More than 40 years ago, on June 3, 1980, at 3 a.m., a call from the Pentagon woke up Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor to then-President Jimmy Carter. On the other end of the phone, his aide told him that the Soviet Union had launched a nuclear attack with 220 missiles. "I need confirmation of that." The aide called him again and said: "Sorry, it's 2,200 Soviet missiles and they're coming here." Brzezinski decided not to wake his wife because, if Washington was going to be destroyed in an hour, he preferred that she die in her sleep. He had between three and seven minutes to call the president and launch a counterattack, but before the deadline ran out, a third call showed that it was a false alarm caused by a computer error.This nuclear panic has been overshadowed in recent decades by other major events: the fall of the Berlin Wall, 9/11, the Great Recession, and now, the pandemic. But the threat, according to experts, is a long way from disappearing.
In order to renew the nuclear balance, the United States and Russia will hold a first meeting at the highest level in Geneva on July 28, as confirmed by Moscow and the State Department. This meeting, called Dialogue on Strategic Stability, is the first between the two superpowers after the summit held on June 16 in the Swiss city between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Democrat Joe Biden. As soon as he became president, Biden announced that he would extend until 2026 the 2010 New START treaty, signed by then-presidents Barack Obama and Dimitri Medvedev, which limits the number of nuclear warheads deployed by Russia and the United States to a maximum of 1,550 and 700 ballistic systems on land, sea and air. According to the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), Washington has about 3.600 nuclear warheads in its arsenals and Moscow about 4,300 and no other country has more than 300. Although the tense relations between Washington and Moscow marked that June meeting, the spirit of Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan still prevailed in the same place in 1985, when they agreed that "a nuclear war has no winner" and next Wednesday's meeting should serve to pave the way not only for future disarmament agreements, but also to establish the basis for a new global security architecture.when they agreed that "a nuclear war has no winner" and next Wednesday's meeting should serve to pave the way not only for future disarmament agreements, but also to establish the basis for a new global security architecture.when they agreed that "a nuclear war has no winner" and next Wednesday's meeting should serve to pave the way not only for future disarmament agreements, but also to establish the basis for a new global security architecture.
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This is what Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association believes, who believes that “both parties would like these discussions to lead to possible agreements that would help limit the threat of a nuclear conflict, reduce the excess of nuclear weapons from long and short range, to configure some common rules for operations in outer space and a possible understanding of missile defense systems ”. Less optimistic is John Krzyzaniak, an expert on non-proliferation and nuclear policy at the prestigious London Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). “We should not expect tangible results from this first round of talks.The Strategic Stability Dialogue is different from any future negotiations on a new arms control agreement to succeed New START. It will be a long process and this is only the beginning ”, he assures in an email.
For half a century, nuclear negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union, later Russia, generated several disarmament agreements. Some have been abandoned like the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2001 and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 2019, but stability is still a game of two (90% of nuclear warheads is in possession of the two superpowers as in the times of the Cold War) based on the logic of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). But the world has changed and although disarmament meant a decrease of 38,000 nuclear warheads, a 79% drop between 1991 and 2010, the old arms control no longer works in this decade of the 21st century. As expert Steven Pifer writes in the article
Nuclear arms control in the 2020s
published in the Brookings Institution think tank: “The strategic stability model is today more complex.
Instead of a two-player model based solely on strategic nuclear forces, today there are multiple players and multiple fields of action.
The nuclear forces of a third country like China must enter the equation.
In addition to nuclear weapons, the model must take into account missile defense, conventional precision weapons, space and the information revolution ”.
There are currently new members in the nuclear club.
According to
The Economist
, 17 countries have a formal atomic program, 10 can make a bomb - if Iran is included - and nine have nuclear weapons (in addition to Russia and the US, France, the United Kingdom, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and Korea from North). In addition, there are new possible theaters of war such as outer space and cyberspace and the advanced technological development of new weapons such as hypersonic missiles, low-yield nuclear warheads -which have the destructive capacity of a third of the Hiroshima bomb-, or underwater nuclear drones. “It is difficult to speak of nuclear balance in a world where nine countries have the bomb and all have different theories about the meaning and the end of their arsenals.But it is correct to say that the collapse of the arms control architecture between the United States and Russia has unleashed a new nuclear race, ”says Krzyaniak.
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For Kimball, however, “the real danger is that without serious and realistic arms control among the five major nuclear powers - the US, Russia, China, France and the UK - an uncontrolled nuclear race will break out.
North Korea, which already has between 40 and 50 nuclear weapons, could also improve those weapons for long distances and increase the size of its arsenal, unless it is committed to the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.
And the United States and Iran need to return to the 2015 agreement or the Iranian nuclear arsenal will grow and its population will continue to suffer the effect of the sanctions. "
The proliferation does not spread as fast as a virus, but it is just as contagious. India, North Korea and especially China, a player that the United States would like to integrate into the negotiations, are expanding and modernizing their arsenals, which contradicts the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and a more recent one, promoted by Nations. United and signed by 86 countries last January to ban the bomb. “China has had nuclear weapons since 1964 and has always had a small, but still very dangerous nuclear arsenal. Today it is believed to have between 250 and 350 nuclear weapons, but according to the United States and independent studies, Beijing could increase the size of its arsenal. It is deploying solid-fuel-fueled missiles faster to launch than its old liquid-fuel-fueled missiles,increasing the number of its long-range missiles equipped with multiple heads, installing the majority of its intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) in mobile launchers and improving its naval nuclear force. These movements are worrying. Beijing is not looking to match the nuclear potential of the US, but it seems that it is diversifying its nuclear force to maintain a nuclear deterrent that can withstand potential nuclear or conventional attacks by Washington, ”says Kimball.but it seems that it does diversify its nuclear force to maintain a nuclear deterrent that can withstand potential nuclear or conventional attacks by Washington, ”says Kimball.but it seems that it does diversify its nuclear force to maintain a nuclear deterrent that can withstand potential nuclear or conventional attacks by Washington, ”says Kimball.
The negotiations scheduled in Geneva between Russians and Americans, whose agenda has not transpired, are a first step to renew the strategic balance between the two superpowers, but also an opportunity to lay the foundations of a model that integrates the new threats that they plan on our country. horizon.
The danger of the briefcase
There are times when the impossible becomes probable.
No matter how solid an agreement the superpowers reach, nothing ever guarantees absolute security.
Donald Trump has been the only US president who has not signed any disarmament agreement, but, ironies of fate, he has been the only president who has been on the verge of misplacing the famous nuclear briefcase on several occasions.
The last time it happened, according to a Pentagon statement collected by the Reuters agency last Tuesday, when Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on January 6. The then vice president, Mike Pence, was in the building accompanied by a military aide carrying a spare nuclear briefcase. Faced with the danger of the assailants seizing him, Pence and his companion had to be led to safety in the midst of enormous confusion. The Pentagon maintains that at no time was the briefcase "in danger" and that, even if the protesters had taken it, they would not have been able to activate it without the permission of the military.
But there were more precedents during the Republican's term. In November 2017, when Trump was having lunch with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, a Chinese security official got into a fight with the US military aide carrying the briefcase. Then-White House Chief of Staff John Kelly had to intervene in the altercation to prevent it from getting lost during the fight or falling into other hands. Trump was so attached to the symbol of nuclear power that he even took one to Palm Beach (Florida) until the same day he ceased to be president, January 20, 2021.
