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THE ATOM Nuclear Bombs, Non-Proliferation and Test Bans November 18, 1996 |
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Read our panel of international nuclear weaponry experts' answers to your questions.
Other Forum Topics for the Week of November 18-22:
Nov. 20, 1996:
Issues of nuclear power, the pros and cons, and a look at the imagery of nuclear energy, the dual symbols of death and rebirth at the core of the atom.
November 22:
A whistleblower and a DOE nuclear waste manager answer questions about health and safety.
"It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East."
This was the way President Harry Truman described the events of August 6, 1945. The decision to drop the bomb on Hiroshima changed the world forever.
Shortly after the Hiroshima blast, many countries scrambled to procure their own collection of nuclear weapons - driven by the fear that they would quickly be surpassed in science and defense capability. The Soviet Union created its first nuclear bomb in 1949, the United Kingdom in 1952, France in 1960, and the Peoples Republic of China in 1964. There are now 11 known nuclear nations, but many countries, like Iraq and North Korea, are believed to be close to having active arsenals.
Pre-occupation over the proliferation of nuclear weapons has been an integral factor in American culture for half a century, epitomized by Stanley Kubrick's satirical and hysterical 1964 movie, "Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb," about thermonuclear holocaust. The doomsday shadow on the human psyche was summed up in William Faulkner's 1950 Nobel Prize address: "Our tragedy today is a general and universal fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up?"
The Fall of October 1962 was closest the world has ever been to atomic war. In response to the discovery that Soviet missiles were delivered to Cuba, President Kennedy sent a private message to Soviet leader Khrushchev saying the Soviet Union's actions risked "catastrophic consequences to the whole world." Indeed, the Cuban Missile Crisis finally taught the Super Powers that initiating nuclear war would be suicidal.
The crisis accelerated the dialogue between the two Superpowers over the need to contain the world's nuclear arsenal. After signing a limited test-ban treaty in Moscow on July 25, 1963, Kennedy said "Yesterday, a shaft of light cut into the darkness... For the first time, an agreement has been reached on bringing the forces of nuclear destruction under international control."
At its height, the explosive power of America's nuclear arsenal was 20,491 megatons-- or six tons of TNT for each person then alive on the planet. During the 1970s some of the older bombs were dismantled, but with the Cold War, bomb production in the U.S. and the SUSSR escalated under the "MAD" doctrine, or Mutually Assured Destruction.
The dissolution of the Soviet Union did not mean an end to the nuclear threat. Indeed, the danger may have increased after the fallout from post 1991 political chaos. Among the lingering and new worries were environmental and security concerns.
On the latter issue, unreliability of Soviet installation security resulted in fear that nuclear weapons components and technology could be sold to the highest bidder, or that terrorists could hold the world hostage with nuclear threats. Some of these fears have been mitigated by treaties with newly independent states like the Ukraine and Kazakhstan, and through U.S. legislation like the Nunn-Luger Act, which provides funds to former Soviet military facilities for conversion to peacetime production.
On the environmental front, the legacy might be greater and is certainly more tangible. In addition, the Soviet Union tested nuclear weapons on civilians in Kazakhstan for forty years, causing radiation-related problems among hundreds of thousands of people.
The testing issue has not been settled either. France began a series of tests in the South Pacific with a September 5, 1995 blast beneath Mururoa Atoll in French Polynesia, causing protests around the world. That detonation, similar in size to the atomic bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, broke a three- year international moratorium on nuclear testing. It also made France the only nation besides China to actively test weapons of mass destruction since 1992.
In response to the international reaction, French President Jacques Chirac went on state-run television to say that the tests were over and that France would take initiatives on disarmament and European defense. "Thanks to the final series which has just been carried out, France will have at its disposal a viable and modern defense. The security of our country and our children is assured." Obviously, some international leaders still believe that a competitive nuclear stock is the best defense.
Our Forum asked: What is the status of nuclear weaponry around the world? Is the threat of nuclear war a relic of the past? What does the United States need to do to ensure that nuclear weapons do not get into the hands of terrorists, or careless non-specialists?
Our Forum guests are Leonard Spector, Director of the Carnegie Endowment Nuclear Non-Proliferation Project, Ken Luongo, Director of the Office of Arms Control at the Department of Energy in charge of the North Korea Task Force and the Russia and Newly Independent States Nuclear Material Security Task Force, and Don Gross, Counselor to the Director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) . Mr. Gross was a member of the U.S. Delegation to the 1995 Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference which achieved indefinite extension of the NPT.
The Forum participants answered questions on the following topics:
- Recent efforts to pass a nuclear test ban
- What are the benefits of the nuclear test ban treaty to the U.S.?
- How are countries making it difficult to obtain nuclear material?
- What is the situation in the former Soviet Union?
- What type of control of nuclear weapons is there in other countries?
- Can the world's nuclear arsenal really be dismantled?
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