The political scientist John Mueller, the Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies at the Ohio State University, has written "Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism from Hiroshima to Al-Qaeda," and his thesis is that the world's magical thinking and alarmism about nuclear energy and nuclear weapons has significantly distorted policy making and threatens to leave the United States more vulnerable to more pressing threats. Mueller's opinions are not shared by most of his colleagues, but they are taken seriously -- he's not a provocateur. I asked Mueller this morning to put the news about Iran in the context of his theories. How much of a threat is Iran's proliferation? How much of a threat is the West's obsession with Iran's proliferation?
"No one has been killed by nuclear weapons in recent memory and lots of people have been killed by our obsession with proliferation, especially in Iraq," he says.
Ok. Lets assume that Iran gets the bomb. What happens?
A
bunch of other countries will run around in hysterics for a while, but
in the end, probably nothing. What China has done with the bomb has
been nothing. It's just been a huge waste of money. Basically, if Iran
gets the bomb, they may find that it's completely useless, except to
stoke their egos for a while.
You concede
that nuclear weapons are extremely destructive, but you say that our
obsession with them has led to a fear that is way out of proportion to
the actual threat. One thing you write in your book is that the notion
that the U.S. and the Soviet Union ever possessed enough nuclear
weapons to destroy the world several times over is just false.
It's false. It would take...something
like 90,000 huge thermonuclear bombs, and we don't have near that many.
That doesn't mean that nuclear weapons can't kill large numbers of
people. But if the weapon that North Korea has were dropped in Central
Park, it wouldn't bring down any buildings. If it were placed in Times
Square, it would be pretty bad, but there is a lot of exaggeration
about the difference [between that bomb and a large conventional
explosive]. Look, the bomb is a horrible thing. I don't want to sound
like I'm trivializing the bomb. But it makes sense to at least abandon
some of our conceptions that are [just as] dangerous.
You want to focus proliferation activities more on terrorists and technology and less on nation-states?
Sort
of. In the case of terrorism, I'm not too alarmed about it. Some things
make sense, like securing fissile materials. But I do have a problem
with carrying out policies that could kill tens of thousands of people.
Graham
Allison, the Obama administration official and former Harvard prof, has
estimated that there's a 50% chance that a nuclear weapon will explode
in a major city over the next ten years. I take it you disagree with
his prediction.
Well, he also said that in
2005. He's a smart guy, and he's been thinking about this for a while.
My disagreement is that he massively undersestimates the difficulty of
a terrorist getting a bomb. There aren't loose nukes out there, even
though he's been talking about it for years. There aren't fissile
materials. What tends to happen on analyses like this, including his,
is that it looks at the individual steps to build a bomb and concludes
that, it would be difficult but not impossible fo each step. But
overcoming [all] twenty difficult if not impossible [steps] to build a
bomb -- there is a vanishingly small likelihood of success. There's
been a considerable exaggeratoin by him and others that Al Qaeda is
even interested in obtaining the bomb.
Back
to the current situation. Isn't the non-proliferation regime you
criticize preventing Israel from bombing Iran -- and therefore
preventing the escalation of the scenario?
Well,
it's quite possible than Iran will never try to get a bomb. But if they
are bombed by Israel, it will increase the likelihood of them getting
the bomb. It will escalate. I think a nuclear Iran could be well
contained and deterred.
So if it's OK for Iran to have a nuclear weapon, then it must be OK for my electric utility to have a nuclear power plant.
While I don't follow the logic of the equation, the answer is nonetheless simple: yes - of course it's OK for your electric utility to have a nuclear plant as part of its generation mix. Why wouldn't it be? Forgive me but the questions seems odd... .
It's false. It would take...something like 90,000 huge thermonuclear bombs, and we don't have near that many. " BS alert! This statement and the site it links to are both contingent on convenient definitions to make them true.
"Destroy the world" = kill all of the people? Kill ALL of the people? Per the site linked to, "kill all of the people = kill all of the people by being within the 95% destruction radius of the initial detonation, which as you might suspect is a fairly stringent requirement for being killed. People out there on the fringes of the, oh say, 50% destruction radius are probably dead TOO. The minimizing of the destructive power of a nuclear detonation is such a ludicrous tactic I don't even know where to begin to refute it.
He references the North Korean weapon as though that science project level nuke is remotely equivalent to a state of the art fission weapon that might be used in an attack. A 1 Megaton air detonation over New Jersey (over N.J. because you don't want to waste that blast by having too much of its radius out over the ocean) would kill EVERYONE in the 5 burroughs and northern New Jersey. An additional 50% mortality could be expected among the survivors over the next few weeks. A fusion weapon (H bomb as opposed to an A bomb fission weapon) can be readily ramped up to 5, 10 or 20 megatons. A NYC strike of a larger weapon could easily kill 30 million in the detonation. A somewhat more serious potential event than the good doctor proposes.
In addition, the tactics for nuclear weapon use have evolved beyond Hiroshima/Nagasaki where they were used like conventional weapons, just bigger. Today's scenarios call for high altitude detonations where the blast is minimized and the damage is done by setting fire to a much larger area (100 - 200 sq miles or so?) than would be affected by a close to the ground explosion. Even dismissing the highly likely "nuclear winter" scenario, even a tenth of the planetary nuclear arsenal detonated in the space of a few days would shortly reduce humanity to a few thousand isolated and starving survivors. If that's not a comfortable definition of destroying the world, I would like to hear a better one.
Re: A 1 Megaton air detonation over New Jersey
There are very few 1 megaton weapons, and all of them are H bombs, not fisson weapons (the Hiroshima bomb was about 18 kiltons that is .018 megatons). Neither Iran nor North Korea posseses themonuclear weapons (neither do India or Pakistan-- Israel is a qusetion mark), which are vastly more difficult (and costly) to make than a fisson bomb. Even the US and Russia downgraded their themonuclear arsenal due to improved targeting abilities so that 1 megatonners are now rare.
Re: ...would kill EVERYONE in the 5 burroughs and northern New Jersey.
Over the whole of northern New Jersey? Huh? that's ridiculous. The 100% kill zone of a one megaton weapon (excluding people well underground) is in a radius of about three miles. The 50% kill zone goes out to about five miles. Beyond that the death rate would drop off quickly, though you would still find ghastly injuries among those caught in the open, mainly burns from the initial radiation pulse and wounds from projectile debries. As for fallout, that depends crucially on where the bomb exploded: at or near ground level, nearby downwind areas are toast. Up a ways (as at Hiroshima and Nagasaki) and there's almost no fallout as the fission fragments are dispersed into the upper atmosphere.
Re: A fusion weapon (H bomb as opposed to an A bomb fission weapon) can be readily ramped up to 5, 10 or 20 megatons.
Yes, but no one does that. The Soviets played around with super-bombs like that once upon a time and ultimately scared themselves silly when they detonated a 60 megatonner in Siberia. Beyond a certain point the extra megatonnage is pointless-- for one thing much of it just ends up digging a really deep crater in the ground.* Improved targeting has eliminated the need for something that wipes out lots of real estate, and bombs with burrowing capabilities (before they detonate) can get at buried command posts and missile silos. And again, very few states have the ability to produce any sort of fusion weapon. Assuming someone doesn't somehow buy a black market H-bomb (which I think is wildly unlikely now that Russia has its act back together) the only weapons pip-squeak powers like Iran and terror groups could get hold of or cobble together is going to be a Hiroshima-sized bomb.
* Since terrorists do not have ICBMs or airforces, a terrorist nuke will almost certainly be exploded at ground level-- bad for producing lethal fallout downwind, but it also wastes half the energy of the blast in thr ground under it.
1. The link is broken, you typed 'http' twice...
2. Prof. Mueller has apparently not considered the specific culture of Iran under the Islamic Revolution. The Mullahs idolize the suicidal Basiji movement, several times leaders have said it would be okay for Iran to be destroyed if Islam ruled the world. They refer to Israel is a one-bomb state and deny the holocaust in the next breath. They are not of sound mind, due to their ideology.
With the death of Saddam, Iran has no enemies other than those created by their nuclear program. Pakistan, India and Israel all have real enemies. So the bomb is not really for Iran's defense or deterrence. If the Mullahs think they have military enemies beyond the anti-nuclear movement, they are paranoid, and must not be allowed to have nukes.
Professor Mueller has been seduced by the logic that nuclear weapons have no practical value, especially for Iran. But logic doesn't always rule the day.
The nuclear programs of Syria and Iraq were bombed out of existence without killing large numbers of people, Muellers figure of 10,000 is just scare-mongering.
"With the death of Saddam, Iran has no enemies other than those created by their nuclear program."
How about the U.S. -- we attacked Iraq who didn't have a nuclear program. Why wouldn't we attack a nuclear free Iran the next time a neocon president is in power? And of course just because Iraq isn't about to invade Iran today, it offers no guarantees for 10 years from now. Iraq invaded them recently.
Iran has enemies and it is perfectly rational for them to want nuclear deterrence. I'm not saying it is smart policy, but is certainly rational policy.
Sounds like someone's preaching from his Ivory Tower again ...
Ulysses,
There would not be thousands of survivors because there millions upon millions of people who would be living in non alligned countries.
Re: The Mullahs idolize the suicidal Basiji movement, several times leaders have said it would be okay for Iran to be destroyed if Islam ruled the world.
Chairman Mao used to brag that China would survive a nuclear war because of its huge population. In fact, the hype and paranoia over Iran hgetting the Bomb is reminiscent of similar nail-biting, hair-tearing over nuclear China-- except that when it comes to megaomaniacal butchers Mao makes the mullahs look like Little Bo Peep.
Just to quibble: 1) The 3 mile radius of "95 - 100% destruction" references destruction of buildings and infrastructure. The radius of human casualty is much greater.
http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/gmap/hydesim.html
The 100 sq mile map in the link and the radii on the simulator specifically exclude thermal and radiation effects 2 primary generators of mortality.
2) the point being discussed was the potential of the nuclear arsenal to "destroy the world". His (Mueller's) reference was that some ludicrous amount of nuclear capability was required. MY point was that one would not need to detonate some multiple of ALL of the nuclear weapons in order to kill everyone in urban circumstances, everyone in non remote non agricultural communities, and lots of whoever else is left.
3) I specifically referenced NOT employing a ground detonation because I was discussing the existing nuclear arsenal being deployed, i.e. by the current owners of those weapons. This context is explicitly NOT about terrorists, so their limitations are not at issue.
The sociological and political nature of Iran and Pakistan and the potential for regimes to come into posession of more sophisticated weapons than they currently have, is in fact THE issue and should be addressed with all of the seriousness it deserves.
While I'm not particularly thrilled with the idea of a nuclear Iran, I tend to agree with Mueller's assessment. Ahmadinejad and Khamenei may be loons, but Iranians aren't suicidal. The West will bitch and moan, Iran will rattle its sabers, and ultimately nobody will nuke anybody, for the same reasons nobody has nuked anybody since WWII. Even the ostensibly crazy dictators aren't stupid.
An Iranian roommate of mine characterized the hard-line's "blow up Israel" stance as less of a realistic policy option and more of a cynical attempt to curry favor with the less-worldly "rednecks" in that country.
While I second prof. Mueller's comments on the alarmism surrounding nuclear proliferation in the Middle East (by the way, an almost exclusively Anglosaxon/Israeli phenomenon), I think he misses an important point concerning the political and diplomatic consequences of nuclear weaponry.
Obviously, the people who worry about an Iranian bomb do not expect it to be used solely as a deterrent. The true power of nuclear weapons lies in the threat, and to do that a state needs threat credibility. Now, the regime in Iran consists of 1) Islamic scholars, skilled in Aristotelian logic and islamic law, but not in modern statecraft or nuclear diplomacy and 2) a military/economic network of revolutionary guards that can be both pragmatist and cynical as well as ideological and fanatical. Despite all cronyism and corruption, Iran retains properties of a revolutionary state, and that makes its regime highly unpredictable.
The unpredictable nature of the regime boosts its threat credibility enormously - even if the actual threat is exaggerated. Its core ideology celebrates suicide in the battle for the faith, and a credible nuclear threat would require just that. Nuclear weaponry in the hands of such a state may not be a very big military threat, in terms of diplomacy it conveys a power that will upset the balance in the Middle East. Or what´s left of it.
While I second prof. Mueller's comments on the alarmism surrounding nuclear proliferation in the Middle East (by the way, an almost exclusively Anglosaxon/Israeli phenomenon), I think he misses an important point concerning the political and diplomatic consequences of nuclear weaponry. Obviously, the people who worry about an Iranian bomb do not expect it to be used solely as a deterrent.
The true power of nuclear weapons lies in the threat, and to do that a state needs threat credibility. Now, the regime in Iran consists of 1) Islamic scholars, skilled in Aristotelian logic and islamic law, but not in modern statecraft or nuclear diplomacy and 2) a military/economic network of revolutionary guards that can be both pragmatist and cynical as well as ideological and fanatical. Despite all cronyism and corruption, Iran retains properties of a revolutionary state, and that makes its regime highly unpredictable.
The unpredictable nature of the regime boosts its threat credibility enormously - even if the actual threat is exaggerated. Its core ideology celebrates suicide in the battle for the faith, and a credible nuclear threat would require just that. Nuclear weaponry in the hands of such a state may not be a very big military threat, in terms of diplomacy it conveys a power that will upset the balance in the Middle East. Or what´s left of it.
The immensity of cultural and historical ignorance displayed by Mueller is stunning. He is stuck is some universe far from earth. He calculates destruction like a cold math freak. He does not understand radical Islam, he does not consider the diverse nature of terrorism and his clean equations do not handle Hugo Chavez nor the impact of nuclear black mail on oil strangulation. What a jack ass simpleton.