Number Of Nuclear Weapons Research Articles

CHINA’S NUCLEAR POLICY: A REALISTIC ASSESSMENT

This research paper focuses on the development, management, and execution of nuclear policies and strategies in China. Chinese nuclear policy has always been a center of discussion for military officials and researchers worldwide. Considering its internal and external security situation and strategic perceptions, China has made some crucial adjustments in its nuclear deterrent to cope with future threats and maintain the diminutive stature among nuclear powers. The issue of Taiwan and ballistic missile defense systems(BMDs) of India and USA may raise China’s critical thinking in the coming future for which it must change its policy of No First Use (NFU) and must shift its nuclear intentions from narrow to limited nuclear deterrent posture. Due to changed cultural perspectives, China has its specific nuclear strategy that involves the minimum utility of nuclear weapons. Factors involved in the evolution of Chinese nuclear strategy are in line with technological modernization. However, China is not willing to leave adherence from its NFU policy. China possesses a limited capacity of nuclear experts, a comparatively lesser quantity of nuclear installations, and a relatively lower number of nuclear weapons because it mainly focuses on the “lean and effective” quality of its strategic nuclear approach. Keywords: Nuclear policy, strategic perceptions, China, security environment.

Debating the withdrawal of US nuclear weapons from Europe: What Germany expects from Russia

The recent debate in Germany about nuclear sharing confirmed the broad support among decision-makers for continued involvement in the political dimension of NATO’s sharing arrangements, i. e., participation in the Alliance’s nuclear consultative bodies. At the same time, German decision-makers hold divergent views on continued participation in the operational and technical aspects of nuclear sharing. Russia’s arsenal of approximately 2,000 tactical nuclear weapons is of great concern to Germany and many in Berlin are worried that Russia is systematically expanding its nuclear arsenal. German decision-makers and the government support NATO’s dual-track policy of deterring and engaging Russia. German policy-makers’ arguments on the added military value of forward-deployed US nuclear weapons remain vague and there are few specific ideas about what type of arms control would be best suited to reduce the role and number of tactical nuclear weapons in Europe. There are four frameworks in which tactical nuclear weapons could be discussed with Russia, namely the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), other multilateral fora, the Russian — US bilateral dialogue on strategic stability, and the NATO — Russia Council. If Russia is serious about reducing the role and number of nuclear weapons in Europe, it should accept the reciprocity paradigm and drop some worn-out demands and positions that have little relevance for political debates around arms control in Berlin and elsewhere.

Prospects for Russia-US arms control ahead of New START's expiry

New START is due to expire in February 2021, and the Trump administration has accelerated its diplomacy on the issue with the approach of the 3 November US presidential election. If Russia and the US cannot reach an agreement on its extension or replacement, there will be no limit – for the first time since the early 1990s – on the number of nuclear weapons the countries can deploy.

What the presidential candidates should be asked about arms control and nonproliferation

ABSTRACTThe next president will have to deal with many pressing questions, but few are as consequential as this one: Do we want to live in a world in which the number of nuclear weapons is going up or going down? Once the next president is elected, he or she will have to make many choices about US internal nuclear policy: Should we use nuclear weapons first in a crisis? Should there be more than one person involved in the authorization of a nuclear strike? Should we make unilateral changes to our forces? And should we be deploying new low-yield nuclear capabilities? External policy choices on arms control and nonproliferation efforts will also have to be made, many of them all but immediately. The American public should be aware of the candidates’ various nuclear weapons plans before they vote.

War Games redux? Cyberthreats, US–Russian strategic stability, and new challenges for nuclear security and arms control

ABSTRACTSome 30 years since the release of the Hollywood blockbuster War Games, the possibility that hackers might break into nuclear command and control facilities, compromise early warning or firing systems, or even cause the launch of a nuclear weapon has become disturbingly real. While this challenge will impact all nuclear-armed states, it appears particularly acute for the USA and Russia given their large, diverse, and highly alerted nuclear forces. The fact that east–west relations have deteriorated to a nadir perhaps not seen since the 1980s, strategic instability has increased – particularly in the wake of the Ukraine and now Syria crises – and that the nuclear arms reductions agenda appears to have reached a standstill makes this challenge particularly pressing. In this discouraging milieu, new cyberthreats are both exacerbating the already strained US–Russia strategic balance – particularly the perceived safety and security of nuclear forces – and at the same time creating new vulnerabilities and problems that might be exploited by a third party. Taken together, these dynamics add another major complication for current arms control agreements and possible future nuclear cuts, and also seem likely to increase the possibility of accidents, miscalculation, and potential unauthorised nuclear use, especially given the large number of nuclear weapons that remain on “hair-trigger” alert.

Institutional Resilience, Deterrence and the Transition to Zero Nuclear Weapons

The goal of a world free from nuclear weapons is directly related to the issues of international institutions and deterrence. Assuming that it would be possible, first, to move to significantly lower numbers of nuclear weapons and then to zero nuclear weapons, governing institutions would have to be resilient enough to respond in a timely manner and to uphold the bargain. But what factors determine and influence institutional resilience? And what would be the likely role of deterrence? This article first assesses what the general ir narratives tell us about determining factors. It then examines two empirical cases from the realm of arms control institutions (the cfe and the npt treaties) and asks why these agreements are not as effective as intended. The next section discusses three additional factors of influence and identifies a shared interest in overcoming the deterrence principle as a key variable for institutional cooperation and as a factor that continues to influence resilience and effectiveness. The last section presents the conclusions.

Re-thinking the Unthinkable: Arms Control in the Twenty-First Century

ABSTRACTSince the end of the Cold War, arms control proponents tried to make the case for deep nuclear reductions and other forms of security cooperation as necessary for strategic stability. While different versions of strategic stability analysis did sometimes produce innovative proposals, constructive negotiations, and successful ratification campaigns in the past, this analytical framework has become more of a hindrance than a help. Treating arms control as a predominantly technical way to make deterrence more stable by changing force structure characteristics, military operations, relative numbers of weapons on either side, or total number of nuclear weapons gives short shrift to political factors, including the fundamental assumptions about world politics that inform different arms control logics, the quality of political relations among leading states, and the political processes that affect negotiation, ratification, and implementation. This article compares two logics for arms control as a means to enhance strategic stability, one developed by the Cambridge community in the 1960s and one used by the Reagan administration and its successors, with current perspectives on strategic stability in which flexibility and freedom of action are preferable to predictability and arms control. It also contrasts what the Barack Obama administration has tried to achieve through strategic stability dialogues with Russia and China with how they envision security cooperation. It then presents an approach developed during the Cold War by Hedley Bull for thinking about both the technical and the political dimensions of arms control, and suggests that the logic of Cooperative Security (which shares important features with Bull's approach) is a more appropriate and productive way to think about arms control in the twenty-first century than strategic stability analysis is.

Discontent with Winter-safe Deterrence

This article anticipates problems with Seth Baum’s idea of adopting ‘winter-safe deterrence’ as a security practice. A world safe from nuclear winter is highly desirable, and reducing the number of nuclear weapons would lessen the likelihood and consequences of nuclear war. However, today’s nuclear weapon states are unlikely to be confident in the deterrent capacity of non-nuclear weapons.

Has Iran Covertly Acquired Nuclear Weapons?

It is possible that Iran has covertly acquired a very small number of nuclear weapons and that these have been tested by North Korea. There are an increasing number of reports to this effect going back to 2007 when the London Daily Telegraph reported that with North Korean help Iran could obtain a “low-grade device—less than half a kiloton—within 12 months.” According to The New York Times concerning the 2013 North Korean nuclear test, a senior Obama administration official concluded that “it's very possible that the North Koreans are testing for two countries.” A.Q. Kahn proliferated detailed technical information not only on the original Chinese CHIC-4 nuclear weapons design but also on a smaller version of the design tested by Pakistan in 1998. If Iran has covertly acquired nuclear weapons, they are likely to be very few in number and low yield. There may still be time to prevent the development by Iran of an extensive nuclear weapons capability but the continuation of the current ineffective diplomacy will not do it.

President Obama's Nuclear Legacy

ABSTRACT President Obama has built a lasting legacy by reducing the number of nuclear weapons and their role in U.S. policy—laying a foundation for further reductions and making progress in securing fissile materials. This article reviews that legacy and provides an outline for bolder action in a possible second term. In such a term, Obama would also have an historic opportunity to do more to fulfill his Prague vision and enhance our security by tossing out the remaining cold war-era policies. He could achieve these goals by pursuing an additional round of arms reductions with Russia, securing Senate ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty, pulling tactical nuclear weapons out of Europe, and continuing to contain the nuclear weapons ambitions of Iran and North Korea. Were President Obama to achieve substantial progress on this agenda, it would be one of the most substantial and long-standing accomplishments of his presidency.

Unblocking the road to zero: US-Russian cooperation on missile defenses

Missile defenses have been a source of contention in US-Russian relations since the beginning of the strategic dialogue between the United States and the Soviet Union. Almost every nuclear arms reduction treaty has involved tough negotiations over the extent to which missile defenses would be permitted for each side and this year, the New START treaty ratification process made clear that missile defenses will remain a primary source of contention during future rounds of disarmament negotiations. The US Congress is not willing to accept constraints on missile defense capabilities and the Russians do not want any significant increase in US strategic missile defense capacity. The issue seems zero-sum, but there is a way to move beyond these positions—a way that has been much discussed but, so far, little pursued.The differences between the two positions can be reconciled through a series of gradual steps leading toward US-Russian cooperation on missile defenses. The brief history of missile defenses presented in this article highlights the urgent need for bilateral cooperation that could build trust that the two nations’ missile defense systems not only would not destabilize the strategic balance, but would serve common purposes. Such missile defense architectures would provide the insurance necessary for both sides to move to very low numbers of nuclear weapons and eventually to zero. In conclusion, the authors offer specific ideas about how tangible progress can be made toward cooperation within a few years.

DOE begins rationing helium-3

As the extent of the shortage becomes clear, an interagency task force is giving scientific users priority, but some say the material is not available at any price.

Nuclear winter

AbstractNuclear winter is the term for a theory describing the climatic effects of nuclear war. Smoke from the fires started by nuclear weapons, especially the black, sooty smoke from cities and industrial facilities, would be heated by the Sun, lofted into the upper stratosphere, and spread globally, lasting for years. The resulting cool, dark, dry conditions at Earth's surface would prevent crop growth for at least one growing season, resulting in mass starvation over most of the world. In addition, there would be massive ozone depletion, allowing enhanced ultraviolet radiation. More people could die in the noncombatant countries than in those where the bombs were dropped, because of these indirect effects. Nuclear proliferation is now expanding the threat. A nuclear war between India and Pakistan could produce so much smoke that it would produce global environmental change unprecedented in recorded human history. Although the number of nuclear weapons in the world has fallen from 70,000 at its peak in the 1980s to less than 10,000 currently deployed, a nuclear war between the United States and Russia could still produce nuclear winter. This theory cannot be tested in the real world. However, analogs can inform us about parts of the theory, and there are many that give support to the theory. They include the seasonal cycle, the diurnal cycle, forest, fires, volcanic eruptions, and dust storms on Mars. The only way to be sure to prevent the climatic effects of nuclear war is to rid the world of nuclear weapons. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.This article is categorized under: Climate Models and Modeling > Knowledge Generation with Models Assessing Impacts of Climate Change > Evaluating Future Impacts of Climate Change

The Second Term Bush Administration and the North Korean Nuclear Crisis

To North Korea's big disappointment, President Bush was re-elected and started his second term on January 20, 2005. On February 10, a few weeks after President Bush's second inauguration, North Korea said it would not attend 6-Party talks aimed at ending its nuclear weapons program unless the United States dropped its “hostile” policy toward the North. Pyongyang also confirmed that it has manufactured an undisclosed number of nuclear weapons to counter this U.S. policy. Considering the conflicting interests between the United States and North Korea, it will be difficult to anticipate how the North Korean nuclear crisis will be resolved. However, the relations between the United States and North Korea seem to remain in a state of tense stagnation rather than falling into a catastrophic phase. North Korea does not expect any concessions from the United States in the 6-Party talks, which only serve as a means of putting pressure on North Korea. North Korea seems convinced that a military option is not likely. North Korea may want to close the door on the United States and concentrate on the stability of its internal affairs. In the meantime, it wants to strengthen its position by extracting more plutonium. The stagnation may continue until the U.S. has enough power to keep the North from continuing to develop its nuclear program, or North Korea has enough leverage to force the United States to make substantial concession to North Korea.

Deconstructing the bomb: recent perspectives on nuclear history

John Canaday,The Nuclear Muse: Literature, Physics, and the First Atomic Bombs. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000. Pp. xviii+310. ISBN 0-299-16854-9. £19.50.Septimus H. Paul,Nuclear Rivals: Anglo-American Atomic Relations 1941–1952. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2000. Pp. ix+266. ISBN 0-8142-0852-5. £31.95.Peter Bacon Hales,Atomic Spaces: Living on the Manhattan Project. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1997. Pp. 448. ISBN 0-252-02296-3. £22.00.A decade after the end of the Cold War, the culture and technology of nuclear weapons had lost much of the overt sense of dread they once inspired. The decline in international tension following the end of the communist regimes of the Soviet bloc produced a massive shift in the ideology of the nuclear in the 1990s. The de-targeting and dismantling of large numbers of nuclear weapons and the demise of the threat of nuclear annihilation created new conditions both for international security and for the writing of nuclear history. With the declassification and release of large quantities of official documentation from the former adversaries, as well as the fiftieth anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1995, a burst of histories of various aspects of the nuclear age have appeared over the last ten years, exploring not just the technopolitics, strategy and operational logistics of the Cold War and the arms race, but the cultural history of the nuclear age, its imagery, its architecture, its oppositional politics and its effects on the landscape, national and regional economies and cultures and indeed everyday life. At a time of global economic and political uncertainty and the emergent threat of capricious international terrorism and new nuclear proliferation, the apparent certainties of the Cold War now even evoke a certain nostalgia, and its artefacts and structures are being recast as ‘heritage’.

A Boost for Abolition

The plan - called the Report of the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons - is notable not only for what it says, but for who said it. The 119-page report, released in August and formally transmitted to the U.N. General Assembly September 30, says that nuclear weapons have long been recognized by military and political leaders as useless for fighting wars. Further, the report suggests, the value of nuclear weapons as tools of deterrence is largely illusory. The report also says that the world can take little comfort in the fact that nuclear weapons have not been used in war since 1945. {open_quotes}The proposition that large numbers of nuclear weapons can be retained in perpetuity and never used - accidentally or by decision - defies credibility.{close_quotes} Nuclear deterrence, which is often said to enhance global security, is an intolerably risky strategy, the report asserts. If it fails, it would do so with {open_quotes}catastrophic consequences.{close_quotes} Nuclear deterrence also encourages destabilizing nuclear arms races, regional and global. {open_quotes}Present and prospective nuclear weapon states have yet to resolve the inherent contradiction of nuclear deterrence: that forces should be postured to convey a credible capability of use, but they should notmore » at the same time provoke contervailing reactions that lead to expanded arsenals, crisis instability and mounting consequences should deterrence fail{close_quotes}.« less

Nuclear Weapons Headed for the Trash

Whether he intended it or not, Bush has taken steps that mean the beginning of the end for nuclear weapons. His proposals significantly reduce the numbers of nuclear weapons and the burdens associated with deploying and controlling them. And although he retains many of the options for continuing and regenerating the nuclear arsenal, he has exposed the fact that there are no longer any grand justifications or doctrinal needs for nuclear weapons - and that the nuclear machine is choking on its economic, political, environmental, and human contradictions. The initiatives fundamentally altered the nuclear stance of both nations. Yet, as momentous as the changes were, they were set in motion in an almost businesslike manner. Neither leader truly framed the moves as an end to the nuclear age. But they didn't need to. The steps they have taken practically guarantee it.

American and Soviet Adolescents’ Attitudes toward the Future: The Relationship between Worry about Nuclear War and Optimism

Despite continuing efforts to achieve a major and lasting arms control agreement, the existence of large numbers of nuclear weapons is perceived by many as constituting a grave threat to the future of the world. This concern is not restricted just to adults: children and adolescents have indicated that they, too, fear a nuclear war. In conversations with psychologists and psychiatrists, children have revealed stark images of such a war, and have indicated that their plans for the future are affected by those fears. Survey research also suggests that significant percentages of children and adolescents worry about nuclear war.

The drive for power and the control of nuclear danger: A response to Deutsch

Dr. Deutsch offers profound and cogent insights on the problem of averting World War III based on years of research and contemplation, and I fully agree with all of them. My comments will seek to expand and make more explicit a psychological source of the nuclear arms race which he touches on only implicitly. This is the drive for power which lies behind the competitive orientation of national leaders. I will also elaborate on his comment that the existence of a community keeps conflict within bounds and develops rules for regulating it. As Deutsch emphasizes, the “craziness” of the nuclear arms race is not due to the psychopathology of leaders, who typically are among the most stable and realistic members of their societies, but results from a malignant social process. The basic psychological source of this process I believe to be the will-to-power, termed by Tacitus “the most flagrant of all the passions” (Tuchman, 1984). The leaders of stronger nations strive to maintain and expand their influence, while those of weaker nations strive for “equality” as the best they can hope to achieve. Equality in this sense seems to mean the demand that the stronger power treat them with respect and acknowledge that their claims must be taken seriously. Leaders, however, seldom speak directly of seeking power. Rather, on both sides, they justify their actions by invoking the need for deterring the aggressive intentions of the other. A moment’s reflection indicates that, although this motivation could be defended plausibly as a justification for accumulating conventional weapons, it makes no sense with nuclear ones. Mutual deterrence has long since been achieved by both nuclear superpowers in that only a small fraction of their arsenals on invulnerable submarines can totally destroy the other nation. Accumulating additional nuclear weapons adds nothing to the security of either. Instead it enhances anxiety in that the greater the number of nuclear weapons, the greater the danger of their inadvertent discharge, with potentially catastrophic consequences. Recently, American military and civilian leaders have sought to reduce our nuclear stockpile by founding deterrence on smaller, more accurate weapons theoretically able to respond in a flexible, controlled manner if the Soviet Union initiates nuclear hostilities at any level or in any form. This so-called “war-fighting doctrine” flies in the face of judgments by highest level military

Are nuclear weapons obsolete?

The threat of a nuclear winter and the need to defend Western Europe lead the author to urge a radical reduction in the number of nuclear weapons and a strengthened conventional defense.