How can we fight against a nuclear threat?

Humans keep developing more and more powerful weapons.
Iron weapons beat the ones made of bronze and artillery made walls and armours unnecessary.
Today, with airplanes, satellites, submarines, missiles we have completely changed the way
of war-making.
In fact, military innovation has produced important technological advances, but it all
has a limit.
The destructive effect of massive destructive weapons has forced rules to limit their use,
their production and their storage.
And that is absolutely necessary if we don't want the planet to be destroyed.
[THE FIGHT AGAINST NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION]
Massive destruction weapons can be biological, bacteriological, chemical, radiological and
nuclear.
But the biggest problem are nuclear weapons, due to their destructive power and because
thousands and thousands were accumulated in an insane arms race.
In the 60s, 70s, 80s art, music and civil movements took action against nuclear weapons-
remember Flower power?
Two of the songs which better represent the story of these years (and I deeply recommend
you to listen to them if you haven´t) are “Enola Gay” by Orchestral Manoeuvres in
The Dark and “99 red balloons” by Nena.
Well, the real challenge today is to keep North Korea or Iran from carrying on with
their programmes of massive destruction weapons, and also, to keep terrorist groups from taking
them.
A nuclear crisis in Korea would be a real tragedy, and it would definitely affect globalization,
trade and our lifestyle, after all.
Now, the problem is quite complex and we should analyse it from a global perspective.
As we said, there are international rules to limit the acquisition of nuclear weapons.
These rules are classified in two different categories:
The Horizontal Non-Proliferation, meant to prevent countries which don't have any of
these weapons from obtaining them.
And the Vertical Non-Proliferation, upwards.
So the states already in possession of nuclear weapons, especially the US and Russia limit
the number of weapons or even reduce their arsenals.
[THE HORIZONTAL NON-PROLIFERATION: THE NPT]
The horizontal non-proliferation tries to prevent new countries from joining the nuclear
club.
And, obviously, for countries like Iran, North Korea or terrorist movements not to lay hands
on these kinds of weapons.
Yes, it is true and we already talked about it in another VisualPolitik video: in Korea's
case…it seems like these rules have not worked well enough.
Well, this is what the NTP has achieved since 1968:
In the early 60s, it was estimated that, by the year 2000, around 20 countries could hold
nuclear weapons.
Many countries like Algeria, Argentina, Brazil, Spain or Sweden had the capacity to develop
these weapons.
However, thanks to the NTP and international leverage, very few states are in possession
of nuclear weapons today.
(The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty established that the five permanent members of the Security
Council: The United States, The Soviet Union, China, France and the United Kingdom were
the only nuclear powers and it forbade other states from acquiring those weapons).
In exchange, the members of the nuclear club, the five nuclear powers, would commit to help
the rest of the countries to develop nuclear energy for civil purposes.
However, with time and despite all of this, some countries have succeeded in becoming
nuclear powers.
Today, besides the five powers previously mentioned, 4 more countries have nuclear weapons:
Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea.
And then there's Iran, which also tried.
You all probably know, during the Ahmadinejad administration, Iran tried to get one of these
bombs, and this would have meant a sure threat both for Israel and the entire region of the
Middle East.
But, fortunately, the International Community took action to fight that possibility and
the sanctions received by the Security Council of the United Nations, The United States and
the European Union damaged the gas and oil exports and hurt Iran really badly.
Well, all that international pressure had an impact in the next elections and Rouhani
became the president of the country, who was a more moderate candidate.
After very harsh negotiations in 2015, they reached an agreement in which Iran stopped
its nuclear agenda and the rest of the countries would lift sanctions on exports, which were
good news in a country like Iran where lack of exports were so damaging for its economy.
As for North Korea…let its leader speak for himself:
We don't know exactly which weapons does Korea own, although some estimations calculate,
as we had already seen in a previous video, from 10 to 20 bombs.
Unsophisticated missiles and bombs, but powerful enough to trigger a severe crisis.
"North Korea has escaped the international pressure by operating underground nuclear
tests and launching missiles.
For this reason, the United Nations Security Council has strengthened the penalty system
for North Korea after the last underground detonation in September 2016.
The press has even dared to speculate with a possible military preventive action against
North Korea from Trump's administration.
However, American experts are warning: this military action could trigger a military reaction
with both massive destruction weapons as well as conventional means.
A war in the Korean Peninsula would mean a human catastrophe and it would negatively
affect the world's economy, but it would affect its neighbours particularly: China, South
Korea and Japan.
And the mere existence of this war threat could lead to a terrifying arms race in the
region and it could even make Japan take exceptional measures…we already mentioned it in this
other video, remember?
That is why China must stop the cravings of this impulsive and terrible kid known as Kim
Jong-Un if they want to avoid all these consequences.
Because this kid won´t play with toys, he will play with an entire country.
[THE VERTICAL NON-PROLIFERATION]
As for the vertical non-proliferation: during the Cold War, the U.S. and the Soviet Union
developed more, better and more powerful weapons in a creepy nuclear race.
Each country needed to have more and better weapons than the other, so they stored thousands
and thousands of nuclear warheads.
They also multiplied their means of delivery, bombardiers, missiles, submarines to an extent
nobody could have ever imagined.
“The arms race reached an amount of 65,000 nuclear warheads around 1985, enough to destroy
the Earth quite a few times”
In those years, there were many tests with nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, in the
sea, in space and sometimes, whether intentionally or not, they used people as guinea pigs to
analyse the effects of radioactivity in humans.
Isn't it terrible?
The Japanese artist Hashimoto has prepared a video where you can see the different nuclear
tests since 1945.
It looks like a videogame, but it´s not.
Fortunately, with the end of the Cold War, the United States and Russia agreed to reduce
their nuclear arsenals as well as their means of delivery.
With President Obama, in April 2010, the New Start Treaty was signed in Prague.
This treaty aimed to limit strategic weapons so each country would “only” hold 1,500
nuclear bombs by the year 2018.
Too many bombs still.
There are also other rules to limit missiles and means of delivery and, of course, in no
way can they conduct more nuclear tests.
The CTBT is a treaty which completely forbids any nuclear tests.
No more tests have been carried out since 1998…with the exception of North Korea.
Anyway, the conclusion of all this story is that: yes, we definitely must stop the nuclear
weapons proliferation of Iran or North Korea and we definitely have to prevent terrorist
groups from laying their hands on these destruction means.
But the nuclear arsenals still existing in the U.S. and Russia should also keep reducing
because, among other things, the risk of misuse and lack of control of these weapons is always
there.
In the world we inhabit today, interdependent and globalized, wars make no sense.
Bernard Brodie, the North American strategist already said so after World War II.
“Thus far the chief purpose of our military establishment has been to win wars.
From now on its chief purpose must be to avert them."
(Bernard Brodie, 1946)
In the U.S., President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was a pioneer in the search of peace and nuclear
disarmament.
In a
world dominated by nuclear weapons, Kennedy refused to conduct any nuclear tests in the
atmosphere and he was criticized for that in his own country.
However, we could have avoided so much suffering, so much waste of money, so many problems if
the world had listened Kennedy´s ideas on nuclear weapons!

How can we fight against a nuclear threat? - VisualPolitik EN

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