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Ukraine crisis highlights the very real peril of nuclear war

Another View: Ukraine crisis puts focus on danger of nuclear war Des Moines Register By Ira Helfand May 3, 2014 The ongoing crisis in Ukraine has made it clear that the danger of nuclear war is still with us and may be greater than at any time since the height of the Cold War. What does that mean for United States nuclear policy?

There are today more than 15,000 nuclear warheads in the world. The vast majority, more than 95 percent, are in the arsenals of the United States and Russia. Some 3,000 of these warheads are on “hair-trigger” alert. They are mounted on missiles that can be fired in 15 minutes and destroy their targets around the world less than 30 minutes later.

During the Cold War, there was a widespread understanding of what nuclear weapons could do.

That is not true today.

Those who lived through the Cold War have put this painful information out of mind, and a generation has come of age that never learned about the terrible effects of nuclear war. This must change if we are to make rational decisions about nuclear policy. Over the last few years, new information has emerged that underlines the danger posed by even the limited use of nuclear weapons. Studies published in 2006 by Rutgers University’s Alan Robock and his colleagues examined the effects of a “limited” nuclear war involving just 100 small nuclear weapons, the size of the Hiroshima bomb, less than 0.5 percent of the world’s nuclear arsenals.

The specific scenario they examined involved a war between India and Pakistan. The two nations have fought three wars in the last 70 years, have come close to war on two other occasions, engage in daily skirmishes across their contested border in Kashmir, and have more than 200 nuclear weapons in their arsenals, many much larger than the weapons used in the study.

The effects in India and Pakistan are horrific. In the first week more than 20 million people are killed by blast, fire and radiation as the great cities of South Asia are destroyed.

But the global impact is far worse. As the cities burn, the fires loft 5 million tons of soot into the upper atmosphere, blocking out sunlight. Across the globe, temperatures fall an average of 1.3 degrees Celsius, and precipitation declines as less water evaporates into the cooler atmosphere to fall back as rain.

This climate disruption has a catastrophic impact on food production around the world. In Iowa, as across the entire U.S. Corn Belt, soy production declines an average of 7 percent for a full decade, and corn production declines an average of 12 percent. In China, rice production declines an average of 17 percent and the equally important wheat crop declines a staggering 31 percent.

“Nuclear Famine,” a report issued last year by Physicians for Social Responsibility, explored the impact this decline in food production would have on human health. The world is not prepared to withstand a fall in food production of this magnitude. World grain reserves amount to only some 70 days of consumption and would quickly be exhausted……….

But the danger posed by the U.S. and Russian arsenals is even greater. A single U.S. Trident submarine carries 96 warheads, each 10 to 30 times larger than the bombs used in the South Asia scenario. That means that each Trident can cause the nuclear famine scenario many times over. We have 14 of them, and that is only one-third of our nuclear arsenal, which also includes land-based missiles and long-range bombers.

The Russians have the same incomprehensible level of overkill capacity.

What would happen if there were a large nuclear war? A 2002 report by Physicians for Social Responsibility showed that if only 300 of the 1,500 warheads in the Russian arsenal got through to targets in the United States, up to 100 million people would die in the first 30 minutes. The entire economic infrastructure on which we depend — the public health system, banking system, communications network, food distribution system — would be destroyed. In the months following this attack, most of the rest of the population would also die, from starvation, exposure to cold, epidemic disease and radiation poisoning.

The global climate disruption would be even more catastrophic.

Limited war in South Asia would drop global temperatures 1.3 degrees Celsius. A war between the United States and Russia, using only those weapons they will still possess when the New START treaty is fully implemented in 2017, drops temperatures an average of 8 degrees Celsius. In the interior of Eurasia, North America and in Iowa, temperatures drop 20 to 30 degrees Celsius to a level not seen in 18,000 years — since the coldest time of the last Ice Age.

Agriculture stops, ecosystems collapse, the vast majority of the human race starves and many species, perhaps including our own, become extinct………

Recognizing these dangers, 126 nations came together in Norway in March 2013 for a two-day conference to explore the full extent of the humanitarian consequences of nuclear war. A follow-up meeting in Mexico last February attracted 146 nations — three quarters of the countries in the world. The United States and the other major nuclear powers, the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, or P5, chose to boycott these meetings fearing that they would lead to negotiations for a treaty to ban the possession of nuclear weapons.

Why should the U.S. fear such a treaty?

Russian nuclear weapons, and the nuclear weapons held by other nuclear weapons nations, remain the greatest threat to American national security. It should be the highest priority of our government to get rid of these weapons. The possibility of conflict with Russia only underlines the urgent need to make sure nuclear weapons are not available to be used by either side. We can only do this by entering into negotiations with Russia and the other nuclear weapons states to achieve the complete elimination of all nuclear weapons, including our own.

The P5 are already committed under Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty to do just this. We have loudly demanded that other countries respect the Non-Proliferation Treaty and forego nuclear weapons, but we have flouted our responsibilities under the treaty to eliminate our nuclear arsenals.

Negotiating such a treaty will not be easy, but it can be done. …….http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/opinion/columnists/2014/05/04/another-view-ukraine-crisis-danger-nuclear-war/8665185/

May 5, 2014 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, weapons and war