Nuclear Weapons: Are They Deterrents, Goads, or Risks?

By Joseph Mazur

Nine countries possess nuclear weapons, and there are likely to be more in the next few decades. Two possible paths to deal with the risks of future annihilation are competing for UN consent. One is deterrence, a position of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) aiming to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. The other is disarmament, a position of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), designed to stop the spread of atomic weapons by achieving complete world nuclear disarmament. With proliferation among growing nuclear states increasing, so are risks concerning possible miscalculations and accidents. Will we be able to therapeutically handle the mass emotions of fears and traumas that will surely follow a nuclear attack if that should ever happen?

“The Hibakusha help us to describe the indescribable, to think the unthinkable, and to somehow grasp the incomprehensible pain and suffering caused by nuclear weapons.”^[1] – Jorgen Watne Frydnes, the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, referring to the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize to Nihon Hidankyo’s global impact through sharing their story of the atomic bombing.

Sooner or later, though, a nuclear bomb will be used in war, either by accident or by the power of an insane leader. It will happen. I cannot tell you where or when, but history has its way of creeping up on pseudo-dependable tight security. There is, as always, an inconspicuously clever rogue who lurks unnoticed, ready to steal best-guarded secrets. There are always slip-ups and unforeseen escapes through security gauntlets. Someday, we will wake to the news that half a million people in one city will either be dead or severely burned, causing anger that will surely turn to revenge. And what will be the plan? To quickly retaliate against the retaliator and jump into the chaos of the moment?

What then? When a war – any war – starts, it is difficult to foretell its end. A nuclear war would be different. It would be over soon – relatively much more quickly – taking with it the destruction of almost everything on the planet that brought us evolution, the meaning of life, value, hope, and happiness. Yes, what then? There is not much point in highlighting the aftermaths. Everyone knows that besides destruction to life and infrastructure, there will be famine and darkness in a sunless black winter that will cool the earth enough to reverse climate change, thereby rebooting the cycle with a wiser humanity if any humans remain alive.

Remembering

How much does the average American know about the A-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? I put that question to a few adults and American teenagers, too few to claim statistical merit. Everyone knew about the bombings, but few could tell me anything clear about the loss of lives or human suffering. When I asked about the approximate number of dead, the answers ranged from 1,000 to 20,000. Teenagers believed the numbers were less than 5,000. The actual count is close to 200,000. Even 20,000 should have been shocking. We cast the destruction of innocent lives in times of war as “non-target damage”, and we in the United States believe that nuclear deterrent theory will protect us from existential destruction, as it has since 29 August 1949, when the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb.

How many of us remember the Cold War fear that sparked demonstrations in all the major cities of the world when we didn’t have social media to join us together for marches and sit-downs? The 1980s was a relatively muted time for social justice, abortion, and climate change fears. Climate change is real and undeniably destructive. Yet we are now in a situation where both climate change and the prospect of a nuclear engagement are high on the list of human fears. A single nuclear blast would cause massive CO₂ calamity, but a nuclear war would have the opposite effect by limiting sunlight to help global cooling, which would expand sea ice while impairing marine life.

The fear of both climate change and nuclear war brings with it new unconscious anxieties that are too powerful for the human brain to calm. For the American public today, climate change concerns outweigh the renewed threat level of nuclear war. Perhaps the double fear is too much to process. Being spectators to the horrors of atomic radiation contaminating the brain’s ability to cope with such massive witnessing of human obliteration could overwhelm the body’s natural pathways of healing. We have seen the photos and videos of Holocaust horrors. Some survivors are still alive to flash back to that time. A nuclear war would have us be present at explosions that would jolt us further than we can rationally comprehend and send us into mindsets that will make those of us who are sympathetic mentally ill.

Seven decades ago, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations, calling for ways “by which the miraculous inventiveness of man shall not be dedicated to his death, but consecrated to his life,”

“Our mass of atomic weapons, with its ever-increasing annual growth, exceeds by many times the explosive equivalent of the total of all bombs and all shells that came from every American plane and every American gun in every theatre of war through all the years of World War II. Any single one of the air wings of our Strategic Air Command could deliver in one operation atomic bombs with an explosive equivalent greater than all the bombs that fell on Germany through all the years of World War II.” – President Dwight Eisenhower, 1953 Atoms for Peace Speech^[2] 

In reading the Atoms for Peace transcript, there is a bewildering uncertainty of its meaning and how to interpret it. In one thought, it is terrifying. In another, it could be telling some hawkish readers that a few nuclear weapons could win a war without completely obliterating a continent. After all, Germany came out of the ashes of WWII as a phoenix, ready to be the economic engine of Europe. Eisenhower’s speech had a different intent and, in 1953, Germany needed the Marshall Plan’s help to rebuild from the massive destruction and enormous loss. One of the arguments that brought about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was that continuing the war with Japan without nuclear weapons would have cost staggering numbers of lives for each side. Such reasoning is still in contention, but it certainly does not hold today because of two advances: modern nuclear weapons are far more destructive than the bombs dropped in 1945, and one group of astonishingly large quantities of atomic weapons aim at another. So, should we be terrified if a war could obliterate just one continent?

A new Cold War heating up, this time with more nuclear members

Americans lived through terrorist attacks but have never had to worry about security and protection against invasions. However, those who are old enough vaguely remember the scary Cold War Cuban missile days that brought heavy anxiety to those who lived through it. They seem to have forgotten the massive protests in the 1980s against nuclear weapons. Gone are the memories of us older folks who joined the ban-the-bomb protest of the 60s. By the end of the Cold War, anti-nuclear wide-ranging activism quickly weakened, though it had the positive effect of establishing significant arms control treaties. Americans have short-term memories of their demonstrations because new political annoyances retire the old. We could attribute that to age; young folks who fret about the future see the world differently than the old, who worry about the young.

This past August, the U.S. Congress published a bipartisan document titled “Commission on the National Defense Strategy” that begins with “The threats the United States faces are the most serious and most challenging the nation has encountered since 1945 and include the potential for near-term major war.”^[3] The report believes that the U.S. is underprepared for what could be the next global conflict of superpowers and how daily life will change drastically should a war, with or without nuclear weapon involvements, erupt. In preparation, the Commission warns that the U.S. should immediately ramp up military funding and modernizations before “the next Pearl Harbor or 9/11.”

In addition to the National Defense Strategy report, there is Project 2025 “Conservative Promise,” among other terrifying schemes to reshape the U.S. federal government and consolidate executive power, a plan to establish a new Cold War under the toughness of advancing nuclear weapons and annihilating arms control treaties.^[4] It calls for a significant increase in the deployment of nuclear weapons and destroying all arms control agreements. However, it is true that as a percentage of GDP, the U.S. military budget has dropped more than half of what it was during the most contentious years of the Cold War (see figure 1). That is because a military budget is tied to the GDP because a larger budget directly and indirectly increases the GDP; conversely, a smaller budget pulls down the GDP. It makes one wonder if a higher military budget benefits defense or the economy.

From those views, it seems that a new Cold War is coming, if it is not already happening, this time with an axis joined by China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Three nuclear powers and one wannabe, led by strongmen. They favor deterrence theory by advocating for military buildup and an exponential increase to the military budget and recommend maintaining deterrence to prevent terrorist attacks and territorial aggression to defend against destructive activities.

Figure 1: U.S. Defense Department Budget FY 1952 to FY 2029 as Percentage of GDP.

Adding to a nuclear arsenal would not increase the power of deterrence. That view is misjudging the theory. Adding weapons adds to an expensive arms race. Even relatively small numbers of arms already in arsenals point to enough deterrence. The numbers may seem to boost one side, but having more weapons in an unwinnable war is meaningless. The strength of deterrence correlates with the amount of catastrophic damage that could come after the survival of an attack.^[5]

Scary numbers

Collectively, nine countries have over 12,000 nuclear weapons, though a more precise number is classified. Of those, more than 4,000 are ready to launch. For an impression of what that means, consider the possible destruction that just one dozen could do. Today, the tiniest tactical nuclear weapon is capable of destruction far worse than what happened in Hiroshima. Yet we talk of portable and tactical nuclear weapons as if they are supercharged howitzers. But what is a tactical nuclear weapon, really? There is no precise definition. Those words are deceptions to have us believe that such weapons are not so horrific. The word, “tactic” means “a strategy for accomplishing something specific.” In warfare, it means “a strategy for ending something.” Let us not be fooled by that word. By those definitions, the A-bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were also tactical military moves. The use of a single nuclear weapon today – the smallest one – could incinerate half the city of Kyiv and half its population of almost 3 million. One nuclear bomb dropped in the relatively desolate area near Kyiv would spark a nuclear war between Russia and the West because no nuclear attack would end with just one.

Figure 2. Logarithmic scatter plot comparing the yield (in kilotons) and weight (in kilograms) of all nuclear weapons developed by the United States.

We read the local headline news to learn about increased threats relating to nuclear weapons. As they continue, we slowly divide our thoughts between indifference and fear. On the one hand, a nuclear threat cannot affect us because we have enough weapons on our side as a deterrent, and on the other – the subconscious one – maybe it could. In speaking to people in my community, I learned that too many have limited impressions of what nuclear weapons are capable of and of how threats of their use mess with our mixed and muddled anxieties. Fear comes from the knowledge that one man, with an arsenal of thousands of nuclear weapons, has exclusive decision power to blow up the world with the stroke of a pen or the push of a button.

Small or tactical nuclear weapons have recently been in the Russo-Ukrainian War news

How should we interpret that often-used word “small?” There is no such thing as a low-yield nuclear bomb. Just so we understand, a nuclear bomb does not ordinarily contain TNT, a highly explosive chemical compound used in conventional weapons such as bombs and grenades. There is nothing atomic about TNT other than its being a chemical compound containing hydrogen atoms. However, the explosive power of nuclear weapons, the blast yield, is measured for military purposes as the power equivalent to a conventional weapon with a weight of TNT per metric ton. In other words, because of the relatively small weight of a nuclear bomb, the explosive energy of a nuclear weapon is expressed as the energy equivalently released in TNT weight as if the bomb’s explosive yield were to come from TNT.

William Foster, a United States government negotiator at the Conference of the Eighteen-Nation Committee on Disarmament, explained it this way: “[All] nuclear weapons have one characteristic in common. It is the characteristic that, upon activation of a prearranged trigger mechanism, they can quickly release large quantities of energy from sources of relatively little volume and small weight. They are enormously concentrated sources of explosive energy.” That explanation describes nuclear weapons as seemingly portable with enormous explosive power. However, the TNT comparison falls short on the suspended effects of long-lasting radiation poisoning causing leukemia. A conventional TNT bomb emits radiation by the extremely high temperatures of its blast, just as sunlight or any long-wave visible or ultraviolet light does, but with far smaller intensity than a nuclear bomb, which emits ultra-short-wavelength gamma rays and neutrons from the fission of atomic nuclei. That gamma radiation is quickly released and it remains in the local atmosphere long enough to likely – even in low-dosage exposure – cause leukemia, the cancer of the body’s blood-forming tissues. Survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki blasts spent their lives haunted by the known effects of radiation poisoning as they witnessed leukemia statistics long after the blasts.

The Russians have a 44-ton TNT bomb, the most powerful non-nuclear bomb in the world, nicknamed the “Father of All Bombs” (FOAB).^[6] It has a blast yield 44 times that of a conventional bomb. On blast, the oxygen from the surrounding air creates an intense, high-temperature explosion along a large radial swath from its point of impact. The U.S. has its 11-ton TNT bomb, the “Mother of All Bombs” (MOAB). The blast yield of modern tactical nuclear weapons (figure 3) is in the tens of thousands of tons, several times that of the bombs used in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings. Just for comparison, the yield of Little Boy, the bomb dropped over Hiroshima, living up to its name in comparison with today’s atomic bombs, was just 12,500 tons of TNT per metric ton.

Figure 3: Comparative nuclear fireball sizes.

TNT weights for non-atomic weapons are far less than one kiloton. And the old A-bombs of the mid-last century were never measured in megatons. For comparison – if it is possible for the mind to fathom such a difference – modern nuclear bombs have blast yields hundreds of times larger than Little Boy. Today’s “small” so-called “low-yield” nuclear bombs have blast yields in the tens of kilotons. The demolition effect of a 1-kiloton nuclear weapon would be comparable to that of 318 Russian FOAB bombs or 1,273 MOAB bombs. In other words, it can thoroughly destroy more – possibly much more – than 8 square miles of habitation.^[7]

In 1954, a Washington Post headline appeared the day after Atomic Energy Commission Chair Lewis Strauss’s press conference, where he said that an H-bomb could destroy the New York City metropolitan area and that “a bomb could be made large enough to knock out any city in the world.” Now, in 2024, we have such a bomb.^[8] That was then. Imagine how much closer we are to the U-bomb now. Now, nuclear technology has made gains in producing nuclear bombs that, unlike the ones dropped from planes, could be used in the field.

And whom else can we trust with the expressive knowledge of the destructive power of thermonuclear weapons but the so-called father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, Andrei Sakharov? He was a Soviet physicist, dissident, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who wrote a relatively long essay about the threat of nuclear war. It is as relevant today as it was when translated from the Russian manuscript and published in The New York Times on 22 July 1968.^[9]

Today one can consider a three-megaton nuclear war­head as “typical” [this is somewhere between the warhead of a Minuteman and of a Titan II]. The area of fires from the explosion of such a warhead is 150 times greater than from the Hiroshima bomb, and the area of destruction is 30 times greater. The detonation of such a warhead over a city would create a 100-square-kilometer [40-square-mile] area of total destruction and fire. Tens of millions of square meters of living space would be destroyed. No fewer than a million people would perish under the ruins of buildings, from fire and radiation, suffocating in the dust and smoke or dying in shelters buried under debris. In the event of a ground-level explosion, the fallout of radioactive dust would create a danger of fatal exposure in an area of tens of thousands of square kilometers. – Andrei Sakharov, “Reflections on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom.”

Nightmare redux

I had an existential nightmare back in the early 1980s, when ICBMs were frequently a part of world news.^[10] A mushroom cloud rose close to where I lived. I jumped around and over embers of small fires and mangled steel, searching for anyone still alive. Nobody was. That dream recurred several times near the end of the Cold War when Russia and the United States possessed a combined total of 63,000 nuclear warheads. Today, there are fewer than 12,653, according to figure 4, a remarkable reduction if we ignore the fact that just 10 of those weapons could wipe out half of Warsaw, Paris, London, Moscow, or New York.

Figure 4. US and USSR nuclear stockpiles.

Few among us have learned the truth from the testimonials of hibakusha [A-bomb survivors] who had gone through a living hell. – Tadatoshi Akiba, former Mayor of Hiroshima

Are humans capable of surviving mental health traumas that are sure to come from seeing nuclear bombing casualties as they happen? On the day of the Hiroshima bombing, the New York Times headline was “ATOMIC BOMB WIPED OUT 60 per cent OF HIROSHIMA … .” At that time, Hiroshima was a 26-square-mile city with a quarter of a million inhabitants! And yet newspapers around the world had headlines that avoided any words of human horror and suffering. The next day, the New York Times headline appeared as “FIRST ATOMIC BOMB DROPPED ON JAPAN; MISSILE IS EQUAL TO 20,000 TONS OF TNT; TRUMAN WARNS OF A ‘RAIN OF TERROR.’”

The Japanese people learned about the extent of misery in Hiroshima and Nagasaki seven years after the bombings. Why seven years? After the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, the General Headquarters of the occupation forces enacted a “Press Code” so that no information about humans suffering from the atomic bombings reached the public. That code was lifted at the end of the Allied post-war occupation of Japan in 1951, when the peace treaty between Japan and the US was signed.^[11]

The U.S. General Headquarters under General Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, along with the U.S. Civil Censorship Detachment (CCD), imposed censorship on the bombings, though not mentioning the atomic bombings.^[12] John Hersey’s book Hiroshima was published in 1946.^[13] It was disturbing and strong enough to bring forward sympathy for the innocent victims, yet that first edition had no photos of sufferers to advance emotions, though it did convey the human toll through stories of six survivors. The Japanese people knew little of the horrors of the bombings before 1952, when the censorship was lifted and Asahi Graph, a Japanese weekly pictorial magazine equivalent to Life, published for the Japanese to see (notably on 6 August 1952) the human tragedy through pictures of human suffering. In the U.S., a 1945 edition of Life magazine showed pictures of destroyed buildings but no heartbreaking photos of the human suffering that came instantly to the inhabitants of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; nothing about the 140,000 ±10,000 deaths in Hiroshima and 73,884 in Nagasaki, and tens of thousands injured or sickened by radiation.^[14] Note the memo and notes below from a war correspondent that significantly underestimates the casualties of the bombing. There was no accurate information, since bombs destroyed the records, and military-related information was not available.

“The atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, also known as the Hibakusha, are selfless, soul-bearing witnesses of the horrific human cost of nuclear weapons; Their haunting living testimony reminds the world that the nuclear threat is not confined to history books.” – United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, congratulating the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize award to the grassroots Japanese organization Nihon Hidankyo.

The so-called “thought police”, established in 1911, was sanctioned and directed to enforce censorship of the spread of “dangerous foreign ideologies” in books, newspapers, magazines, plays, films, radio, and letters, avoiding all information on human trauma.^[15] Because of that censorship, most Japanese did not know about the misery side of the destruction until years after the bombing. On 11 March 1946, once again, Life magazine had pictures of destruction and descriptions of squeezed bodies and ruptured internal organs that were difficult to process emotionally.^[16] Since photos move emotions in ways that text cannot, the September 1947 edition showed burns, blisters, and the life-long health issues of hibakusha, survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The CCD permitted descriptions centering on “layers of twisted tin and rubble,” steel skeleton frameworks, buildings losing shingles, roofs toppling to the ground, and trees that are gaunt, blackened, and contorted. When it came to humans, the numbers were terribly underestimated at just 33,000 dead, 13,950 seriously wounded, and 43,500 with “wounds not thought serious,” yet some people died mysteriously from slight burns and wounds not ordinarily fatal. Nothing on the survivors and the horrors of their future. Nothing about the burned bodies, weeping children, or vaporized corpora of charcoal on walls. The CCD knew that photos and descriptions of massive human suffering would cause substantial and serious mental health issues through natural human compassion. Waiting seven years would mitigate the shock so people could emotionally process the event.

Even if just one nuclear weapon launches in current conflicts, there would not be enough therapists in the world to deal with the human mental health trauma that would come from watching the aftermath in real time. After one nuclear bombing, we would see the casualties instantly, not one, two, or seven years later, when somehow the mind puts all horrors in memory cells dealing with past events. We would see humans, possibly hundreds of thousands, being decimated, crushed and scorched. The photos below will jolt our saddest emotions, yet they tell a history. Future atom bombings, if there are any, will be viewed in color on a few billion phones. Our brains will be unprepared to deal with the emotions that will come. How much mental damage will they bring? Billions of people would continuously witness living mass torture in real time. How would the aftermath look and feel? How will we narrate such historical tragedies?

How many nuclear weapons are enough? Do the numbers satisfy nuclear deterrence theory?

The Federation of American Scientists, United States Department of State, U.S. Department of Energy, and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimated nuclear warhead inventories in 2024.^[17] Its findings open the question of why the world has stockpiled 12,653 nuclear warheads, hundreds of which are ready to be launched at a hair-trigger notice. Given this insanity, I ask again the question in my previous WFR article “The NATO Alliance: Will It Have A Future?”: why can’t we get along without offensive weapons and spend our money to benefit the world, rather than be ready to blow ourselves up?^[18] Look at figure 5 and decide whether nuclear proliferation as deterrence gives us safety. If we can eliminate nuclear weapons and all its associated accessories, we could end hunger and child poverty and still have enough money and human resources to work on our many current crises and start rebuilding Ukraine and Gaza when and if their wars end.

Figure 5

What is the purpose of nuclear weapons? One might just as well ask what the purpose of so many nuclear weapons is. The two countries that dominate possessions of nuclear weapons say the answer is that, with our enormous numbers of nuclear warheads, we deter others from having foolish plans of attacking our allies. Deterrence theory emerged in the mid-18^th century, partly by English philosopher Jeremy Bentham, known for principles based on consequences. Bentham’s ideas stemmed from earlier debates on reforms for criminal punishment, assuming that individuals make behavioral choices based on balancing the pursuit of desires against the harmful consequences of choices. The theory developed more vibrantly in the 1970s as a solution to spikes in crime somewhat under the judicial dictum, “Don’t mess with us, or else.”^[20] That choice theory became the convenient excuse for the proliferation of nuclear weapons. In the end, the point of nuclear deterrence is to assure the inhabitants of a nuclear country that they are safe from a nuclear attack because a massive deployment of nuclear weapons tells potential attackers don’t mess with us, or else. But then, what about an accidental nuclear weapon launch or a madman dictator hellbent on releasing a nuclear bomb? Those questions and others elevate arguments by nuclear weapon experts who join ongoing debates over whether deterrence theory weakens the justification of the theory. Applying that to nuclear weapons, deterrence theory presumably works when adversaries understand that destruction is mutual and when each side sees the other as equally able to retaliate with a strike that will end in insufferable mutual destruction.

Nuclear deterrence favors a multilateral approach involving arms control and reduction. Modernization is part of the plan, so there are investments to advance proficiencies. Nuclear deterrents must be credible to be of any use, and since Russia and China, the two other big players, are updating nuclear instruments, so must the U.S. if it sees its massive number of warheads as a deterrent. However, critics of the deterrence theory claim that global security connects with the broader concern for threats such as terrorism and governmental instability. Some see the theory’s risk, claiming that any nuclear policy must be internationally cooperative through alliances that could almost guarantee safety. “Almost,” they say, because there is no absolute when it comes to mass-destructive weapon protection. Others say that, though NATO is a collective nuclear power, only NATO should be the deterrent agency in charge of nuclear weapons. That could happen only if the Russian Federation were to join NATO. Still others, hoping for a generational forward-thinking shift in outlook that favors adaptation of a holistic approach, feel that with enough public sentiment, full abandonment of nuclear weapons is possible and worth pursuing. 

Deterrence theory advocates argue that nuclear weapons will not be used, though they are necessary to deter attackers. Tadatoshi Akiba, a former Mayor of Hiroshima who has devoted much of his life to work on abolishing nuclear weapons, told me, “Without knowing how to deter foreign aggression in realistic terms, most of us have no alternative but to accept that claim. So, the half-truth spreads throughout the world to become solid faith in nuclear weapons and the deterrence theory: Nuclear weapons are there for peace.”^[21]

Some opponents tell us that deterrence has enticed new nuclear weapon states. The Soviet Union’s atomic arsenal existed to deter the U.S.; France and the United Kingdom to deter the Soviet Union; China to deter the U.S. and the Soviet Union; Israel to deter Iran; Pakistan to deter India; and North Korea to deter the U.S. It seems that deterrence will forever invite new parties to the growing nuclear club. It no longer takes a Manhattan Project to produce nuclear weapons. Now, many countries are capable, yet they still have daunting challenges. Forget the relatively easy part, such as fabricating the bomb, building detonation devices, or making a warhead to deliver the bomb. A more difficult problem is how to enrich plutonium or uranium to weapons grade. Iran already knows how to build a nuclear weapon. Its problem, since its plan supposedly ended in 2003, has been to get uranium enriched enough to be weapons grade. David Albright, President of the Institute for Science and International Security, reports, “Today, it would need only about a week to produce enough for its first nuclear weapon.”^[22]

The ultimate problem

“For some reason, the West believes that Russia will never use it. We have a nuclear doctrine, look what it says. If someone’s actions threaten our sovereignty and territorial integrity, we consider it possible for us to use all means at our disposal. This should not be taken lightly, superficially.” – Vladimir Putin 2024 speech at St Petersburg International Economic Forum^[23]

Recently, we had serious concerns that Russia might attempt to test-drive a nuclear weapon to warn the West that it means tactical business. We could take it as a bluff, but a nuclear bluff is a threat that carries a criminal charge under UN international law of warfare.

For the first time in more than 70 years, we face a nuclear-armed state governed by an authoritarian leader whose word is his manipulation of the truth. Any confidence left in deterrence policy vanished close to the moment Putin delivered his crafty nuclear threat that confused the West. Perhaps that is why, on March 28, the U.S. Department of Defense released its unclassified missive titled “The 2022 Nuclear Posture Review”: “Missiles are a principal means for projecting military power, which makes missile defense a key component of integrated deterrence.”^[24] However, the Review also asserts, “As long as nuclear weapons exist, the fundamental role of U.S. nuclear weapons is to deter nuclear attack on the United States, our allies, and partners. The United States would only consider the use of nuclear weapons in extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States or its allies and partners.” The Review, however, does not deal with the no-first-use policy, which presents a problem for the cautionary concerns about current and future leaders who might have wild interpretations of “extreme circumstances.” The nuclear policy of the United States is no longer one of deterrence but rather one of “flexible deterrence,” whatever that means.^[25]

My recent blog post in Psychology Today, “Are Mushroom-Cloud Nightmares Returning?”, suggests that the words of Vladimir Putin’s 24 February 2022 incendiary speech were to remind the world that Russia has 6,200 nuclear weapons, not to signify that he will use any.^[26] His speech includes the threat because he knows his military operation will not end with a decisive victory. “Whoever tries to hinder us,” he said, “should know that a Russian response will be immediate. And it will lead you to such consequences that you have never encountered in your history.”^[27] We must take his warning seriously, as Russia’s nuclear deterrent policy permits the use of nuclear weapons in response to a conventional strike on “critical government facilities and military infrastructure.”

Putin’s speech reads as a threat. So, as the “Mushroom-Cloud Nightmares” article pointed out then, “The worry is not rational. World War III is not likely.” It also noted, “Under healthy reasoning, we should feel that a nuclear conflict in Ukraine is not likely,” though Russia is now in a higher state of nuclear readiness to raise the fear gauge. A nuclear conflict in Ukraine is still not likely if we believe that Vladimir Putin is sane. Yet, it now seems that his invasion has cornered Russia into a protracted war that will take many more lives of Russian and Ukrainian soldiers than it already has. Putin is the leader of a country under an increased nuclear alert status during an invasion that is not going as well as initially planned. His endless war, as Tom Nichols wrote in his Atlantic newsletter, “is now embroiled in perhaps the greatest military blunder in modern European history.”^[28] Blunderings of war beget rage, and with rage come mishaps. Putin must be fuming as every day of Ukraine’s fearless resistance and incursions into Russia points to a protracted war, wasted lives and equipment, and diminishing general world prestige. To him, a lost or long war is not an option, so what else could he do?

The feeling of power can drive a craving for more power until it is absolute. Even though Russia is geographically the largest country in the world, for Putin, its current borders do not include enough territory; Russia plus Ukraine and the Baltic states may not suffice, either. Madness can emerge from having too much power. Seeing the world as conquerable can drive an impulse to seize it. Being president – either of Russia or the United States – instills a bravado that may come with the job. Can we trust any individual to remain of sound mind in a timely conflict, especially if that conflict is not going well or involves too many casualties? When wars do not go as expected, commanders blame their opponents rather than their incompetence. So, they pull the usual tricks, such as false flags or doing something horrendous and blaming the other side to make it appear that they were not the first to cross the line.

Unlike China, Russia has never agreed to a no-first-use nuclear policy. Its deterrent policy permits the use of nuclear weapons in response to a conventional strike on government facilities and cyberattacks.^[29] That brings with it the fear of Putin’s ambitions, because unavoidable accidents of warfare, in this case a possible threat to NATO territory, could trigger an unimaginable response. Rational or not, Putin’s threat brings a renewal of Cold War “nucleomituphobia.”^[30] Should we unearth our bomb shelters, stock them with canned food and water, and relive those Cold War years of paranoia?

Four dark possibilities for a nuclear confrontation

“As long as nuclear weapons exist, their use remains possible. In times of crisis and conflict, their use becomes more probable.”^[31] – Mariana Budjeryn, Project on Managing the Atom researcher, Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center.

In my columns on understanding war, I tend to analyze war in general without bringing forward specific wars, which are far too complicated to assess without first-hand experience of the battlefields. However, from any one of my articles to the next, I find myself in situations that draw in specific wars. So, I feel forced to say that the war in Ukraine worries me. Not because I am against Ukraine’s defense objectives. My worries have increased lately on the conflict between Ukraine’s incursion into Russia and Vladimir Putin’s threats to use a tactical nuclear weapon if Russian territory is compromised. Ukraine is moving into risky moves that could bring Putin’s anger to a boiling point.

So, I see four possibilities for the future, not just about what might happen during the present war in Ukraine: 1) A country launches a nuclear weapon claiming defense. 2) A nuclear weapon is launched by accident. 3) A terrorist organization has decrypted the codes and keys to a nuclear weapon. And 4) the dangers of nuclear weapon proliferation in space. I must ask: is any one of the four possible? Or are all four possible because we have nuclear weapons and so we may wake someday to learn that one of those insane weapons killed innocent millions and others are on their way in reactive avenging?

The self-defense claim

Nuclear threats damage deterrent theory. Besides, the threat itself is illegal by international law. Sergei Karaganov, Professor Emeritus of National Research University-Higher School of Economics, Moscow, and Honorary Chairman of the Presidium, wrote in Russia Global Affairs, “We will have to make nuclear deterrence a convincing argument again by lowering the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons set unacceptably high, and by rapidly but prudently moving up the deterrence-escalation ladder.”^[32] His view is that Russia should use nuclear weapon intimidation and deterrence, even risking a retaliatory strike on its own territory. “Only a madman, who, above all, hates America, will have the guts to strike back in ‘defense’ of Europeans, thus putting his own country at risk and sacrificing conditional Boston for conditional Poznan.” Putin has brought such threats forward repeatedly, and now, with Ukraine’s offensive moves into Russia, the threats are once again making news.

Dmitry Kiselyov, a propagandist anchor for Russian State TV appointed by Putin, announced that if NATO sends troops to help the Ukraine cause, Russia will go nuclear to disarm NATO, and “the British Isles will go underwater.” On 28 April 2024, he announced, while showing videos of missile launchings, that Putin has already said: “Why do we need a world if Russia is not in it?” Kiselyov, who always rattles the nuclear saber, continued, saying, “American decision-making centers and launch sites on land and sea are already in our crosshairs.”^[33] Read what you want into that insanity.

A former Russian president, Dmitri Medvedev, now a senior security official, one of the Kremlin’s most hardline hawks, used threatening language to remind Poland, Sweden, and Finland that Russia has nuclear and hypersonic missiles that could hit any state in Europe. Remember, he warned that Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia are part of Russia, and that it would be a “fatal mistake” to think that Russia was not ready to use tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine. He stressed, “This is, alas, neither intimidation nor bluffing.”^[34]

In June 2024, Putin remarked that he would consider sending long-range weapons to unspecified countries that target Western interests for a potential Russian preemptive nuclear strike. That, by definition, should be a threat. It was in response for the request to the United States and European countries for Ukraine to have permission to use Western munitions to attack Russian territory. In his keynote address for the annual St. Petersburg Economic Forum this year, Putin said, “The use of nuclear weapons is certainly theoretically possible. For Russia, this is possible if a threat is created to our territorial integrity, independence, and sovereignty, the existence of the Russian state.”[35] Then, on 25 September 2024, speaking to Russia’s Security Council, he claimed, “Russia reserved the right to also use nuclear weapons if it or its ally Belarus were the subject of aggression, including by conventional weapons.”^[36] These self-defense claims are threats that normalize the scheme of using nuclear weapons as excuses for imposing fear within the international community that could get out of control. 

An accident causing a nuclear event

Aside from the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, nuclear attack threats have brought the world to the brink of nuclear war at least one other time. In 1983, the Soviet nuclear warning system falsely raised an alarm, reporting that five U.S. nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles were on their way toward the USSR. There was no retaliatory launch from Moscow. Fortunately, for human intelligence, the hero of the day, Stanislav Petrov, a Defense Force officer on duty, suspicious of the early-warning system, did not relay the warning up the normal chain of command to start World War III. He saved the world by his critical choice based on his suspicion. Petrov was correct. The satellite warning system had malfunctioned to set off the alarm. It had mistaken the reflection of the sun off clouds as missiles.^[37] The incident had been top secret for both countries until nine years after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

AI and machines are imperfect, and humans have mishaps. More recently, on 13 January 2018, at 8:08 am, another false alert signaled over radio, television, and cellular phones that a ballistic missile was coming, ostensibly from North Korea. It was a miscommunication about a drill alert from the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency. That error would not have set off a nuclear response, but it showed flaws in the emergency alert system that could diminish public confidence in safety.

In my article “Wars of the Future Are Coming. Are We Ready?” I wrote about how countries are accelerating the pace of AI technology in warfare, especially connected to drone swarms.^[38] Now, I am thinking more about AI’s influence on nuclear issues. The overarching question is: will AI pose a security risk for nuclear weapons if autonomous nuclear delivery systems could lead to accidents by miscalculations?^[39] There are no satisfactory answers; experts are not worried but cannot answer the question reasonably. The biggest worry is how AI will handle LGM-30 Minuteman missiles, those ICBMs lodged underground in silos at geographical coordinates known to adversaries. They are first-strike weapons on constant high alert, guarding against attacks because their locations are known. High alert is a good thing, but likelihoods of accidents and miscalculations grow as weapons remain on high alert and hair-trigger-ready for action. 

Decrypted codes leading to a terrorist attack

To access and control nuclear weapons and to prevent unauthorized detonation of atomic weapons, every nuclear weapon has an attachment to its system called the permissive action link. A warhead can be stolen, though not easily. To use a nuclear weapon, both the warhead and its launch system must be in the hands of the thief who has the warhead. To arm or activate components in a nuclear weapon system requires a code.^[40] Launching an armed nuclear weapon from on-alert bombers and submarines with nuclear weapons requires an authorization code with elaborate procedures and keys communicated through a Permissive Action Link (PAL), an access control security device for nuclear weapons that prevents unauthorized detonation without the insertion of a prescribed discrete code. In some cases, each weapon, or at least each group of weapons, requires its own code and lock. Add to that a one-time pad (OTP), a cryptograph key that enables an opening for just one time. An OTP is a secret single-use pre-shared key known only to two parties on a secure channel of data transmission that ties the code to an encryption key that is random, thereby making computer-phishing algorithms for codebreaking useless, though leaving open the possibility of a crack because there is no such thing as complete randomness.^[41]

PALs offer encrypted choices to either detonate or safely destroy the weapon in such a way as to avoid an explosion. Encryption has gotten much tighter than it was with early nuclear weapons, but encryption is never 100 per cent infallible, even using the tightest cryptography; think of how Bletchley Park handled the German Enigma in WW2. It wasn’t easy, but the Enigma’s codes were eventually decoded. Nuclear codebreaking is far more difficult these days, but codebreaking is not a worry. Artificial intelligence, the synthetic brainpower algorithms that could do all the work necessary to actuate a nuclear alarm, is more troubling.

Nuclear weapon proliferation in space

What could happen if Russia were to put a nuclear weapon in orbit? In 2017, Vladimir Putin, a leader of few scruples who shows little regard for international law, said, “The one who becomes the leader in this sphere [AI] will be the ruler of the world.”19 No, the ruler of the world will be the head of a country that puts a nuclear bomb in space. And it was Putin who said that Russia will have nuclear weapons operating in space. Such a weapon will not affect the global natural atmosphere that protects us from most radiation but could confuse satellite battlefield communications, making GPS-guided systems inoperative. Such a tool could close banking and power plants and upset hospital operations to put one powerful operator in charge of ruling the world.

Ah, but we have a UN treaty to thwart that move: the Outer Space Treaty. That treaty governs activities of states operating in outer space for exploration and use. That treaty, adopted by the General Assembly in its resolution 1962 (XVIII) in 1963, includes rules about the Moon and other celestial bodies.^[42],[43]

Avoiding nuclear destruction

How will we handle the fear, risks, and effects of potential nuclear weapon unleashing, and how could we limit the proliferation that will continue to metastasize into extremes of madness that could ultimately rouse nightmares corporeality?

Besides non-governmental organizations such as the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), we have two essential treaties that could help: the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT),^{[44], [45]} and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). Others point in the right direction, such as the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and the START Treaty, which expired in December 2009.^[46] But CTBT and START are peripheral to possibilities of sensible ways to move forward.

The NPT is signed by 191 states (ratified by 43 states) by UN international agreement and a hopeful objective to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. Parties to the treaty are prohibited from transferring or controlling nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices from one state to another. Any assistance or encouragement from nuclear states to non-nuclear weapon states to develop atomic weapons is banned.

The TPNW is a legally binding international agreement and a hopeful objective to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, to promote peaceful uses of atomic energy, and to achieve complete world nuclear disarmament. Article 1 begins with a list of prohibitions.^[47] It bans states from developing, testing, producing, manufacturing, and stockpiling nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices. As with the NPT, it also bans transferring atomic weapons or other nuclear explosive devices or control over such weapons directly or indirectly.

As of the date of this posting, 94 states have signed TPNW and 73 states have ratified TPNW.^[48] However, a joint statement by China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States tells us that they “remain committed under the Treaty to the pursuit of good faith negotiations on effective measures related to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty behind general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control. We support the ultimate, that of a world without nuclear weapons with undiminished security for all. We are committed to making the international environment more conducive to further progress on nuclear disarmament.” ^[49]

Sounds terrific! Hold on, those five powerful countries remain opposed to TPNW in favor of a more gradual approach taking account of international security, noting that an NPT approach works better because history shows that, over time, it has spurred reductions of global nuclear stockpiles. The joint statement points to what they see as contradictions and risks in protections, firmness, and openness between states that are divided by what they see as contradictions between non-proliferation and total disarmament. So, by their reasoning, those five weighty states decided not to support or ratify TPNW. Yet the statement ends with, “In this context, our five countries reiterate our commitment to continue our individual and collective efforts within the NPT framework to advance nuclear disarmament goals and objectives.” An applauding death to TPNW.

 A 2020 UN Review Conference of the Parties to the NPT tells us that there will always be risks associated with nuclear weapons and that if there are nuclear weapons available to governments, there will be risks concerning possible miscalculated intentions and accidents that could come from state or non-state actors.^[50] So, in conception, and only in conception, it favors the complete elimination of nuclear weapons as the best way to eliminate those risks because it recognizes diminishing international security, the competitions surrounding great power strategic competition, stress on nuclear arms control, regional tensions, and destabilizing technological development trends. However, TPNW has many morally constructive regulations and is the first treaty to prohibit and eliminate nuclear madness and outlaw the threat to use nuclear weapons.

With the abundant recent research on nuclear misuse risks, including intentional, accidental, or unauthorized use, greater awareness and an emergent understanding of atomic risks come an urgency for the NPT to tighten its articles to give the International Criminal Court (ICC) legal ammunition for combatting atomic threats and to slide closer to the Stockholm Initiative on Nuclear Disarmament, supported by the ministers of 16 non-nuclear-weapon states, having an ultimate goal of a world free of nuclear weapons. The initiative calls for the NPT to acknowledge that nuclear weapons should be banned because “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fould take developmental work within the context of the NPT to rid the world of nuclear weapons. It is not impossible.

That is one reason why all countries, with the help of the UN, must abolish all nuclear weapons before it is too late. When is too late? Sooner or later, there will come a time when someone with unchecked power will be unhinged enough to use that power to destroy what cannot be taken. Then it will be too late.

All the photos in the article are provided by the company(s) mentioned in the article and are used with permission. 

About the Author

Joseph Mazur is an Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at Emerson College’s Marlboro Institute for Liberal Arts & Interdisciplinary Studies. He is a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim, Bogliasco, and Rockefeller Foundations, and the author of eight acclaimed popular nonfiction books. His latest book is The Clock Mirage: Our Myth of Measured Time (Yale).

Follow his World Financial Review column at https://worldfinancialreview.com/category/columns/joseph-mazur/ More information about him is at http://www.josephmazur.com/

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