Sheepland Episode 01: Nuclear Weapons | Dr. Debak Das

Audio & Transcript

Executive Producers: John Lamberger, Lindsey Ferrini, Connor JL Moore

This transcript has been edited for clarity and readability while preserving the speakers’ original meaning and conversational tone. Minor repetitions, filler words, and false starts have been removed. Speaker attributions have been carefully reviewed against the audio to ensure accuracy.

Introduction

Atomic bombs. Thermonuclear warheads. Intercontinental ballistic missiles. The bomb. The big one. The fat man. The little boy.

Lindsey: Hello, I'm Lindsey Ferrini.

John: And I'm John Lamberger. Welcome to Sheepland, the wide green pastures of our modern media environment.

Lindsey: Sheepland, where people are fenced in by politics, graze on soundbites, and fall prey to the wolves of propaganda. So where are we?

John: Sheepland, a program about the great issues facing humanity.

Lindsey: A Mooreposts Podcast…

Lindsey: All nuclear weapons employ a phenomenon called fission to create a chain reaction that releases an immense amount of energy in a fraction of a second.

John: A fission or fusion reaction involving the unstable atoms of uranium or plutonium releases an immense amount of energy, creating an explosion so powerful that a single device can destroy an entire city.

Lindsey: The physical blast, thermal radiation, and radioactive fallout combined with long-term environmental damage have the potential to kill hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people.

John: On September 23, 1992, the United States conducted its 1,054th and final nuclear weapons test. Soon after, President Clinton signed the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty. With the Soviet Union dissolved, It seemed as though an era had ended, an era in which the science of human relationships finally outpaced the science of waging war.

Lindsey: Today, roughly 90% of the world's 12,241 nuclear weapons remain in the arsenals of the United States and Russia. The rest are held by China, the United Kingdom, France, North Korea, India, Pakistan and Israel.

John: So did the nuclear age really end with the Cold War? Or merely fall silent, waiting for humanity to forget?

Introducing Dr. Debak Das

Lindsey: Dr. Debak Das is an assistant professor in peace and security at the Joseph Korbel School of Global and Public Affairs at the University of Denver.

John: The scope of his research and study includes international security, nuclear proliferation, crises, and international history.

Lindsey: Nuclear weapons is obviously a very important topic and it can be scary, it can be a lot to take in and controversial. So how did you first learn about them?

Dr. Das: Thanks, that's a great question. I first learned about nuclear weapons as a kid actually. So I grew up in India. In a city called Kolkata. And in 1998, India conducted five nuclear tests, nuclear weapons tests, in Western India, in the desert of Rajasthan. And for the first time, nuclear weapons suddenly were in the public domain. People were talking about it, newspapers were writing about it, culturally, too, we have this huge festival which happens actually around October in Kolkata especially where all kinds of it's like the city becomes this moving art installation. There was a lot of art dedicated to nuclear weapons in a way that did not necessarily convey the dangers that we think of today. It was more of a celebration of strength of power and things like that. And really, that's my first memory of getting introduced to this idea of what nuclear weapons are. 

Then 1999 happens, India and Pakistan fight this war, which is under the nuclear shadow, both countries have nuclear weapons. They're fighting a war. Again, this is being talked about a fair amount, internationally, but also in the public domain. So those are some of my early memories of how I thought of or got interested in nuclear weapons. And of course, then as graduate school progresses, as you may well know, you go into different kinds of specializations. I was fortunate enough to have a few professors and a few classes offered on nuclear weapons, took those, got involved in the think tank circle, started organizing track two dialogues between India and Pakistan on nuclear issues, India, Pakistan and China as well. So really that's when what was an early interest transformed into a broader academic interest. What do we think about these weapons? How do these weapons proliferate? What are the different ways in which we should be thinking about the dangers and threats posed by these weapons? So I started thinking about that a lot more.

Why Study Nuclear Weapons?

John: What has really, like, what about nuclear weapons stood out to you the most? That, like, is there like a deeper just thing that drives you to center a career around this? Like, something about nuclear weapons that is just so different from any other interesting subject.

Dr. Das: Absolutely. I think in terms of the sheer destruction and the sheer nature and magnitude of the, the weapon itself is awe-inspiring? So there is this broader question of what are we doing here? Why are we building more of these things? Why is it that these weapons have become a core part of the security strategies of the countries that have nuclear weapons? Why do countries covet nuclear weapons, even non-nuclear countries? Why haven't we, and when I say we, I don't just mean academics, I mean we as a broader public, interested in survival, interested in thriving in a future that is positive and good for the climate, good for the environment, good for the future generations. Why do we embrace these horrendously dangerous systems? And make them an almost everyday part of the business of securing ourselves. It's very antithetical. There are a lot of dilemmas in that? And there are a lot of contradictions in that. That to me is fascinating.

Lindsey: Yeah, it's just such a complex topic.

Dr. Das: Yeah, absolutely.

Lindsey: A lot of people, when they think of nuclear weapons and even when I like brought up that, we're going to be speaking with you to family members and things and they just say, well, what are you going to talk about? Like, do we use them? Do we like them? I'm like, no, it's actually, there's a lot that goes into it. It's not just the nuclear weapon itself. That's like the center of all these topics and politics and, it's, it's really complex.

Dr. Das: Yeah, absolutely. And, and when you say there are a lot of things that go into it

that really resonates. Because first it's like peeling an onion. Of course, there's the bomb. There's and in fact, even before the bomb, there's the uranium that's like in under a mountain somewhere that has to be mined. There's an entire mining operation there that has to get extracted. There are scientific processes that, pre-process that turn it into uranium that could potentially be used in a weapon. So that means enrichment. Things that you hear about when you talk about Iran's nuclear program potentially. Then there's a question of, will you use plutonium? Then you have to reprocess the waste from the uranium. Then you have to take all of that, package that into a bomb itself. But the bomb can't go anywhere by itself, so you have to build delivery vehicles. So missiles, nuclear submarines, aircraft? Then there's a question of, okay, how are we going to control these weapons? So what is our command and control setup? So there's satellites, communication cables underwater? There's this entire infrastructure, which is not just the bomb and the missile? And then there's the broader political question of where is, where are the people here? Are the people, are the public involved? And do they have a role in this decision making process? Is it just the political elite and nuclear weapons? Decision making is a very Elite driven Enterprise. There's so many different layers. And that's another going back to your earlier question. That's another thing that fascinates me about the subject itself.

Human Consequences of Nuclear Weapons

John: It sort of touches everything, environment, democracy, anything. I have two little short stories that really shook me that have stayed with me for a while. Just to preface, flavor the question. So Moto Musuro, and her daughter Toshiko Saiki lived in Hiroshima. Because of the Second World War and American firebombing, Toshiko had evacuated her son to the outlying suburbs of the city. In mid-summer 1945, she went to visit him. On August 6th, the United States exploded the first atomic bomb over Hiroshima. Toshiko, in the suburbs, rushed back to the city but could not find her mother. Misoru. A month later, Toshiko's brother-in-law searched the destroyed home and was able to recover only her head. Glasses, which she always wore, were stuck to it. I saw those glasses at the Hiroshima Peace Museum in Japan. The 2017 Nobel Peace Prize winning organization the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, conducted an interview with George Coleman. He was a former Navy officer. In 1952, he participated as a test subject on the risks of being exposed to a nuclear blast. He recalled in the interview of lying in a trench with his hands covering his closed eyes as a shield from the bright light. When the bomb exploded, he recalled seeing the bones in his hands as if he were looking at an x-ray. He soon began losing his hair, his thyroid stopped functioning, and he later developed prostate cancer. So I say both of those things because it is just so unimaginable. And we have inherited this legacy and these weapons. But our humans, including those in the future, are capable of truly understanding the destructive scope of these weapons.

Dr. Das: Both of those stories are so evocative and both true stories which give us a flavor of how truly dangerous and destructive these weapons are in a way that we do not talk about, you know, when we talk about nuclear weapons policy, when we are talking about building more nuclear weapons, when we are talking about deterrence, we are not talking about some of the effects of what does this actually mean? What do your policies actually lead to? Sort of encapsulated in these stories that you just said. Are we capable of understanding the scope of the harm and damage? I think we are. I think the more you actually are curious and you learn, you find out that these weapons have in fact affected millions of lives over the years and I don't just mean in Hiroshima, which, you know, your story very much sort of brought out an aspect of what happens when you use nuclear weapons in or on a population, on a civilian population, more importantly. It's also people who have lived in areas where nuclear testing has taken place. So I'm thinking about the South Pacific, the Marshall Islands. I'm also thinking of the United States, places like New Mexico and Nevada. And people have lived with the effects of radiation in those populations. And lived with the intergenerational sort of damage that has been done to their bodies, which has probably passed down through different generations. So I think we have the science, we have the knowledge, we have the stories of survivors, these accounts, which are extremely harrowing. If you listen to the stories of the Hibakusha, the folks who survived the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and those stories are extremely well documented. So it's a question of do you have the interest of going out and finding out what is the effect of these weapons? And it's not just about your own interest, it's also a question of the policy community and us as the academic community, are we able to communicate these stories across to the broader public so that people understand? And I think there are efforts there. Perhaps those efforts aren't enough. There can always be more. I think my direct answer to you is yes, we can understand the scope of the harm. And at the same time we are not understanding it because there is a gap in access to that knowledge. And that's what we need to try and bridge.

Arms Racing and Nuclear Reduction

Lindsey: In 1986, there were around 70,000 nuclear warheads in the world. Today, there are about 12,241, most of those being held by the United States and the Soviet Union. Why were there so many to begin with, and what led to that reduction?

Dr. Das: So one, To answer the question of why we get to those numbers, of course, this was a great power competition. We were in a world in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 50s, it was a slow ramping up, but there was definitely President Eisenhower who sent sort of a full push forward towards building as many nuclear weapons as possible. A part of that was feeling insecure about what the Soviet Union was doing. And at the same time, the Soviet Union was feeling insecure about what the United States was doing. This is what we call a classic security dilemma. I think that I'm not safe enough, and so I keep building more. And you think that you're not safe enough because you don't know exactly what I'm doing, and so you keep building more, or you don't trust me. So you keep building more regardless of what's going on in terms of diplomacy, etc. And so that's how we get to this mind blowing sort of 70,000 is just such a ridiculous number when you think about the number of nuclear weapons that two countries possess.

John: It seems divorced from like how many do you even need? 

Dr. Das: Exactly. And in the 60s, there used to be this talk of a gap. A nuclear gap. So if there is a gap, we have to meet it because we have to be at parity. And people always perceived there to be a gap. There was talk of a missile gap. If you have 100 missiles, I need to have 100 missiles. But hey, you're probably going to build 50 more, so let me try and build 200. And then you look at me trying to build 200 and you think, I need to build 250. And so on and so forth. And that's how you get to 70. So that's one. I think in the 80s, what happens is slowly but surely there is a broader sense of the danger that is present in, and pretty much the, the idea of head trigger alerts, where you could potentially launch a nuclear weapon pretty much as soon as you thought that the other side was to launch. Because you needed time to fill your missiles, it would take time to actually launch those missiles, etc. So we were in the United States as well as in the Soviet Union pretty much on the precipice. There was an exercise called the Able Archer exercise in the early 80s, which the NATO countries, including the United States, conducted, and that really freaked the Soviet Union out. As a part of while all of this is taking place, of like, you know, states sort of posturing against each other, building up more, there's also a very strong disarmament movement, which is grassroots organizations, non-governmental organizations, college campuses, people on the streets. About a million people land up in Central Park in New York protesting against nuclear weapons, which was at that point in time the largest sort of gathering of people for a cause, any political cause. So there's that happening in the United States. The other thing that's very interesting is, and this sounds a little ridiculous, but it actually did happen, which is that in 1983, there's this movie called the Day After that was released. And the Day After is about NATO and Warsaw Pact countries sort of basically ramping up the rhetoric and eventually launching nuclear weapons against each other. And then the destruction that follows the day after the nuclear bombs have fallen. And a million people, at least I think millions of people, watch this on the same evening that it's sort of broadcast in the United States. One of the people who watched it was President Reagan. And it freaks President Reagan out. And it truly represents this change in somebody who is fairly, before that, hawkish on a number of different security issues, to think we can't destroy ourselves. Then, of course, Reagan finds a partner in Gorbachev, who's the premier of the Soviet Union, who also is like minded in the sense of thinking there is an inherent danger to keeping nuclear weapons and staying on this hair trigger alert. So those two actually come together to bring forward all these treaties like the INF, which is the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, like START, which is, you know, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. And so there is a move as you kind of reach this height of 70,000 and great vulnerability for people, there is a backlash against that, not only from the people but also from the political class. And so hence we start seeing a reduction. And then, of course, the Soviet Union collapses. The threat of nuclear weapons strike from a great power adversary reduces. So the United States is also ready to reduce the number of nuclear weapons that it has. Countries like France give up a leg. So you generally have an air, sea and land-based sort of nuclear weapons. And the French give up their land-based nuclear weapons. In the 90s, because they say, look, the threat has changed, the threat has reduced. So there is this hopeful moment where people are reducing numbers, the START treaty has come into place, there's a dramatic reduction. Of course, today we are in a place that's very different. We'll talk about that in a second, I'm sure, but that's kind of the story of the dramatic reduction.

Tactical Nuclear Weapons and Escalation

John: That's a good place to transition so that was a hopeful peak of nuclear weapons. I'm really concerned about the valley. And if we're entering a valley today, Russia has deployed tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus and has begun joint tactical drills around them. These weapons are intended to be used on the battlefield against troops, although it could vary greatly. Battlefield nukes could unleash an explosion from less than one kiloton, which is a kiloton is 1000 tons of TNT, if you can even imagine that, to tens of kilotons. For reference, the bomb used in Hiroshima was 15 kilotons. Do you think that it's possible to use nuclear weapons in a responsible manner or within some sort of ethical framework where harm is proportional, like against troops on a battlefield?

Dr. Das: I think the answer to that is no. The answer to that is no because when you say in proportional terms you assume that there is a certain level of controllability, that you can control the proportion, the harm that is being caused by the nuclear explosion itself but also the radiation that comes after. Then there's a question of what happens to the other side. Do they think of it as being proportional or not? So can you control escalation? Once a single nuclear weapon has been used, there is this spiral that you're very likely to fall into where I think that I need to use more against you and you might think that you need to use more against me. And before you know it, there is no tactical use of nuclear weapons. There is another fallacy around this idea of a tactical use of nuclear weapons. If you think of where are these weapons going to be used, so if you think of a nuclear competition between countries like say India and Pakistan, if a single tactical nuclear weapon is used in a battlefield along the border of India and Pakistan, the population densities are such that there can never be just a tactical use where only members of the military are being affected. Broader and larger civilian populations will be impacted naturally. And then there's that question that we talked about earlier about intergenerational harm. What does this mean for harm of the land, but also of the people, of the animals on it? The Physicians for Social Responsibility, which is a set of scientists who look at nuclear weapons use and also advocate for nuclear disarmament, did this study on what would happen if a few tactical nuclear weapons were used in South Asia. And they came to the conclusion that 2 billion people in the world would be at risk because the use of these weapons would lead to maybe a very marginal change in the climate, the temperatures that you would have, which might then lead to famine, which would lead to crop failure broadly. Which would then lead to all this death. So when we say tactical nuclear weapons use, we should be really careful about what we are talking about and how do you actually differentiate between tactical and strategic?

Deterrence and the Kargil Conflict

John: The Cold War is often framed as an indirect conflict in which the US, Soviet Union, two nuclear armed states confronted each other through third party actors, espionage, and extremely violent wars in satellite countries such as Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan. Yet virtually no American or Soviet military forces ever directly fought each other because of the nuclear exchange that could possibly escalate from that. However, in 1999 from May to July, a violent conflict occurred between two nuclear armed states, Pakistan and India. In the Cargill War. Depending on the source, the number of casualties on both sides range from hundreds to several thousands. Please correct me if you have a good source for that. War between two nuclear armed states. Do you feel as though that is an encouraging development that this conflict remained limited without the use of nuclear weapons? Or is this a discouraging development as it hollows out that deterrent value of not avoiding conflict at all times between these two states?

Dr. Das: Any time nuclear weapons are not used, that’s encouraging. So let me start there. The good news is that we did not see an escalation beyond the theater of Kashmir, where the two armies fought, which is where the, which is why we call it a limited war. Other parts of the India-Pakistan border could have potentially been opened up. Both sides did not decide to open up those borders. So, the conflict remained limited. And so that's a good thing. Now, you asked me about the deterrent value of, of nuclear weapons, what's, how does that figure in this story? And I think this is where we need to question, what is deterrence by you. What does this idea of nuclear weapons mean to you? So in 1999, when the Pakistani irregular forces as well as the Army forces crossed over to the Indian side and occupied about 500 square miles of territory before, at, let me say, in the, in the height of winter in the Himalayas, which is no mean feat. India only found out that this had happened when the snow started thawing and sometime in April. When they realized that, oh, we don't actually have those, those peaks anymore. People who were going out to graze with their animals were like, that's not you up there. And so then there's the question of, Well, India had nuclear weapons in 1999. Why did that not deter Pakistan from doing that? India has had nuclear weapons since 1998. We still see terrorist attacks happen on it, on its soil, intermittently. With the most recent one taking place earlier this year in May. So why does that continue to happen? Why do conventional armies fight each other even when both sides have nuclear weapons? Why does one side attack another one? So it's telling us and it's giving us these data points that, well, nuclear weapons don't actually deter that. There is, let's, let's temper our expectations about what deterrent value we get from nuclear weapons. It's not going to deter everything. There's folks who might say, you know, maybe it doesn't deter much at all. So if these weapons are in fact unusable, which a lot of people have talked about and claimed, then what is it actually deterring?

The Korean Peninsula and Demilitarization

Lindsey: So nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula. Are often cited by North Korea as an obstruction to peace and reunification. But South Korea doesn't have any nuclear weapons. I mean, they rely on the, you know, the United States for that. And would this mean that, like, demilitarization and the removal of American troops in South Korea, would it allow for, like, a future United Korea or Korean Peninsula?

Dr. Das: That’s a very difficult question. There are no easy answers.

Lindsey: Yeah, it is. That's why we're asking you.

Dr. Das: No easy questions here. You know, it's difficult to say whether the demilitarization, in the sense whether the removal of US troops from South Korea would lead to reunification. But I would say that that would be the first step because you cannot have reunification without the removal of US troops. The other thing here is you have between North Korea and South Korea and the United States, the Korean War has not ended officially for any of these countries. There's a ceasefire and we've been in that ceasefire for the last, let's say, 70 something years. So step one is to actually acknowledge that this war has ended. And can we talk about the terms of what that peace would look like? And that in itself would lead to some kind of demilitarization presumably because then you would stop treating the Korean Peninsula as an active war zone where US troops for example have to be deployed. That's pretty much step one. Then it's a business of diplomacy. How can you actually have a stable situation between South Korea and North Korea along the border? Can you have diplomatic relations? And then can you talk reunification? That's up to those two parties specifically. And at the same time, North Korea has security concerns. South Korea has very severe security concerns. So there's a question of how can you assure if you're the United States or if you're China. Interested parties in that peninsula, how can you assure that there is some kind of security provided or there are some sort of assurances of security given? To either side so that there can be some kind of negotiation around either reunification or coexistence. But as you say, demilitarization is probably the first step and I don't think that's going to happen without first acknowledging the end of the war.

South Korean Nuclearization and Proliferation Risks

Lindsey: My follow-up question to that and I'm I'm specifically curious about this, especially because you previously talked about how much deterrent value nuclear weapons actually hold. So as tensions of the Indo-Pacific conflict with China and North Korea increase, and the future commitment by the United States starts to become uncertain, Should South Korea compete in nuclear armament to protect itself? Would that cause an uproar? Just increase the tension in that region?

Dr. Das: It would certainly increase the tension in the region. And yes, it would certainly create an uproar. South Korea getting nuclear weapons would be an extremely dangerous outcome for the world. And I'll tell you why I say that. One is, of course, for the region itself, because then you'll have, for the first time, a sort of contiguous number of countries in Asia which have nuclear weapons that share borders? So you'll have, let's say if we start with Russia right at the top, you would have North Korea, South Korea, North Korea shares a border with China, Russia also shares a border with China, India shares a border with China, Pakistan shares a border with India? So that's one straight line of countries that share each other, that share borders that will have nuclear weapons. So that's one terrifying idea. And even without South Korea, that's terrifying enough? That would just be in addition, more terror. Then there's this question of how do we see North Korea potentially responding to South Korea having nuclear weapons? Does it mean that it's going to ramp up production somehow? Does it mean that it's going to increase its potential nuclear delivery capacity? There's also a question of how China is going to feel about this? Does that mean that we are going to see more Chinese nuclear weapons potentially targeting South Korea? Are we going to just see more ramping up of the Chinese nuclear weapons production line, which, by the way, is already at a pretty high sort of cadence? They're building nuclear weapons pretty fast to the best of our knowledge. And then on the other side, if you think of it beyond the adversary's question, what's Japan going to do if South Korea gets nuclear weapons? And if South Korea gets nuclear weapons and there is no consequence for that, why shouldn't Poland? Because South Korea getting nuclear weapons is also a sign that, hey, we don't believe in the United States' capabilities or assurances to secure our borders or we don't believe in the nuclear umbrella that the United States is giving us. Once that happens, other countries which are under the nuclear umbrella, especially in Europe, are also going to reconsider their position on that nuclear umbrella. So what does that mean for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty? What does that mean for other nuclear, non-nuclear countries? If,  South Korea builds these nuclear weapons and sort of breaks with what has been the international norms of not building more nuclear weapons. It's a difficult question, and it's certainly a very dangerous sort of situation, given the kind of public support there is for South Korean nuclearization right now.

Preemptive Strikes and Nuclear Self-Defense

Lindsey: In Chapter 7, Article 51 of the UN Charter, it states that nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a member of the United Nations. With the immense speed and destructive power of nuclear weapons is even just the possibility or thought of obtaining them by one state, a threat or a preemptive attack by another state.

Dr. Das: This is something that's happened in the past. Where when a country thinks that another country is going to get a nuclear weapon and that is going to potentially threaten them, Countries have gone in and attacked the potential proliferator. So we saw this with Israel attacking Iraq, the Osirak reactor in the early 80s. We've seen Israel striking Syria's potential nuclear capabilities in I think it was 2006 or around then. The United States and Israel together set back Iran's nuclear program with the use of the Stuxnet cyber attack, as well as the recent attacks this summer over in Iran by the United States. So, do countries often try to conduct preemptive attacks? Yes. Now, then there's a question of how effective those attacks are? If we take the most recent example of these attacks on Iran, have they been effective? We don't know. Even though there are certain folks who have claimed that this was a great success, if you look at the statements of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the IAEA in the following months. They've essentially said, some of these facilities still remain. Iran has a big scientific base to draw from, and it potentially has a fair amount of enriched uranium, which is not terribly far away from reaching weapons agreement. Ultimately, military attacks, preemptive attacks might set back a nuclear program for a certain amount of time, depending on how severe those attacks are. But to give up a nuclear weapons program requires diplomacy. It requires a change in a state's feeling threatened, as well as what is going to make it secure. You have to convince somebody that, hey, this is not going to make you secure. Bombing them is not going to make them feel more secure. I think we've got to think about some of those sorts of questions as we think about whether preemptive strike potentially on a potential nuclear weapons program is going to help that process of denuclearization. You might also potentially strengthen the resolve of the country that you're bombing. And so then you're going to have the opposite outcome of what you were trying to do in the first place. So, that's something to think about.

Leadership Psychology and Nuclear Decision-Making

Lindsey: Yeah. And I would imagine it would have to also depend on exactly what state would be obtaining that nuclear weapon. I know we keep going back to the Korean Peninsula, but if South Korea were to obtain nuclear weapons like North Korea, we know that the leader is a pretty hawkish leader. That would have a pretty negative outcome, of course, with other states in that region. I think depending on the relationship, you have to take that into account and the leaders and how they're going to respond as well, and the strength of that state.

Dr. Das: Absolutely. I think you're totally right about it matters who the leader is of any country. Whether they're going to feel more threatened. And there's actually literature on this. My colleague Rachel Whitlark, who has written a book on leaders and nuclear counterproliferation, talks about how there is a lot of evidence on how a leader thinks about the world, what their life experiences have been, all of those things shape their political positions. And then it also shapes how they might respond to crises, especially nuclear crises and crises which involve a potential country getting nuclear weapons, that is their adversary. So you see a difference, for example, between Kennedy and Johnson. These are two administrations that are almost the same in terms of staffers, secretaries of state, cabinet, they're exactly the same apart from the fact that the president changes after Kennedy is assassinated. There you see very different outlooks on whether you should be going in and trying to proactively stop a country from getting nuclear weapons or not. So leadership matters, how they think, who they are, how secure do they feel. All of those things matter.

John: And countries have given up nukes like South Africa, Ukraine, although they might not have had access to them, but they still, politics did exist, through diplomacy and pressure to have them do so.

Dr. Das: Absolutely. South Africa giving up nuclear weapons in the 1990s, on somewhat questionable grounds of political change and potentially the ANC coming into power, their bombs themselves were potentially aimed at internally against internal resistance to the apartheid regime. That particular regime I sort of think of as a little bit of an outlier to the broader to other sort of denuclearization examples. When we think about countries like Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus, for example, those are countries that have truly given up nuclear weapons who inherited thousands of nuclear weapons when the Soviet Union collapsed and they gave up those weapons under the most famous memorandum, of course, is the Budapest Memorandum, which we've heard about a lot in recent years. But also Kazakhstan and Belarus had separate agreements with the United States with other P5 countries. In return for giving up these nuclear weapons, there were, you know, financial aid that was given to those countries. And not only that, part of them giving up nuclear weapons was not just external pressure, it was also internal sort of churn and anti-nuclear sentiment. These existed both in Ukraine as well as in Kazakhstan. There are two books which have come out very recently which I think are worth reading. One is called Inheriting the Bomb by Mariana Bujarin talks about Ukraine's nuclear weapons, about Ukraine inheriting nuclear weapons and how they gave them up. And the other one is on Kazakhstan's nuclear weapons called Atomic Step by Tokhtar Kasenova. And that talks about how Kazakhstan had the experience of Kazakhstan as a place where the Soviet Union tested nuclear weapons, harbored nuclear weapons, and then eventually left nuclear weapons. And sort of the anti-nuclear movement within Kazakhstan that led to them giving up nuclear weapons. So it was an interplay of both international politics and domestic politics.

John: Certainly the legacy of Chernobyl was fresh in everyone's mind too.

Dr. Das: Absolutely. And that's where the anti-nuclear sentiment in the region really comes from. This idea that it could happen anywhere. In a sense, that's still true today. We assume that we can control nuclear technology. And here I mean civilian nuclear power technology as well as nuclear weapons technology. But every now and then you have a very, very rare case, what we call a black swan event, and you get a Chernobyl, you get a Fukushima. You get a three mile island. So the United States is not alien to this idea. It has happened on United States soil before. And those are things that we need to think about as we go forward and we think about either nuclear energy as being something that is desirable or building more nuclear weapons as something that is more desirable.

The Future, New START, and China

John: So let's talk about where we go from here, the future. In 2017, the Congressional Budget Office estimated the Obama administration's plans for the future of the US nuclear forces would cost $1.2 trillion in 2017 dollars over the 2017 to 2046 period, a figure that has only grown with modernization and subsequent administrations. On February 5th, 2026, the New START treaty, the only remaining bilateral arms control agreement between the US and Russia, will expire, effectively ending any legally binding limits on nuclear arsenal size. And in the deserts of the Gansu province in China, China is constructing about 120 missile silos, part of a broader effort to rapidly expand its strategic forces. And you talked about the high cadence of them. Constructing their nuclear arsenal. According to the US Department of Defense, China could possibly field a stockpile of around 1,500 nuclear warheads by 2035. Are we in that valley? Are we re-entering a nuclear arms race? Will we always be in one?

Dr. Das: First, I'd say we don't always have to be in a nuclear arms race. Being in a nuclear arms race is an active choice. Like most other things in life, you choose to be in one. You can also choose not to be in one. But I see what you're talking about here as being one. That is the issue of China ramping up its nuclear arms production of the New START treaty essentially ceasing to exist in 2026 in February, which is not terribly far away. All of those are points of concern. So let's start with the New START treaty. There is no mechanism to renew the treaty as it stands because it has been extended. President Putin about a month ago, said that he and Russia would unilaterally adhere to the stipulations of the treaty for at least one year. Now it remains to be seen what the United States is going to do. The United States could well say, well, okay, we will do the same, and that will give us a year to potentially negotiate some kind of new agreement. That is very similar to New Start. So that's an option and we can continue to hold out hope for that because despite everything, President Trump has in fact in the past made statements about how dangerous nuclear weapons are. It seems that in the US administration there is hence an understanding that more nuclear weapons might be more dangerous for the world. So one can hold out hope that there might be some kind of agreement there. At the same time, the United States might also be reluctant to come to an agreement like this because once the New START treaty expires, keeping an eye on China and the ramping up of nuclear weapons there, the United States might say, well, this is an opportunity for us now that we are not limited by the new start treaty to build more strategic Warheads and increase our stockpile. And if that happens, there is a broader question of what is strategic logic that is going to drive that? Do more nuclear weapons necessarily make you safer? I'd argue the answer is no. Even somebody like Henry Kissinger, who is extremely hawkish, of course became anti-nuclear towards the end of his life. Even somebody like Henry Kissinger in the 1950s when he was writing about nuclear weapons, says beyond a certain number, what are you going to do with more nuclear weapons? Are you going to make the rubble bounce? Which means that you don't actually need that many nuclear weapons to, say, destroy Beijing, to destroy, you know, Moscow. So beyond the 1550 deployed nuclear weapons, do you need more? And likewise is applicable to China or Russia. Do they need more to be able to target their adversary primarily, which is the United States? And I'd argue the answer is no. Countries like India and Pakistan, for example, have kept the number of nuclear weapons that they have at what they call a minimum, sort of talking about a credible minimum deterrence, which basically says we don't need more than a few hundred. That number could even be lower potentially. But it really depends on what you believe, which is why I say being in an arms race is a choice. Because you could choose to say, how about we cap our nuclear numbers at 100 each? Then we can talk about the next step. So that's, that's one part of it. I do want to flag something that we don't often talk about, which should be talked about more, which is that there is, beyond these nuclear countries, an entire movement, which is called the tree, which is centered around the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons. It's called the nuclear ban movement. About 120 countries essentially passed this treaty in the UN in 2017. More than 90 countries are signatories to this. And they essentially are countries that have given up the right to build nuclear weapons. They are in favor of getting nuclear weapons to zero. So they're in favor of nuclear disarmament. And they essentially say, look, the consequences of the use of nuclear weapons is not just going to be on nuclear countries. So, if you use a nuclear weapon against China or if China uses a nuclear weapon against the United States, that's going to affect everybody? That's going to affect the world. Nowhere in the world are you going to be exempt from it. So, even if you're a non-nuclear country, you are affected by something that you have no control over. So, they are trying to build up this movement and, you know, half the countries in the world have signed on to that. Of course, the nuclear countries have not. But it's important to note that there is a countervailing force against this idea that building more nuclear weapons is a normal thing. These countries are saying, no, it's not normal. In fact, you need to be building. Well, you need to stop building and give up your nuclear weapons because you're all making us more unsafe. So let's think about that as well. And how do we factor that into our understanding of what is the threat? Is it a threat that the United States is building more nuclear weapons? Is it a threat that China is building more nuclear weapons? Is it a threat just that there are too many nuclear weapons in the world and something might happen to one one day and then, you know, all bets are off?

Public Opinion and Democracy

Lindsey: Well, it is hopeful to hear that a lot of the world is rooting for less of them. And it is always a tense subject, isn't it?

John: I mean, something got us from 70,000 to 12,000 is too many, but it's certainly a dramatic shift.

Dr. Das: For sure. And we're seeing at this moment a slow ticking up of that number from 12,000. 12,000. And so it's on us to talk about this more. It's on us to do what you both have just done, which is, you know, talk about this and put this out to the public and help, hopefully spark conversations and also think about what we want? Sure, the intelligence Community thinks something and the government thinks something and the white house thinks something and likewise across the world? Like the leadership of every country thinks a certain thing about what makes us safe. What about the people living in democracies? What do you think makes you safe? If you're sitting in, you know, we are sitting in Colorado? We've got nuclear ICBMs in the northern part of our state? Does that make you feel any safer? I don't know. I certainly worry about those nuclear ICBM silos being potential targets if there is a war between Russia and the United States or China and the United States. So that doesn't necessarily make me feel terribly safe. Does that make you terribly safe? And is it possible for you to shape the conversation from the ground up into trying to craft a policy that you'd like rather than a bunch of people who are elites in the world?

Lindsey: I think you're absolutely right that it needs to be talked about more, especially with the general public and people living in a democracy. I feel like nuclear weapons tend to be sort of taboo to people who don't look into them and don't understand anything about them or what they are and what they do. And, you bring it up and people say, oh, no, that's too much. I can't, I don't know. That's a lot to talk about. I don't know.

John: Or it's, it keeps us safe and they slap their knee or something.

Lindsey: Yeah. So it is, I agree with you that it's important. It should be more of a normal thing to talk about, especially today.

Dr. Das: Absolutely. Yeah. So thank you for doing that.

Lindsey: Yeah. We're glad we got to sit down with you and pick your brain about something we've just been just so curious about, because we talk about it with each other and with our peers, especially in grad school and It's nice to sit down with someone who has built a career around it and studies it and can inform us.

John: This was everything we wanted to ask, but we're too afraid to ask. 

Closing

Lindsey: To lighten the mood a little bit, and just to kind of wrap it up, we thought we would ask you a fun question, which is if you could personally recommend one place that everyone should visit, whether it's for its beauty, importance, for its people, whatever it may be. What is one place that everyone should visit?

Dr. Das: So I'm going to give you a very biased answer here. I'm from India, and I think for those of you who have not been to India, you should absolutely visit. And you can visit in any season. And there's always a part of India. It's such a huge country. There's always a part that you can go to. If it's hot, you can go to the Himalayas. If it's kind of, you know, like, cold, you can go to the beach and go. You can come to Calcutta, which is where I'm from, where you'll get the best food in India. And that's, you know, that this, this is, this is not a hot steak, at least in my opinion, but sure to create a little bit of controversy amongst others, but so I would say, you know, go to the subcontinent. There's a lot to do, there's a lot to experience, there's a lot of, uh, not just Scenic Beauty, but also, cultural insight that you might yet, and if you're listening to this in the United States, it's definitely a very different sort of language. I don't mean language in the sense of, like, most Indians will speak in English to you, but the language of how we think and how we're talking about things is often different in different parts of the world. Wherever you go, that's, that's true of any So yeah, I would say go find yourself in India.

John: I'm sold.

Organizations to Highlight

John: And lastly, at Mooreposts, we want to make it a point to promote nonprofits or organizations that create positive impacts. Are there any that you'd want to share, promote, or just have people know about that are important to you?

Dr. Das: I'd flag two. One is the Ploughshares Fund. The Ploughshares Fund has been working for decades now on reducing the threat of nuclear weapons in the world. And they also have a podcast. They fund a lot of different projects around community building, as well as spreading information as well as understanding of the threat from nuclear weapons. 

Another organization that I've been sort of thinking about and following their work recently is called the NDN Collective. They work with Indigenous communities and Indigenous-led organizations in the United States, Canada, Latin America, and I know that a part of their work has been to work with survivors of areas where there's been nuclear testing in the United States. So areas in New Mexico, for example, especially, and we know the native populations are the ones who have been the most affected by some of those nuclear tests. And so they work with them in trying to create policy advocacy for them. And so those are a couple of organizations that I would follow.

Final Thanks and Outro

John: Absolutely. Dr. Das, thank you so much for doing this. This was very generous of your time.

Dr. Das: This was an absolute joy. It's always a pleasure to talk to students. It's always a pleasure for me to be talking about nuclear weapons. Talking about the different ways in which they affect us. So thank you for having me. This was a delight.

John: Sheepland. A program about the great issues facing humanity.

Lindsey: A Mooreposts Podcast.

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DISCLAIMER

The views and opinions expressed by podcast guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Mooreposts, its editors, contributors, or affiliates. Podcast transcripts are edited for clarity and readability; section headers have been added for navigational purposes. The substance and intent of all remarks remain unchanged.