00:00Well, 80 years after humanity's first atomic bomb was dropped by the United States and 40 years of seeing stockpiles reduced, it looks like our leaders are turning in the other direction.
00:11To find out a bit more, we can speak to Professor for Peace Research in Natural Scientists at the Technical University of Darmstadt, Professor Malte Goetje.
00:19Thanks for your time. Can I start by asking you that?
00:23I mean, we're seeing reports that more and more countries are turning towards stockpiling nuclear weapons.
00:29To what extent and why?
00:32Well, there are currently nine nuclear weapon states, including France and the United Kingdom in Europe, North Korea, the United States, Russia, China, India and Pakistan.
00:45And there are concerns about whether Iran might be heading for a nuclear weapon.
00:50But the problem is not only that countries might be interested in nuclear weapons.
00:55The problem is also that those nuclear weapon states that exist today are not moving forward with their legal commitment in the Non-Proliferation Treaty, where in the 70s they pledged to negotiate nuclear disarmament towards a world free of nuclear weapons.
01:12And we see no progress in this direction.
01:14When exactly did the change in direction it would take place rather than reduce them?
01:20It seems like the US and Russia in particular have started to put more and more resources into having more and more nuclear weapons.
01:27Yes, the geopolitical context has changed drastically.
01:32Perhaps some remember when Obama was president of the United States, he laid out the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons, understanding that this would make the world safer.
01:45And I would say this is the only way in the long term to avoid catastrophe, quite frankly.
01:51But given the change geopolitical circumstances and, of course, also the war in Ukraine is playing a role in the European context, nuclear weapons states are modernizing their arsenal.
02:02There is one remaining sort of remaining treaty, the New START Treaty, which regulates the number of nuclear warheads between the United States and Russia.
02:10This treaty is set to expire and no replacement is in is in sight, which would be the first time in decades that there is no bilateral arms control treaty.
02:23And smaller nuclear weapons states such as the European ones are hiding, I would say, behind the larger nuclear weapons states, saying that it's their obligation to make progress first.
02:33And when you look at the way things are going, I mean, are countries wanting to stockpile nuclear weapons simply as a threat or could we see them actually want to use such destructive force?
02:46I mean, we have seen in Russia, you mentioned the war in Ukraine, but they seem Russia seems to have lowered the threshold that would validate in their eyes the use of them.
02:55Yes, indeed, Russia is regularly threatening the use of nuclear weapons.
03:00The credibility of such threats are very, very difficult to measure, whether this is rhetoric or whether this is an actual change in the way that Russia thinks about this.
03:12But this is highly dangerous because other states have to make sense of it.
03:17And when there is no clarity, this introduces risks.
03:22And there can always be unintended nuclear weapons explosions.
03:26There have been cases in the past where states thought they were under a nuclear attack, even though this was a false alarm.
03:33So this is a very dangerous situation.
03:36So indeed, Russia is offering these threats.
03:40And it may become true.
03:42There are nuclear weapons that are designed for battlefield use, whereas many other nuclear weapons are reserved for strategic purposes,
03:53for deterrence when the existence of a state as a whole is under threat.
03:58And this would, for instance, be the case for the French nuclear weapons.
04:02Give us a better idea, perhaps, of what we mean when we say countries are increasing their stockpiles of nuclear weapons,
04:08because today we're marking the 80th anniversary of that atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
04:13What kind of weapons are they comparable to that one?
04:16What is available today?
04:17Most of them today are much, much more powerful.
04:22So the weapon, the two weapons that were dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki were fairly small weapons,
04:29which is almost ridiculous to say because you've mentioned already the number of fatalities from these nuclear weapons attacks.
04:37But most of today's nuclear weapons are orders of magnitudes more powerful and would result in significantly more deaths from the direct effects.
04:48In Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we observed the direct physical effects, thermal radiation and the pressure wave.
04:54But in addition, there is going to be fallout, which is radioactivity dragged into the atmosphere,
05:00which is then going to come down on Earth over vast areas.
05:06And even worse, if there is a nuclear war, even a regional, small-scale nuclear war,
05:13where the fires and the soot that is going to be dragged into the atmosphere is going to reduce precipitation,
05:21it's going to reduce temperature, and this will have massive effects on food production,
05:25which may lead in today's world to many millions of deaths, and in some scenarios, even billions of deaths.
05:32So this is absolutely incomparable to the situation, to the very sad situation that we observed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
05:44Now, you mentioned there there's nine nations that are known that we know have nuclear weapons.
05:50Iran has always said that its nuclear program is not aimed at having nuclear weapons.
05:54But then, of course, this year we saw the U.S. and Israel attack it.
05:57Where do you think Iran stands on the question today?
05:59Well, there was no evidence that after 2004, Iran pursued the nuclear weapons option.
06:10Certainly, Iran is running a nuclear program that is very difficult, or not to say impossible,
06:16to explain based on civilian energy needs.
06:20But again, there was no proof, no indication that Iran was directly aiming for a nuclear weapon.
06:25This, in my assessment, may have changed now, because the nuclear facilities have been bombed,
06:32but they have been bombed to such an extent that Iran can rebuild the essential capacities very, very quickly.
06:39And I'm afraid that this bombing might have triggered a decision to go for a nuclear weapon.
06:46But, of course, also this we don't know.
06:48Of course, it seems when I'm listening to you, it seems like the main goal or the main wish to have these nuclear weapons
06:54is really retaliation, to have them in case they want revenge attacks more than a defense,
06:59if I'm understanding things correctly.
07:01What do you think it would take to change things once again back in the right direction for the world,
07:06to get people to move away from nuclear weapons?
07:08Yeah, that is really difficult to see at the moment,
07:12as all nuclear weapons states are modernizing their nuclear arsenals.
07:16I would say it is a shared responsibility of the international community
07:21to make progress on reducing the nuclear threat.
07:26States need to get together to do this.
07:29States need to understand the long-term dangers of possessing nuclear weapons.
07:36And I think this anniversary, this 80-year anniversary,
07:41may provide an opportunity to step out of day-to-day politics, day-to-day threats,
07:48and think about these long-term consequences and the responsibility
07:52that the international community has in this regard.
07:56Malte Goetje, Professor at the Technical University in Darmstadt,
08:00thanks very much for your time and your insight on it all.
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