The Paikin Podcast - World on Edge: The Rising Global Nuclear Threat

Episode Date: May 21, 2026

MIT’s Vipin Narang joins Janice Stein to discuss the global nuclear arms race, how the United States “now faces a Category 5 hurricane of nuclear threats,” why China wants to become a nuclear powerhouse, how Russia and Putin plausibly threatened the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine, and why this was the closest we came to nuclear war since the height of the Cuban missile crisis. They then discuss the Iran War, how it makes us “way worse off now,” the bar for the deployment of American nuclear weapons, whether more countries such as Saudi Arabia or South Korea want a nuclear weapon now, if Canada should get a nuke, and if the rationale of mutual assured destruction (MAD) is still in play today. Support us: patreon.com/thepaikinpodcast Follow The Paikin Podcast: YOUTUBE: http://www.youtube.com/@ThePaikinPodcastSPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/1OhwznCIUEA11lZGcNIM4h?si=b5d73bc7c3a041b7X: x.com/ThePaikinPodINSTAGRAM: instagram.com/thepaikinpodcastBLUESKY: bsky.app/profile/thepaikinpodcast.bsky.social Email us at: [e-mail] 

Thankfully, the only time nuclear weapons have been used in human history was by the United States in Japan to end World War II. But a few years ago, Russia's Vladimir Putin threatened to use them in Ukraine. And as we know, the U.S. insists part of the reason they invaded Iran in February was to prevent that country from acquiring nuclear weapons. The usefulness of nuclear weapons in the 21st century. Coming up next on World on Edge on the Paken podcast. We are delighted to welcome. to the Paken podcast for the first time, Vipin Narung,

the Frank Stanton Professor of Nuclear Security and Political Science, and the director of the Center for Nuclear Security Policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And we are also happy to welcome back, Janice Stein, the founding director of the Monk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. And Janice, you two know each other well, don't you?

We do, we do. Great to see you guys. Thanks for having me. Vipin, where are we getting you today? Are you in Cambridge? I'm in Cambridge, yep. Semester's over, so as I joked, you know, now we're in hoodie face. Hoodie phase is a good phase. All right.

Let me start. I'm going to put you to work right away, and we want to go back to the year 2009. Barack Obama is the president of the United States, and you wrote that when he came into office, nuclear weapons, quote, looked increasingly superfluous. Why did you take that position at that time? Well, first of all, thanks for having me, Steve. It's great to be here. It's great to do with Janice, who's an old friend and mentor of mine. Look, at the end of the Cold War, the belief was that the salience, if not the presence of nuclear weapons, was going to continue to head downward and become minimal in U.S. and Russian nuclear strategy.

Remember, the Cold War was essentially defined by these two massive arsenals in the United States and the Soviet. Soviet Union. And with the end of the Cold War, the primary sort of threat against whom we were relying on nuclear weapons to deter the Soviet Union fell apart. And the question was, why do we need to continue to maintain such a large nuclear arsenal? And in fact, it was President George H.W. Bush that began the process at the end of the Cold War of reducing in tremendous numbers, the number of deployed nuclear weapons, not just in Europe and in Asia, but in the U.S. of strategic arsenal as well, because the primary reason we had them had sort of disappeared. And those cuts continued, first in the H.W. Bush administration, then the Clinton administration,

and then onward through the second George H.W. Bush administration. And when President Obama came to office, Russia and the United States at that point had reduced their deployed nuclear arsenal from, you know, a maximum of like 30,000 during the Cold War to, you know, what ended up being instantiated in the new START treaty, which was ratified in the U.S. Senate in 2010, 2011, of 1,550 deployed weapons. Quite a drawdown. The drawdown of deployed weapons, right? The current U.S. stockpile is, I'm going to throw out a number, which I think is right, 3748.

Call it 3750 nuclear weapons or so. This is the public number a couple of years ago, of which 1,550, 375 nuclear weapons. strategic weapons are currently deployed and active. The rest are sort of in reserve, as you would call it. And the assumption when President Obama came to office and gave the Prague speech was that 1550 was just the beginning of the end, that we would continue to reduce the number and the reliance on nuclear weapons that, you know, sort of marked the Cold War. And the 1550 was not sort of the end of that march downward.

But Russia and China had different plans. So to North Korea. I think, you know, in the decade since the President Obama's prox speech, you know, the world that we, we anticipated we would be confronted with did a 180. And Putin relied more on nuclear weapons to achieve his sort of regional ambitions in Ukraine, you know, the Baltics. He was pressuring Georgia, Estonia. And China sometime in the last 10 years decided to wake up and do what we did. didn't expect China to do, which was compete as a superpower in the nuclear domain. And we can talk about China and why I chose to do it.

Well, let me just, yeah, just before we go there, let me get Janice to build on that answer because clearly Janice, we were headed in one direction and we are very clearly heading in another direction right now. And I wonder if you could sort of help us understand why these big hyperpowers felt the need to do that. Yeah. The why I think is quite clear really where Russia is concerned. And, you know, Russia takes up most of the airspace here, frankly.

And there's controversy, you know, on why Vladimir Putin turned against the West. And there are different explanations that doesn't really matter. He did. And as soon as he did, he began to look to the near neighbors, to the close neighbors that he thought was the core part of the Russian Empire. It was all wrapped up in his famous phrase that the worst catastrophe known to humanity was the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the loss of its empire, right? And so, and that's, I think, at the root of it. And he begins, as Vipin says, first of all, to use hostile language.

And often the language is a precursor to deployments that you see. And they're, you know, a flashing orange light. And then begins a period, really, of covert action. And it starts quite early. It's by 2008, 2009, there's covert action. And that changes the context in which people think about nuclear weapons, right? when the world is peaceful and there's no peer competitors in the United States, it's easy to say we're done with nuclear weapons.

It was a tremendous expenditure of money. It bought us the victory at the end of the Cold War. We don't need this stuff anymore. When you have a country that is, again, using, you know, doing and using, using language, but also doing stuff on the ground. which Russia was doing in Eastern Europe. At the time, I think even President Obama and Vipin will correct me if I'm wrong by the end of his term, was becoming increasingly worried.

Well, okay, that's the Russia angle. Vipen, take us to the China angle here. Why did they decide, in your words, to become a nuclear powerhouse? So I think the puzzle for China, you know, I think now is not, you know, sort of why they chose to undergo what is nothing short. of a wholesale transformation of their nuclear arsenal. Because for half a century, 50 years, China was content with a relatively small, relatively recessed, assured retaliation, plausible retaliation arsenal,

just a handful of strategic weapons that they relied on to try to deter the United States. And the puzzle actually, in retrospect, is sort of not why they transformed in the last decade, but why didn't do earlier, right? It was not really a major power nuclear arsenal, and it was barely survivable against a peer competitor like the United States. And so the question of why China waited this long to undergo this transformation, I think raises real questions

about its intent. And, you know, I think for planners, at least, who have to focus on the worst case scenario, what China's expansion, not just of its nuclear arsenal at the strategic level, but the development of sort of battlefield or tactical nuclear weapons as well for the theater, opens up the possibility for China to do what Russia has done in Eastern Europe in the Indo-Pacific. And what planners now have to worry about is that China is developing this arsenal as a shield behind which it can aggress against Taiwan or the South China Seas.

And the timing of its embarking on this transformation may give us some insight into what its timeline may be for when it seeks to attempt to revise sort of the territorial status quo in the Indo-Pacific. But for planners, the bottom line is China's transformation will inevitably put it in a position where it could attempt to do what Russia has done in Ukraine, which is try to take territory as a Fed accompli and then use nuclear weapons. weapons to deter the United States and its allies from unwinding that aggression. In which case. That's what I think we have to plan for now. Sure. Well, that takes me nicely to Janice then. Russia is doing what it's doing.

China is doing what it's doing. How has that had an impact on what the United States now feels it needs to do? Well, it's a game changer for the United States. And look, let's distinguish between two groups and Vippins started us down this path, right? there are the planners and there are the leaders. And the planners have to plan for the worst possible case. They really do. You know, with one caveat here that sometimes when you execute those plans for the worst possible case,

you can actually provoke to some degree. And that's a struggle for planners every day of the week, frankly. But you do have to worry nonstop about the worst possible case. That's not necessarily what leaders do. And so let's go back to Russia for just one minute, Steve, and that when you talked about Vladimir Putin threatening to use nuclear weapons, Vipin was in the senior position in the Pentagon during those months when, and so we had a close-up view.

Probably Vipin, you would say, one of the tensest, most tense periods of time when it seemed credible, and I'm only going to quote from public sources here, the CIA estimate was 50% likelihood that Vladimir Putin would use a tactical nuclear weapons if the Russians broke through, if the Ukrainians broke through Russian lines and were able to threaten Russian control of Crimea. That's the most, you know, if I think that, there's no, there was a period, there was one exercise in 1983 that provoked a lot of concern, but really since 1962, you could argue that this was the most serious case. Since the Cuban missile crisis? Yeah, I think because there was more,

I see Vittonani's head there, so that's not wrong. But if you, in fact, he was talked down, right? He was talked down by the Secretary of Defense, by the president, and by China and by India at Biden's request. So all that it took was to talk him down. How seriously do you take this Bippin as being part of an esplotory spiral that builds up nuclear weapons? And Vippin, but just before you speak to that, could you first tell us what your responsibilities were in that administration?

Sure. Talk about being in the hot seat at a propitious time. At the right time. Yes, go ahead. It was, thanks, Janice. So in March 2022, I assume the role of principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for space policy, of office that included space and at the time, cyber as well as nuclear policy. Cyber policy got moved out. And then I concluded my time in government as the acting assistant secretary for that portfolio.

And I started in March 22, a month after the invasion. And in October 22, as Janice pointed to, Russia was. six months into a war it thought was going to last six days. And it was running out of conventional stuff. And the lines at Kersan were dangerously close to collapsing. And in Putin's world, as Janus pointed out, Putin has a very keen sense of history. In 1917, and the collapse of the Russian army is a searing sort of moment in Russian history for Putin. And Russia has always stated that a threat to the regime would be one of the thresholds at which it might use nuclear weapons to stave off sort of that collapse or threat to the regime. And the collapse of the Russian army, at least in Putin's

head and perception, could be a very clear pathway to a threat to his leadership and regime. And so had the Russian army collapse, so the lines collapsed at Kerasan, the U.S. intelligence community judged that Putin might perceive a threat to his own leadership and rule. And there was, let me be clear, at this moment in October 22, I was middle management in the Pentagon and I was staffing my boss, Colin Call, who just recently wrote, I think, a firsthand account of his staffing of the Secretary of Defense and the White House. And Jake Sullivan, who is the national security advisor, has also talked about publicly. So I'm just going to reinforce everything they said, because they were, you know, they were the principles who were managing this.

But the point, the most important point for me was that, you know, we should not comfort ourselves into believing that we deterred Putin from using nuclear weapons in that moment, which was, in my view, and I think their view, the closest we came to seeing nuclear employment since the Cuban Missile Crisis, because this was a scenario where Putin's regime really could have been threat. Putin's rule could have been threatened. And the possibility that he might use one or several small, what we call tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield in Ukraine to sort of prevent the collapse of the Russian army was, as Janice pointed out, at that point had gone from a, you know, sort of an assessment of very, very highly, extremely unlikely to a coin flip. And when the president

hears or a secretary defense hears that you've had an increase in the probability from extremely unlikely to a coin flip that catches your eye and ears. What conclusion did you come to as to why you think in the end Putin decided to stand down from using nuclear weapons? I think we don't know because the lines never collapsed. And the condition under which Putin would have employed nuclear weapons never materialized, which is why it is important to note the nuclear weapons were not used, but we should not comfort ourselves into believing that we successfully deterred Putin from doing that.

How scared were you? How scared were you that they were about to be used? He was. I think we took it extremely seriously. And I think if you ask Colin and Jake, they would, you know, that was a period where, you know, there was significant concern that had the lines collapsed. It was not only a non-zero probability. but, you know, a coin flip, according to the intelligence community. I don't know what sort of the, what would have transpired at the moment the lines collapsed, but there was significant concern that Putin, who had no conventional schlitz left, because it had all been depleted in the last six months,

and they had not prepared for a conflict this long. The only thing he had to reach for to stave off the collapse of the Russian army at that point was either chemical weapons or small nuclear weapons. And so either of those could have been possible. And we'll be back right after this. Janice, I wonder if you would take us through, because of course every action by one country requires a reaction from another country. What does the book say one does?

If Putin had, in fact, used nuclear weapons then, what would the U.S. have been obliged or wanted to do? you touched on a really big issue there, Steve. Because during this same period of time, what did the Biden administration do? And it was done at multiple levels, right? There were conversations between the Secretary of Depends and the Russian chief of the general staff.

There were president-to-president conversations. And the president of the United States did ask, the Prime Minister of India and the President of China to speak out and they did against the use of any tactical nuclear weapons. So Vipin is making a really important point here that I just want to underline. Yeah, you could argue, well, Putin was deterred. He was prevented because he was so dependent on China at that point. And the Chinese spoke out, we don't know because the situation never really happened. But you think those conversations were important to.

Russia standing down? We don't know. I mean, we don't really know. And that's why, and this is one of the hardest parts of studying, you know, the history of nuclear crises. Because you really, unless you've got access to what the decision, in that case, Putin said to some of the closest people around them. Or there's a journal somewhere. Or there's something else that you can rely on. you're just inferring and since the situation never really arose, Steve, you can't make any judgments here.

It is, it is curious. Let me just, and I'm going to throw this one back at that Penn really. It is curious that Putin has threatened several times during this war, not in a serious way. There were something, there were two or three things that were unique about this particular circumstance. But he does, he has resorted in public to rhetoric that suggests that he was considering using tactical nuclear weapons, frankly. And he's done it several times. And so you ask yourself this, you know, by this time, people are inclined to say he's bluffing. He's not going to do it.

He said it over and over again. He's not going to do it. And he's depreciated the currency of any nuclear threat that Russia must. issue, frankly. And that's a dangerous thing. You can't really afford to take that position, can you? Well, but you do it over and over and nothing happens. And so the conversation that shifts, well, he's never going to do it, despite the fact that we don't know why he didn't do it when the situation was most dominant. Okay. So, yeah, Vippin, please. I was just going to say one

interesting note about the fall 2022, which is basically end of September to the end of October before sort of then the lines were the the risk of collapse had sort of dissipated in your entering the winter. Separating the bluster from, you know, what as Janice pointed out, Putin was prone to bluster on nuclear weapons. What's really interesting about that period is he was very quiet. There was, it was, there was a lot, a lot less bluster about the use of nuclear weapons. And the, the, there was, you know, sort of, uh, alongside, you know, sort of the intelligence that was being picked up was this effort to the Russian effort to sort of lay the groundwork for a false flag over a nuclear accident and radioactive leak in

Zaporizia in Ukraine. And if you put these two together, what it appeared as if Putin was laying the ground for, or groundwork for, was to be able to potentially use one or several tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield in Ukraine and blame it on the Ukrainians as Zaporizia. And that was very, very concerning. And the intelligence that Colin and Jacob talked about alongside the false flag effort, alongside the lack of sort of bluster and other intelligence inputs gave rise to the estimate as to why this was so credible. And it's important to note it wasn't associated with like the bluster that Janice is referring to because that we've seen periodically. And I think one of the reasons why the IC was so concerned was because there was

no bluster. It was, there was a very calculated and crafty effort to sort of lay the ground for a false flag story alongside the other indicators that they had. And, you know, that's why I think there was this concern. And also on the deterrence point that Janus raised, like did China and India successfully, you know, weigh on Putin, you know, you put yourself in Putin's shoes at that moment, the loss or the collapse of the Russian army and the threat to the regime for him is permanent, whereas the loss of, you know, sort of or a probrium from China or India would be temporary. So that calculation to me always weighed, you know, I just, that's why I don't think it is easy to sort of conclude that Putin was deterred or prevented.

We just don't know. And the lack of bluster... And there's struck in the world in which he may not have been. The lack of bluster, I presume, was viewed as more ominous than the actual bluster. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, there's one of the case might be worth talking about. The Chinese case, we don't really understand why we got this big shift. that you asked about, Steve, it's hard to know.

But it does create something that we call, and it's really tough. It's called the three-body problem, a two-way race. It's just much easier to think about, and it's much easier to say, okay, if we both have 1,447 nuclear weapons, that'll be enough. even if you're dumb enough to strike first, I'll have enough left and I'll be able to strike you back. When you add a third to that calculation, it gets very, very complicated because you have to model

what happens if both of them or one strikes first and then I use my weapon to strike back and then that other one strikes. So we're into three-dimensional chest then. That's right. And the numbers go way up. for what you would consider a minimum. And that's the big risk of the period that we're in there. Hmm.

All right. Do we, we mentioned the word bluster before, and there was a considerable amount of bluster from Putin as it relates to Ukraine. Can I take you more recently to Donald Trump's, what some might call bluster as it related to Iran? There were, I think, multiple occasions where he talked about blowing Iran's civilization to smithereens. you know, the ending a civilization of 3,000 years.

Vippin, when you heard that kind of rhetoric, did you take it as seriously as you did when Putin was employing it? I mean, look, I say this as a proud American citizen having served in the previous administration. You know, I think we've learned, you know, not to take President Trump literally, but even I was surprised at sort of, you know, how, you know, sort of the that that kind of threat is is is i think not appropriate for a president of the

united states to make um we all agree that iran we prefer in iran not to have a nuclear weapon very analytically the problem is that the president you know operation midnight hammer actually probably did set back iran's ability to enrich uranium and produce a nuclear weapon a window that had closed because I believe the previous Trump administration pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal of so-called JCPOA or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. And they had gotten closer and closer and closer. And, you know, I think right, you know, what you can litigate whether Operation Minai Hammer was just or not just, but it probably delayed them a little bit. But it did not, it did not obliterate Iran's nuclear program because the enriched uranium stockpillar, as we all know, still existed. It was just sort of very difficult to access. The second time around,

you know, which was essentially, whether they claim it or not, it was essentially a decapitation effort with the hope that if, you know, the Supreme Leader was killed, whoever succeeded him would be more likely to sort of negotiate away that stockpile, which still existed. But that didn't happen. And now the Trump administration and Israel are sort of caught between Iraq and a hard place because the Iranians have withstood the initial assault, probably consolidated the regime around the IRGC in some ways, and the enriched stockpile still exists. And there is no easy way to get that. If there was a way for special forces, for example, to somehow foul enriched uranium, the 60% or 20% stockpile with a reagent or, you know, some compound so that it became unusable, I'd say,

okay, I'd bet that we could probably do that. But there is really no easy way to do that. And even if you blew up these cylinders of enriched uranium, the Iranians could scrape it off the walls. And so you have to get the stockpile. And it's now buried. And the last time we tried to get this much sort of enriched uranium out of a country, it was with a cooperative government after the fall of the Soviet Union. And it took like a month with a, cooperative government with a lot of heavy equipment, you need transport aircraft, you need to secure the area, you need an airfield to get an aircraft there. This is not easy. And I think the coercive effort to try to get Iran to give it up, up until now at least, so we're recording this on

May 14th, up until now is not succeeded. And the whatever is left of the Iranian regime may believe that they've withstood the worst. And now they have leverage with the Strait of Hormuz. And so we neither have sort of like we've lost control this rate of hormones or the openness of it so global energy markets are rattled we have not eliminated the rain the enriched uranium stockpile and you have a regime which is angrier and which have given the opportunity may actually sprint for a bomb faster now if they're able to do so and so i think we find ourselves in some ways way worse off now than we were at what february 28th was the initiation of the day it started so three Three months, Janice, three months later, do you think Israel or the United States has ever been close to using nuclear weapons in this war?

No. Absolutely not. You know, I'm going on an anecdote here now. I'm a lot of it agrees. But I guess I'm going on an anecdote here. And the anecdotes, you know, come from some of the people in this White House who don't have any background in nuclear weapons. this is not their background of their training. They have a lay person's understanding of the issues.

Let me put it that way. And they describe Donald Trump as having an absolute horror of nuclear weapons. Every time. So, you know, I only say that because these things matter at some point. He's just horrified by it. He cringes when you talk about it. He thinks the worst thing that could happen. And interestingly, you know, he said it in Beijing,

where, you know, at the summit of it, the worst thing that can happen. could happen would be for anybody to use a nuclear weapon. And so I think he, there's no way, first of all, Steve, that this issue is as important to Donald Trump as, you know, the Russian army's collapsing was important to Vladimir Putin. There's a huge asymmetry in the stakes here. And I just thought, I think that's something that for Donald Trump, just off the table form for Israel, it's very similar. You know, they don't have an official doctrine about when they would use nuclear weapons.

So they've never admitted they have them, even though it's such common knowledge that they have both strategic and tactical nuclear weapons. But there's no discussion, official discussion, of when under what circumstances they would ever use it. But it would have to be that the survival of the state, it wouldn't be a regime issue. It would be a survival of the state. That would be the only circumstances under which they would use it. Because given their geography, if they use it, they're using it on themselves as well as on theirs. Right.

Well, and their territory was attacked and they didn't respond with nuclear weapons. So we know that that's not the threshold that they're playing to. I think it's more to emphasize for the United States at least. You know, I agree with Janice. President Trump, if there's one consistent thread from the 1980s, he has a horror's nuclear weapon. I mean, he does, you know, he did say as long as they exist, we're going to have the biggest and the best. And like I as a guy agree with that. That's like longstanding U.S. position.

But I, you know, I don't interpret the civilizational threat as a threat to use nuclear weapons just given his history. I, I, I, I, I, I, the bar for any American employment of nuclear weapons is so extremely high, particularly given our conventional strength. The, the, the, the big advantage of the U.S. maintains and continues to maintain is our conventional strength over adversaries, especially like Iran. And so I cannot imagine a world where anyone will recommend, let alone the president would authorize the use of a nuclear weapon against Iran or anyone else. The bar is extremely high and will, in my view, remain extremely high. Okay, but that's about you. So now let me ask about acquiring because I wonder whether or not the events of the last four years, Putin's bellicosity on the use of nuclear weapons and so on going forward.

now the war in the Middle East. Do you think that has provoked other countries, maybe Saudi Arabia, maybe South Korea, to pursue acquiring nuclear weapons in a more, in a faster timetable, let's say? I do want to say something that I think we haven't touched on yet, which is the difference between sort of quote-unquote rogue state or adversary proliferation and allied proliferation. And one of the things that is unique about American nuclear strategy is this, unique responsibility we take to extend our deterrent to allies across the Atlantic Ocean and NATO and across the Pacific Ocean in East Asia and Australia. No other nuclear power extends a nuclear

umbrella over two vast oceans to at least 34 formal allies. And the reason why I think, you know, a lot of the things we've talked about are sort of will converge into the problem, one of the problems you've just illuminated, which is the three-body problem or the rise of China and North Korea sprint at the same time. Doubts about the credibility about American reliability, right? Because President Trump has been very, very vocal about the NATO not coming to, you know, being a reliable sort of alliance. What do they do for us? Same with South Korea and Japan, tariffs. For the first time since the end of the Cold War, we have nervous allies who know, longer who worry whether we're willing or able to continue to credibly extend this umbrella.

No, you're not a reliable ally anymore, are you? Well, I'd like to think that we can be, but I can understand why they're concerned. And so, you know, I do think the point you raise about the, there's, the Iran story, I think, provides incentive for small, potentially adversarial states of the United States to acquire nuclear weapons. Don't fight the, the United States about nuclear weapons was a lesson Saddam Hussein set after 1991. And very famous Indian general said, the lesson of the first Gulf War

is never fight the United States without nuclear weapons. I think the Iran story, North Korea went one way, which is Kim Jong-un just sprinted for the bomb. Iran sat on the hedge on the precipice for very, very long time. And then because it never consummated

its pursuit of nuclear weapons, Supreme Leader Comaini paid the price, the Iranian regime paid the price. And the lesson for a lot of us, other states that may be adversarial with the United States is don't wait. If you if you're if facing a potential U.S. invasion get nuclear weapons as fast as you can. That's one category. The other category is a nervous allies. And to your point for the first time, I think since the end of the Cold War, you've got to South Korea, potentially Saudi Arabia, Poland, Germany, Japan,

that are asking how reliable is the United States? And maybe, you know, if you get a future, you know, Democratic administration, they'll be reliable for that period. But if there's this whiplash that they experience every four years in our domestic politics, you are getting some very serious people in places, including Japan, which you opened the show with, which suffered the only nuclear attacks in history. Prime Minister Takeichi and her government, you know, is very forward-leading on the possibility of, you know, what do we need to do to ensure our own defense. And Japan is sitting on tons of reactor great plutonium

and would be have a very easy pathway to the bomb. I'm not saying they're going to do it. But there are questions now amongst very serious people that used to be behind closed doors and taboo about whether American allies need to get their own nuclear weapons to defend themselves. I'm worrying I'm more about the allies, about the

nervous allies, frankly because they find themselves in this situation for the first time really in 75 years. They haven't, they don't have the muscle mass. to think this through. And there's a combustible mix of anger and fear in many of the allies, which I think people in the United States,

who are not even by the Trump administration underestimate. They don't understand the degree of nervousness and fear. You know, in Germany, in Poland, in the Baltics, in these front-line states that are absolutely convinced the United States, This, the NATO's death for all intents of purposes, the United States will not come to their defense. I think for adversaries. And here's one place for Vippin and I disagree. I don't think nuclear weapons have been a great deal.

You know, Vipin wrote the study, and it's really scary, too, if we're looking for scary stories here, of the May 2025 confrontation between India and Pakistan, which people tend to dismiss. But there you have, and I tell the story for this purpose, you have two nuclear states. It didn't really constrain them. So what did nuclear weapons buy either of them during war time? The other side of the story, we look at this from the perspective of Iran looking at the United States, but Iran unleashed 1,300 ballistic missiles at Israel. That's not nothing.

and there were extensive numbers of people who were injured and wounded. It was an attack on the homeland, and they were the first ones to start two years ago. And what did Israel's nuclear weapons buy it? So in many ways, I mean, those are the best cases we have about whether nuclear weapons deters. Now, in part because this is not Russia, the United States. that had a ritualized understanding of the rules of the road and what they could do, you'll learn more, I think, from India, Pakistan, Iran, Israel,

than you do from some of these other cases. And boy, Vipin, if you sprint for a bomb, and that's the strongest incentive for somebody else to go. For us to kill it. Yeah, I agree. And this is the window of vulnerability. Yeah, the window vulnerability is real. And that is sort of the tradeoff that I think.

think a potential proliferator has to sort of calculate. And that's why I think Iran, for a long time, decided actually getting a bomb was on as an interest. And the reason they signed the JCPOA is because I do think that there were elements of the regime that wanted to enter the modern economy and wanted to be an energy supplier, which Iran could really benefit from and modernize its economy. And so they decided not to do it. But it sort of since because they never gave it up and there are always suspicions that they were close, then they attracted Israeli and American attention. But one feature where, you know, Janice, I do agree, is over time what we're seeing is especially these regional states, take India, Pakistan as an example, they're really

pushing the line about as to how far they can go under the nuclear shadow. I mean, that was, May 2025 was the most intense conventional conflict between nuclear powers and the history of the nuclear era. I mean, they were throwing round houses at each other. I will say it's still, the way nuclear weapons still sort of shaped the conflict, even four days into that, that those exchanges or four days in May was, I think there was conscious effort on both sides to restrain their targeting of certain things. India did not target Iran, Pakistan's nuclear weapons. Pakistan made it a point not to target very sensitive targets on the Indian side. And I think even in sort of the Iran-Israel exchanges, you know, Iran had a lot, a lot of the, you know, barrages have been symbolic and face-saving, and they really avoided targeting sensitive areas in Israel

thus far, for the most part. I would say that that is one way where nuclear weapons still provide a backstop of deterring sort of attacks against the most sensitive targets, but we are seeing incredible efforts to push the line. And the problem when you push the line is sometimes you may accidentally go a little further than any thought. Well, I should ask to give you one. To give you one example.

And so I really think it's the pushing the line where there's so much danger. In May of 2025, not long ago, when the Indians bombed an airfield in Pakistan adjacent to some of the aircraft that they use to deliver their nuclear weapons, Iranians announced they were going, they were going to bomb Demona. And some of the missiles fell quite, you know, that's Israeli nuclear. establishment. And boy, the missiles did not fall far from Demona. So I think, I think we're probably underestimating the risk. And in, and by the way, Indian Pakistan each have second strike capability. They're not the same India's as better. But they each have enough survivable weapons. So you can't say these are just new nuclear powers that are learning. And 25 years later,

you can't say they're new nuclear state. No, you can't. And so I, you know, that I think that we're going to learn more from these cases than from the Russia-China-U.S. one, in which at least there's some rules of the road. I should ask if we think that the United States might not extend its protection to other allies, one of which is still Canada. Let me ask you directly, Janice. Well, yeah, on a good day. On a good day. Yeah. Do you think Canada should try to acquire its own nuclear weapons? No. No, there's a, there's an insane discussion in this country about whether Canada in the future. I mean, if anyone could, Canada's in a pretty good position, but. No, and we have all the inputs here. You have all the infrastructure for it. Yeah, we have everything. But what purpose would it serve us? Right? And especially since

who we're worrying about presumably would be an attack from Russia that would come over with the United States would be there in a minute because there's a wrong what you worry about the U.S. I mean, these 50% state jokes. I mean, Denmark, Greenland. I mean, Denmark, Greenland. What good would nuclear weapons do us there? Yeah, no, I'm sort of being facetious. But I do think on the point you both have raised about reliability of allies, I think we underestimate the degree to which this administration's obsession with Greenland and sort of picking a fight with Denmark over Greenland has really torn NATO apart.

And they're like no matter what the Secretary General says because he has to and he has no option, Mark Rote. I think there are, in NATO capitals right now, there is a lot of concern about whether the U.S. needs to be, you know, is as big a threat to NATO as, you know, that it's ever been. Not that it's a bigger threat than Russia. I don't want to claim that because it's not. But yeah, and if you hold a map up, Biven, Greenlands on one side, Alaska's on the other side and what's in the middle.

Yeah, that's right. Canada's art, right? And so it's a concern here too. And Canada is a five-eyes country, nor, I mean, the degree of integration, maybe Canada, we oftentimes, you know, we take it for granted, but Canada is our best hour. There's just no question. Let's in our remaining moments here consider one more question, which is, I think, for the last 75 years, the basic operating procedure between the good guys and the bad guys, and you can define those however you want, is mad, mutual assured destruction. And that's, in some respects, kept the piece since 1945.

Is that still the basic operating procedure, Fippin? I mean, well, I would sort of dispute the premise of the question a little bit because although we're taught that Mad sort of defined the Cold War, the dirty little secret is the United States never really accepted Mad. And we spent most of the bulk of the second half of the Cold War trying to escape mutual vulnerability and mutually sure destruction. We wanted to put pressure on the Soviet Union second strike. We wanted to convince Moscow that they did not have a second strike capability, a secure second strike.

And we did a lot to convince them of that by hunting their submarines, by targeting their land-based forces, partly because of extended deterrence. I would say largely because of extended deterrence. I don't want to get into my sort of like lectures and seminar material, but the downside to mutually sure destruction, if you're extending deterrence, is the so-called stability, instability. paradox, where if you have strategic stability between the U.S. and the Soviet Union or the U.S. and China, the outflow of that, and Janice is one of the world experts on this, is you get instability at lower levels because it would be mutual suicide to escalate to the top. In the extended deterrence world, who pays a price for that instability? It's the allies.

And so one of the reasons the U.S. tried to escape mad in the second half of the Cold War when it really started looking like it could take hold was we were worried precisely about the credibility of our extended to turn to the allies. We're worried that in a mad world, we would walk away. If our homeland was vulnerable, it was no longer credible that we would, you know, sort of, we wouldn't trade Boston for Berlin. So we had to adopt a strategy, craft a strategy that basically save Berlin without losing Boston. And that's sort of been enduring strategy since then. So this is the problem with the multiple peer world. How do we continue to do this with both Russia and China at the same time? And I don't think it would require a huge adjustment to the U.S. nuclear force posture.

Actually, a modest adjustment is probably all that's necessary. But we have some real questions at the very high level. Are we committed to extended deterrence? And the answer to that question drives essentially everything else. Yeah, I mean, this is a famous de Gaul comet that goes back to the 50s in which he says, would the United States sacrifice New York for Paris? And he asked it in a rhetorical way because he was saying no, right? And thank goodness was never tested,

but it was never a fully credible argument. It was really hard to make it credible that you would sacrifice an American city in order to defend an ally capital. No, see? And so they're saying, right, no, we wouldn't. As soon as you say that, you then matter. and no longer matters because you've got to convince the allies.

You've got to have more than enough to survive. They've got to have more than that in order to assure them so that they don't go out and get nuclear weapons on their own. And it was that triangle between that allies and being absolutely opposed to nuclear proliferation. Every American administration. That's right. And that's why, like, if you oppose ally proliferation, then the question is, are you willing

to do what is necessary to essentially convince both the adversary and the allies that you can, you know, the phrase is limit damage to the United States homeland and the ally, essentially, you know, disarm the adversary of its nuclear weapons in a meaningful way, which is something the U.S. got very good at. And that is, it's an uncomfortable place to be because it says if you really oppose the proliferation of nuclear weapons, both the adversaries and allies, then you may have to accept that the U.S. is doing more in its nuclear strategy than some of the sort of arms control advocates would be comfortable with. Okay. I'm going to save my favorite question for last, and that is I want each of you to give me your favorite motion picture based on a nuclear theme. Vippin, go ahead.

So most people would probably go with Dr. Strange Love. I think my, in the hunt for Red October, But I think one that is very good that I use as a teaching tool, which is fantastic, is Crimson Tide. Because it goes through an improbable, but not zero probability scenario. It's got Gene Hackman, Denzel Washington, and a whole bunch of characters who end up in The Sopranos, I think. It is a phenomenal movie and goes through a very real command and control dilemma. and I think raises, you know, sort of a lot of really good questions about sort of how we manage nuclear weapons and what would happen if an order was to give one, but it was trying to be rescinded, but it was only fragmentary. And I think the acting is phenomenal. The story's phenomenal.

And it's very, very good. Is that a Tom Clancy book it's based on? It is. No, Crimson Tide is not Tom Clancy. No. For example, Tom Clancy. Yeah. Oh, okay.

Crimson Tide is not a Tom Clancy novel. Yeah. Yeah. So they've been back the two obvious ones, right, off the top of the end, before you went to Crimson, So I'm not going to play fair here. And I'm going to say Oppenheimer. Because you asked me for your name. So I'm in the box.

But it's not what you're really looking for. But it was absolutely fascinating in many ways. The part that was fascinating. And the reason I say this is because Oppenheimer was so tortured. Because he really understood what he had unleashed. And Levin and Steve, my colleague at the University of Toronto, is Jeffrey Hinton. Right?

Grandfather of AI. The father of the deep neural networks. And if you spent two hours with Jeffrey, he just had a lot. He does look like and sound like up and on. Well, that's true. Yeah. Yeah. I have to confess, I'm a little surprised.

Neither one of you mentioned failsafe, which I think is the best one of all time. War games. Yeah. Yeah. You know, sorry, Steve, go ahead. I was just going to say, Henry Fonda as the president, and if we ever get in this kind of trouble, I'd want Henry Fonda to be the president. He was so sane and sober and with good judgment. And Larry Hengman of Dallas fame as the translator.

Yeah. I was going to do, in fact, I'm going to do this. So undergrad at MIT who may be listening to this, I had thought about doing nukes through film because I could pick, I think I had 10 films I could go through it. And you pick sort of teachable moments and sort of issues from each film. That would be great. Bill Safe was on the list. That's a great idea for a course. I'd take that course.

That's a great course. I need to reboot it. So I might do that if they'll let me do that. Good stuff. Okay. Let me do a little business here just before we go. And that is to say, we really do appreciate the people who offer us a few bucks every month to keep this program going. There are expenses related to it.

And we want to keep it free forever. But we have a Patreon community that we've created in order to, to allow people to help us out if they want to. So go to patreon.com forward slash the Paken podcast. And I'm going to reference one thing this week in particular that's new on that site. And that is, last week there was a celebration of life for a truly great Canadian that you have never heard of. Janice, maybe you've heard of him.

But I'm telling you, 99% of Canadians have never heard of this guy. He was a deputy minister in the Ontario government 45, 50 years ago, became. a captain of industry and literally did so well, he gave away a hundred million bucks before his life ended. A great philanthropic Canadian, his name was Linton Wilson, Red Wilson. You know, flaming red hair when he was a young guy. So Red Wilson, may you rest in peace. We had a wonderful celebration of life, which I had the honor of emceeing at McMaster University last week. So that ceremony is on our Patreon site. And I encourage people to go see. see it because this is a guy you should know more about. He's just been a force for good in this world

in a way that is quite distinctive and unique. So God bless Red Wilson. And all of our shows are archived at stevepaken.com. Vippen, Janice, so good of you both to join us today for this show. Peace and love, everybody, and we'll see you next time.