After hosting last week’s BMD conference in Vienna (Our new media department is working on the videos and mp3s of the panel-speeches. Curious? ) and getting my course-plans ready for the next term, I finally have a few minutes to write a couple of lines.
On my way back from Vienna, I skimmed through the latest issue of Foreign Policy and, of course, John Mueller’s article on nuclear weapons caught my attention. I had bought Mueller’s book “Atomic Obsession” a couple of weeks ago (unfortunatley, it is still collecting dust in the shelf but I promise to read it … soon 
) and so I curiously studied his arguments in FP. There are three points I would like to raise (Ken Adelman already responded to Mueller’s piece – you can read his article here):
1) Mueller argues that treaty-based agreements are not needed for the reductions/elimination of nuclear weapons:
But all of this is scarcely needed. Nuclear weapons are already disappearing, and elaborate international plans like the one Obama is pushing aren’t needed to make it happen. During the Cold War, painstakingly negotiated treaties did little to advance the cause of disarmament — and some efforts, such as the 1972 SALT Agreement, made the situation worse from a military standpoint. With the easing of tensions after the Cold War, a sort of negative arms race has taken place, and the weapons have been going away more or less by themselves as policymakers wake up to the fact that having fewer useless things is cheaper than having more of them. By 2002, the number of deployed warheads in Russian and U.S. arsenals had dropped from 70,000 to around 30,000, and it now stands at less than 10,000. “Real arms control,” wistfully reflected former U.S. assistant secretary of state for arms control Avis Bohlen in an essay last May, “became possible only when it was no longer necessary.” (emphasis added)
Well, is it really that easy? While it is true that we have seen the reduction of the over-kill capacity, the tough phases of reduction are still lying before us. Given the fear of cheating and break-out, which would be more serious in a world with fewer nucler weapons, reductions below a certain level cannot and will not be achieved without treaties. Moreover, Mueller’s view that nukes are “useless things” is – unfortuntely – still not shared by many decision-makers around the world and nukes are still seen as the ultimate means to ensure national security. It is one thing to judge the utility of nuclear weapons as a professor and conclude that they are useless, but is quite another thing to do so a decision-maker.
2) In a later section of the article, Mueller cites French and British reductions and notes that “the Chinese have built far fewer of the nuclear weapons than they could have – they currently stock just 180.” Is this really good news? You could also put it like this: China keeps modernizing its nuclear arsenal (to ensure its reliability and survivability) and is estimated the deploy between 50 and 100 ICBMS by 2015 (see the report by P. Podvig and H. Zhang on “Russian and Chinese Responses to U.S. Military Plans in Space”, p. 51-52). The numbers could even be higher (around 200 warheads on ICBMs, according to H. Zhang), if Beijing decides to speed up modernization/extension as a reaction to US missile defenses. Not quite a negative arms race, right?
3) Mueller also addresses the impact of a nuclear explosion on the American society and economy:
Although former CIA chief George Tenet insists in his memoirs that one “mushroom cloud” would “destroy our economy,” he never bothers to explain how the instant and tragic destruction of three square miles somewhere in the United States would lead inexorably to national economic annihilation. A nuclear explosion in, say, New York City — as Obama so darkly invoked — would obviously be a tremendous calamity that would roil markets and cause great economic hardship, but would it extinguish the rest of the country? Would farmers cease plowing? Would manufacturers close their assembly lines? Would all businesses, governmental structures, and community groups evaporate?
Americans are highly unlikely to react to an atomic explosion, however disastrous, by immolating themselves and their economy. In 1945, Japan weathered not only two nuclear attacks but intense nationwide conventional bombing; the horrific experience did not destroy Japan as a society or even as an economy. Nor has persistent, albeit nonnuclear, terrorism in Israel caused that state to disappear — or to abandon democracy.
Even the notion that an act of nuclear terrorism would cause the American people to lose confidence in the government is belied by the traumatic experience of Sept. 11, 2001, when expressed confidence in America’s leaders paradoxically soared. And it contradicts decades of disaster research that documents how socially responsible behavior increases under such conditions — seen yet again in the response of those evacuating the World Trade Center on 9/11.
But what about the scenario of a nuclear explosion in one US city (e.g. New York) followed by the threat (!) of a terrorist organization to detonate nuclear explosives in two or three other cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles, or Washington – or, even worse, two or three unspecified cities? I doubt that reactions of US citizens during and after the attacks of 9/11 are a good indicator for what would happen in situation like this. The discussion about whether terrorists could succeed in obtaining/constructing a nuclear weapons is of course a different story.
A last note: You may have heard that Libya’s Mu’ammar al-Qadhafi called for a Jihad against Switzerland …
