Transcript 0:00 [intro music] Hello, and welcome to Trend Lines, a podcast on international affairs by World Politics Review. My name is Peter Durrie. 0:18 We consider the avoidance of war between nuclear weapons states and the reduction of strategic risks as our foremost responsibilities. 0:26 This joint statement by the governments of China, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, and France, all permanent members of the UN Security Council and the world's foremost nuclear powers, was a rare glimpse of hope in the otherwise intractable fight to denuclearize the world's arsenals. 0:42 Global efforts to curb the proliferation of nuclear weapons, to reduce global stockpiles, and to decrease the risk of nuclear escalation have stalled in recent years. 0:52 The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty's 10th Review Conference has been postponed repeatedly due to the global pandemic, and while the conference is sorely needed to resolve a host of outstanding problems regarding the treaty and its implementation, some observers welcomed the postponement, as it gives states parties more time to bridge some of the stark disagreements over the best way forward. 1:14 Meanwhile, North Korea is expanding its nuclear arsenal. The US under Donald Trump has effectively sabotaged efforts to integrate Iran into the global non-proliferation regime. 1:25 The US, China, and Russia are all investing heavily in modernizing their arsenals and are increasingly opposed to cooperation on military issues in general, while new bilateral arms control treaties are nowhere on the horizon. 1:38 At least three countries in addition to North Korea, India, Pakistan, and Israel remain outside the non-proliferation framework despite having nuclear capabilities. 1:48 To discuss these developments and possible ways forward, I am joined today by Miles Pomper. 1:54 Miles is a senior fellow at the James Martin Center for Non-Proliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, where he specializes in nuclear security, non-proliferation, and arms control. 2:07 Miles, welcome to Trend Lines. Thanks so much for having me. Great to have you. Maybe to bring everybody up to speed, can you quickly summarize for me the state of nuclear security and non-proliferation in 2022? 2:22 Who has nuclear weapons? Who is trying to get them? And who, if anyone, is prepared to give them up? Um, well, who has them? 2:30 You, you started out, you mentioned the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, France, and China. All of them have nuclear weapons. 2:43 Three countries which never signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty have weapons. That's India, Pakistan, and Israel. 2:51 And, um, North Korea, which claims to have withdrawn from the Non-Proliferation Treaty, has nuclear weapons. Those are the nine that currently have nuclear weapons. The presumption is that the Iranians want at least the 3:04 capability to build weapons very quickly, and there is some assumption if they went ahead, then the Saudis might be not too far behind. Um, but they don't have... 3:14 They're far behind in terms of the capability, but not in terms of the intentions necessarily. Uh, no one is planning to give them up, [laughs] is the short answer. So why is that? Why... 3:25 Since basically the inception of, of nuclear weapons, there has been a drive to get rid of them, mostly by the states who don't have them at any given point. 3:35 But why has this drive not really yielded any tangible results so far? Well, because nuclear weapons provide security benefits to the countries that have them. 3:45 They're the ultimate weapon, and that means that it's one reason, one would argue, that we haven't had wars between the countries that have nuclear weapons, certainly the large countries, or large scale wars. 3:57 So we haven't had a European war since World War II, fortunately. 4:03 And even in the current crisis over Ukraine, you can see a, a lot of the caution that's involved because the United States and Russia have nuclear weapons, so they provide security benefits for the countries that have them. 4:16 In the periods... You know, the only period where we really saw substantial, uh, reductions in nuclear weapons weren't, was in the, 4:25 towards the end of the Cold War and the immediate post-Cold War era, and that reflected reduced tensions and reduced geopolitical strains. 4:33 So once those strains unfortunately have accelerated again, as they have now with, between the United States and Russia, and the US-China rivalry is really taking off, those tend to be reflected in the countries' accumulation of nuclear weapons. 4:48 And then you have countries like India and Pakistan, which developed the weapons later, but their tensions are still quite ripe, as well as the India-China rivalry. So, you know, weapons don't stand, uh, in isolation. 5:02 They reflect politics. 5:05 On an international level, there is the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty, often also called Non-Proliferation Treaty, or NPT for short, which in theory binds its signatories to work toward non-proliferation, towards nuclear security, and towards disarmament in, in the nuclear realm. 5:25 That treaty first entered into force in 1970. 5:28 As I said at the beginning, the 10th Review Conference that was due in 2020 has been postponed multiple times due to the pandemic, but ha- would have faced quite difficult negotiations between the parties in any case. 5:45 So how has that treaty performed in your view, especially in the last couple of decades or so, and what are the sticking points in the nego- negotiations between the different parties in trying to move it forward? 6:01 Well, let's, let's sort of establish clearly what the initial Architecture of the treaty was. Um, people like to say that there were three legs to the treaty. The first one was 6:12 that countries that do not have nuclear weapons will not acquire them, and one could argue that's actually worked pretty well. 6:20 As I mentioned, the only countries that have had the nuclear weapons other than the original five permanent members of the Security Council 6:28 are three countries that never signed the treaty, India, Pakistan, and Israel, so their lack of signatures was kind of a statement in itself, and then North Korea. 6:36 So you have one country that was a member and claimed to have withdrawn from the treaty, and that's it in terms of people who've actually signed up to the treaty and its obligations. Secondly, you have the other... 6:47 The second leg is the countries, the n- the countries with nuclear technology, peaceful nuclear technology, agree to, to share that with other countries. 6:57 So the, the nuclear possessors, their part of the bargain they, they were supposed to give the non-nuclear weapon states was to share nuclear, peaceful nuclear technology with them, and that's happened to 7:10 a considerable extent. Some countries may not think it's as much as they would like, but there is... 7:15 You know, there are nuclear, uh, power reactors in many countries that don't have nuclear weapons, and there is, uh, radioactive material that's used for peoples, peaceful purposes in a lot of countries, and research reactors in, in quite a few countries, more than there are power reactors. 7:30 So one can argue that that has worked quite well, too, although, as I said, some of the non-nuclear weapon states might, uh, might w- like to see more. 7:38 Uh, the third leg was a commitment to disarmament in a very abstract form. The, the actual language of Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty said that disarmament as part of general and complete disarmament. 7:52 So I think your listeners would appreci- appreciate how difficult general and complete disarmament would be. So nuclear disarmament is not likely to be a whole lot easier. 8:03 The, the main commitment that the countries made was to make a good faith effort towards nuclear disarmament. That's really the test, the good faith effort, not the act- achieving the end goal of disarmament. 8:13 And it's been a bone of contention for a long time by the non-nuclear weapon states that the nuclear weapon states, that is particularly the United States and Russia as the largest possessors, but also the other ones, have not made sufficient efforts towards disarmament. 8:27 And that really, given the breakdown in US-Russian relations, particularly in the last roughly decade since President Putin came back to power, that is, is true. 8:39 It's, it's not been a great period for arms control, although I should say the one positive achievement in this field within the last year or so has been the extension of the New START treaty to... 8:52 which was supposed to expire in twenty twenty-one and has now been extended to twenty twenty-six and covers the strategic arsenals of the United States and Russia. 9:00 So it's a mixed success on the treaty, but when you look at the context of when the treaty came into place and people like President Kennedy were expecting dozens of countries to have nuclear weapons, that hasn't happened, and I think that hasn't happened partly because of the treaty, but also because many of the countries that were expected to have those weapons were allies of the United States. 9:25 I mean, the people, the countries that people were really worried about were developed countries, countries like Germany, um, like Sweden, Switzerland, others, a number of people who had programs, Japan, Korea, so on. 9:38 Those countries have not developed nuclear weapons, and that has as much to do with the alliance relationships they have with the United States as with the treaty, but the treaty does provide an additional leverage point for countries not to do that. 9:50 And when this review conference will take place, hopefully sometime this year, uh, when the COVID-19 pandemic is under control or doesn't play, uh, that much of a role in these kind of matters anymore, what will the parties to the treaty be talking about and hopefully find a compromise over? 10:10 Well, I mean, to be honest, a lot of these conferences tend to be... It ends up being about wording and wordsmithing. I don't s- expect people to make substantive policy changes in the conference. The, the US... 10:25 I mean, there'll be pressure from the non-nuclear weapon states for the U- for the nuclear weapon states to make explicit commitments to, y- you know, disarmament, good faith efforts. 10:36 I don't really expect the count- the nuclear weapon states to do anything beyond what they've already done because they, they feel that that's in their, you know, national defense interest, their deterrent capability, and so on. 10:49 And there'll be efforts by the nuclear weapons states to try to get the non-nuclear weapon states to agree to tighter restrictions on enrichment and reprocessing technology. 10:58 We can provide the, the fuel for nuclear weapons as well as for nuclear energy, and this is the issue with Iran, of course, is their enrichment technology, as well as potential for withdrawing from the treaty as, uh, North Korea tried to do, and the n- non-nuclear weapon states will resist that, so there probably won't be a lot of progress there. 11:17 There's sure to be... There's a regular feature of these conferences is the effort to push for weapons of mass destruction free zone in the Middle East, which is an outgrowth of the Arab states' efforts to push Israel 11:31 to basically give up its publicly unacknowledged, but privately acknowledged nuclear capability, which isn't gonna happen, so... But there'll be some format to probably continue those discussions. 11:41 And, you know, the, the bottom line effort of the conference from the n- nuclear weapon state perspective will be to 11:49 somehow try to undermine, uh, the momentum for the new, uh, nuclear ban treaty or the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons from that getting more momentum, 'cause that's something they all clearly do not want. 12:02 And so they want to register some progress, which is why they made the statement that you read at the beginning of the broadcast. In terms of really substantive concessions, I would not expect any. 12:13 Talking about the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons, that came into force in January 2021. My understanding is that it was initiated by 12:24 a group of non-nuclear states that were frustrated with the slow pace or lack of progress, one could say, in terms of nuclear disarmament, and is by its proponents touted as a alternative way to, to get towards a new kind of nuclear zero globally within, with a world of, free of nuclear weapons. 12:47 So how is that treaty different in its approach to the NPT, and has it changed the debate around this topic in any way, in your view? 13:02 And does it maybe even present a more promising way forward compared to the NPT? Well, it's, it's certainly different. I mean, it's a ban treaty. The, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is kind of what its title says. 13:14 It's trying to... Its, its main goal is to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons, the further spread. As I mentioned, the disarmament is only about it making a good faith effort towards disarmament. 13:26 It is not a disarmament treaty. The ban treaty, any of its signatories agreed not to have nuclear weapons and not to have 13:35 other people's nuclear weapons on their territory, and that's, you know, if there's been any political movement that's been affected by the ban treaty, it's been those countries really, the ones on... 13:47 Countries not to host other countries' nuclear weapons because the United States has several non-strategic weapons, about 100 right now, B61 bombs deployed in five European countries, and the, they are non-nuclear weapon states under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. 14:05 That is, they, they themselves are not allowed to have nuclear weapons, but US weapons are on their territory, and would be, could be used by those countries in the event of war. 14:16 And so a number of them are under pressure from their domestic publics to either get rid of the weapons, adhere to the ch- ban treaty, or at least move closer, you know, push their, the US closer towards disarmament. 14:30 And so you had, for instance, in the new German government, when it formed, this was a big issue in the coalition agreement between the different political parties in Germany. 14:39 And, you know, the Green Party, for instance, which has b- uh, long been, you know, kind of started as an anti-nuclear group, both in terms of nuclear energy and nuclear weapons in Germany during the Cold War, and the Social Democrats, many of whom were removing the US weapons, brought pressure in the coalition to have something on this. 14:57 And so they're, you know, Germany is now looking at being an observer to the n- the deliberations of the, the treaty on the ban, the ban treaty, the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons. 15:09 Norway has made similar statements. So, you know, if you, if you're an activist, uh, tied to the ban treaty, you can say, "Well, we're, we're starting the kind of dominoes that'll lead to nuclear disarmament." 15:23 I do not think that's very realistic. It makes them feel good, and it makes them able to raise money for their cause, but 15:31 there's no indication that the nuclear weapon states are moving any closer to disarmament because of the treaty and that they're ever gonna join, which would be the only way this treaty would have any real practical effect. 15:43 So in fact, things are, you know, if anything, moving in the opposite direction. So I think it, it kind of ignores the major dynamics, which are 15:53 the trilateral relationship, particularly between the United States, Russia, and China, and how the political changes there are affecting nuclear and strategic relations. It's sort of in its own 16:04 world of aspiration outside of reality. 16:07 I, I think one argument by parties or by proponents of, of pushing for, uh, more progress in terms of disarmament is that especially the arsenals of the, the United States, Russia, China are far larger than any conceivable scenario where they would have to use them or would want to use them would require, so they, they are suf- sufficient to destroy the Earth multiple times over, basically. 16:36 Why is it still not possible to get these states to commit to sizable disarmament when their stockpiles seem to be complete overkill in the literal sense? Well, I mean, I think we have to qualify that a little bit. 16:53 I mean, actually the stockpiles have come down... I mean, they've continued to come down since, uh, the end of the Cold War. 17:01 I mean, it's, they're much smaller, in part because the weapons are much more accurate these days. In, in the past, 17:07 you had, one of the reasons there were larger stockpiles is that you really couldn't guide the weapons very well, so you didn't know if you were gonna hit your targets, and so, you know, multiple weapons would be launched at, say, a, a ICBM silo. 17:23 Now there's pretty good confidence that they would be able to hit those targets and destroy them, so they don't, they don't need as many weapons to do that. 17:31 So the actual non-deployed weapons, that is, those that are sort of in storage and extra and reserve, as well as the deployed numbers have, have come down. 17:39 The problem is they're not coming down, you know, they've come down from the past through the new, the New START treaty and so on. They're not doing it r- anymore. They've kind of plateaued 17:50 on the US and Russian side, and the Chinese are substantially, uh, increasing their arsenal because they, they basically wanna be, at some point, reaching towards parity with the United States and Russia to be treated sort of equally in the global arena. 18:06 Their weapons could be cut further if political, uh, you know, if the political environment wanted that. I think that In some cases, people tend to focus on numbers, 18:18 and it's, it's more often the case that the really, the real things you need to worry about are which kinds of weapons are being deployed and how they're being deployed because it's not just numbers, it's which ones would be used very quickly in a situation, which one-- where would 18:34 most likely to escalate to use, and that's what you're, you're most worried about in these situations. And that's really where we need more discussions. I mean, the, the... 18:43 And that in, in a lot of times is actually not based on the nuclear weapons themselves. It's also based on the risks that conventional warfare could escalate into nuclear use, and that has, again, comes back to 18:56 underlying strategic and political relations, which is really what you need to solve these problems. In that arena, do you feel that the world has become more or less safe in recent years? Less safe. I mean, for sure. 19:10 I mean, I think the-- clearly the, you know, uh, the relations between the United States and Russia and the United States and China are in far worse shape than they were a decade ago. And 19:24 that's the-- those are the dominant relationships that shape the world. And until those are improved, I think the, the security situation's gonna get worse among those countries. 19:35 During the Cold War, there have been a couple of near catastrophes when basically faulty intelligence or faulty signals or stressful situations almost resulted in a nuclear exchange of some kind, um, without ill intent on any of the involved parties, really. 19:55 Also, for a long time after the fall of the Soviet Union, there was the r- the, the fear that nuclear material would get into the hand of terrorists, of, of state sponsors of terrorism in some way, shape, or form. 20:10 These kinds of risks, do you think that they have been brought under be- better control nowadays, or is that still a, a scenario that you, that you think policymakers should, uh, lose sleep over? 20:24 Well, let me start with the second one. While we don't have a situation right now like we did at the end of the Cold War in terms of Russia kind of being the Wild West of people sort of trafficking material 20:36 out of desperation given poor economic times, there's still material that is unaccounted for that's out there, and there are still way too many research reactors, for example, using highly enriched uranium, which is the, 20:50 unfortunately, the best possible material for a terrorist nuclear weapon 'cause it would be fairly easy to build one if you got that material. And so there's still a lot that more that can be done there. 21:01 Russia in particular has not really made progress on substituting low enriched uranium fuel for high enriched uranium fuel in its 21:11 existing reactors to the degree that the United States and other countries have, and particularly in Europe and, and other countries around the world. 21:19 So right about, about now they've got about half the world's reactors that are running on highly enriched uranium, so that's very worrisome. 21:27 And what about these kind of scares, uh, which happened a couple of times during the Cold War, um, where for some reason or another, somebody almost pressed the red button? 21:41 Well, and I think that's, that's certainly just the general problem of our nuclear postures. I mean, 21:47 even barring faulty intelligence, the president would have half an hour after the launch of a Russian I- ICBM or, or sea launched missile to make a decision about, or, you know, the reported launch, I should say, of, of these things to make a decision about whether to respond before one hit the United States. 22:06 That's, you know, that's an absurdly small amount of time to make that kind of decision. 22:11 So, and then there's, you know, then you're talking about this might come in the, in the sort of a wartime situation, the fog of war and so on. You don't... 22:19 All sorts of things that you don't know what is happening may be happening. So you're-- a lot of confusion going on. And if you look, you know, historically about the, the Cuban Missile Crisis, which is of course the, 22:31 the, the crisis where we have kind of the closest to a, a superpower nuclear exchange. You know, we didn't know that the, there were tactical nuclear weapons on Cuba that the Russians had put there. 22:43 You know, and if we had bombed Cuba, there's a, there's a fair chance that they would have responded with those, which was one of the scenarios that the, you know, President Kennedy was considering. 22:53 So intelligence is always imperfect, and these are very dangerous situations, and that's sort of what arms control should be about. As opposed to, you know, there's disarmament, then there's arms control. 23:05 The focus in-- since the Cold War has been people pushing for disarmament, and a lot of the focus has come off arms control, and we've lost agreements like the Intermediate Nuclear Forces agreement. 23:17 And these are measures which reduce the chances of, one, escalating to the point of nuclear war, and two, misinterpreting actions by the adversary. 23:26 We have a lot more grounds for misinterpretation because we don't have the same treaties and the same channels and the same information that we had in a lot of areas, uh, before. And, you know, fortunately, we do have 23:39 this New START agreement, but that's it basically now. And we had a whole raft of other agreements that really supplemented this, both in the conventional and the nuclear arena. You know, there's a lot of talk within the 23:50 people who follow this regularly about what's the role of emerging technologies, you know, both in terms of things like hypersonic weapons and, and artificial intelligence, for instance, and the, you know, how does that relate to the command and control of nuclear weapons? 24:07 And I think there's a lot of... You know, those are questions people are still sorting out. The question of how does, you know, cyber and how potential dangerous interactions there with nuclear weapons. This is... 24:19 You know, there's a lot of rethinking in the, the nuclear landscape, which tends to be very 24:24 state and, you know, for understandable reasons people are very ma- cautious about making changes, is undergoing a lot of change, and there's gotta be new thinking. 24:32 And that and the rise of China, because we've never really faced a situation where they've had three peer, near peer competitors, 24:41 you know, superpowers essentially, in the nuclear arena, and that changes how you make your calculations. 24:48 Acknowledging that, uh, forecasting over long periods of time is more art than science, in your best estimation, in 30 or 50 years will there be more or less countries with access to nuclear weapons? 25:03 I would, I would unfortunately probably guess more. I have a hard time thinking there'll be fewer, and, you know, you s- there's sort of four or five countries that you could see, um, going nuclear right now. 25:18 I mean, as I mentioned earlier, you know, there's Iran, which would be followed shortly by Saudi Arabia, and then there's Japan and South Korea. 25:27 And those, essentially three of those countries are being held back by, you know, US leadership and the US alliance. 25:34 And unfortunately some of the other trends you see in the United States about where our power is going, uh, in the world, you know, are we a- gonna be able to restrain countries in 30 or 40 or 50 years in a much different, uh, international environment than we've lived in? 25:50 I'm not sure. And that's what I w- that's what I primarily worry about. Miles Pomper, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you. And also thank you, dear listener. 26:01 If you found this conversation interesting, you would probably enjoy more of Trendlines. 26:06 You can subscribe, uh, to the podcast in any podcast app of your choice, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and you can of course listen to old episodes and find our show notes on worldpoliticsreview.com/podcast. 26:19 My guest today was Miles Pomper. My name is Peter Dury, and I am the producer and editor of Trendlines, and we are published by World Politics Review. Have a great week, and until next time on Trendlines. 26:31 [outro music]
