On 26 September 1983, Lt Col Stanislav Petrov was duty officer at a command centre of a Soviet nuclear early-warning system at a time of serious international tension, when his system reported that one missile had been launched from the United States, followed by up to four more. Although his orders were to report such warnings immediately, Petrov suspected a false alarm, and decided to wait for confirmatory reports, which did not appear. It was subsequently found that the false alarm was from radar reflections from high clouds over North Dakota. Had Petrov passed on the initial false alarm, as per his orders, a nuclear war would probably have followed, and you might not be reading this.
The Petrov incident was one of at least 11 cases where nuclear war very nearly began.
The debate about nuclear weapons seems insoluble. On the one hand, we who wish to get rid of nuclear weapons argue, rightly, that a global nuclear war would bring human civilisation to an abrupt and agonising end. On the other hand, advocates of nuclear weapons argue with great conviction that nuclear weapons are all about deterrence, they are not there to be used, but to persuade any potential enemies that we are prepared to use them, and therefore they are there to prevent war; nuclear deterrence has kept the peace between the superpowers for the past 80 years and can therefore be trusted to keep the peace for ever more.
From here on the debate tends to get bogged down in an untidy jungle of claim and counter claim.
The application of logic to any debate of this kind can be helpful in escaping from opinion to certainty, and the deterrence debate can be refocused through the following incontrovertible statement:
We may reasonably use a system whose failure would mean the end of human civilisation if that system is absolutely incapable of failing.
From this, the discussion now depends on two clear questions. First, would a global nuclear war destroy our civilisation? Second, is it possible that the nuclear deterrence system could fail?
The answer to the first question, after a reasonable examination of the consequences of a nuclear war, is a confident “Yes”. Medact members have played an important part in showing that medical services would be totally overwhelmed by the needs created by even a single nuclear weapon, let alone a global nuclear war. In brief, health workers would be inundated by a tsunami of crush injuries, trauma, radiation sickness, and infections at a time when the supply of dressings, fluids, hospitals, transport, communications, and pharmaceuticals would have reduced to nothing. Even the uninjured would be existing in a world darkened by Nuclear Winter with dwindling supplies of food and clean water, with armed, desperate gangs ready to take any food they could find. The idea of surviving a nuclear war is nothing but a delusion.
The answer to the second question is also “Yes”. No human system is infallible, and the deterrence system has always been a delicate network of electronic sensors, digital transmission, human operators, bureaucratic hierarchies, war cabinets and presidents. This is clearly a recipe for confusion, misunderstanding and disaster. Developments are making that network yet more delicate, with hypersonic missiles, detection of previously undetectable nuclear armed submarines, artificial intelligence, space weapons, autonomous nuclear armed torpedoes and defensive systems adding additional complexity and instability into the system. On top of this, authoritarians are rising to power in many countries, including nuclear-armed United States, North Korea and Iran.
Given that nuclear deterrence is not infallible and that nuclear war is not survivable, it must follow logically that humanity must divest itself of these nuclear weapons of mass destruction. The reasoning is simple, unassailable and clear, but the way forward is shrouded in mist. How can we divest ourselves of nuclear weapons? Is it possible to get rid of these nightmare inventions totally? How could it be done?
Have a read of our blog: How can we bring about a world free of nuclear weapons.
A previous version of this blog incorrectly mentioned Iraq as having nuclear weapons. The passage has been corrected and now highlights the broader rise of authoritarian leaders.
