not only had the Indian position vis a vis China and Pakistan deteriorated during the 1980s, New Delhi's relations with the United States never reached a 'normal' stage. First, India deeply resented Washington's renewed support for Pakistan because of the Afghan war, and the American propensity to turn a blind eye to the Pakistani nuclear program (and its Chinese connection). But India was helpless-it had no leverage against Washington, especially since the Soviet Union was fast-fading as a serious power. There were several years when Indians expected that Washington itself would begin its own decline, and the origins of the 'look east' policy were an effort to establish India as a significant factor in South East Asia and with Japan (which was widely believed, in India no less than Washington, to be the most likely candidate to emerge as Asia's greatest state, and to eventually supplant the United States).

This was not a worrisome prospect for India. The core Indian strategic view holds that not only was New Delhi potentially one of the four or five great states of the world, its true emergence would come about through a combination of its own movement from middle-power to great-power status, and the decline of the superpowers that towered over the next tier of states. The Soviet Union had gone, and 'declinist' theorists-Japanese, Chinese, British, and American-found a ready audience in India. The United States would soon retreat from Asia in general and South Asia in particular.

This scenario never materialized. The United States not only refused to go into decline, but its logical successor, Japan (from the Indian perspective, a benign and friendly state), tentative and cautious in its post-Cold War diplomacy, showed no interest in a special relationship with New Delhi. India wound up with the worst of all possible worlds: the continuation of a China-Pakistan relationship, a still-meddling America, no likely new Asian partners, the collapse of the Soviet state, and a burgeoning domestic insecurity problem, abetted by a Pakistan that, after 1990, had to be treated as if it was a nuclear weapons state.

India's security environment seemed worse than it was because of the very high expectations of a strategic breakthrough in the 1970s and again after Rajiv Gandhi's accession to power. These expectations were sustained through 1992 by the hope that China and the United States would abandon Pakistan. The latter did reduce its commitment to Islamabad after the end of the Afghan war, but the Chinese remained Pakistan's good friends. The long-held if fantastic Indian view that the United States was guided in its Asian policy by a desire to contain India, and a willingness to use both China and Pakistan for that purpose, remained one of the core assumptions of a good portion of the Indian strategic elite.

A final component of India's worsening strategic position came from an unlikely direction: the surprisingly ease with which the Non-Proliferation Treaty was permanently extended, and the strong effort made to then develop a treaty to comprehensively ban nuclear explosions. The idea of a CTBT had been introduced originally by India, but it in its new incarnation was seen by many Indians as a way of permanently closing off India's nuclear option. This belief was strengthened by the many statements issued by American officials to the effect that the US' goal was to cap, reduce, and then eliminate India's and Pakistan's nuclear weapons capabilities. It is harder to imagine a formulation that was more threatening to the vast majority of Indian security experts, whose chief goal was to retain the option, not to exercise it or to abandon it. Incredibly, senior American officials continue to use this formulation in public speeches, ensuring that the bomb lobby's interpretation of a malign American policy will remain dominant for the foreseeable future.

No better example of the consequences of this misguided American strategy can be found than that of George Fernandes, who became Minister of Defense in the BJP-led government that finally decided to exercise the option. Fernandes came out of the liberal trade union movement, and had been vehemently anti-nuclear during his entire political career. He has stated that he remained opposed to the bomb "from Day One till the nineteenth of July, 1996," when the Lok Sabha began its debate over the CTBT. For Fernandes, who was morally opposed to nuclear weapons, the pressures from the five nuclear 'haves' was even more obnoxious. When the BJP leadership informed him of their decision to go ahead with the tests he heartily concurred.

Costing the Bomb
One of the central issues in the first Indian debate on nuclear weapons (which took place immediately after the Chinese test of 1964 and lasting through the end of 1965) was financial cost. A number of economists weighed into the debate, and various politicians argued the merits of a weapons program vs. that of maintaining a strong conventional force, or seeking other strategic remedies, such as an alliance with a friendly nuclear weapon state.

The cost of a nuclear program was less important in the subsequent (1967-68) Indian debate that had been triggered by the question of whether or not to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The dominant concern in 1967-68 was preventing India's option from being foreclosed by the NPT. By the time of the Indian test (1974), cost was relegated to a minor issue, and the entire bomb issue was swallowed up by domestic politics. India had emerged as the dominant South Asian power after its defeat of Pakistan, and there was no strategic pressure to exercise the option. In the 1970s it was widely thought that India could easily afford a nuclear weapon program, but with Pakistan crushed, and China in domestic disarray (and the United States a distant factor), there was no urgency.

The American-led response to the 1974 Pokhran test revived the economic factor in Indian nuclear calculations. Delhi was surprised at the intensity of the international reaction and shocked by the severity of the sanctions imposed upon the Indian civilian nuclear program. Subsequent American legislation (the NNPA), and the establishment of various international regimes to deny dual-use technology to incipient nuclear-weapons states had reintroduced and transformed the idea of 'cost.' Until then, cost was a purely Indian calculation of economic advantage or disadvantage. The burden of investing in a weapons program (when weighed against strategic need) had, for years, led to the conclusion that the decision could be deferred.

The various sanction and technology denial regimes developed after 1974 changed this calculation. Technology denial regimes were seen as not merely targeting India's military programs, but as punitive and vindictive, directed against the civilian energy program if not the whole Indian economy and the very emergence of India as a modern state. While not much is known about the internal debate, it is possible that the decline of the civilian program (for reasons noted above) strengthened the hand of the weapons scientists. There had been a group of Indian scientists (largely associated with the civilian program) that cautioned against the military program on the grounds that the latter would further damage the civilian effort. If this was the case then American and other restrictions on the Indian civilian nuclear program were a direct stimulus to the weapons program.

By 1998 the 'cost' argument had become inverted. Early in India's nuclear program it was argued that a strong civilian program was necessary to provide the wherewithal for a military program, should one be necessary. By 1995 it was clear that the civilian program was in shambles, and it was heard that the military program had to be sustained in order to keep a critical mass of scientists and engineers together. These arguments went virtually unchallenged in India, since the data and information needed to counter them were either suppressed or secret.

Two other cost-related factors also seemed to suggest that a nuclear weapons program would be more feasible than ten years earlier. India had undergone a severe economic crisis in 1990-91, which led to the introduction of a number of economic reform measures. These were welcomed by many pro-bomb publicists, who (naively) assumed that the Indian economy, now traveling down the road to reform, would generate the resources to develop massive and sophisticated nuclear and missile programs. Second, with every passing year, the actual investment in the weapons infrastructure had slowly grown, and by 1997 India had acquired the technical base to test a variety of systems. These might not have added up to a comprehensive, highly advanced weapons and delivery capability, but the additional cost of a full-fledged weapons program could be kept low (so the advocates of a bomb claimed) as long as India avoided an arms race, and developed a 'minimum' deterrent. 'How much is enough?' was never really debated in India, and future decisions to build and deploy will be influenced by the balance between strategic requirements and new (as opposed to sunk) costs.

Nuclear Weapons and Indian Politics
The nuclear tests were influenced by India's domestic politics in at least four ways. First, they are seen by the Delhi-centric elite as strengthening the hand of New Delhi itself against the states. To the degree that it is the center that is responsible for large, secret, and expensive projects that can be justified in the name of national security, the center has more resources at hand, and a continuing claim on revenue.

Further, the aura of crisis and danger that surrounds nuclear weapons demands a powerful political center as well as a correspondingly powerful administrative mechanism to guard them and decide upon their use. This is very appealing to once-powerful regional elites, and the bomb lobby has a disproportionate number of high-caste Hindus, members of religious minorities and others who have been dispossessed from regional politics by the emergence of mass politics. The bomb-lobby is dominated by Indians with a common understanding of the importance of maintaining the political primacy of New Delhi. A nuclearized Delhi would be marginally stronger administratively and politically and could better withstand the pressures from the states for more revenue and less spending on defense.

Second, the nuclear program is one in a series of important symbolic projects that the center has undertaken to develop a sense of Indian nationhood and identity. The content of that nationhood is, when projected through the prism of the bomb, a scientifically adept, multi-cultural people, capable of achieving great things with minimum resources. Originally, these symbolic meanings were attached to the civilian nuclear program, and its leadership often boasted of the way in which Indian talent and innovativeness thrived under the adverse conditions brought about by Western economic sanctions and technology restraint regimes. Tamils, Telugus, Parsis, Punjabis, Bengalis, high-caste and low-caste, Muslim, Sikh and Hindu, all contributed to the effort. The underlying philosophy is that no single Indian state is capable of such a project, and that only by working together can the diverse peoples of India accomplish such great deeds. A.J.P. Kalam has become the central icon of the program not only because of his technological skills, but because they were largely acquired within India and because, although a Muslim, he has a strong interest in broader Indian philosophy and culture. Finally, because the program is entirely civilian, it is a reminder to the military (and the Indian public) that Indian civilians still reign supreme.

Fourth, changes in the political process that made various 'bomb' decisions over the years is worth examination, especially the changes in the coherence and stability of the Congress party and its major rivals. As in most countries, India's bomb-related decisions have been very tightly held, even though they have been intensively debated from 1964 onward. What has changed in the past ten years is the political context in which these decisions have been made. Four prime ministers (Nehru, Shastri, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi) were secure in their positions in that they headed Congress party governments that had a clear majority. Except for Indira Gandhi during her first term as Prime Minister none of them faced any severe internal challenge. Most nuclear decisions were made in terms of strategy and cost-none of these governments would face defeat at the polls, or in internal party struggles, because of a nuclear decision.

This does not mean that they were not challenged from within the party on critical foreign policy issues. Nehru, in particular, was pressured into several decisions, including the invasion of Goa and the pursuit of a confrontational policy vis a vis China. At one time an attempt to trade territory with China (and resolve the territorial issue) was blocked by a long-time Congress stalwart (Pandit Pant, K.C. Pant's father), who threatened to bring the government down if one inch of Indian territory was transferred to the Chinese.

With the advent of weak and coalition governments in the 1990s, a challenge to the government on foreign policy was possible from without as well as within the dominant party. This occurred during Narasimha Rao's prime ministership. While he was widely respected as a shrewd manager of Indian foreign policy (he had been Indira's Foreign Minister for a number of years), he was otherwise politically vulnerable, and could have been removed from office on a number of issues. The subsequent Janata-led coalition was even more precarious, and both Deve Gowda and Inder Gujral continued in office only through the tolerance of a very disparate group of coalition partners. None of these were as vehemently pro-bomb as the BJP, but during this period the BJP was picking up new members from Congress and other parties, and some (such as K.C. Pant's wife, and then K.C. Pant himself) were hawkish on nuclear issues.

To summarize:
India's strategic environment grew both more complex and dangerous after 1990. with the renewal of the threat of war with Pakistan, Islamabad's nuclearization, strong evidence of Chinese support for Pakistan (despite the apparent improvement of India-Chinese relations), and the rise of serious domestic insurrections in Punjab, the Northeast, and Kashmir; while objectively India's security position was manageable, the sense of insecurity grew in New Delhi. This was partly because of an earlier expectation of a more secure post-Cold War world, the decreasing stability of successive Indian governments after 1990, and the emergence of what appeared to be a Western (i.e. American) attempt to eliminate India's nuclear option via a series of increasingly restrictive treaties.

The financial burden of developing a nuclear weapon was seen as diminished (in view of the major investments made in the nuclear and missile programs over the years); indeed, the failure of the civilian power program led to the inverted argument that the weapons program could provide a means to sustain the infrastructure for an eventually expanded civilian program. Finally, the real (but limited) economic reforms initiated after 1991 seemed to suggest that the money would be there if the option were exercised.

The medium-range political calculations seemed to have made it easier to reach a decision to go nuclear. It was not just that the BJP had come to power (both a Congress and a Janata government were apparently on the edge of ordering tests, and certainly authorized the preparations for subsequent tests), but all political parties from 1990 onward were more vulnerable from within their ranks and from coalition partners, to pressure on a variety of different issues. This, coupled with a larger shift away from opposition to nuclear weapons, per se, and the growth of militant 'nuclearism' (the belief that nuclearization could solve a wide range of national, cultural, and strategic problems) created an environment in which the decision to go nuclear was domestically politically acceptable, and perhaps politically essential for those on the Indian right.

Why Now?
These long and medium-term factors provide a frame through which we can view the events of 1998. Clearly, there was widespread support for any decision that could be seen as preserving Indian greatness and its strategic capabilities. The debate over the CTBT had been structured by the dovish Inder Gujral so that India presented itself as a moral authority on strategic and nuclear issues, and was openly defying the West (especially the US) to punish it. As Gujral said in one of his speeches, Indians were proud of their willingness to address and challenge on these great moral issues (especially when India's own strategic position was affected), and would not mind-it even welcomed-the consequences.

We now turn to a series of events and short-term factors which together formed the end game of the decision to test and move towards a declaration of nuclear weapon status. Less is known about them at the moment, but undoubtedly the full story of the actual decision to proceed with the tests will emerge over the next year or two.

Internal BJP party considerations Immediately after the tests several informed observers noted that 'domestic politics,' and the internal politics of the BJP-RSS nexus, were responsible for the decision. Stephen Solarz and others have argued that to meet pressure from within the party (and by extension, the Sangh Parivar-the larger community of Hindu nationalist organizations and groups) the Vajpayee and others had to demonstrate that they were capable of fulfilling at least one of the Party's major planks. They had yielded to coalition partners on the revocation of Article 356 of the Constitution (which provided Kashmir with a special constitutional status), on the further destruction of mosques built upon temple sites, and on 'Swadeshi' economics. Only the bomb was left.

Electoral calculations. Several Indian press reports claim that the decision to test a weapon was made by the first BJP government (in 1996), but not implemented since it failed to achieve a parliamentary majority and quit office. This possible sequence of events was cited by some as indicating the strength of the bureaucracy and its ability to resist a radical decision by a government with less than complete authority.

However, another factor may have been involved, especially if there was a decision to test in 1996. It could be that the BJP leadership felt that they had to test quickly because it would be one of the few major accomplishments they could bring to the voters should there be an election. This was probably the case in 1996, perhaps somewhat less so in 1998 because India had grown election-weary, and there was widespread expectation that the BJP-dominated coalition would hold office for at least a year. The core group that made the decision to test in 1996 and 1998 could have felt that for electoral reasons it would be better to test sooner rather than later.

The Ghauri Test. Pakistan's test of a medium-range missile has been termed especially provocative. However, this was only one in a series of provocations offered up by each side-and does not quite square up with the Government's repeated insistence that the tests were carried out primarily because of concern with Beijing, rather than Islamabad. In any case, the decision to go ahead with a test had already been made in Delhi: the Ghauri only confirmed the wisdom of that decision and further weakened the position of any Indian official or citizen who opposed weaponization. Ironically, the Ghauri test may have made it more important for Islamabad to subsequently test a nuclear weapon in order to continue its strategy of one-upping New Delhi.

The Clinton visit and false 'signals.' The likely Clinton visit was thought by some Indian strategists as the best opportunity to engage the Americans on issues of real concern to New Delhi. According to some sources, it was thought that getting the test out of the way as soon as possible would provide enough time for India and the US to sort out residual differences and still permit a Clinton visit in 1998. And, some had drawn the conclusion that the United States no longer regarded proliferation as that critical an issue in its dealings with India. A number of American studies, later echoed in official statements, called for a broad-ranging relationship with India, and a de-emphasis on proliferation and formal treaty adherence.

Was this taken (by some Indians) as a sign that the United States had a more nuanced (i.e. tolerant) view of Indian strategic ambitions, and might even welcome an Indian nuclear program as strengthening India's capability to stand up to China? It should be emphasized that the Indian strategic community is deeply divided as to the origin of the threat as well as the means to meet it, and that the same individuals who held these views could (and usually did) strongly criticize the United States for its strategic insensitivity and hegemonistic inclinations. If American statements sent false signals then this may have had more to do with Indian wishful thinking than any changes in American strategy towards South Asia, which during this period was still in a state of flux.

Summary and Review:
The 'bomb' has always been a subject of intense debate in India. The debate has often been one-sided or incomplete because of the poor quality of knowledge about nuclear weapons and strategy. Nevertheless, from 1964 onward the long and medium-term factors discussed above-politics, strategy, cost, national identity-were thoroughly aired in public and within the government.

Over the years pro-bomb arguments grew stronger but never dominated. This is evident in the shift of public opinion (as measured by a long-running series of polls) from strongly opposing nuclear weapons to cautiously favoring them, although a majority of Indians would still favor nuclear abstention if there were no threat from Pakistan or China.

The most important change in the structure of Indian public debate has been to propel the 'identity' argument forward as a key issue, and to reduce the importance of economic cost. The rise of a more splintered domestic political order in India is indirectly but importantly linked to foreign policy. On the one hand this splintering makes governments more vulnerable to pressure on highly visible foreign policy issues, on the other it seems to enhance the importance of national consensus and a common approach to foreign policy. The greater the division on other issues, the more important it seems to be to have a common front on security issues, and both the BJP, as well the Indian strategic community has been engaged in an attempt to define the parameters of that consensus. The bomb tests have important strategic consequences, but Indian strategic decisions are also at the mercy of an increasingly tumultuous domestic political system.

Conclusion
What does this analysis have to say about our understanding of regional proliferation dynamics, and what major surprises emerge from this brief note?

Explaining The Decision
Two single-variable models for predicting Indian decisions can be readily dismissed. One has been favored by 'realist' analysts the other by elements of the non-proliferation community.

The former argue that states will always go nuclear if vital security interests are threatened; Indian and Pakistani interests have been threatened, hence the tests and the eventual weaponization that will follow. This does not provide an answer to the question as to why India did not go nuclear much earlier when its security situation first began to deteriorate.

Some arms controllers have argued that prestige is a critical variable in the decision to go nuclear. Unlike the realists, who see threats everywhere, they do not grasp why even the most serious security threat would lead a state to develop a weapon that cannot seemingly be used for any rational military purpose. Further, in the South Asian case the argument that states go nuclear because of the prestige factor also fails to persuade, largely because of the evident reluctance-stretching over decades-of many successive Indian governments to test, or to declare India to be a nuclear weapons state without a test. All of these governments have had to deal with a difficult strategic environment under circumstances of economic stringency.

The Indian counterpart to the West's 'more bang for a buck' is New Delhi's 'more rumble for a rupee' and there is a small but growing military literature on the use of tactical nuclear weapons in the Subcontinent. This discussion has been inhibited until now because neither Pakistan nor India had declared themselves to be nuclear weapons states, but we can expect a full-scale discussion of nuclear doctrine to emerge in the next few years; it is highly unlikely that prestige will play much of a role in the discussion, as compared with hard-core strategic, economic, and political considerations.

If single-variable explanations seem weak or limited, it is no less imprudent to aggregate all variables and assume that today's policies, which might have been the same as yesterday's, will continue on tomorrow. Like the weather, tomorrow's weather will not be the same as today's, even though today's may be the best single predictor. This is because what happens today is not a factor or variable, it is an outcome.

Some surprises
Our approach has been to disaggregate a large number of factors into their short, medium, and long-term mutability. This suggests that it in the Indian case (and Pakistan's as well) it will be especially important to track changes over time and remain alert to the appearance of seemingly irrelevant factors, and the reappearance or disappearance of others. In the case of the 1998 tests some old factors (cost) reappeared in a new guise, and some new ones (political instability at the center) were unprecedented. There was also a steady erosion of opposition to nuclear weapons. To my mind, however, there were three significant developments that were systematically underestimated by outsiders (and many Indian analysts).

1) The first was the deterioration in India's apparent strategic position. To outsiders India looked as prosperous and as secure as before, but for many Indians the loss of its strategic anchors and the prospect of facing a new and unexpected world without a full complement of weapons (when three hostile states had them) demanded more self-confidence than could be expected of a country also undergoing simultaneous economic, political, communications, and cultural revolutions. It remains to be seen whether the bomb will ease the sense of insecurity that pervaded the Indian strategic elite in the mid-1990s. My own view is that it will provide some temporary respite, but without significant progress at home (and a more adept diplomacy abroad), the deeper insecurities that made the bomb decision possible will remain.

2) American policy, no matter how well-meaning, served as an accelerant as far as the nuclear decision was concerned. Washington seemed to be trying to foreclose some important Indian options, opening the way for the proliferation hawks to tests and weaponization. (the options before recent governments have included a test with no weaponization, and the declaration of weaponization without testing, the BJP did both, although it, and the scientific/strategic enclave that was responsible for the technical side of the tests, skillfully misled outsiders and Indians alike as to their intentions).

3) While being a democracy has an impact on Indian foreign policy, weak governments are especially vulnerable. The great stress, in India, on the importance of a bipartisan consensus on foreign policy meant that once earlier governments moved towards a nuclear test by preparing the test site and allowing the design teams to continue their work, then successor governments could claim that their predecessors supported their policies because they had literally prepared the ground. It will be difficult to move the new 'consensus' back from this position, to a point where declaration of nuclear weapons status does not include deployment.

4) Finally, we conclude with a theme which has not been discussed in the strategic literature, or in Indian statements immediately after the tests-but which is evident in any reading of the Indian press. It is that India is simultaneously undergoing a variety of domestic changes, some of which are revolutionary in their implications. There is a stalled economic revolution, which began about the time that India's global strategic position changed (1990), there is a social revolution, epitomized by the emergence of regional middle caste and even low caste political parties, whose fixed agenda is nothing short of social transformation; there is also a cultural revolution underway, led by the BJP, which seeks to redefine and homogenize the meaning of 'Indian.' Finally, there is a federal revolution under way in the country, in which the states battle for greater freedom from the center.

Each of these revolutions has important implications for Indian foreign policy: our point here is that together and separately they remain far more important for most Indians than issues such as nuclear weapons or arms control. Strategic and military issues become politically salient only when they are linked to these deeper causes. It has been a major accomplishment of the BJP to once again (as did Nehru) link India's foreign policy with its larger civilizational aspirations. Both Nehru, his daughter, and the BJP saw this as a way of strengthening their hand at home. This suggests that in the long run purely strategic considerations will eventually be displaced, or supplanted, by considerations of economics and politics-hardly a surprising conclusion for a democracy. The BJP will not win the next election because of the bomb, it may do marginally better (or worse) depending on how the nuclear issue is linked to the concerns of India's voters. Only a few of those voters are concerned about foreign policy issues, many more are concerned about economic issues, caste and ethnic conflict, growing social violence, and loosening the heavy hand of New Delhi.

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Nuclear Weapons and Conflict in South Asia | Brookings

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Paper by Stephen Cohen, Senior Fellow, Brookings Intitiution, Foreign Policy Studies presented to the Harvard/MIT Transnational Security Project Seminar, November, 23 1998.

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The U.S. should back away from updating its obsolescent nuclear weapons, in particular silo-launched missiles that needlessly risk catastrophe

By The Editors

This article is part of "The New Nuclear Age," a special report on a $1.5-trillion effort to remake the American nuclear arsenal.
The U.S. is planning to modernize its unwanted, unneeded and unsafe nuclear triad of land-, sea- and air-based weapons. Perfectly poised to refight the cold war, these overhauled bombs will waste $1.5 trillion and threaten life on Earth for the century to come. We should rethink this miserable folly rather than once again squandering our wealth while driving a new arms race.

As detailed in this issue of Scientific American, this plan to burn money while imperiling the world has been widely criticized in nuclear policy circles. "Russia and the United States have already been through one nuclear arms race. We spent trillions of dollars and took incredible risks in a misguided quest for security," former U.S. defense secretary William J. Perry wrote in 2016 as the plans first materialized. "There is only one way to win an arms race: refuse to run."

Although the Biden administration canceled proposed Trump-era sea-launched missiles, the U.S. nuclear arsenal still bristles with some 3,700 weapons, around 1,700 of them deployed for military use and the rest in storage overseen by the Department of Energy. This quantity is more than enough to threaten the destruction of humanity and Earth's biosphere-and it is only a fraction of the world's total, leaving out Russia's similarly large stockpile and smaller ones in China and other nations. Lowering the numbers and thus the risks of these weapons is a responsibility the U.S. and the Soviet Union first recognized at the end of the 1960s, and this goal should drive military and political decision-making now.

Instead the U.S. is sleepwalking into an ill-considered and little-discussed resurrection of its three-pronged cold war nuclear forces. Meanwhile China is expanding its own arsenal (to one-fourth the size of the U.S.'s). New submarines, missiles and planes, all designed to fit into a military strategy first conceived before the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, will by 2050 leave the dead hand of the past steering us into another century of pointless risks. In this future, a mistake or misjudgment could exterminate humanity, as nearly happened repeatedly throughout the cold war. We are simply fortunate, nothing more, to have survived the hundreds of false alarms that rang over those decades.

At the center of the government's proposal is a $100-billion bid to fill 450 nuclear silos in five inland states with hundreds of new nuclear missiles set to launch on hair triggers. Built before submarine-launched missiles became large, accurate and untraceable, these relics are now justified as a "nuclear sponge" to absorb a Russian attack on the U.S. Why plant a $100-billion nuclear "kick me" sign on the country's breadbasket?

We cannot store the nuclear waste we have now, never mind the additional waste that will result from building these missiles. The so-called nuclear sponging mapped in this month's issue [ see "Sacrifice Zones"] would kill up to several million from radiation exposure, with hundreds of millions in North America being at risk of exposure to lethal fallout. Even a limited nuclear war between India and Pakistan would kill tens of millions worldwide and cause global famine-but how can the U.S. argue for other nations to disarm while burnishing its own nuclear sword in such a heedless fashion?

We aimed this Damoclean sword at ourselves during the cold war when we produced 70,000 of the plutonium "pits" that trigger thermonuclear warhead explosions. Weapons tests of these blasts have left every part of Earth's surface contaminated with plutonium, with hotspots such as the Rocky Flats in Colorado and the Hanford sites in Washington State still requiring tens of billions of dollars for cleanup. Faltering efforts to restart pit production for the nuclear-modernization effort have cost $18 billion to $24 billion, much of it wasted, and, by the admission of weapons officials at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, they don't even seem to be immediately necessary.

Why are we risking so much when the lessons of the 20th century are so clear? In the words of the 1991 START Treaty that capped the cold war, "nuclear war would have devastating consequences for all humanity ... it cannot be won and must never be fought." Disregarding Russia's inability to turn its nuclear arsenal to military advantage while being bombarded by Ukrainian drones, our political class has fumbled away hard-won wisdom about the deadly futility of the arms race. We are recapitulating the dangers the world turned away from decades ago.

Who today benefits from disinterring the arms race? Only defense-industry shareholders and military contractors near silos in North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and Nebraska. This, in a nation where we have just doubled child poverty out of a refusal to help lower-income families. Surely it would be cheaper, safer and smarter to build factories or universities or research labs in these places, construct low-cost housing next to new engineering or biomedical campuses there, and watch them boom, in a good way, for the next century at a fraction of the silo-overhaul price tag. The 900 nuclear missiles onboard U.S. submarines will meanwhile deter the feared nuclear first strike the obsolescent land missiles were meant to discourage at the dawn of the cold war.

"A worrisome new arms race is brewing," United Nations secretary-general António Guterres said in September. "This is madness. We must reverse course." We agree. The only real way to use nuclear weapons is never. They should exist only in numbers large enough to deter their use by others, which they already abundantly do, with not one warhead more.

This article was originally published with the title "Modernizing Nuclear Weapons Is Dangerous" in Scientific American Magazine Vol. 329 No. 5 (), p. 72
doi:10.1038/scientificamerican1223-72

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The U.S.'s Plans to Modernize Nuclear Weapons Are Dangerous and Unnecessary

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The U.S. should back away from updating its obsolescent nuclear weapons, in particular silo-launched missiles that needlessly risk catastrophe

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Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - Causes, Impact & Lives Lost

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On August 6, 1945, during World War II (1939-45), an American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima, immediately killing 80,000 people. Three days later, a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people.