The Beginning Of Nuclear Age And Implications Of Nuclear Proliferation

The atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945, marked the beginning of a new age. Chosen instead of Operation Downfall, a proposed invasion of the Japanese mainland, Col. Paul Tibbetts flew in on the Enola Gay, a plane named after his mother, and unleashed death and destruction on an unimaginable scale. Silhouettes of the citizens were burned into the concrete, buildings were reduced to rubble, and Colonel Tibbetts “saw the sky in front of me light up brilliantly with all kinds of colors.” But that wasn’t the end of it. Three days later, on August 9th, the horror happened all over again, this time in Nagasaki. Japan surrendered soon after. Months later, people started to get sick, with illnesses they didn’t understand and which we know all too well as radiation poisoning. What followed was a brief period of near-uncontested US hegemony over the world-until the Soviet Union detonated their first atomic bomb in 1949. The nuclear age had begun in earnest.

From 1949 to now, there have been more times than anyone is really comfortable admitting where a handful of people stopped nuclear Armageddon from being unleashed upon us all, as every state to become nuclear has sought to amass more and more nuclear weapons in order to keep up with everybody else. Now, in 2019, there are nine states with access to nuclear weapons:

• The United States (1945)
• Russia (then the USSR, 1949)
• The United Kingdom (1952)
• France (1960)
• China (1964)

Israel (sometime before 1967, the details were only released in 1986)

• India (1974)
• Pakistan (1998)
• North Korea (2006)

Nuclear proliferation is a concept which uses one big word in place of many small ones-put simply, all it means is that there are more nuclear weapons in the world today than there were yesterday. This comes in two chief forms: vertical integration (an existing nuclear state creates more nuclear weapons) and horizontal integration (a state becomes nuclear). Of the two, vertical integration is far more common (the oldest nuclear states have stockpiles far greater than the newer ones because they have made more weapons), but horizontal integration is generally considered to be more notable.

This is because of how a nuclear arsenal fits into the concept of security, particularly from a state perspective. Put bluntly, a nuclear state is prohibitively costly to attack, which means that, particularly from a realist perspective, one of if not the greatest threats to national security (other countries invading) becomes something of a new factor. However, the anarchy of the international system means that states will continue to jockey one another for more and more power, and a new approach to security has to be taken. This lead to the theory of deterrence, which claims that nuclear states will not attack each other, because it is incredibly likely to end in the ashes of mutually assured destruction (MAD), which would leave both countries devastated. This principle has led to a massive amount of vertical proliferation, as nuclear powers swell, update (the payload, not necessarily the delivery method-nuclear silos are still using floppy disks) and diversify the methods by which annihilation would be rained down upon the enemy. Over time, this developed into the modern nuclear triad, composed of: Bombers, a la Enola Gay. These benefit from having a human pilot in charge of dropping the bombs, who can be ordered to turn around if need be, at the expense of being the slowest.

Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs), nuclear missiles able to be launched from the aforementioned silos. These are much faster than bombers, but can’t be turned around as easily. Nuclear Submarines, submarines which can launch nuclear missiles. Their primary benefit is their stealth: the ocean is a massive place to hide in, and no nuclear submarine has ever been detected to date. This means that, in the event the first two parts of the triad were disabled, the submarines could still hypothetically launch a retaliatory strike.

All of the potential ways in which your fellow nuclear powers can annihilate you have, unsurprisingly, changed how wars are fought across the globe. This leads nicely into the concept of the “new war,” wherein soldiers are far less likely to die than the civilians caught in the seemingly neverending proxy conflicts occurring across the globe. Nuclear proliferation is not unique in the scope of its threat (environmental issues certainly have the power to end life as we know it, brought about by degrees rather than in a single flash), nor in the fact that it poses a constant existential threat to both human and state security, but unlike its environmental cousin, it has the luxury of being able to seize the national zeitgeist whenever it comes up, whether it be Guam being threatened with nuclear weapons or the hysteria that gripped Hawaii after a text alert about an incoming strike, which continued in part because the governor didn’t know his own Twitter password.

It’s worth noting that there are many states (particularly those in the global north) who have the capacity to attain nuclear weapons, should they so wish, but choose not to. Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and the South Pacific are all “nuclear free zones,” areas which ban nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants, with several states in the Middle East looking to turn that region into a sixth such zone. Some states, such as Germany, refuse to start a nuclear weapons program as a part of their foreign policy stance: a state seems like it’s willing to bargain when it isn’t capable of destroying entire cities in minutes. However, there are several states (including Iran) which have been deliberately hampered by the international community in their quest for nuclear weapons. Dubbed nuclear apartheid, this tactic is controversial, with its proponents arguing it stops dangerous states from getting their hands on even more dangerous weapons, while its opponents argue that working to stop a state from being able to defend itself is the ultimate violation of state sovereignty, although other key components of security, such as responsibility to protect, argue that the idea of sovereignty is porous, and can and should be violated as need be to ensure human security.

I wish to explore the practical implications of nuclear proliferation with a look at the horizontal and vertical proliferation of the world’s youngest nuclear state, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (referred to from here on out as North Korea.) In the interests of focus and brevity, I will be focusing primarily on the leadup to and occurrence of the 2018 and 2019 summits, but first I will provide a little context, in order to better understand what happened there. Since its inception, North Korea has never been on friendly terms with the United States, the oldest nuclear power with the second-largest nuclear arsenal. The Korean War ended in a ceasefire, and has never been formally resolved, with the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea continuing to be a destination for US deployments into the 21st century. In 2006, North Korea officially became a nuclear power, which it has been building up ever since.

The Trump administration initially got off on something of a rough footing with North Korea, with talk such as the infamous “Fire and fury” remark calling back to the days of brinksmanship. This ramped up through 2017, culminating in January of last year with the Hawaii False Missile Alert, in which an entire US state was led to believe that it was the target of a nuclear strike. Months later, on March 7th, 2018, North Korean diplomats reached out to the White House, saying Kim Jong Un was willing to discuss his nuclear arsenal. Days later, the invitation is accepted, with North Korea putting its nuclear program on temporary hiatus a month afterwards in what President Trump dubbed “a huge success!” In June, the two meet, the first time the heads of their respective states have, and the summit ends with Kim vowing to work towards the denuclearization of Korea. The two met again in Hanoi during February of 2019, but ended up going nowhere after Trump refused to lessen the sanctions on North Korea as part of the denuclearization process. Finally, over the Summer of 2019, a third meeting was held, with President Trump crossing into North Korea and Kim Jong un crossing into South Korea. Finally, in September of 2019, North Korea stated they were willing to continue talks, but the United States would have to take a fresh approach. As of yet, no fresh approach has been made.

The importance of nuclear proliferation is difficult to overstate. While the United States being able to destroy the world seven times over instead of six seems academic, the truth is that nuclear weapons are a threat to global security, particularly human security, as the devastation wrought by these weapons is immeasurable. North Korea, as the world’s youngest nuclear state, is proving how rapidly vertical proliferation can occur, and any war on the Korean peninsula, even a total United States victory, would still result in a humanitarian disaster, with uncountable lives being lost if the DPRK decided to take the nuclear option. Nuclear power has become so intertwined with our lives that radiologists can tell whether or not any particular bottle of wine was bottled before 1945, and that’s been used to solve potential fraud cases. The power of the atom has seeped into us, and it is imperative that we don’t let it get any further before it’s too late.