STEPHEN HERZOG
In October 1962, the United States and the Soviet Union squared off in what game theorist and Nobel laureate Thomas Schelling described as a nuclear game of “chicken” that threatened humanity’s survival. The Cuban Missile Crisis spurred six decades of efforts to limit the spread of nuclear weapons and inspired a generation of scientists to think critically about reducing atomic risks. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent nuclear threats during the war in Ukraine are an unambiguous reminder that such dangers have outlived the Cold War. A new wave of scientific research is urgently needed to understand conditions for making global nuclear disarmament desirable and feasible.
October 1962 and October 2022 are hardly comparable. There were four nuclear-armed states then—the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, and France. Today, there are nine, with the additions of China, India, Israel, North Korea, and Pakistan. Success containing proliferation to just nine countries came about in no small part from the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and subsequent International Atomic Energy Agency inspections. These initiatives were a direct result of the Cuban Missile Crisis, as were US–Soviet/Russian arms control agreements that reduced worldwide nuclear stockpiles from nearly 70,000 warheads in the 1980s to ∼12,700 today.
Unfortunately, nuclear reductions have now been replaced by competition. China, Russia, and the US are modernizing their arsenals, ignoring disarmament commitments in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Meanwhile, new actors, proliferation risks, and intersections between nuclear and emerging cyber and artificial intelligence technologies challenge existing deterrence and nonproliferation theories. Amid these developments, 68 countries have ratified the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which seeks to ban all nuclear weapons–related activities. Nuclear-armed states reject the treaty, citing a lack of verification measures and a volatile security environment. Simultaneously, global research funding for nuclear risk reduction is shrinking rapidly, limiting opportunities for interested scientists.
Most social science research focuses on living with nuclear weapons rather than their elimination. Russian nuclear threats to deter intervention by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Ukraine may further entrench this status quo by hardening nuclear-armed states’ resolve to maintain their arsenals and incentivizing proliferation among non-nuclear states hoping to avoid invasion. But deterrence, whether in 1962 or 2022, is a game of hostage taking. Adversaries point nuclear-tipped missiles at each other’s population centers in the name of keeping the peace. Ironically, this existential gamble portrays vulnerability as protection. Polls have long shown that most people desire a world free from nuclear fears.
Still, academics have generally accepted nuclear deterrence as an eternal fact of life. Just as the Cuban Missile Crisis changed nuclear thinking, the war in Ukraine necessitates new research programs. Social scientists can draw on perspectives of nuclear and non-nuclear states alike to identify strategies for protecting populations and vital interests without nuclear risks to survival. After all, only a minority of states actually rely on nuclear weapons or protection pledges from nuclear-armed allies. These international political realities should be reflected in the scientific literature. Interrogating nuclear deterrence calls for rigorous scholarship on nuclear disarmament and alternative frameworks of security in public discourse, peer-reviewed journals, and academic syllabi.
Moving beyond nuclear deterrence requires research into nuclear disarmament’s feasibility. An oft-repeated critique of complete disarmament is that it is desirable but ultimately unachievable. Yet, innovations in neutron detection, noble gas monitoring, and sensor technology offer ways to verify warhead dismantlement and the absence of fissile material production and nuclear test explosions. None of these methods are entirely foolproof, so increased resources for verification science should be a top priority for governments, universities, philanthropists, and other funders of peace and security research. Disarmament verification should mirror best practices of transparency and replicability in the natural sciences to win confidence from decision-makers.
The Cuban Missile Crisis may seem distant, but nuclear dangers are not speculative fiction. Thousands of cities are mere minutes away from nuclear destruction by weapons far more powerful than those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This is the legacy of “protection” by nuclear deterrence. If scientists draw a lesson from October 1962, it is that existential risks demand novel thinking. Like climate change, solving the nuclear disarmament puzzle requires improved understanding of system-altering change. Putin’s nuclear saber-rattling sends a clear message: Now is the time to fund and pursue scientific research for a world beyond nuclear deterrence.
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