Of course, it is necessary to mention in the context of the post the Budapest Memorandum and Ukraine's agreement to denuclearize in exchange for a promise by the powers to respect its borders.
Spicy but very well thought out take. Interestingly enough - Sweden had its own nuclear weapons program after WWII but the US convinced Sweden it would use nuclear weapons in Sweden's defense if it were invaded by the Soviet Union. So the Swedes junked it.
Sad testament to the state of geopolitical affairs. The west can't seem to get its defense industrial capacity increased in a meaningful amount of speed and our allies might be relegated to this.
My concerns: If this is publicly or privately made known/discovered would this bring forward any pending timelines of military action? How fast can nuclear weapons be developed and deployed in a country? And would that in itself be seen as hostile (just as how the US has been publicly denouncing Iran's nuclear program)? Maybe signaling that this is being done would have the opposite effect because it would allow our enemies to use the same argument we've made in the past to launch military campaigns (Iraq will forever live in infamy)?
As far as NP in general - I think Pakistan getting them was a huge mistake (and you've done recent pieces on the state of Pakistan). If Pakistan becomes a failed state there's an actual chance that Muslim extremists could obtain nuclear weapons/materials (Nightmare scenario time). South Korea and Japan seem stable now (especially in a relative sense because the US is just becoming nuts) but that too can change. I get where you're coming from but I worry the thesis is limited to relying on a relatively short span of time. As you implied I don't even think China is happy that the DPRK has nukes.
Ultimately, NP or not I think that overall our adversaries see us slow walking our responses to their aggression and are if nothing else....emboldened. Germany looks feckless (you've noted elsewhere - FDI into china despite domestic industry suffering, Military is moribund, shutting down nuclear power, etc), UK can't service it's own aircraft carrier, and the US is depleting its munition stock and can't increase production to match our enemies (let alone pass a budget or send additional support to Ukraine). Military strategy and posture could already be outdated and our ability to project power abroad is becoming more tenuous. Carriers are sitting ducks against anti-ship missiles and drone attacks - let alone considering the strained logistics of getting material from the US West Coast to Taiwan, the Philippines, and Japan.
They debate resolve and capacity - Elbridge thinks capacity is limited and so needs to be prioritized to Taiwan (because it's strategically more important than Ukraine to the US). Bret think the US can't leave Ukraine but doesn't really offer any solutions to the problems Colby brings up.
Which leads me to mine: our resolve dictates our capacity to address our issues. Unfortunately - if we're in a situation that requires us to choose between Ukraine and Taiwan then I fear we have already decided to lose.
Japan has all the technology for nuclear weapons and ICBMs and could build them within a few weeks. I'm not sure about South Korea but I think the same is true.
F-35s are nuclear capable. Japanese public opinion would likely be the major holdup; I believe it will have to be presented as a fait accompli to alleviate Chinese interference.
Hi Noah! Do you have views on how the Western world could build on AUKUS and whether it could or should expand further, perhaps extending to nuclear weapons, or including other nations? I'm not American - but I am strongly of the view that a powerful US is firmly in anyones interests who values long-term stability and liberal democracy. And the more that aligned nations can do to support that goal, the better.
The thing about nuclear proliferation is that it's always possible to make a credible argument for some specific country acquiring nuclear weapons, and in a vacuum the argument is plausible. But when that choice is successively made over various countries, the collective outcome from several individually rational decisions is a totally disastrous one.
Tom Lehrer put it best:
"First we got the bomb, and that was good,
Cause we love peace and motherhood.
Then Russia got the bomb, but that's okay,
Cause the balance of power's maintained that way."
I suppose I could add my own commentary in lyrical form:
I mean, Tom Lehrer also worried that putting U.S. nukes in West Germany would prompt the Germans to start World War 3. Was that warning a prescient one? No. I love Tom Lehrer, but I think we should consider the possibility that perhaps comedy writers don't entirely understand the intricacies of national security policy... 😉
Tom Lehrer was a mathematician who worked on a PhD in statistics, worked for the NSA, and later taught political science at MIT. Given his clearance level and profession I imagine he had a better-than-average sense of the risks we were taking at the time. There is a reason he chose to leave that career and write funny songs!
Putting US nukes (without functioning permissive action links!) into the field in Germany was incredibly dangerous, like dozens of the other things we did during that period. We stopped doing it for a reason. Frankly, we're amazingly lucky to have survived that period of the Cold War. Winning one game of Russian Roulette doesn't make playing the game a good idea.
The bombs we deployed to Germany during the early cold war had no modern security features, and were protected by a single (or a small number of) US soldiers armed with pistols. This meant that a single rogue pilot could have taken off with one, and/or a small number of German soldiers could have easily taken control of them and launched WWIII without anyone being able to stop them.
The modern weapons ostensibly have Permissive Action Links (PALs) that prevent German soldiers from stealing them without US authorization. No doubt this could be overcome in a matter of days with a concerted effort by Germany's security forces, but it's wildly different than the insane things we were doing in the 50s and 60s. With that said, it is certainly not great.
Agreed. If the NPT gets "torched" as another commenter puts it, it won't end with Poland and Japan. It'll be every two-bit nation in the world. And since ICBMs are also 1950s/60s technology it'll only be a matter of time before every politically-unstable country has the ability to vaporize a dozen US cities in an afternoon. Our grandparents saw this possibility and worked very hard to make sure it didn't happen: this is the recipe for undoing everything they achieved. Frankly, a world with periodic invasions and conventional wars is better than this vision.
ETA: A slightly less terrible alternative to Noah's "let's break the seven seals one by one and see what happens" proposal is to place US weapons on Japanese and Polish planes, such that the (unstated) assumption is that, under sufficiently urgent conditions, those nations could credibly threaten to launch them without our permission. We did this in Germany for years.
A couple of the seals have been broken, or maybe bent to near the breaking point, but Satan's armies haven't gone on the march yet. In the 34 years since 1990 there have been exactly two new entrants to the nuclear club: Pakistan and North Korea (note that South Africa left in 1989.) North Korea getting nukes is a very, very big screwup: but also probably doesn't provide a model for lots of other countries to follow, since the West has made clear that the cost for their nuclear capability is total economic isolation.
This may change in the future. Most likely it will change with Iran, and that's also a huge screwup on our part (a lot of very smart people tried hard to prevent this, basically by bribing them into economic engagement with the West, but a moron blew that all up.) Maybe once Iran gets nukes, all the dominoes will fall and we can all throw up our hands and wait for the world to burn. But I propose we shouldn't do anything to speed that process up, and I think your proposal would very much do that.
Currently, nukes are proliferating to every key Chinese and Russian ally, but not to America's key allies.
The nonproliferation regime currently applies only to democracies. That's why it has failed. Only if the totalitarian powers know that democracies can also go nuclear will they be willing to support the nonproliferation regime. Until then, we will continue to have uncontrolled proliferation, like what happened with North Korea and Iran.
Russia has always had nukes. So allowing nukes in Poland doesn't address new proliferation risks, it just creates new proliferation risks. North Korea didn't get nukes from China, North Korea got them all by itself and doesn't necessarily coordinate with China. Indeed, I imagine that China would greatly prefer NK not have nukes, even if they won't make any (likely fruitless) attempt to disarm them. Iran would argue that they need nukes to counterbalance Israel, which obtained nukes (likely) with US help. Whether you accept their justification or not, Iran's nuclear capability is already counterbalanced by a US ally. There is a reasonable argument for giving Japan/Korea/Eastern European nations a bit more control over the NATO nuclear shield, but having them all go fully nuclear would be catastrophic.
The risk here is that the whole sweater unravels, and you have nukes in every country with a population over a few million people. That's where things go if we torch the NPT. That future is what I referred to with the phrase "Satan's armies on the march", and it's incredibly dangerous. Probably not survivable for long.
The sweater has unraveled already. Our allies' unilateral disarmament is no longer any kind of a global norm. To reestablish the norm, we need China and Russia to help enforce the norm. They won't do that when the norm only applies to democracies.
At the present time, there are no other proliferation threats aside from Iran. No other countries are even trying. Pakistan and NK have been nuclear for decades, this is not a slippery slope right now.
Read anyone who works in arms control or nuclear threat reduction, literally anyone. Just google nonproliferation and you will find a decisive refutation of the point of view you're taking..
Btw Ukrainians are very unhappy they had to give up nuclear weapons for “protection”. No one to blame except ourselves of course but the “nuclear deterrent” looks like a real thing
Not sure what Putin has to do with this? The Budapest Memorandum was signed in 1994 by Boris Yeltsin. Putin was still a nobody in Saint Petersburg at that point.
Of Westerners who support Ukraine's fight against Russia, how many do you think are "moderates" who basically see Putin as the problem, and how many do you think are "radicals" who have the position formerly held by the Anti-Bolshevik Block of Nations (and before them, the Polish Prometheist movement): that Russia in anything like its current borders will be incorrigibly imperialist (regardless of regime type) and that its dismemberment should be a goal of the West?
33% of Americans believe that white Christian ant-woke Putin is just a manly man reclaiming what's rightfully Russia's--a rogue SSR of sub-Russians--who had the temerity to try to break away from a recognized sphere of influence.
I don't disagree with you, but under this logic, why not Taiwan too? Is the assumption that if China catches wind they're developing nukes they will invade to preempt?
Yes, I wonder if Japan and South Korea would be enthusiastic about tearing up the nonproliferation treaty when there's no evidence China wants their territory.
Is Taiwan even bound by the treaty? It's not a UN member State, after all... 🙄
A logical question to ask here. How many nukes would one of these countries require in order to serve as a real deterrent?
Naturally, normal people do not spend a lot of time dwelling on what is meant by a serious thermonuclear attack upon a country. But the truth is that we are talking about very large numbers of nukes raining down upon each significant city, sent from a variety of types of locations (subs, missile silos, etc.) Otherwise, nukes are not really a deterrent.
Especially if you are the leader of a country that has a history of throwing large numbers of its citizens' lives away to achieve its goals. And that is exactly the thing that our rivals have in common with each other. Thus, North Korea's 30 nuclear warheads might possibly serve as a real deterrent to us (to the extent they can be delivered to our cities), but Poland having 30 nuclear warheads would almost certainly serve as considerably less of a deterrent to Putin's Russia. Particularly since Russia could then obliterate each Polish city with 30 nukes each, and still have thousands of warheads left over to respond to any nation that wished to take up the Polish cause.
My point here is not that you are necessarily wrong, Noah, only that it would be unrealistic to think that a few nukes would be enough to protect any of these countries. In fact, a few could prove worse than none at all, if it led to a false sense of security, and a sense that the US could safely wash its hands of all responsibility.
In my mind, though, the #1 priority is to engage with this misguided domestic isolationism that projects weakness and (literally) invites foreign aggression. Very few Americans would be happy with the impact on us, if the rest of the world simply went its own way,
I'd say a couple hundred. That wouldn't be enough to annihilate China, but it would be enough to make a Chinese attack on Japan catastrophic. And it would be enough to annihilate North Korea.
You might want to interview an expert on this--like you did with that amazing interview with that professor from Annapolis--to get a more exact idea of how many nuclear detonations on specific target nations would be required to economically cripple them, or outright destroy them.
One Russian R-36M2, for example--with ten 800Kt warheads, and forty decoys--concentrated on targets in the DC area, could do what precisely? What about a second R-36M2 targeting greater New York, and a third the San Francisco Bay area? Would destruction of our capital and centres of Finance and Tech be enough to cripple us? Is this something we could bounce back from? And if so, how long?
Isn't Russia in particular more deterrable than you're thinking, because it is a "prison of peoples" that would likely break apart (as Chechens, Tatars, Dagestanis, Buryats and other subjugated peoples made a bid for independence) if the imperial center of Moscow were destroyed?
China is likely more dangerous in that respect, as China proper (minus Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang and Tibet) has the vast majority of the population and is much more ethnically homogenous.
Creating cultural dissolution of target nations is apparently a key analytic in Pentagon wargame planning. Like with Iraq--now effectively divided into 3-4 countries, it happens along ethno-linguistic lines. Iran is roughly 60% Persian; China has 30% who cannot even speak Mandarin.
Also, these countries would need a *survivable* nuclear force to credibly threaten Russia/China. That means subs or a large number of mobile missiles, neither of which these countries would be able to afford at anything remotely like their current defense budgets.
The partial failure of non-proliferation is not an argument for its abandonment. Also, what most miss is that non-proliferation is actually more successful than ever in one respect - when the NPT was signed, less than 10 countries had the ability to become nuclear states. Now it's easily 80+ countries, and the great majority have so far abstained, with the benefit that we've all survived. Heck, an entire generation and more have grown up largely unconcerned about nuclear war - a gift some would now turn into a curse.
Risk of use is exponential to the number of nuclear states. That number is the real doomsday clock for our species, the most critical single metric in human survival.
Once both authoritarian and democratic states repudiate non-proliferation, it is fantasy to think that expansion among states and types will be limited. It won't take long before incompatible nuclear strategies come into conflict, or a nuclear state fails.
Since 1945, humanity has been living on borrowed time. Noah's strategy would burn up much of the little that remains.
I imagine you've studied norms in political science, and so you know that norms can be wounded but maintained when one side remains committed, even when the other side is spotty.
Your characterization of the situation as simply unilateral is not accurate either. France, Canada, and China helped Israel, India and Pakistan respectively become nuclear states, and they all regret it.
Right now, the norm is that Chinese and Russian allies can get nukes, and American allies and democracies cannot.
That norm encourages proliferation. Only if democracies can also get nukes will the totalitarian powers be willing to switch back to a norm of nonproliferation.
Your hypothesis is certainly refreshing and thought-provoking. Something entirely worthy of discussion. But who precisely, besides Iran, is currently on the cusp of developing a functional domestic nuke program?
Following through with this plan would be the ultimate proof--in the eyes of the world and in objective reality--that the "rules based international order" means that rules are enforced against US adversaries but not against us or our allies. The NPT is the longest-standing and most beneficial arms control treaty of all time and you are talking about torching it.
The US nuclear umbrella doesn't need to be 100% trustworthy (it never has been) in order to work. China doesn't need to be deterred that hard from invading SK and Japan, since it would stand to gain very little by doing so in the first place.
This Okinawa stuff is tea-leaf-reading taken to the extreme. It's not impossible your take is right, but I'd give it a 10 percent chance if I were betting.
I hate Trump but your analysis here is flawed as well. Trump is an unreliable member of NATO, yes, but he also has the mad bomber effect on his side when it comes to deterrence. Russia and China would likely consider their risk of nuclear war with the US to be *higher* with Trump in charge, and they would be right to do so. I think it's fairly clear that Russia was deterred from going into Ukraine during his presidency.
Also, there will be at most four more years of Trump and it would take almost that long for J and SK to build an arsenal anyway, so your plan will not actually help them until it's too late. Probably MAGA will continue after Trump in some form, but the success of the movement has been based on its domestic social policy appeal and the immigration thing, if you look at Trump's successors in this movement who have any shot at the presidency they are mostly hawks.
Most importantly, your constant highly speculative extrapolation from mild regional ambitions toward nations that were literally part of their territory in the recent past, to wanting to take countries that are US treaty allies with American troops deployed there... I don't know what to say. You are behaving like the people who thought the Soviets would roll through Afghanistan into the Arab states in the 80s, and yes, like the people who thought Iraq was going to pass a nuke to terrorists in the '00s.
If the world is going to be kept safe from nuclear weapons, "strengthen nuclear deterrence" can't be the answer to everything. The examples you cite are anecdotes that are highly compatible with the possibility that those wars could have gone hot in a nearby alternate world. Yes, India and Pakistan have survived until now, but there is a very good chance they will be destroyed sometime in the next century. You can only play chicken so many times before you lose.
If I thought there was a chance of moderating your paranoia about our regional adversaries I would urge you to expand your analysis diet--to read sources like Kaiser Kuo, Philippe Lemoine, Jessica Chen Weiss--but I suspect you already are in touch with these ideas and there is nothing to be done. I really didn't think you were (to be frank) this far gone.
You have it exactly backwards. Currently, China's allies are "allowed" to get nukes while U.S. allies are not. As things now stand, the "rules-based order" with regards to nuclear weapons is entirely one-sided; it only constrains U.S. allies.
Iran and NK have been sanctioned heavily for their proliferation. Unless your view is that the same should happen to Japan and SK if they develop nukes, you are talking about completely breaking the rules-based order.
Russia and China voted for three different Security Council resolutions materially sanctioning Iran for its nuclear program between '07 and 2010, and several others endorsing the effort to halt Iran's program. Iran's proliferation success was a done deal before it aligned with Russia and China. You should read Wikipedia before you post about something.
When you have to cite examples from the '50s and the '80s to argue that nuclear proliferation "is happening," it rings pretty hollow. Nuclear proliferation has happened a couple of times in fairly distant history, it is happening in one country, and your Sino/Russian bugbears did not help out with it.
-Regarding Poland, since it is a NATO member, isn’t that its protection? Initiating a nuclear weapons program would be a vote of no-confidence in NATO, which seems ill-advised.
-Regarding Russia, isn’t it increasingly a vassal state of China? Before invading Ukraine, its GDP was about the same as Canada; it must be much lower now. Its ability to pursue imperialism going forward seems remote, regardless of its fate in Ukraine. But to China, some of Russia’s eastern regions must look appealing, so couldn’t Russia end up a victim of Chinese “slow empire” encroachments?
-Regarding Iran, its GDP is about the same as Pakistan, so its ability to pursue nuclear aggression is low. Maybe the global democratic alliance can offer Iran a better deal (JPCOA v2)? Stopping nuclear weapons development in Iran seems better than starting it elsewhere.
-Regarding North Korea, isn’t it also a Chinese vassal state? As such, it wouldn’t undertake nuclear aggression without Chinese approval. But South Korea developing nuclear weapons could be misinterpreted by North Korea as a planned attack, requiring pre-emptive action. In this case, is it possible that ‘madman theory’ is correct, and North Korea should not be provoked?
Which leaves China. Since its client states have nuclear weapons, its conduct towards them is somewhat constrained. But the best counterweight to Chinese aggression looks to be the developing global democratic alliance, and its regional offshoots. Strengthening and maintaining these relationships looks like the best use of resources, with multiple benefits and few “unknown unknowns”.
So American leadership - but not domination! - can make all the difference. An additional benefit would be the geopolitical heft to institute a global non-proliferation regime.
How do we introduce nuclear weapons into South Korea without North Korea attacking it with their nuclear weapons? That is likely to be a pyrrhic victory. I don't disagree with the the thrust of the argument but the implementation is another matter.
Japan could easily do so, the question again is how do you get a nation which is antithetical to the use of nuclear weapons to accept them for their self-defense?
If there ever was a problem that was close to three-dimensional chess, it is this one. One issue that you did not directly address is the problem of erratic leadership. This is already affecting North Korea, the US, and Russia. It could easily emerge in any nuclear armed country, given the instability inherent in human nature. The more nuclear-armed countries, the more opportunities for human loose screws.
I will have to say one thing semi-positive about Trump. His first term showed that he is easily dissuaded. One could hope that someone in his environment would speak up loudly in the event of a global crisis. I don't think Stephen Miller wants to get roasted alive in a nuclear exchange.
A final point. You say the Democrats will not always hold the White House. You forget another moderating influence on US policy—the military brass. They will be one of the dissuading influences would work against MAGA pressures as they did in the first Trump administration. They are a precious part of the American deep state that will work to stabilize US policy.
Of course, it is necessary to mention in the context of the post the Budapest Memorandum and Ukraine's agreement to denuclearize in exchange for a promise by the powers to respect its borders.
Spicy but very well thought out take. Interestingly enough - Sweden had its own nuclear weapons program after WWII but the US convinced Sweden it would use nuclear weapons in Sweden's defense if it were invaded by the Soviet Union. So the Swedes junked it.
Sad testament to the state of geopolitical affairs. The west can't seem to get its defense industrial capacity increased in a meaningful amount of speed and our allies might be relegated to this.
My concerns: If this is publicly or privately made known/discovered would this bring forward any pending timelines of military action? How fast can nuclear weapons be developed and deployed in a country? And would that in itself be seen as hostile (just as how the US has been publicly denouncing Iran's nuclear program)? Maybe signaling that this is being done would have the opposite effect because it would allow our enemies to use the same argument we've made in the past to launch military campaigns (Iraq will forever live in infamy)?
As far as NP in general - I think Pakistan getting them was a huge mistake (and you've done recent pieces on the state of Pakistan). If Pakistan becomes a failed state there's an actual chance that Muslim extremists could obtain nuclear weapons/materials (Nightmare scenario time). South Korea and Japan seem stable now (especially in a relative sense because the US is just becoming nuts) but that too can change. I get where you're coming from but I worry the thesis is limited to relying on a relatively short span of time. As you implied I don't even think China is happy that the DPRK has nukes.
Ultimately, NP or not I think that overall our adversaries see us slow walking our responses to their aggression and are if nothing else....emboldened. Germany looks feckless (you've noted elsewhere - FDI into china despite domestic industry suffering, Military is moribund, shutting down nuclear power, etc), UK can't service it's own aircraft carrier, and the US is depleting its munition stock and can't increase production to match our enemies (let alone pass a budget or send additional support to Ukraine). Military strategy and posture could already be outdated and our ability to project power abroad is becoming more tenuous. Carriers are sitting ducks against anti-ship missiles and drone attacks - let alone considering the strained logistics of getting material from the US West Coast to Taiwan, the Philippines, and Japan.
More than anything else this just makes me think about the recent debate between Bret Stephens and Elbridge Colby again. Found here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/two-years-later-should-america-continue-to-aid-ukraine/id1570872415?i=1000646382544
They debate resolve and capacity - Elbridge thinks capacity is limited and so needs to be prioritized to Taiwan (because it's strategically more important than Ukraine to the US). Bret think the US can't leave Ukraine but doesn't really offer any solutions to the problems Colby brings up.
Which leads me to mine: our resolve dictates our capacity to address our issues. Unfortunately - if we're in a situation that requires us to choose between Ukraine and Taiwan then I fear we have already decided to lose.
Pax Americana indeed.
Japan has all the technology for nuclear weapons and ICBMs and could build them within a few weeks. I'm not sure about South Korea but I think the same is true.
F-35s are nuclear capable. Japanese public opinion would likely be the major holdup; I believe it will have to be presented as a fait accompli to alleviate Chinese interference.
If it comes to this that would be an extraordinarily precarious moment in time.
Thoughts of Neo Tokyo linger in the adolescent portions of my brain from decades ago where Kaneda and Tetsuo roamed free…
Hi Noah! Do you have views on how the Western world could build on AUKUS and whether it could or should expand further, perhaps extending to nuclear weapons, or including other nations? I'm not American - but I am strongly of the view that a powerful US is firmly in anyones interests who values long-term stability and liberal democracy. And the more that aligned nations can do to support that goal, the better.
I'll think about it! I'm not quite sure what I think about AUKUS yet.
The thing about nuclear proliferation is that it's always possible to make a credible argument for some specific country acquiring nuclear weapons, and in a vacuum the argument is plausible. But when that choice is successively made over various countries, the collective outcome from several individually rational decisions is a totally disastrous one.
Tom Lehrer put it best:
"First we got the bomb, and that was good,
Cause we love peace and motherhood.
Then Russia got the bomb, but that's okay,
Cause the balance of power's maintained that way."
I suppose I could add my own commentary in lyrical form:
"Then Japan got the bomb, but that's all fair,
Cause US protection won't always be there.
Then Poland got the bomb, but that's just fine,
Cause someone needs to keep Putin in line."
And what is this "totally disastrous" outcome?
In the decades since Tom Lehrer wrote that song, has the risk of nuclear annihilation increased, or decreased?
I mean, Tom Lehrer also worried that putting U.S. nukes in West Germany would prompt the Germans to start World War 3. Was that warning a prescient one? No. I love Tom Lehrer, but I think we should consider the possibility that perhaps comedy writers don't entirely understand the intricacies of national security policy... 😉
Tom Lehrer was a mathematician who worked on a PhD in statistics, worked for the NSA, and later taught political science at MIT. Given his clearance level and profession I imagine he had a better-than-average sense of the risks we were taking at the time. There is a reason he chose to leave that career and write funny songs!
Putting US nukes (without functioning permissive action links!) into the field in Germany was incredibly dangerous, like dozens of the other things we did during that period. We stopped doing it for a reason. Frankly, we're amazingly lucky to have survived that period of the Cold War. Winning one game of Russian Roulette doesn't make playing the game a good idea.
You know we didn't stop doing it, right?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction
The bombs we deployed to Germany during the early cold war had no modern security features, and were protected by a single (or a small number of) US soldiers armed with pistols. This meant that a single rogue pilot could have taken off with one, and/or a small number of German soldiers could have easily taken control of them and launched WWIII without anyone being able to stop them.
The modern weapons ostensibly have Permissive Action Links (PALs) that prevent German soldiers from stealing them without US authorization. No doubt this could be overcome in a matter of days with a concerted effort by Germany's security forces, but it's wildly different than the insane things we were doing in the 50s and 60s. With that said, it is certainly not great.
I don't know whether the threat has increased or decreased, tbh. We are working with sample sizes of zero, here!
Agreed. If the NPT gets "torched" as another commenter puts it, it won't end with Poland and Japan. It'll be every two-bit nation in the world. And since ICBMs are also 1950s/60s technology it'll only be a matter of time before every politically-unstable country has the ability to vaporize a dozen US cities in an afternoon. Our grandparents saw this possibility and worked very hard to make sure it didn't happen: this is the recipe for undoing everything they achieved. Frankly, a world with periodic invasions and conventional wars is better than this vision.
ETA: A slightly less terrible alternative to Noah's "let's break the seven seals one by one and see what happens" proposal is to place US weapons on Japanese and Polish planes, such that the (unstated) assumption is that, under sufficiently urgent conditions, those nations could credibly threaten to launch them without our permission. We did this in Germany for years.
The seven seals have been broken already. North Korea got nukes. Pakistan got nukes. Iran is close to getting nukes.
Unilateral disarmament by U.S. allies is not the same as nonproliferation.
A couple of the seals have been broken, or maybe bent to near the breaking point, but Satan's armies haven't gone on the march yet. In the 34 years since 1990 there have been exactly two new entrants to the nuclear club: Pakistan and North Korea (note that South Africa left in 1989.) North Korea getting nukes is a very, very big screwup: but also probably doesn't provide a model for lots of other countries to follow, since the West has made clear that the cost for their nuclear capability is total economic isolation.
This may change in the future. Most likely it will change with Iran, and that's also a huge screwup on our part (a lot of very smart people tried hard to prevent this, basically by bribing them into economic engagement with the West, but a moron blew that all up.) Maybe once Iran gets nukes, all the dominoes will fall and we can all throw up our hands and wait for the world to burn. But I propose we shouldn't do anything to speed that process up, and I think your proposal would very much do that.
Japan and South Korea are not "Satan's armies".
Currently, nukes are proliferating to every key Chinese and Russian ally, but not to America's key allies.
The nonproliferation regime currently applies only to democracies. That's why it has failed. Only if the totalitarian powers know that democracies can also go nuclear will they be willing to support the nonproliferation regime. Until then, we will continue to have uncontrolled proliferation, like what happened with North Korea and Iran.
Russia has always had nukes. So allowing nukes in Poland doesn't address new proliferation risks, it just creates new proliferation risks. North Korea didn't get nukes from China, North Korea got them all by itself and doesn't necessarily coordinate with China. Indeed, I imagine that China would greatly prefer NK not have nukes, even if they won't make any (likely fruitless) attempt to disarm them. Iran would argue that they need nukes to counterbalance Israel, which obtained nukes (likely) with US help. Whether you accept their justification or not, Iran's nuclear capability is already counterbalanced by a US ally. There is a reasonable argument for giving Japan/Korea/Eastern European nations a bit more control over the NATO nuclear shield, but having them all go fully nuclear would be catastrophic.
The risk here is that the whole sweater unravels, and you have nukes in every country with a population over a few million people. That's where things go if we torch the NPT. That future is what I referred to with the phrase "Satan's armies on the march", and it's incredibly dangerous. Probably not survivable for long.
The sweater has unraveled already. Our allies' unilateral disarmament is no longer any kind of a global norm. To reestablish the norm, we need China and Russia to help enforce the norm. They won't do that when the norm only applies to democracies.
At the present time, there are no other proliferation threats aside from Iran. No other countries are even trying. Pakistan and NK have been nuclear for decades, this is not a slippery slope right now.
Read anyone who works in arms control or nuclear threat reduction, literally anyone. Just google nonproliferation and you will find a decisive refutation of the point of view you're taking..
Btw Ukrainians are very unhappy they had to give up nuclear weapons for “protection”. No one to blame except ourselves of course but the “nuclear deterrent” looks like a real thing
Tbf, Ukraine did not have the money, technical ability to maintain or use said weapons
Because everyone trusted the word of Putin. Sadly the American GOP still does.
Not sure what Putin has to do with this? The Budapest Memorandum was signed in 1994 by Boris Yeltsin. Putin was still a nobody in Saint Petersburg at that point.
Good call. Vlad P was just a Mayor-type-admin dude in '94.
Of Westerners who support Ukraine's fight against Russia, how many do you think are "moderates" who basically see Putin as the problem, and how many do you think are "radicals" who have the position formerly held by the Anti-Bolshevik Block of Nations (and before them, the Polish Prometheist movement): that Russia in anything like its current borders will be incorrigibly imperialist (regardless of regime type) and that its dismemberment should be a goal of the West?
33% of Americans believe that white Christian ant-woke Putin is just a manly man reclaiming what's rightfully Russia's--a rogue SSR of sub-Russians--who had the temerity to try to break away from a recognized sphere of influence.
Which is why I restricted my question to "Westerners who support Ukraine's fight against Russia".
Good writing on a terrible topic. Very much appreciated. 🙏🏼
I don't disagree with you, but under this logic, why not Taiwan too? Is the assumption that if China catches wind they're developing nukes they will invade to preempt?
Pretty much. They could possibly have pulled it off in the 70s. Not now though.
Wouldn't nukes in Taiwan be a bit like a reversed Cuban Missile Crisis?
Now, yes.
Yes, I wonder if Japan and South Korea would be enthusiastic about tearing up the nonproliferation treaty when there's no evidence China wants their territory.
Is Taiwan even bound by the treaty? It's not a UN member State, after all... 🙄
Ironically if they are just a “Chinese province” doesn’t that grant them permission in the NP regimes under the Chinese umbra?
I agree with you.
2024 is Reality year
A logical question to ask here. How many nukes would one of these countries require in order to serve as a real deterrent?
Naturally, normal people do not spend a lot of time dwelling on what is meant by a serious thermonuclear attack upon a country. But the truth is that we are talking about very large numbers of nukes raining down upon each significant city, sent from a variety of types of locations (subs, missile silos, etc.) Otherwise, nukes are not really a deterrent.
Especially if you are the leader of a country that has a history of throwing large numbers of its citizens' lives away to achieve its goals. And that is exactly the thing that our rivals have in common with each other. Thus, North Korea's 30 nuclear warheads might possibly serve as a real deterrent to us (to the extent they can be delivered to our cities), but Poland having 30 nuclear warheads would almost certainly serve as considerably less of a deterrent to Putin's Russia. Particularly since Russia could then obliterate each Polish city with 30 nukes each, and still have thousands of warheads left over to respond to any nation that wished to take up the Polish cause.
My point here is not that you are necessarily wrong, Noah, only that it would be unrealistic to think that a few nukes would be enough to protect any of these countries. In fact, a few could prove worse than none at all, if it led to a false sense of security, and a sense that the US could safely wash its hands of all responsibility.
In my mind, though, the #1 priority is to engage with this misguided domestic isolationism that projects weakness and (literally) invites foreign aggression. Very few Americans would be happy with the impact on us, if the rest of the world simply went its own way,
I'd say a couple hundred. That wouldn't be enough to annihilate China, but it would be enough to make a Chinese attack on Japan catastrophic. And it would be enough to annihilate North Korea.
You might want to interview an expert on this--like you did with that amazing interview with that professor from Annapolis--to get a more exact idea of how many nuclear detonations on specific target nations would be required to economically cripple them, or outright destroy them.
One Russian R-36M2, for example--with ten 800Kt warheads, and forty decoys--concentrated on targets in the DC area, could do what precisely? What about a second R-36M2 targeting greater New York, and a third the San Francisco Bay area? Would destruction of our capital and centres of Finance and Tech be enough to cripple us? Is this something we could bounce back from? And if so, how long?
Isn't Russia in particular more deterrable than you're thinking, because it is a "prison of peoples" that would likely break apart (as Chechens, Tatars, Dagestanis, Buryats and other subjugated peoples made a bid for independence) if the imperial center of Moscow were destroyed?
China is likely more dangerous in that respect, as China proper (minus Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang and Tibet) has the vast majority of the population and is much more ethnically homogenous.
Creating cultural dissolution of target nations is apparently a key analytic in Pentagon wargame planning. Like with Iraq--now effectively divided into 3-4 countries, it happens along ethno-linguistic lines. Iran is roughly 60% Persian; China has 30% who cannot even speak Mandarin.
Also, these countries would need a *survivable* nuclear force to credibly threaten Russia/China. That means subs or a large number of mobile missiles, neither of which these countries would be able to afford at anything remotely like their current defense budgets.
The partial failure of non-proliferation is not an argument for its abandonment. Also, what most miss is that non-proliferation is actually more successful than ever in one respect - when the NPT was signed, less than 10 countries had the ability to become nuclear states. Now it's easily 80+ countries, and the great majority have so far abstained, with the benefit that we've all survived. Heck, an entire generation and more have grown up largely unconcerned about nuclear war - a gift some would now turn into a curse.
Risk of use is exponential to the number of nuclear states. That number is the real doomsday clock for our species, the most critical single metric in human survival.
Once both authoritarian and democratic states repudiate non-proliferation, it is fantasy to think that expansion among states and types will be limited. It won't take long before incompatible nuclear strategies come into conflict, or a nuclear state fails.
Since 1945, humanity has been living on borrowed time. Noah's strategy would burn up much of the little that remains.
Democratic countries unilaterally refusing to develop nuclear weapons is NOT nonproliferation. It's simply unilateral disarmament.
I imagine you've studied norms in political science, and so you know that norms can be wounded but maintained when one side remains committed, even when the other side is spotty.
Your characterization of the situation as simply unilateral is not accurate either. France, Canada, and China helped Israel, India and Pakistan respectively become nuclear states, and they all regret it.
Right now, the norm is that Chinese and Russian allies can get nukes, and American allies and democracies cannot.
That norm encourages proliferation. Only if democracies can also get nukes will the totalitarian powers be willing to switch back to a norm of nonproliferation.
Your hypothesis is certainly refreshing and thought-provoking. Something entirely worthy of discussion. But who precisely, besides Iran, is currently on the cusp of developing a functional domestic nuke program?
Following through with this plan would be the ultimate proof--in the eyes of the world and in objective reality--that the "rules based international order" means that rules are enforced against US adversaries but not against us or our allies. The NPT is the longest-standing and most beneficial arms control treaty of all time and you are talking about torching it.
The US nuclear umbrella doesn't need to be 100% trustworthy (it never has been) in order to work. China doesn't need to be deterred that hard from invading SK and Japan, since it would stand to gain very little by doing so in the first place.
This Okinawa stuff is tea-leaf-reading taken to the extreme. It's not impossible your take is right, but I'd give it a 10 percent chance if I were betting.
I hate Trump but your analysis here is flawed as well. Trump is an unreliable member of NATO, yes, but he also has the mad bomber effect on his side when it comes to deterrence. Russia and China would likely consider their risk of nuclear war with the US to be *higher* with Trump in charge, and they would be right to do so. I think it's fairly clear that Russia was deterred from going into Ukraine during his presidency.
Also, there will be at most four more years of Trump and it would take almost that long for J and SK to build an arsenal anyway, so your plan will not actually help them until it's too late. Probably MAGA will continue after Trump in some form, but the success of the movement has been based on its domestic social policy appeal and the immigration thing, if you look at Trump's successors in this movement who have any shot at the presidency they are mostly hawks.
Most importantly, your constant highly speculative extrapolation from mild regional ambitions toward nations that were literally part of their territory in the recent past, to wanting to take countries that are US treaty allies with American troops deployed there... I don't know what to say. You are behaving like the people who thought the Soviets would roll through Afghanistan into the Arab states in the 80s, and yes, like the people who thought Iraq was going to pass a nuke to terrorists in the '00s.
If the world is going to be kept safe from nuclear weapons, "strengthen nuclear deterrence" can't be the answer to everything. The examples you cite are anecdotes that are highly compatible with the possibility that those wars could have gone hot in a nearby alternate world. Yes, India and Pakistan have survived until now, but there is a very good chance they will be destroyed sometime in the next century. You can only play chicken so many times before you lose.
If I thought there was a chance of moderating your paranoia about our regional adversaries I would urge you to expand your analysis diet--to read sources like Kaiser Kuo, Philippe Lemoine, Jessica Chen Weiss--but I suspect you already are in touch with these ideas and there is nothing to be done. I really didn't think you were (to be frank) this far gone.
You have it exactly backwards. Currently, China's allies are "allowed" to get nukes while U.S. allies are not. As things now stand, the "rules-based order" with regards to nuclear weapons is entirely one-sided; it only constrains U.S. allies.
That is not a stable situation.
Iran and NK have been sanctioned heavily for their proliferation. Unless your view is that the same should happen to Japan and SK if they develop nukes, you are talking about completely breaking the rules-based order.
When we're the only one following the rules, there is no rules-based order.
Russia and China voted for three different Security Council resolutions materially sanctioning Iran for its nuclear program between '07 and 2010, and several others endorsing the effort to halt Iran's program. Iran's proliferation success was a done deal before it aligned with Russia and China. You should read Wikipedia before you post about something.
When you have to cite examples from the '50s and the '80s to argue that nuclear proliferation "is happening," it rings pretty hollow. Nuclear proliferation has happened a couple of times in fairly distant history, it is happening in one country, and your Sino/Russian bugbears did not help out with it.
Questions (and spitballing):
-Regarding Poland, since it is a NATO member, isn’t that its protection? Initiating a nuclear weapons program would be a vote of no-confidence in NATO, which seems ill-advised.
-Regarding Russia, isn’t it increasingly a vassal state of China? Before invading Ukraine, its GDP was about the same as Canada; it must be much lower now. Its ability to pursue imperialism going forward seems remote, regardless of its fate in Ukraine. But to China, some of Russia’s eastern regions must look appealing, so couldn’t Russia end up a victim of Chinese “slow empire” encroachments?
-Regarding Iran, its GDP is about the same as Pakistan, so its ability to pursue nuclear aggression is low. Maybe the global democratic alliance can offer Iran a better deal (JPCOA v2)? Stopping nuclear weapons development in Iran seems better than starting it elsewhere.
-Regarding North Korea, isn’t it also a Chinese vassal state? As such, it wouldn’t undertake nuclear aggression without Chinese approval. But South Korea developing nuclear weapons could be misinterpreted by North Korea as a planned attack, requiring pre-emptive action. In this case, is it possible that ‘madman theory’ is correct, and North Korea should not be provoked?
Which leaves China. Since its client states have nuclear weapons, its conduct towards them is somewhat constrained. But the best counterweight to Chinese aggression looks to be the developing global democratic alliance, and its regional offshoots. Strengthening and maintaining these relationships looks like the best use of resources, with multiple benefits and few “unknown unknowns”.
So American leadership - but not domination! - can make all the difference. An additional benefit would be the geopolitical heft to institute a global non-proliferation regime.
How do we introduce nuclear weapons into South Korea without North Korea attacking it with their nuclear weapons? That is likely to be a pyrrhic victory. I don't disagree with the the thrust of the argument but the implementation is another matter.
Japan could easily do so, the question again is how do you get a nation which is antithetical to the use of nuclear weapons to accept them for their self-defense?
If there ever was a problem that was close to three-dimensional chess, it is this one. One issue that you did not directly address is the problem of erratic leadership. This is already affecting North Korea, the US, and Russia. It could easily emerge in any nuclear armed country, given the instability inherent in human nature. The more nuclear-armed countries, the more opportunities for human loose screws.
I will have to say one thing semi-positive about Trump. His first term showed that he is easily dissuaded. One could hope that someone in his environment would speak up loudly in the event of a global crisis. I don't think Stephen Miller wants to get roasted alive in a nuclear exchange.
A final point. You say the Democrats will not always hold the White House. You forget another moderating influence on US policy—the military brass. They will be one of the dissuading influences would work against MAGA pressures as they did in the first Trump administration. They are a precious part of the American deep state that will work to stabilize US policy.
I agree! But are there any surveys of Korean and Japanese views towards nuclearisation? What of the leaders?
It appears Japan remains focused on nuclear abolitionism
https://eastasiaforum.org/2023/06/01/japans-nuclear-dilemmas-in-a-challenging-new-era/
Koreans are becoming more pragmatic
https://www.38north.org/2023/10/learning-from-south-asias-nuclearization-lessons-for-south-korea/