Perspective: Nuclear testsThe Once and Future Threat of Nuclear Weapon Testing
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is the central security instrument of the United States and the world community. It is based on a strategic bargain between the five nuclear weapon states in the NPT (the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia, and China) and the 185 non-nuclear-weapon parties to the treaty. The current worldwide moratorium on nuclear weapon testing and the intended ultimate conversion of that ban to legally binding treaty status by bringing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) into force are essential to the long-term viability of this strategic bargain.
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is the central security instrument of the United States and the world community. It is based on a strategic bargain between the five nuclear weapon states in the NPT (the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia, and China) and the 185 non-nuclear-weapon parties to the treaty. The current worldwide moratorium on nuclear weapon testing and the intended ultimate conversion of that ban to legally binding treaty status by bringing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) into force are essential to the long-term viability of this strategic bargain. But some Trump administration officials have signaled hostility to the CTBT and an interest in the United States resuming nuclear weapon testing, which could cause a catastrophic unraveling of that bargain.
Thomas Graham Jr. writes in Just Security that the bomb used against Hiroshima had an explosive yield of 12.5 kilotons or 12.5 tons of TNT equivalent. This weapon completely devastated the city of Hiroshima, killing some 200,000 people out of a total population of approximately 330,000. But, with the first thermonuclear weapon test by the United States and the Soviet Union just a few years later, in the 1950s, nuclear weapon tests explosions reached the megaton range, equivalent to 1 million tons of TNT — roughly 1,000 times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. During the Cold War, the United States built more than 70,000 nuclear weapons and the Soviet Union some 55,000; peak stockpile numbers at one time reached 32,500 weapons for the U.S. and around 45,000 for the Soviets. In the early 1970s, U.S. strategic nuclear weapons carried on U.S. missiles numbered some 5,800 deployed, representing around 4,100 megatons in explosive yield, the Soviet numbers being 2,100 representing 4,000 megatons (the Soviet nuclear weapons tended to be larger).
These are numbers that exceed all comprehension, whether military, political or just on the basis of rationality. They are enough to destroy the world many times over.
In 1970, at the time the NPT entered into force, there were five treaty-recognized nuclear weapon states: China, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States. Israel and India were known as being nuclear weapons capable. Since that time, only two states, Pakistan and North Korea, have acquired nuclear weapons, a far cry from JFK’s fears. What the NPT accomplished is that it changed what had been an act of national pride — the acquisition of nuclear weapons — into an act that would make a country an international pariah.
The primary reason that the anxieties of President Kennedy have not been realized — the main reason that nuclear weapons have not spread widely — is this treaty, the NPT. No international instrument is more important to the security of the United States and the world, and it must be protected and defended at any price.
Graham concludes:
The results of a U.S. resumption of full-scale nuclear weapon tests would be catastrophic. U.S. security should not be treated as some sort of object to be played with for political gain. The reality likely would be the trashing of the CTBT and the testing of nuclear weapons by a significant number of nations — for example, Iran and Saudi Arabia.
And because of the intimate connection of a ban on nuclear weapon tests to the basic strategic bargain underlying the NPT, as mentioned above, the NPT under these circumstances could come apart under the added pressure of a deteriorating world situation created by climate change. Among the many calamitous events stemming from climate change are the expansion of deserts, the shrinkage of arable land, a significant decline in fresh water sources, as well as widespread major wildfires, horrific heat waves, and significant threatening diseases as a result of advancing insects and an increasingly acidic ocean. Countries facing these conditions may wish to turn to nuclear weapons to protect what they still have.
