What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Nuclear Weapons.

Eighty years into the Nuclear Age, certain subjects are off limits in nuclear security conferences

I gave a talk this week to the Public Policy and Nuclear Threats Boot Camp sponsored by the National Nuclear Security Administration (the section of the Department of Energy that builds our nuclear weapons), the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation and the Stanton Foundation. They wanted a contrarian opinion and they got it. Turns out that the audience of young nuclear practitioners and students liked it enough to ask me to write a summary of the talk to share more widely.

On the 80th anniversary of the first test of the atomic bomb and its first use on Japanese cities, here are some thoughts on what gets censored from our debates on nuclear weapons.

In the short story, “Silver Blaze,” Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous detective, Sherlock Holmes, is called in to help solve the mysterious disappearance of a champion race horse and the murder of its trainer. He investigates, offers some comments and then Scotland Yard’s Chief Inspector asks, “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention, Mr. Holmes?”

“To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time,” the detective replies.

“But,” says the inspector, “the dog did nothing during the night-time.”

“That,” says Holmes, “is the curious incident.”

Sherlock Holmes had picked up on a negative fact - something that did not happen - as the clue that could solve the case. The dog did not bark. Therefore, it knew the person who came to steal the horse. That narrowed list of suspects soon solves the mystery.

If you are perplexed as to why we spend each year more on nuclear weapons than most nation’s total budgets, why we walk tipsily along the brink of catastrophe and keep stockpiled and ready for instant launch many times the number of nuclear weapons needed to destroy all of humanity, then consider what we don’t discuss in most of our nuclear conferences and congressional debates.

Accurate analysis requires us to consider all the factors, not just the convenient ones. We need a multi-factor analysis to understand what is happening and to have any chance of devising strategies to impact events. In order to solve the nuclear policy mystery, we need to consider what we don’t talk about.

Here are seven topics largely off limits, in rising order of importance.

1. Cost. Next fiscal year the U.S. government will spend $87 billion on nuclear weapons, up from $70 billion this year. The Congressional Budget Office predicts these numbers will skyrocket. We will spend almost one trillion dollars over the next ten years, averaging $95 billion per year. Add in $25 billion for the foolish “Golden Dome” and perhaps $20 billion for other “missile defense and defeat” programs and we will spend $130 billion on nuclear weapons and related programs next year. The costs will grow. Every one of the new nuclear systems is over-budget and behind schedule. The new, unnecessary Sentinel ICBM has more than doubled in cost and is at least three years late. The Federation of American Scientists calls it “the two hundred billion dollar boondoggle.”

2. Targeting. What will we hit with all these weapons? The targets are kept secret, but why? We should want other nations to know what they risk if they attack the United States. As Dr. Strangelove famously said, “Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost, if you keep it a secret! Why didn't you tell the world, EH?” Perhaps because the absurdity of targeting hundreds of military, economic and political sites with multiple warheads on multiple delivery systems would be exposed as absurd. In one example I was given at a briefing at the Strategic Air Command when I was on the staff of the House Armed Services Committee in the 1980’s, we would have hit Odessa in Ukraine (then part of the Soviet Union) with 60 thermonuclear warheads. Obviously overkill. In the tortured logic of nuclear targeting, however, we were not targeting cities, merely the sites that happened to be located in cities.

3. Casualties. We gloss over the millions of innocent civilians that would be killed even by limited use of nuclear weapons. Most experts agree with the finding by the International Campaign against Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) that “Nuclear weapons are the most destructive, inhumane and indiscriminate weapons ever created. Both in the scale of the devastation they cause, and in their uniquely persistent, spreading, genetically damaging radioactive fallout, they are unlike any other weapons.” Even as we mark the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, many underestimate or gloss over the hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians killed in those attacks and the millions threaten by future attacks.

4. Consequences of Use. The immediate death toll would be just the beginning of the damage. With new climate tools we can predict that even a limited nuclear war in South Asia or the one-sided use of nuclear weapons where the attacked country did not respond could result in massive climate change. Scientists estimate that a war involving as few as one hundred weapons would pour enough particulates and soot into the stratosphere to surround the Earth in clouds, drop global temperatures and kill 40 percent of the world’s food crops. Billions would starve; human civilization would collapse. (A new National Academy of Sciences report notes the uncertainties of these estimates and recommends deeper study.) Yet, as The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists warns, “The US government has persistently failed to consider the climate effects of nuclear weapons in its policies, ignoring studies that draw attention to the scientific reality of nuclear winter and the devastating famine that would follow.”

5. Morality. Pope Francis repeatedly asserted during his papacy, “The use of nuclear weapons, as well as their mere possession, is immoral.” He is not alone. Most major religions denounce nuclear weapons as immoral, from the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Ayatollah of Iran to the Dalai Lama. Notably, in the last decade the Catholic Church switched its position, which had reluctantly allowed for the possession of nuclear weapon for the purpose of deterrence, to one condemning the very existence of the weapons because it saw little serious effort among the nuclear-armed states to pursue disarmament, the only reliable path for preventing nuclear use. Despite the frequent invocation of religion in our national discourse, I cannot think of any recent conference where there has been a panel on the morality of our nuclear policy.

6. Politics. We cannot understand U.S. nuclear policy without factoring in the deep politics involved. This begins with the general antipathy of Democratic Party leaders towards fundamental change in national security policy. Afraid of looking weak, ever since Bill Clinton the party has largely sought to “triangulate” on national security, supporting massive spending and modest adjustments. Barack Obama was the exception, but after his victories with New Start and the Iran Deal, he, too, abandoned the effort. Joe Biden did nothing to change Donald Trump’s nuclear policies and programs. The bureaucratic politics are worse. Anyone who dares challenge the entrenched nuclear priesthood is ostracized. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Policy Leonor Tomero was sacked for trying to actually implement President Biden’s declared intention to re-examine nuclear programs. “People wonder why we don’t learn from failures like Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. The reason is simple: People who point out alternatives to current national security policies are systematically driven out of positions of authority,” Jeffrey Lewis told The Washington Post. “Firing her sends a clear message to everyone in the Pentagon that there is no tolerance for new ideas when it comes to our nuclear weapons policies.” Then there is the personal politics. As a committee staffer, I have had direct experience with very liberal Democrats backing away from reports critical of weapons systems out of fear voting for their release would hurt their election prospects. If it is a choice between national, bureaucratic or personal politics and sane nuclear policy, the politics always win.

7. Corruption. We cannot evaluate nuclear strategy as if our decisions are made in careful deliberations among wise, mostly white, mostly men. Nuclear weapons are a big business. People get rich making nuclear weapons. Roughly half of every defense dollar goes to private corporations. The payment of $50-65 billion in nuclear contracts to a handful of corporations every year is an integral part of the transfer of wealth from working class and middle class taxpayers to the top one percent. Corporations market nuclear weapons like Kellogg’s markets cereal. You don’t just need Shredded Wheat, you need Mini-Wheats and Frosted Mini-Wheats and Strawberry Frosted Mini-Wheats. There is a nuclear weapon for every possible military niche, real or invented. Big Nuclear has learned from Big Oil, Big Pharma and Big Tobacco. These corporations assure congressional approval and near zero oversight with generous campaign contributions. They stifle academic debate and generate pro-nuclear reports with donations to think tanks. The revolving door spins freely between the Pentagon and nuclear companies. It is impossible to have a meaningful impact on nuclear policy without honestly confronting the profits made from the production of these weapons and the system these profits have rigged to ensure the indefinite continuation of the nuclear-industrial complex.

If this assessment sounds bleak it is because our strategic situation is bleak. Nuclear dangers are rising around the world. “In this 80^th year of the nuclear age, the world finds itself at a reckoning point,” declares the new Nobel Laureate Assembly Declaration for the Prevention of Nuclear War. “Despite having avoided nuclear catastrophes in the past, time and the law of probability are not on our side. Without clear and sustained efforts from world leaders to prevent nuclear war, there can be no doubt that our luck will finally run out.”

The Nobel Laureate statement contains all the elements of a sane nuclear policy. But no world leader is making any effort to implementing these policies. Changing that requires more than expert reports and the earnest efforts of the few. It requires the championing of these policies by the new mass movements emerging in the global struggle to preserve Democracy and resist authoritarian rule. Then and only then will political leaders find the will to embrace new policies. Then and only then will we be able to counter the power of the nuclear corporations. Charting that course, with the benefit of a comprehensive, multi-factor understanding of the elements of current policy, is the challenge of this new nuclear age.