It is time to accept that North Korea has nuclear weapons
Russian armed forces in the war against Ukraine: How dangerous are nuclear weapons to the world and to the Russians in the threat of nuclear war?
The threat is less of a nuclear war than of Russia using tactical nuclear weapons against Ukranian. It wouldn’t be as bad as in 1962, but still devastating. Putin would let the deployment happen again if tactical weapons were used. There would be a nightmare situation if the weapons of mass destruction were normalized.
Mr. Putin argued that he was forced into his decision. “They want to inflict ‘strategic defeat’ on us,” he said, picking up a phrase that American officials have used to describe their desired outcome for Russia in the war against Ukraine, “and climb on our nuclear facilities.” He claimed that the Ukrainians were already using drones to attack strategic air bases in Russia, where the Russians keep the bombers that can deliver nuclear weapons.
From the moment these weapons were introduced, the world has lived with the perpetual threat of nuclear annihilation. Many people seem to forget the giant elephant in the room when it comes to terrorism, as well as other dangers, in the last few years.
These warheads are fitted to Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) which can travel thousands of miles and are aimed at key sites and cities in the US, UK, France and Russia.
Nuclear weapons with less than 100 kilotons of explosives have a lower yield than those with more than 1,000 kiloton of explosives.
Though blowing up these power stations would not create a nuclear explosion similar to a weapon detonation, it could spread radioactive debris and contaminate local water supplies.
The Russian Army as a Force in the Warsaw Pact: Does it Matter How Well It Is Used and How Does It End?
De Bretton-Gordon: This is difficult to tell for certain, but my assumption is that Russia’s strategic weapons and ICBMs are probably in good condition and always ready. I expect Russia’s nuclear weapons to be well looked after because they are only Russian and they give it more military power than the US and NATO.
But this is likely not the case for the tactical weapons. The missiles are in decent shape and the warheads are in good shape, but the vehicles mounted on them are in poor condition, according to my opinion. This is an assumption based on the state of the rest of the Russian Army equipment on show in Ukraine.
The scenarios of how the Russians may do it vary greatly. They could fire a missile from a location in Russia or a shell six inches wide from a gun onUkrainian soil. The targets may be a military base or a city. The size of the weapon and the winds would affect how much destruction there would be. Thousands of deaths could be caused by a small nuclear explosion, rendering a base or a downtown area uninhabitable for years.
Due to the sanctions imposed on Russia, and its heavy use of precision guide missiles, these weapons are reliant on high-tech components, such as chips and transistors, which is very rare in Russia.
The main thrust of this move is attacking civilians rather than opposition forces. Attacks on hospitals, schools and hazardous infrastructure happen with this. They can become chemical or nuclear weapons if attacked.
The Russians hope the military will follow the Ukrainian people in giving up, which is a mistake because both are better than the Russians.
The weather is showing that all this would head west across Europe. This could be seen as an attack on NATO and also an attack on all NATO allies in the same way that an attack on one ally is considered to be an attack on all allies.
De Bretton-Gordon: The use of strategic nuclear weapons is extremely unlikely in my opinion. This is a war nobody can win, and at the moment it does not seem likely that this regional conflict in Europe would lead to a global nuclear war which could destroy the planet for many generations.
I am sure the checks and balances are in place in the Kremlin, as they are at the White House and 10 Downing Street to make sure we are not plunged into global nuclear conflict on a whim.
Analysts inside and outside of the government who have tried to make Mr. Putin look bad have started to doubt how useful the arms would be if they were thrown in the truck.
De Bretton-Gordon: I believe the Russians developed their unconventional warfare tactics in Syria. (Russian forces entered Syria’s long civil war in 2015, bolstering ally President Bashar al-Assad’s regime). I do not believe Assad would still be in power had he not used chemical weapons.
The massive nerve agent attack on August 21, 2013 on Ghouta stopped the rebels overrunning Damascus. The four-year conventional siege of Aleppo was ended by multiple chlorine attacks.
And it does not appear that Putin has any morals or scruples. Russia attacked hospitals and schools in Syria which it is repeating again in Ukraine. Unconventional warfare aims to break the will of civilians to resist, and Putin appears to be happy to use any means and weapons to achieve this.
However Soviet doctrine, which the Russians still seem to be following, allows local commanders to use tactical nuclear weapons to stave off defeat, or loss of Russian territory.
The attempted annexation of four districts through the current sham referendums makes the likelihood of tactical use very high, if these places are attacked. Though one still expects that local commanders would defer to Putin first before pressing their own equivalent of a red button.
Western military sources say that Putin seems to be giving low level commanders orders, and that he is getting involved in the close battle. This is extraordinary – it appears that only now Putin has lost faith in his generals after Ukraine recaptured large swathes of the north-east earlier this year – and suggests a broken command and control system, and a president who doesn’t trust his generals.
One assumes that Putin would participate in an attack on a power station because the West would likely view it as a nuclear weapon and act accordingly.
The primary utility, many U.S. officials say, would be as part of a last-ditch effort by Mr. Putin to halt the Ukrainian counteroffensive, by threatening to make parts of Ukraine uninhabitable. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to detail some of the most sensitive conversations inside the administration.
Mr. Biden’s references to Armageddon were highly unusual for any American president. Since the Cuban Missile Crisis, 60 years ago this month, occupants of the Oval Office have rarely spoken in such grim tones about the possible use of nuclear weapons, much less talked openly about “off ramps.”
“We are trying to figure out: What is Putin’s off ramp?” Mr. Biden said, adding: “Where does he find a way out? Where does he find himself where he does not only lose face but significant power?”
The threat has always been high on the minds of the administration and the battlefield failures have only served to increase discussions around the issue. There was no indication of a change in Russian posture from any briefings or new information Biden was given.
Biden’s blunt assessment caught several senior US officials by surprise, largely due to that lack of any new intelligence to drive them and the grim language Biden deployed.
The President has used more candor and colorful rhetoric in his speeches than Biden has, but the latest unguarded moment from the Vice President was during an off-camera fundraiser. Biden’s off-the-cuff remarks tend to be a brief glimpse into real concerns or debates he is grappling with at the moment.
Biden’s remarks serve as a window into a very real, very ongoing discussion inside his administration as the seek to calibrate the response to that environment.
Typically held with only a few dozen donors, Biden’s fundraisers are more intimate occasions where he often speaks from handwritten notes, only loosely following a script he’s written for himself. Like at his public events, Biden speaks from a handheld microphone during his fundraisers and usually roams around the room while he’s talking. Reporters can observe the President’s speech, but not film it, as the convention started during the Obama presidency.
The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Status of the U.S. and its Relation to Moscow – an Underlying Event as the Origin of the Cold War
The Cuban missile crisis took place when the world appeared to teeter on the edge of nuclear war, as the US and the Soviet Union faced off over missiles in Cuba.
The President’s use of Armageddon served to illustrate that point – there’s no escalation ladder when it comes to nuclear weapons, tactical or otherwise. Any move in that direction sets off a cascading response that only has one outcome.
US officials have been wrestling with the potential for use of the nuclear weapons since the first days of the war and several of them pointed out that Putin had been rattling them for a while.
The speech strengthened the US view of Russian weakness and isolation, but it also increased concern that Putin was prepared to escalate beyond the level of a rational actor.
White House officials decided not to say anything publicly Thursday night, and there are no plans to address the remarks in isolation so far on Friday morning. When Biden leaves for hisMaryland event later in the morning, he will see what he wants to say.
More broadly, the most important element remains that US officials have seen no change in posture or specific intelligence that raises the threat level above where it has been.
The US has communicated with Moscow many times in recent weeks about the scale of their response if Putin goes down that path. Those details remain closely held, and officials say that won’t change any time soon.
The Cold War and the Nuclear War: The Day After Reagan and the Transition to Nuclear Security at the Reagan-Two-Year Postwar Period
Editor’s Note: Julian Zelizer, a CNN political analyst, is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author and editor of 24 books, including, “The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment.” Follow him on Twitter @julianzelizer. His views are not reflected in the commentary. View more opinion on CNN.
Fears of nuclear war then accelerated. In the 1980s, then-President Reagan’s bellicose rhetoric and a series of quick successions of Soviet leaders kept Americans on edge. Millions of viewers were scared when ABC broadcasted the movie “The Day After” in 1983, which depicted a fictional war that escalates to nuclear Armageddon. In his diary, Reagan wrote, “It’s very effective & left me greatly depressed.” A 16-year-old who had watched the film told a reporter that he was wondering if we were all going to die after watching it.
Although Reagan spent his first term railing against any negotiations with the Soviets, he later bucked conservative opposition to sign the historic Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Agreement (INF) in 1987. The emergence of Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev changed international dynamics and his embrace of reform and peace opened the door to the treaty, which led to the elimination of entire classes of missiles.
Things weren’t made easier by Soviet aggression. After the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in December 1979, Carter admitted, “My opinion of the Russians has changed most dramatically in the last week than even the previous two and one – half years before that.” The Senate was able to get Carter to sign the SALT II treaty in June, but he asked them to put it off until after the Soviet invasion. (While the treaty was never ratified by Congress, the US voluntarily observed the arms limits for several years.)
During the 1980s, a massive, international nuclear freeze movement came to symbolize the current Zeitgeist and created renewed pressure for elected officials to negotiate again.
Although the Cold War ended, nuclear weapons remained a topic of discussion – particularly how to keep them out of the hands of rogue states and terrorist networks. In 2002, the US raised concerns that Russia was aiding Iran with its nuclear weapons program after the two countries signed a new nuclear arms treaty. In 2015, President Barack Obama signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2015 that aimed to contain Iran’s nuclear program.
When Donald Trump became president, he pulled out of the nuclear agreement with Iran despite Tehran’s increased nuclear arms program. The United States withdrew from the treaty. One year later, Trump did the same with the Open Skies Treaty, which had enabled participants to conduct surveillance flights to foster transparency and reduce the risk of war.
The United States and Russia are not allowed to each have more than 1,250 strategic warheads. The COVID-19 pandemic forced a pause in weapons inspections, and they have not restarted since Russia invaded Ukraine last year. The US government said in January that Russia was violating the treaty by not allowing inspections to resume. However, Russia’s official suspension of the inspections is another blow to international efforts to control nuclear weapons, say experts, who worry that the world’s largest nuclear powers will not be subject to any arms-control obligations once New START expires in three years — or even sooner.
As the world now faces the real possibility of those weapons being deployed, let’s remember Gorbachev’s wise words — a sentiment that was shared by Reagan – and make this world safer.
Had the Trump administration taken this approach three years ago, we might be in a very different place today. No, North Korea wouldn’t be disarmed by now. We might have a chance to explore other steps to reduce tension, have commitments of good behavior from Tehran, and possibly even offer some gesture towardsdenuclearization in exchange for relief from sanctions. This is far from ideal, but much better than the situation when Pyongyang has weapons.
Does that mean everyone should run for the hills? No. I believe that core deterrence is very strong. The United States and Russia, and the United States and China, have enormous incentives not to end up lobbing nuclear weapons at each other’s homelands. There is much work to be done to repair the nuclear order internationally.
Although Israel has never acknowledged its nuclear capability, it remains the worst-kept secret in the world. But it does not openly flaunt its capability, which made it much easier for Arab neighbors like Egypt not to pursue their own nuclear programs in response. The United States turned a blind eye to India until it conducted a round of tests in 1998. Washington pragmatically set aside its concerns over those tests to enable cooperation in other areas.
Security and Protection of Nuclear Facilities in the Middle East: Recent Progress in the Study of Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces and the Zaporizhzhia Reactor
Last week Jeremy Fleming, director of the UK’s GCHQ intelligence agency, said that he would hope that signs would start to show if they went down that path. He added that there would be a “good chance” of detecting Russian preparations.
Russian nuclear bombs are stored in military facilities and would need to be loaded into the aircraft or slayer for deployment. The global community knows the location of about a dozen nuclear weapons storage facilities around Russia where the activity is likely to originate, according to the research organization called Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces. The US and Russia worked together to improve physical security of the repository between 2003 and 2012 as part of an initiative called Cooperative Threat Reduction.
The most urgent priority is the withdrawal of Russian military personnel and weapons from the Zaporizhzhia plant, and to ensure there are no further attacks on it or its power sources. The security of other Ukrainian plants needs to be guaranteed. A Security Council resolution should be used to create a more formal security and protection zone after that.
Next, the I Atomic Energy Agency needs to be put into international law first through a Security Council resolution and then in a new convention. Additional Protocol I should remove right to attack a nuclear-power plant during conflict. A large-scale radiation release is too grave a threat to civilians and the environment.
The integrity of reactor cores and storage pools is the main concern. If fuel rods are exposed, a core meltdown and uncontrolled release of radiation is likely, as happened at Fukushima, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 19792. “And so, one mine or one missile or whatever”, warned Ukraine’s energy minister Herman Halushchenko, “could stop the working of the generators and then you have one hour and probably 30 minutes, not more than 2 hours, before the reaction starts.”
According to US officials, Russia refused to allow scrutiny of its nuclear facilities on many occasions. Russia is not complying with it’s duty to facilitate inspection activities on its territory according to the US State Department.
Globally, 57 units to supply 60 gigawatts (GW) of new nuclear power are under construction, mostly outside Europe3. China plans to quadruple nuclear power generation to 180 GW by 2035, adding 150 new reactors to its existing 47, at a cost of US$440 billion. Bangladesh, Belarus, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates are each constructing a reactor, as well as India and India’s co-builders.
Turkey’s borders with Iraq and Syria have been highly unstable, complicated further by persistent conflict with its Kurdish minority and the extremist Islamist movement Daesh. Relations between India and Pakistan have been more stable since the 1999 ‘Kargil war’, but border fighting regularly breaks out. India and China are uneasy, but a Ukraine scenario is not likely. The most immediately concerning situation would be the deployment of troops from the Chinese mainland to Taiwan, which has three civilian nuclear reactors.
Potential loss of life and land due to radiation release and interactions between nuclear builds are some of the risks that need to be considered. Some studies are classified and need to be shared internationally, but scholars need access to that information. This is a substantial task that requires significant industry and government investment. It would help regulators and governments to take action.
The treaty doesn’t cover the battlefield nukes that Mr. Putin has threatened to use against the Ukrainians, which is the most concern for the rest of the world. The United States has a few hundred and Russia has over 2,000.
The protocol has a get out clause. It permits strikes on military objectives only if they are used in regular, significant and direct support of military operations, and if the only feasible way to end this support is an attack.
Demilitarization of the site, subject to a UN Security Council resolution, would be uncontroversial. But how could such a situation be monitored and secured? A small, neutral international peacekeeping force tasked with supporting the IAEA’s mission there is one option. However, if attacks on the plant continue, they might be faced with the need to suppress troop incursions or rocket or artillery strikes on the site. This would require rapid access to air power and entail significant risks.
Given Russia’s veto on the Security Council, a resolution would be impossible to obtain without prior agreement. A resolution should be pursued. Negotiations over ceasefires, withdrawals and peacekeeping forces often run in tandem. There is a moral pressure on the combatants to comply with the deployment.
Rosatom’s control of the plant and Russia’s annexation of the Zaporizhzhia region add unwelcome complications. The pragmatism of the cold war is what Russia needs to remember, because of the threats of nuclear war and proliferation that were mitigated by the collaboration of the superpowers. Today is another such time.
The IAEA, as well as non-governmental organizations, scholars and the civilian nuclear industry need to devote more resources to research into making nuclear plants safer.
The report admitted that risks were site- and design-specific, and recommended little changes to fuel-pool designs. The 2020 Safety Guide is an important start as it sets out rigorous and challenging standards for operators. Military attack isn’t considered to be a specific risk by the IAEA.
If the war in Ukraine doesn’t turn into a catastrophe at Zaporizhzhia then Russia,Ukraine, and many of eastern Europe may be in good shape. The world should be ashamed that nearly 70 years later, after President Eisenhower declared the era of “atoms for peace”, people are still relying on luck. The governments have the power to prevent disasters. Will they act?
Putin was speaking at a news conference in Bishkek. He described the preemptive nuclear strike as “applied to the control points, deprive the enemy of these control systems and so on,” implying that it could even prevent a retaliatory strike.
On Wednesday, Putin warned of the threat of a nuclear war as he acknowledged that the conflict is going to take a while.
“As for the idea that Russia wouldn’t use such weapons first under any circumstances, then it means we wouldn’t be able to be the second to use them either — because the possibility to do so in case of an attack on our territory would be very limited,” he said Wednesday.
If we are talking about this disarming strike, then perhaps we should think about our American partners’ ideas for guaranteeing their security. We are just looking at it. No one was shy when they talked about it out loud in previous times and years,” he said.
He said that if a potential adversary believes that a preventive strike is possible, then this still makes them think about their threats.
Russia unleashed a wave of missile and drone attacks on energy infrastructure in Ukraine on Monday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the strikes caused extensive power outages in several regions, including Kyiv and Odesa.
Now Putin says that Russia will no longer be involved in New START, the last remaining treaty between the US and Russia. The treaty, which took effect in 2011, is set to expire in February 2026.
“Russia’s refusal to facilitate inspection activities prevents the United States from exercising important rights under the treaty and threatens the viability of US-Russian nuclear arms control,” the spokesperson said.
The country clarified that it won’tseek to bulk up its nuclear arsenal on Tuesday, after Putin said that Russia wasn’t abandoning the treaty entirely.
After Mr. Putin said he would be willing to negotiate a new treaty that was clearly in the interests of both his country and Russia, the Secretary of State said he was willing to do that.
“We’ll be watching carefully to see what Russia actually does, we’ll of course make sure that in any event that we are posturing appropriately for the security of our own country and that of our allies,” said Blinken. “I think it matters that we continue to act responsibly in this area … it’s also something the rest of the world expect of us.”
The Director of the Nuclear Information Project questioned if Russia will stop exchanging data with the US now that Putin said the treaty was on life support.
I am involved in the nuclear arms-control dialogue between Russia and the United States. We have looked at a lot of the key issues required to be covered in the next round of nuclear arms-control negotiations. We have not been very productive discussing who is right and who is wrong in the war, but both governments asked us to continue, and I don’t think those discussions have been easy.
Mr. Putin’s announcement, he added, was “deeply unfortunate and irresponsible.” He said that the US would stay compliant with the treaty no matter what Russia did.
I’m not sure the treaty will last to the end. Rusten doesn’t see how we’re going to replace it with another agreement if we can’t even negotiate. “It is worrying that we are near a moment where the U.S. and Russian nuclear forces will be completely free to use in the foreseeable future.”
He said that the Ukrainians could use the inspectors’ findings to launch further attacks on those facilities. “This is a theater of the absurd,” he said. The Western world is directly involved in the attempts of the Ukrainian regime to hit the bases.
Second, trust between the two countries is virtually nonexistent. Mr. Biden and Mr. Putin have not spoken in more than a year. The Russian leader has been described by Mr. Biden as a war criminal. Even if a treaty were signed, it would not be feasible for the Senate to approve it under these conditions.
Nuclear experts are no longer in favor of another treaty between Moscow and Washington. According to the Pentagon, China will have about 1,500 weapons in the next dozen years, matching American and Russian arsenals. So an arms control treaty that left out one of the three major powers would be all but useless. If there were any, China would join the negotiations.
Gorbachev and Reagan said that a nuclear war cannot be won and must always be stopped.
New START allows each country to verify the weapons pact is being followed, by inspecting the other country’s nuclear arsenal multiple times each year. The treaty also requires regular communications about an array of military equipment and operations, to avoid misunderstandings or accidents.
Nature discussed the rising nuclear threat with Matthew Bunn, who tracks nuclear policy at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Bunn participates in one of the last remaining back-channel dialogues between Russian and US scientists, a mechanism that researchers developed during the cold war to foster communication — and avoid conflict.
The State Department’s yearly implementation report concluded that Russia was not in compliance with the treaty because it would not allow the United States to conduct on-site inspections and did not convene a meeting of the Bilateral Consultative Commission.
Russia says it will continue to alert the U.S. about missile launches, but it doesn’t know if it will continue sending notification regarding the movement of strategic military assets.
“Every time a strategic item that’s subject to the treaty, like a bomber or a submarine, moves, you send a notification,” Rusten said. “So those are really important and they’ve been going on seamlessly throughout,” even in the absence of inspections.
Nuclear Treaty New Start: What do the Russians think about the U.S. response to Putin’s accusation of destroying New START?
Putin and his government are accusing the U.S. of conducting a hybrid war against Russia and maliciously escalating the Ukraine conflict, alleging that the U.S. has fundamentally altered the security environment.
The fact that the United States is formally accusing Russia of being in violation of the treaty is a factor, according to Rusten. “The Russians, who actually do tend to be very legalistic in this kind of stuff, are putting forward their legal rationale for why they’re justified in not hosting on-site inspections under New START. It did not have to do anything with Biden’s visit, to be honest.
“A ‘suspension’ is a term of art [meaning it has a particular legal meaning],” Rusten said. One option available to the party that isn’t complying with a treaty is to file a lawsuit. Now the problem with this is, for arms control treaties, that should only be used if the U.S. were violating New START.
“Russia is linking it to our support of Ukraine.” I don’t think the U.S. State Department lawyers would say that’s a legitimate use of that sort of right under international law.”
Bidgood said, “It indicates to me that the Russian leadership no longer believes that arms control with the United States should be walled off from the bigger ups and downs of bilateral relations as it was during some of the most difficult moments of the Cold War.”
“Not of which I am aware,” Bidgood said. It is important to note that suspending participation is a political decision that can be reversed, according to the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research. What we don’t know is, under what circumstances would or could that happen?
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/22/1158529106/nuclear-treaty-new-start-putin
The nuclear arms race: what does it need to happen? – U.K., Russia, China, France and the United States made a statement in January 2022
It really depends on how states behave, said Bidgood. “If you affirm that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought, but then engage in nuclear saber-rattling, it seems to me that these words ring pretty hollow.”
The leaders of the US, Russia, China, France and the U.K. made a statement together in January of 2022, Rusten said.
“That’s really significant,” she added. “And that should be a platform on which to build, and step back from this brink that we have walked up to and that Putin’s walking up to, and take meaningful steps to make sure that a nuclear war isn’t fought, because it can’t be won. It can’t do anything to advance Putin’s war aims.
The non proliferation and disarmament regime is essential according to Bidgood. The treaty obligates all parties to pursue negotiations in good faith about cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament.
“This is really important in the environment, because it creates a mandate to engage in negotiations,” Bidgood said. The outcomes of those negotiations are what we need.
The Nuclear Landscape: How Does the New START Nuclear Treaty Prevent a Century of Warfare Between the United States and the Russian Nuclear Forces?
He has spent decades cultivating relationships with Russian scholars, nuclear scientists and military officials, only to see many of those relationships evaporate since the war in Ukraine, which Bunn says has created a level of hostility between the two nuclear superpowers that has not existed since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. The situation is becoming increasingly precarious across the board, he says, but there are still reasons for hope.
This is an important step that will undermine the future of arms control. The New START treaty expires in February 2026, and with the war in Ukraine, no talks are under way on any kind of replacement. Now even the New START treaty may fall apart before February 2026, and we may find ourselves for the first time in half a century in a world with no limits on US and Russian nuclear forces. That would increase dangers to all of us.
Almost all US–Russian communication is cut off, and many non-government dialogues have been cut off. Russia appears also to have instructed current and retired people involved in its nuclear-weapons complex not to participate in these dialogues, so the kinds of conversation that I used to have regularly with Russian colleagues are just not happening anymore.
If you look at the nuclear landscape, you have more hostility between the United States and China. India and Pakistan have growing nuclear arsenals, Iran has a collapse of the Iran nuclear deal, and North Korea has a burgeoning nuclear arsenal. It’s a much darker nuclear picture that it was even a decade ago.
