Vladimir Putin on board of a battle cruiser. Photo: www.kremlin.ru/Wikimedia Commons
Russia recently held the largest nuclear weapons exercise in its history, matching, for the first time in over two decades, the scale of Soviet-era tests.
Russian President Vladimir Putin presided over a combined exercise of all three components of Russia’s nuclear triad (submarine-based missiles, land-based missiles, and bombers), taking “personal leadership” of the endeavor, according to the Kremlin. He also provided a “high evaluation” of the results, indicating that they proved Russia’s nuclear forces to be reliable and effective.
At first blush, this may seem like saber-rattling, particularly at a time of tension in U.S.-Russian relations over Syria and other issues, even as the two countries continue to cooperate elsewhere, including on Afghanistan and sometimes Iran. The primary audience for last week’s event, however, is Russian.
Nuclear bomb explosion (montage). Image: Madison Guy/flicker.
MADRID – Since its launch in December 2008, Global Zero, the vision of a world without nuclear weapons, has run up against some formidable challenges. One is related to the readiness of the two major nuclear powers, Russia and the United States, to move from the stockpile reductions to which they agreed in the New START treaty to complete elimination of their nuclear arsenals. Others concern smaller nuclear powers’ willingness to go along, and whether reliable inspection, verification, and enforcement systems can be put in place.
But these issues are not the real problem. Although Russia and the US possess roughly 90% of the world’s nuclear warheads, their nuclear capabilities are less of a threat than is the danger of proliferation. It is this fear of a fast-growing number of nuclear-armed states, not the fine balancing of the US and Russian nuclear arsenals, that the case for Global Zero must address. Indeed, addressing the underlying security concerns that fuel nuclear competition in regional trouble spots is more important to the credibility of Global Zero’s goal of “a world without nuclear weapons” than is encouraging exemplary behavior by the two major nuclear powers.
After all, North Korea, India, Pakistan, Iran, and Israel might not be particularly impressed by a reduction in the US and Russian nuclear-weapons stockpiles from gross overkill to merely mild overkill. There is a stark lack of synchrony between the (admittedly qualified) improvement in the two major nuclear powers’ bilateral relations and conditions in volatile regions around the world.
Federal Councillor D. Burkhalter (last row, left) at the Seoul Nuclear Summit, Image: IAEA/flickr
Switzerland risked a jumping in at the deep end on Tuesday. Deviating from the agenda, Federal Councillor Didier Burkhalter confronted participants at the Seoul Nuclear Security Summit with his call for nuclear disarmament.
Burkhalter emphasized that if the risk of nuclear terrorism was to be minimized – the official aim of the summit – it was necessary “to do everything possible to reduce the sources of such an act”, namely to cut down the number of nuclear warheads and weapons capable material.
Switzerland’s foreign minister has a point. Even though the New START treaty marks a step towards the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons, there are still far too many warheads around.
For years, Swiss diplomats have tried to keep the debate on nuclear disarmament running and have pushed projects and international initiatives. Switzerland leads by example: it has ratified all multilateral disarmament agreements open to it and plays an active part in the work of multilateral bodies related to arms control and disarmament.
However, the country has not always advocated nuclear disarmament. In fact, until the 1960s, Switzerland followed quite the opposite course with its nuclear weapons program. Only after the Cold War it fully embraced a multilateralist approach to disarmament. All this became apparent during a lecture on Swiss security policy, held on 22 March 2012 at the University of Zurich.
Nuclear power plant in Sweden, courtesy of Vattenfall/flickr
This week the ISN looks at the causes and consequences of a global nuclear renaissance. We ask whether nuclear power is a false prophet for a planet imperiled by climate change and assess the difficulty of reigning in those that seek to turn energy into weapons.
The Special Report includes the following content:
An Analysis by Trevor Findlay and Justin Alger on the promise of nuclear energy in the fight against climate change.
A Podcast interview with Dr Oliver Thränert on the need to control the risk of nuclear energy being used for military purposes.
Security Watch articles on nuclear cooperation between Japan and India, Sino-Pakistani nuclear ties, the Iranian impasse and many more.
Publications housed in our Digital Library, including an Elcano Royal Institute of International and Strategic Studies study on nuclear weapons in the 2010s and a Congressional Research Service paper on US nuclear cooperation with India.
Primary Resources, like the Joint Declaration by Iran, Turkey and Brazil on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
Links to relevant websites, including a TEDTalk on the importance on nuclear energy.
Our IR Directory, featuring the Russian Federal Nuclear Center (RFNC-VNIIEF) and the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA).
After years of speculation, journalists from the UK paper the Guardian and US historian Sasha Polakow-Suransky disclosed information that could prove what many had been suspecting for years: Israel has the bomb.
Polakow-Suransky came across a bundle of classified documents when conducting research in South Africa. These papers were handed over by the current South African ANC government but date back to the times of the Apartheid regime in 1975. The documents include a memo, meeting minutes, as well as an agreement between South Africa and Israel for the transfer of nuclear weapons to the Apartheid regime signed by Shimon Peres – the current president of Israel and then minister of defense.
If the authenticity of the documents is verified, this would be the first time the world has written proof about Israel being a nuclear power and the implications thereof are not yet sorted out.
What will happen to the current multilateral negations on nuclear non-proliferation and the specific case of Iran? Just in this month, Iran agreed to abandon its nuclear enrichment research program and to cooperate with Turkey. How will the Iranians now perceive the new development and the factual existence of a hostile nuclear power in the region? Moreover, how is Israel going to position itself once it can no longer deny to be in possession of nuclear weapons?
President Peres immediately denied any involvement of Israel and himself in negotiations on the exchange of nuclear weapons with the South African Apartheid regime. Nonetheless, Israeli government officials tried to block the South African government from handing out the respective documents to Mr. Polakow-Suransky, giving rise to the question why the Israelis care about these papers in the first place.
