Nuclear weapons debate

The Fat Man mushroom cloud resulting from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki.

U.S. and USSR/Russian nuclear weapons stockpiles, 1945–2005.

The nuclear weapons debate is about public controversies relating to the use and stockpiling of nuclear weapons.

History

Even before the first nuclear weapons had been developed, scientists involved with the Manhattan Project were divided over the use of the weapon. Some—notably a number at the University of Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory, represented in part by Leo Szilard—lobbied early on that the atomic bomb should only be built as a deterrent against Nazi Germany getting a bomb, and should not be used against populated cities. The Franck Report argued in June 1945 that instead of being used against a city, the first atomic bomb should be "demonstrated" to the Japanese on an uninhabited area. This recommendation was not agreed with by the military commanders, the Los Alamos Target Committee (made up of other scientists), or the politicians who had input into the use of the weapon. Because the Manhattan Project was considered to be "top secret", there was no public discussion of the use of nuclear arms, and even within the U.S. government, knowledge of the bomb was extremely limited.

The Little Boy atomic bomb was detonated over the Japanese city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. Exploding with a yield equivalent to 12,500 tonnes of TNT, the blast and thermal wave of the bomb destroyed nearly 50,000 buildings and killed approximately 75,000 people. Detonation of the "Fat Man" atomic bomb over Nagasaki occurred on 9 August 1945. The role of the bombings in Japan's surrender and the U.S.'s ethical justification for them has been the subject of scholarly and popular debate for decades. J. Samuel Walker suggests that "the controversy over the use of the bomb seems certain to continue".

After the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the world’s nuclear weapons stockpiles grew, and nuclear weapons have been detonated on over two thousand occasions for testing and demonstration purposes. Countries known to have detonated nuclear weapons—and that acknowledge possessing such weapons—are (chronologically) the United States, the Soviet Union (succeeded as a nuclear power by Russia), the United Kingdom, France, the People's Republic of China, India, Pakistan, and North Korea.

Arguments

Nuclear disarmament refers to both the act of reducing or eliminating nuclear weapons and to the end state of a nuclear-free world, in which nuclear weapons are completely eliminated. Proponents of nuclear disarmament say that it would lessen the probability of nuclear war occurring, especially accidentally. In the early 1980s, following a revival of the nuclear arms race, a popular nuclear disarmament movement emerged. In October 1981 half a million people took to the streets in several cities in Italy, more than 250,000 people protested in Bonn, 250,000 demonstrated in London, and 100,000 marched in Brussels. The largest anti-nuclear protest was held on June 12, 1982, when one million people demonstrated in New York City against nuclear weapons. In October 1983, nearly 3 million people across western Europe protested nuclear missile deployments and demanded an end to the arms race.

Critics of nuclear disarmament say that it would undermine deterrence. Deterrence is a strategy by which governments threaten an immense retaliation if attacked, such that aggressors are deterred if they do not wish to suffer great damage as a result of an aggressive action. Nuclear weapons are said to have induced "nuclear peace" during the Cold War, when both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. possessed mutual second-strike retaliation capability, eliminating the possibility of nuclear victory for either side.

Various American government officials, who were in office during the Cold War period, are now advocating the elimination of nuclear weapons. These officials include Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, Sam Nunn, and William Perry. They believe that the doctrine of mutual Soviet-American deterrence is obsolete, and that reliance on nuclear weapons for deterrence is becoming increasingly hazardous and decreasingly effective.

Recent developments

In recent years there have been concerns about North Korea's nuclear tests and Iran's refusal to stop its program to enrich uranium, potentially to weapons grade. The world is now in a new and dangerous nuclear era, and the likelihood that non-state terrorists will get their hands on nuclear weaponry is increasing. Nuclear weapons deployed by terrorists would be the ultimate means of mass devastation. And non-state terrorist groups with nuclear weapons are "conceptually outside the bounds of a deterrent strategy and present difficult new security challenges".

In January 2010, Lawrence M. Krauss stated that "no issue carries more importance to the long-term health and security of humanity than the effort to reduce, and perhaps one day, rid the world of nuclear weapons".

See also

• Agency for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean
• Anti-nuclear protests in the United States
• Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
• Debate over the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
• History of the anti-nuclear movement
• International Court of Justice advisory opinion on legality of nuclear weapons
• Lists of nuclear disasters and radioactive incidents
• List of states with nuclear weapons
• List of nuclear weapons
• Nth Country Experiment
• Nuclear disarmament
• Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
• Nuclear peace
• Nuclear power debate
• Nuclear proliferation
• Nuclear weapons and the United Kingdom
• Nuclear weapons and the United States
• Paranuclear
• Strategic Arms Limitation Talks
• Three Non-Nuclear Principles, of Japan
• United Nations Security Council Resolution 1194
• Uranium mining debate

Further reading

• M. Clarke and M. Mowlam (Eds) (1982). Debate on Disarmament, Routledge and Kegan Paul.
• Cooke, Stephanie (2009). In Mortal Hands: A Cautionary History of the Nuclear Age, Black Inc.
• Falk, Jim (1982). Global Fission: The Battle Over Nuclear Power, Oxford University Press.
• Murphy, Arthur W. (1976). The Nuclear Power Controversy, Prentice-Hall.
• Walker, J. Samuel (2004). Three Mile Island: A Nuclear Crisis in Historical Perspective, University of California Press.
• Williams, Phil (Ed.) (1984). The Nuclear Debate: Issues and Politics, Routledge & Keagan Paul, London.
• Wittner, Lawrence S. (2009). Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, Stanford University Press.