Angry Planet - Why nuclear war looks inevitable

Episode Date: September 13, 2016

Several developments have the potential to move the hands of the nuclear doom clock closer to midnight. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast? Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. The opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the participants, not of Reuters' News. A terrorist does not have land to protect or lives to save, and so they, in a way, can't be deterred. that is where my anxiety kind of stems from. North Korea isn't the only country looking to improve its nuclear arsenal.

The United States is tinkering with its bombs in ways that some foreign policy experts fear could destabilize the world. This week on War College, we look at just how close the world has come to nuclear war in the past and whether it can be avoided in the future. You're listening to Reuters War College, a discussion of the world in conflict, focusing on the stories behind the front lines. Here are your hosts, Jason Fields, and Matthew Galt. Hello and welcome to War College. I'm Jason Fields with Reuters. And I'm Matthew Galt with War is Boring. Dan Zack is a reporter with The Washington Post and an expert on nuclear security.

He's just published a book. It's a little bit of a mouthful, but I'll do my best. Almighty, courage, resistance, and an existential peril in the nuclear age. That makes him the perfect person to talk to as the U.S. contemplates whose finger will soon be on the nuclear button. So actually, first of all, can we just start off with, there's not actually a button, right? Right, there is no button that the president, him or herself, pushes, no. So can you tell us just a little bit about how it actually does work? Well, sure. The ultimate authority over the U.S. nuclear arsenal does rest with the president. And, you know, that authority developed over time because during the course of the Cold War,

the delivery systems for nuclear weapons became so sophisticated and so quick that you couldn't necessarily convene a committee or a panel or anything to decide what to do in the event of some kind of incoming nuclear attack. And so over time it developed that the president would be the one who would issue the order. And so the president doesn't push a button. The president is followed around by the nuclear football, which is a 45-pound suitcase that has a menu of options for nuclear strikes and communication gear to talk to Pentagon people, people in Strachcom. And the president also has a small plastic card called the Biscuit, which has codes on it, alpha-numeric. codes with which the president can authorize the fact that they are the president to authenticate the order to strike. So you've got this card called the biscuit, you've got this briefcase

called the football, and those two physical objects are what the president would use to pick and then authorize some kind of a nuclear strike. Well, it sounds like the buttons, we'll just say for shorthand, the biscuit, the football are pretty well guarded, but what about the actual missiles themselves? Well, I mean, you look through nuclear history and you see a disturbing tradition of security compromises. You know, if you want to start with the biscuit, it's been reported that Bill Clinton lost the biscuit for a couple months. Jimmy Carter sent his to the dry cleaners. After President Reagan was shot, the biscuit was briefly lost at the hospital when his suit was cut off and then

taken into custody by the FBI, who would not immediately relinquish it to the Air Force. And then if you talk about actual nuclear warheads, there have been plenty of mishaps near misses. You know, up until very recent mishaps. In 2007, you had six nuclear-armed cruise missiles that were flown from North Dakota to Louisiana without anyone's knowledge. There was an accounting error, and people didn't realize that this bomber plane was loaded, and it was, and that wasn't discovered until after it was on the tarmac in Louisiana for a little while. And then you have security breaches like the one I wrote about in my book, which is three peace activists, one of whom at the time was an 82-year-old Catholic nun, getting much farther than they should have at the

Y-12 National Security Complex in East Tennessee, which is where we keep all of our highly enriched uranium. It's probably the largest volume of fissile material on the planet, and they kind of walked right up to this building. So it's a long way of saying that neither the apparatus which controls nuclear weapons nor the warheads themselves are 100% secure. You're talking about an incident that happened in the United States, and one of the key concerns over the last, well, I guess 25 years since the Soviet Union fell is the security of other people's warheads. And we've certainly had a lot of concerns over Soviet scientists and nuclear material over those 25 years, and then more recently, India and Pakistan, especially around Pakistan. Do you see one of those

threats as being more acute, or do you think it's just all equally scary? Well, as someone like me who's, you know, not a career nuclear expert, but someone who is a concerned and curious citizen who's studied up on this for the past four years, you know, I've talked to a lot of people who rank nuclear-related concerns. And I think, based on my reporting and based on my experience, the preeminent concern is some kind of regional war between India and Pakistan that escalates into nuclear war. And of course, plenty of people who are against nuclear weapons cite such a regional war as evidence that there could be kind of a global cataclysm. You know, if 100 nuclear warheads are exchanged between India and Pakistan, that equals 2 billion deaths worldwide.

that's billion with a B, not because of the direct effect of explosions and detonations, but because of the effect on agriculture when you throw that much debris and soot into the atmosphere. So that's obviously a huge concern. You know, the United States, which is pretty secure and transparent, and its management of nuclear arsenal, is still very much vulnerable than what is it like in India and Pakistan. And the other chief concern, which is sometimes overstated, is nuclear terrorism. You know, there are plenty of articles that are written about this nightmare scenario of a terrorist with a nuclear weapon.

And I think the probability of that is overstated, but the consequences certainly aren't. You know, there have been 2,700 cases of illicit trafficking of non-fissile radiological materials in 100 countries since 2014. And, you know, we're not talking about fissile material, but the fact that, you know, borders can be that porous with radiological material, it kind of makes you wonder. If I could just interrupt for just one second for lay people, fissile is the kind of material that could actually be used to create an explosion, right? And radiological would be used perhaps in something called it like a dirty bomb to spread radiation poisoning?

That's an important distinction. Nuclear weapon would rely on fissile material like uranium and plutonium. That causes your nuclear chain reaction. It causes this enormous explosion. Just non-fissile radiological material. we're talking just kind of dirty bomb ingredients, radionuclides that are harmful to people that could be dispersed by a conventional explosion.

And that is kind of the more probable event is there would be some kind of dirty bomb, not a nuclear explosion by a terrorist. How have we managed to avoid all of this so far? It just seems with the amount that's out there and it's kind of incomprehensible that nothing bad has happened yet. It is.

And I think most people would say, included that it's been mostly dumb luck. And that's not to shortchange the hard work that nuclear security experts have done since the end of the Cold War. I mean, there was an incredible work done in the aftermath of the dissolution of the Soviet Union to secure materials in former Soviet states. That was tremendously important work. But because of illicit trafficking, because these radiological materials are used in medical equipment, they're all over the place. And the fact that it hasn't happened yet, I think is a combination of luck and of the work of security experts. So speaking of luck, we've had incidents where the United States has come very close to

launching weapons. False reports of a Soviet nuclear strike being launched, and the people at the top of the U.S. food chain desperately trying to figure out whether or not we should launch. How much time does the president, or Zbignu Brzynski in the case of Carter, how much time do they actually have to respond if there's a report that a launch has happened? Well, it's a matter of minutes. If there's some indication that there is an incoming attack of a good degree of magnitude, it's a matter of minutes. And that is what convinced many people, including people who formerly worked in the nuclear security enterprise of the United States, to say, that's not enough time to make a rational decision. And no human being should be presented with that predicament. Because even the coolest

head is liable to make a rash decision. I mean, is a matter of minutes enough time to make sure that it's not some kind of false alarm and miscalculation, which is what's happened over the years. You mentioned Brzezinski. You know, he had, I think, once he got a second confirmation from the military, he had about three minutes to call the president and say, this is what's happening. And now what happened in that incident in 1979 was the military had loaded a training exercise into the system that was then interpreted by officers as an incoming attack. There was this famous incident in the Soviet Union in 1983, when a colonel in a bunker outside Moscow got word that there were submarine-launched U.S. missiles incoming,

and the decision to engage rested with him. He was the one who would call it up to the Kremlin and say, okay, we're under attack, let's retaliate. That turned out to be sunlight reflecting off class. That's what Soviet satellites interpreted as some kind of strike. And so when you have this capacity for misinterpretation, for miscalculation, and you add in this time crunch, it's kind of a recipe for disaster, I think. Are there any checks in place at all on a president?

I don't know about Vladimir Putin or anyone in China, but are there any checks at all for a U.S. president? The problem here is because of the quickness with what we're going to be. which this has, this system has to operate, it is founded and based around verifying an order and then following the order. If the president happens to be with a defense secretary, with advisors who can persuade him or her not to engage, that's a check. But once a decision is made, in order for the thing, the operation to work appropriately, you authenticate through the chain and then as soon as the order is authenticated,

you know, you have to react. You know, there's not the traditional checks and balances because there's no time. You know, you don't have Congress getting together to vote, you know, you don't have the Supreme Court being able to kind of check this decision at all. You certainly don't have a popular referendum saying, yeah, this would be a good idea. There just isn't the time. So you go from the president giving the order all the way down to the launch officers who turn their keys, and they're trained to, if they verify the order, to turn their keys. They are psychologically vetted. so that they're able to perform that automated response. You know, you can talk about, you know, discussions that are had in between. You can talk about kind of a two-person verification thing, but when it comes down to it, it's the president's arsenal, and when the order is given, the system kicks into gear. There were a series of reports about problems inside the Air Force Nuclear Command. I don't know if you'd be able to explain some of those problems

and what's been done to correct them. but I remember it had something to do with training of personnel, for one thing. Yeah, I mean, there's been problems, different kinds of problems that have afflicted the Air Force, wings that are in charge of nuclear weapons, ranging from cheating scandals, cheating on training tests, to drug use in a Wyoming base, to essentially bad behavior by superiors in the Air Force abroad. And also, you know, this kind of lingering morale problem, which you could say is led to all these problems, the drug use, the cheating.

There is a sense within the Air Force that if you are assigned to be a launch officer to work in the silos in North Dakota and Wyoming and Montana and in the upper plains, that there is no room for kind of career advancement, that it's a dead-end place, especially for a young airman to work, to essentially sit in a hole and wait to launch World War III, it's not viewed as a terribly career-advancing or ennobling venture. And so the Air Force, especially in the past 10 years, has tried to refurbish the image of this kind of work and this kind of duty. They've increased the pay of people who work in this field.

They provide other perks and built bowling alleys and institute leisure activities to make this kind of lifestyle more palatable for people. But it's certainly been a problem since, as I mentioned, that kind of mistaken conveyance of those six cruise missiles from North Dakota to, which resulted in the head of the Air Force resigning. You know, the Air Force has done everything from these bowling alley adjustments to, you know, elevating the status of superiors in this realm to kind of reinforce the importance of this mission of nuclear deterrence, which people say have been lost since the end of the Cold War. This is interesting. This speaks to something I wanted to get into. because right after World War II, the people that dealt with the nukes in the military were rock stars, you know, strategic air command, and it didn't take very long for the tide of kind of public opinion to turn.

But I'm wondering if you think public opinion since the Cold War played into any of this, any of these problems that you've seen, and if the American public is kind of chosen to ignore our nukes and our nuclear power? Yeah, well, I mean, I kind of come at this notion. from a personal standpoint. You know, I was born in 1983, a couple months before the day after premiered on television. So I was born into a world that was very fixated on nuclear weapons, but I came of age in a world that was not. I mean, I became politically, socially conscious after the end of the Cold War. And when you don't have that kind of existential superpower versus superpower threat that makes nuclear weapons salient for everyone, it's easy to let them

recede from popular consciousness. So I think now you have multiple generations who have come of age without nuclear weapons occupying, say, you know, a duck-and-cover presence in their everyday life. And the U.S. has taken its own eye off the ball after the end of the Cold War. Reducing the amount of warheads and the significance of nuclear weapons and military strategy has yielded both a complacency and a bit of, you know, ignorance about them, both inside and outside the military. I think, you know, partly because I think the Pentagon doesn't really view them as weapons of war. They're more political weapons at this point. They're used as bargaining chips with Russia. They're not, they have no practical military use because once you start using them, you kind of

transcend the realm of war into cataclysm. And so I think for all those reasons, they have, the end of the Cold War, the receding from, you know, popular culture and public consciousness, they've been kind of sidelined, even though they haven't gone away. So you refer to the people who are involved in the nuclear hierarchy as sort of a nuclear priesthood? Is that right? Could you explain what you mean by that? Sure, and it's not my term. It's a term that's used in Washington, and it's used to refer to kind of career nuclear experts, people who are highly versed in techno strategy, who have worked in the Pentagon in the Atomic Energy Commission, then the Department

of Energy, then the National Nuclear Security Administration, people have worked in the National Security Council, and people who are, you know, true believers, I think, in the usefulness of nuclear weapons, the usefulness in possession of these weapons. And I think the term is especially appropriate because it brings in this kind of spiritual or religious element, this faith that they have in nuclear weapons maintaining a global peace since World War II? I mean, that's what they're credited with. That's the popular notion in Washington is there hasn't been a World War III because starting war these days, a global war with nuclear weapons means the end of the world. And so I think priesthood is a term that encapsulates this intense

paradox that we are preserving the world by threatening its existence minute to minute. And that is doctrine in Washington, and it's embodied by kind of career experts who see continuing value in possessing them. Is that being undermined at all by, there have been comments of Vladimir Putin when he moved missiles, he threatened to move nuclear missiles into Crimea. A few years ago, I think the same year 2014, made comments about, you know, seeing the world burn, or at least seeing the Westburn. And even in this political campaign, I mean, there have been some comments or concerns about the use of nuclear weapons and possible first strike. Does that change anything, do you think? I mean, or are we really just talking about the same kinds of threats that have

always been there or implied? You know, when you have political figures like Putin, who's been rattling the nuclear saber, and Trump, who, you know, despite saying, you know, despite saying, you that nuclear weapons are a horror, I would never use them, you know, that was reported that he was asking, well, why can't we use them? And that brings to the front this kind of, again, to go back to paradox, they're not designed to be used. They're designed to be threatened to be used. But I think apart from political figures like them, what's a little more concerning is, you know, more granular activity, especially in Europe. You know, you have the U.S. upset by Russia's alleged violation of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty by developing testing a cruise missile.

You have Russia's own criticism of the U.S. about missile defense. You have the U.S. modernization plan for the B-61 warhead, which is deployed in Europe, and, you know, how doing so. And, of course, this discussion about the long-range standoff missile, which is part of the U.S. modernization program, which plenty of people see as destabilizing. When you're introducing new and updated weaponry with perhaps new capabilities, that screws with stability. And when you start screwing with stability,

you start screwing with kind of the mainframe of deterrence. And so because of all these factors, these uncertainties, both in political figures and in military plans, it feels like Europe especially, the fault line between NATO and Russia, is getting creakier and creakier. And when you start introducing uncertainty and instability, that's when you start making room for misunderstanding or miscalculation. And all of a sudden you can blunder your way into, you know, quote, a tactical nuclear war, which, you know, I really think it's a mistake to make any distinction in there.

And then you find yourself in full-blown nuclear war. So, you know, you can talk about rhetoric, but there's actual practical, strategic things that are happening that are just as concerning. What exactly do you mean by tactical nuclear war, or what does the priesthood mean by tactical nuclear war? They mean, you know, nuclear weapons that can be used on the battlefield like any other weapons. You know, there's, and this is part of kind of the priesthood jargon. You have tactical nuclear weapons, which are lower yields, less powerful, more precise, and you have strategic nuclear weapons, which are higher yield, which can take out hardened targets, take out cities and military installations.

A lot of people think it's foolish to distinguish between the two because once you escalate past the nuclear threshold, then all bets are off. You get into the spiral. But that's what we've deployed in Europe. We have these B-61 bombs in Turkey and the Netherlands and Italy. That's the concern with this B-61 bomb, that this modernization of it is improving its accuracy and also making its yield more customizable. and critics say that those capabilities make it more usable in the minds of a commander-in-chief. It's, oh, if we're sure about how precise it is and we can dial the yield down low enough, you know, why don't we use it in this instance?

You know, and even if you, that's the case, you're still crossing that threshold. What's the standoff weapon that you mentioned? Well, this is an air-launched cruise missile, which would be nuclear capable, and which plenty of people are criticizing because we're also. developing a new penetrating bomber. And, you know, people on Capitol Hill who are critics of this nuclear modernization plan say, well, if you have a bomber

that you can get past defenses and radar, you know, why do you need to develop a new missile to do the same thing? They see that as wasteful, redundant, destabilizing. But both plans, you know, are kind of proceeding. They're being questioned on Capitol Hill, but they are proceeding.

You know, the Air Force thinks we need both. Do you think it's ever possible to get rid of all of the nuclear weapons? Was that just a pipe dream? Well, if I thought it were possible, then I would probably have a plan to do it, in which case I would win some kind of, I would win a Nobel Peace Prize. You know, I don't know anything is possible. It certainly doesn't seem probable.

And there are plenty of activists who would recoil at that kind of cynicism. But we've really gotten ourselves in a knot here. There's been, you know, a lot of progress since the peak of, of the global arsenal. You know, the U.S. has reduced its stockpile by 85 percent since peak. Fissel material has been located, secure, downblended, used in power plants. Russian and the U.S. stockpiles have gone down significantly. You know, at the same time the number of nuclear-armed nations has gone up. There are now nine. So it kind of doesn't matter that the warhead number has gone down. And, you know, the lower we get in those numbers, the harder it is

to make cuts because the U.S. wants to be able to achieve all of its military objectives in a number of scenarios and also offer nuclear defense to its allies. And so as long as we have those alliances, those defense commitments, as long as, you know, Russia is not going to be a willing partner, you know, it's hard to conceive of the arsenal shrinking beyond, much beyond what it is now. So that number, when you talk about reducing by something like 80%, or 85%, did you say? About 85%, yeah. So we're still talking about an enormous amount of fissile material. And, I mean, during the Cold War, you mentioned the day after, I'm a bit older than you.

And I remember the reports about, you know, well, the United States could blow up the world ten times over. The Soviet Union could more or less do the same. So at this point, we're not talking about going below the level of destroying the entire world, right? I mean, however many we've decommissioned, I mean, the major powers still have the power to destroy the world. Correct. Yeah, I mean, there's still about 15,000 warheads on the planet. That's plenty to do us in multiple times over. But, you know, there's one way to illustrate just how complicated and how political this is.

You know, the Pentagon has determined that the U.S. can meet its military objectives, even if we eliminate one-third of our deployed nuclear weapons. You know, we can get rid of a third. We'll still be fine. But we're not going to do that unilaterally, even though we wouldn't be any less safe, even though we would save money, we're still not going to do it unless Russia does it, and Russia does not want to play ball there. So it's strange to have this existential threat, this still too outsized stockpile,

and to kind of reduce it to this kind of schoolyard diplomacy, well, if they have that many, we can't not have that many too. And so until we untie that knot, it's hard to conceive that we're going to get, we're going to bring the stockpile down even to a level that will only destroy the world once over instead of many times over. Every country that has nuclear weapons is also aligned with someone. North Korea, as many times as it's called a rogue state, is still aligned with China in some sense. China has not actually fully disavowed them after the nuclear test and everything. Pakistan is allied with China and the United States. India is allied more and more closely with the United States.

So if any of those situations go wrong, if North Korea considered the greatest loose cannon actually did something, does that make the possibility of real nuclear war more likely? I mean, are we now talking about it being almost inevitable? Some people would say that as long as nuclear weapons exist, we're kind of living on borrowed time. And I think even a nation as backward and aggressive and provocative as North Korea recognizes that starting some kind of war,

nuclear war is suicidal. So, you know, my concern, you know, I am concerned about kind of conventional war between conventional nation states that escalates because of misunderstanding or miscalculation. But what kind of concerns me more is those, you know, time-tested notions of deterrence and stability from there are kind of out the window when you're talking about terrorist factions. I mean, that's kind of what's more concerning to me because you don't, a terrorist does not have land to protect or lives to save. And so they, in a way, can't be deterred. You know, that is where my anxiety kind of stems from, is that we're living in a world,

a multipolar world that is chiefly preoccupied with, in terms of actual battling, with terrorism. And the greatest weapons we have really serve no purpose or function on that kind of battlefield. So, you know, North Korea, I think, is being provocative in order to maintain its place, you know, it's relative place at the big boys table. That's always been what nuclear weapons are about. You know, it can give a country that is impoverished and backward a seat in discussions if it wants. It's leverage. I don't think they would ever actually use them, but who knows?

Because they still have a nation state to secure, defend, and prolong. You know, a rogue group, a terrorist group does not have that. So that's kind of where my concern lies preeminently. Right. Is the last weapon you want someone that has nothing left to lose to have? That's precisely. That's precisely it. Terrorism takes these weapons that are not meant to be used because they provide stability

and moves them into a category where, well, of course they want to be used because it creates the maximum amount of mayhem and destruction. Well, Dan, thank you so much for joining us to talk about this. I think Matt, I don't know if you got a chance to listen to the show, but Matt will back me up, that at least half of our conversations end up with Matt and I both terrified. Yeah, it's true. And so we appreciate, you know, you tipping the balance into more than half. Well, you can always take heart and, you know, the spreading of awareness and education about this is a good thing.

It makes more informed citizens, more informed voters, and really that's kind of good for, democracy. And I know that sounds silly, but I think you have to kind of take any sunshine you can get. So I appreciate you guys talking about it and discussing it with me. Thanks so much. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Thanks for listening to this week's show. We hope it's not the last one, but after talking to Danzac, we can't be sure. If you want to take what may be your last opportunity to contact us, reach out on Twitter. We are at or underscore college. We've still got room for a few more subscribers to the show, so take this opportunity to sign up and get your

friends to come along. War College was created by me, Jason Fields, and Craig Heedek. It's co-hosted by Matthew Galt, who also wrangles the guests. The show is produced by Bethel Hoppe, who has been known to complain about the noise coming from the ant colony owned by her next-door neighbors.