A world without nuclear weapons?

The underlying motive would be to renew and strengthen the Treaty itself, by removing an objection often voiced by non-nuclear governments about unacceptable discrimination. Some of the motivation is evidently to spur an overdue drastic reduction in Russian and Amer ican nuclear war-heads, especially those on high alert. But hardly any of the analyses or policy statements that I have come across question overtly the ultimate goal of total nuclear disarmament.2 Nearly all adduce the unequivocal language of the Wall Street Journal quadrumvirate. None explicitly addresses the question, why should we expect a world without nuclear weapons to be safer than one with (some) nuclear weapons? That drastic reductions make sense, and that some measures to reduce alert status do, too, may require no extensive analysis. But considering how much intellectual effort in the past half-century went into the study of the ‘stability’ of a nucleardeterrence world, it ought to be worthwhile to examine contingencies in a nuclear-free world to verify that it is superior to a world with (some) nuclear weapons. I have not come across any mention of what would happen in the event of a major war. One might hope that major war could not happen in a world without nuclear weapons, but it always did. One can propose that another war on the scale of the 1940s is less to worry about than anything nuclear. But it might give pause to reflect that the world of 1939 was utterly free of nuclear weapons, yet they were not only produced, they were invented, during war itself and used with devastating effect. Why not expect that they could be produced – they’ve already been invented – and possibly used in some fashion? In 1976, I published an article, ‘Who Will Have the Bomb?’ in which I asked, ‘Does India have the bomb?’ (Shelling, 1976: 77-91). India had exploded a nuclear device a couple of years earlier. I pursued the question, ‘what do we mean by “having the bomb?” ’ I alleged that we didn’t mean, or perhaps didn’t even care, whether India actually possessed in inventory a nuclear explosive device, or an actual nuclear weapon. We meant, I argued, that India ‘had’ the potential: it had the expertise, the personnel, the laboratories and equipment to produce a weapon if it decided to. (At the time, India pretended that its only interest was in ‘Peaceful Nuclear Explosives’ [PNEs].) I proposed an analogy: does Switzerland have an army? I answered, not really, but it could have one tomorrow if it decided today. The answer to the relevant question about nuclear weapons must be a schedule showing how many weapons (of what yield) a government could mobilize on what time schedule. It took the United States about five years to build two weapons. It might take India – now that it has already produced nuclear weapons – a few weeks, or less, depending on how ready it kept its personnel and supplies for mobilization. If a ‘world without nuclear weapons’ means no mobilization bases, there can be no

such world. Even starting in 1940 the mobilization base was built. And would minimizing mobilization potential serve the purpose? To answer this requires working through various scenarios involving the expectation of war, the outbreak of war, and the conduct of war. That is the kind of analysis I haven’t seen. A crucial question is whether a government could hide weapons-grade fissile material from any possible inspection-verification. Considering that enough plutonium to make a bomb could be hidden in the freezing compartment of my refrigerator, or to evade radiation detection could be hidden at the bottom of the water in a well, I think only the fear of a whistle-blower could possibly make success at all questionable. I believe that a ‘responsible’ government would make sure that fissile material would be available in an international crisis or war itself. A responsible government must at least assume that other responsible governments will do so. We are so used to thinking in terms of thousands, or at least hundreds, of nuclear warheads that a few dozen may offer a sense of relief. But if, at the outset of what appears to be a major war, or the imminent possibility of major war, every responsible government must consider that other responsible governments will mobilize their nuclear weapons base as soon as war erupts, or as soon as war appears likely, there will be at least covert frantic efforts, or perhaps purposely conspicuous efforts, to acquire deliverable nuclear weapons as rapidly as possible. And what then? I see a few possibilities. One is that the first to acquire weapons will use them, as best it knows how, to disrupt its enemy’s or enemies’ nuclear mobilization bases, while it continuing its frantic nuclear rearmament, along with a surrender demand backed up by its growing stockpile. Another possibility is to demand, under threat of nuclear attack, abandonment of any nuclear mobilization, with unopposed ‘inspectors’ or ‘saboteurs’ searching out the mobilization base of people, laboratories, fissile material stashes, or anything else threatening. A third possibility would be a ‘decapitation’ nuclear attack along with the surrender demand. And I can think of worse. All of these, of course, would be in the interest of self-defense. Still another strategy might, just might, be to propose a crash ‘rearmament agreement’, by which both sides (all sides) would develop ‘minimum deterrent’ arsenals, subject to all the inspection-verification procedures that had already been in place for ‘disarmament’. An interesting question is whether ‘former nuclear powers’ – I use quotation marks because they will still be latent nuclear powers – would seek ways to make it known that, despite ‘disarmament’, they had the potential for a rapid buildup. It has been suggested that Saddam Hussein may have wanted it believed that he had nuclear weapons, and Israel has made its nuclear capability a publicized secret. ‘Mutual nuclear deterrence’ could take the form of letting it be known that any evidence of nuclear rearmament would be promptly reciprocated. Reciprocation could take the form of hastening to have a weapon to use against the nuclear facilities of the ‘enemy’.