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Three big questions about nuclear weapons

How worried should we be?

- October 14, 2024
Bikini Atoll mushroom cloud, nuclear weapons test, 1946
Bikini Atoll mushroom cloud from U.S. nuclear test in July 1946 (cc) Library of Congress .

Editors’ note: The 2024 Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Japanese grassroots organization Nihon Hidankyo, has worked for decades to ensure that nuclear weapons are never used again. In this archival newsletter piece, Good Authority editor Elizabeth N. Saunders examined the reasons that officials worry that some country might use nuclear weapons – and the structural forces constraining that use. Her analysis was originally published in August 2023.

In the summer of 2023, nuclear weapons and their horrific consequences are back in the news, thanks in part to the film “Oppenheimer.” August 2023 also marked 78 years since the United States became the only country to use nuclear weapons in wartime, with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And in July, the world marked the 70th anniversary of the armistice in the Korean War, a conflict that unfolded under the constant shadow of possible further use of nuclear weapons – something that came closer to happening than many people realize.

If that history is our nuclear past, what about the nuclear present and future? Here are three big questions.

Would countries use nuclear weapons in conflicts today?

Analysts see plenty of reasons why nuclear weapons are still a top-of-mind worry for U.S. policymakers today.

One is the war in Ukraine. As Caitlin Talmadge explained in the early weeks of the war, Russian president Vladimir Putin made the Ukraine war a nuclear crisis. To be sure, Putin has many reasons not to use nuclear weapons, but the riskiest moment would come if he felt cornered and desperate.

Then there’s North Korea. In August 2017, nuclear weapons made headlines when President Trump threatened North Korea with “fire, fury, and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before.” Responding to provocations from North Korea, Trump set off escalating rhetoric between North Korea and the United States, including a North Korean threat of missile strikes against the U.S. territory of Guam. The threats angered U.S. allies in South Korea and Japan, and put residents in Guam and Hawaii – which had endured a frightening false alert for an incoming missile in January 2018 – on edge.

And in July 2021, new evidence emerged that China was pursuing a major upgrade to its nuclear arsenal, apparently shifting away from its longstanding posture of maintaining a very small nuclear force. Of course, the United States is currently modernizing its nuclear arsenal at a potential cost of more than $1 trillion. Many analysts see China’s modernization as a reaction to U.S. missile defense systems and the U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 2002, as better defenses require better offensive weapons.

But don’t panic

Confrontations like these show that the risk of nuclear war remains real and must be taken seriously. Fortunately, there’s ample evidence that leaders and policymakers – not only in the United States but also in adversary countries – are well aware of the danger. As security studies scholar Austin Carson has shown, enemies often take steps to limit escalation – even “colluding” with each other in wartime to look the other way when events take them too close to the brink of catastrophe.

Furthermore, the basic principle of nuclear deterrence still applies: Countries thinking about using nuclear weapons must consider that a nuclear-armed adversary would retaliate with its own nuclear attack. While nowhere near a guarantee, such thinking is a big part of what kept nuclear weapons from being used after 1945 despite high tensions during the Cold War. It’s also why many analysts saw real benefits to negotiating some kind of agreement with North Korea. Once countries become nuclear powers, it’s safer to communicate constructively to count, limit, or otherwise manage nuclear arsenals and mitigate the risk that nuclear weapons will be used.

Will more countries get nuclear weapons?

Okay, you might ask, but what if all this nuclear talk makes more countries want nuclear weapons in the future? Nuclear proliferation has been a concern since the dawn of the nuclear age, but both friends and foes of the United States may see new reasons to become nuclear-armed countries in the not-too-distant future.

For the foes, like Iran, nuclear weapons could offer insurance against attack and make it easier to act as it wishes within its region, using nuclear weapons as a kind of shield (Putin’s attack on Ukraine is the blueprint here). The intense sanctions that led up to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal temporarily made that prospect much less attractive for Iran because of how severely those sanctions damaged the Iranian economy.

But when President Trump withdrew the United States from the deal – promising to use “maximum pressure” to get a better deal – Iran’s calculus shifted again, as the U.S. reimposed sanctions. (Reports that Trump sought to attack Iran in the final weeks of his presidency probably didn’t help; those war plans figure in the classified documents case against Trump.)

President Joe Biden has made an effort to get a new Iran deal, but the lesson Iran seems to have taken is that no deal is guaranteed to last past the current presidency. As scholars like Rachel Myrick have argued, this is one of the effects of partisan polarization on U.S. foreign policy: Making international commitments that stick, and thus will be credible to other countries, is much, much harder.

It’s not just adversaries that might want nuclear weapons, however. Even U.S. allies like South Korea and, yes, Japan, have seen an uptick in interest (although that’s notably lower in Japan, for obvious reasons). These countries aren’t just worried about China’s increased nuclear (and non-nuclear) capabilities. Allies worry about the same thing adversaries like Iran do: the long-term credibility of U.S. promises. After Trump repeatedly called on U.S. allies, including South Korea and Japan as well as NATO allies, to pay for their own defense, these countries had less faith in the U.S. commitment to use its own nuclear weapons to protect allies – the so-called nuclear umbrella. Biden has worked to reassure U.S. allies, even sending a U.S. nuclear-capable submarine on a port call in South Korea for the first time in decades. But again, polarization makes it hard to know if this recommitment will outlast his administration.

What would broader nuclear proliferation mean? As Gene Gerzhoy and Nicholas Miller explained for our readers, research suggests that nuclear proliferation increases the risk of conflict. However, concerted U.S. counterproliferation efforts, especially when dealing with U.S. allies, can slow or stop the spread of nuclear weapons.

Who makes decisions about nuclear war?

Does it matter for future nuclear security who wins in 2024?

The short answer is an emphatic yes, because the president retains sole nuclear launch authority. After the January 6th riots, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi raised concerns with Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, about how to take “precautions” against Trump using nuclear weapons in his remaining time in office. But as Vipin Narang explained in an interview with our publication, there was no legal way to stop Trump if he gave an order to launch. So whoever wins in 2024 will have that sole authority. There are proposals to change this arrangement, but they remain just proposals for now.

In reality, however, no leader operates in a vacuum. All leaders, including dictators, face external pressures – like geography or domestic politics – that hold them back from taking the most egregious risks.

The nuclear past was horrific, the nuclear present is dangerous, and the nuclear future uncertain. Perhaps the way to think about nuclear risk is that it has increased – but that in absolute terms the risk is still small. Anything above zero is reason for concern, however, so vigilance is warranted. But as many of our pieces on nuclear topics – including this one – have stressed, don’t panic.