Why Nuclear Security Matters

I didn’t really know anything about nuclear security.

I studied international affairs in college, but found myself drawn to more popular topics like peace in the Middle East and development in sub-Saharan Africa. I have a vague recollection of memorizing the nine known countries that possess nuclear weapons for an introductory-level course, but can’t call to mind another time in my undergraduate career when nuclear weapons were mentioned.

Now that I’ve spent a few months interning in nuclear nonproliferation, I find that mind-boggling.

Nuclear is relevant to everything in international relations, and, yes, affects everyone in the world. Nuclear security matters.

Most American children learn about nuclear weapons in the World War II unit of high school history classes. The United States became the only country to have used atomic bombs when it effectively ended the war by dropping bombs on the Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And then despite debate in the scientific, military, and diplomatic communities, a race to build bigger, more powerful, and more terrifying nuclear weapons began.

Scores of countries started to develop nuclear bombs. At one point, President John F. Kennedy spoke about a potential world with dozens of armed nuclear states. Sweden became a potential nuclear state. And so as the Cold War raged on between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., a set of treaties known as the nonproliferation regime came into force. Stockpiles are now down 85 percent from where they were at the height of the arms race, and the number of countries with nuclear weapons did not balloon as feared.

In 2018, we’re limited to just nine states with nuclear programs: America, Russia, France, Great Britain, Israel, China, India, Pakistan, and North Korea.

But those nine states hold 14,000 nuclear weapons, each one grim, deadly, and under human control.

Nuclear security matters, and here’s why:

1. Because we spend an insane amount of money on it. Think student debt is bad? We (fellow millennials) might have to fund a bunch of new nukes. The U.S. is expected to pay $1.7 trillion on new and improved nuclear weapons over the next 30 years, an insane dollar amount on par with the current student loan debt.
2. Because weapons with catastrophic capacity can be launched by the whims of a single person. The President can personally choose to launch nuclear weapons at any time, without condition or approval from anyone else. And current U.S. nuclear policy requires unrealistically quick decision-making in times of crisis; some of our most destructive weapons are purposefully kept on high alert, capable of being fired in as little as ten minutes.
3. Because nuclear weapons kill people with lives, families, and loved ones. The 73-year anniversaries of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings are this week, and it’s critical that we never forget the very real, human cost of these weapons: 130,000 lives lost and tens of thousands of survivors with horrific injuries. And it could happen again all too easily.

In the era of Trump, we’ve come close to nuclear conflict with North Korea and made threats to unleash terror on Iran. The less we understand the financial and human cost of nuclear weapons, as well as how little oversight we really have over them, the graver the threat to the world.

Before I came to work in the nuclear nonproliferation world, I thought nuclear weapons were an outdated relic from my textbooks. I didn’t realize how real and immediate the threat is to us all.

Somehow, 60 percent of Americans would support a nuclear attack on Iran that would kill 2 million civilians. Perhaps it’s because we don’t really know anything about nuclear security.