Abstract
Zia Mian looks at the ideas and practices and institutions of a nuclear age, one that is like development oriented towards the future, sees no limits and links state power, science and technology, national politics and the threat and use of violence. He argues that we are trapped in the nuclear age until we understand the fundamental links between development and nuclear weapons.
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Notes
I am grateful to Martin Sherwin for this quotation.
On the members of the General Advisory Committee, the text of the October 1949 report on development of the H-bomb and the appendices, see York (1987).
A reassessment of Sakharov's 1958 analysis by von Hippel (1990) found the estimate of 10,000 people affected per megaton of yield to be more or less correct, after adding in the effects of fission products to the radioactive exposure due to carbon-14 (half-life of 5,700 years), changed assumptions about world population and new parameters for the cancer risk from radiation at low doses.
Recent calculations have shown that McNamara's criteria of nuclear sufficiency, that is, killing 25 per cent of the population, would require only a small fraction of actually existing arsenals; if applied to an attack on the United States, it would take 124 nuclear warheads to meet McNamara's criteria, only 51 warheads in the case of Russia and 368 warheads in the case of China (McKinzie et al., 2001a). The calculation assumes warheads of 475 ktons yield, comparable to those in current arsenals in the nuclear weapons states.
There is little solace to be had in the relatively smaller arsenals of India and Pakistan, the newest nuclear weapon states. A war between Pakistan and India in which each used only five of their nuclear weapons (the yield is similar to the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki) would likely kill about three million people and severely injure another one and a half million (McKinzie et al., 2001b). Both states continue to produce material for more nuclear weapons.
The 1986 Chernobyl accident led to the deaths of 30 people, the evacuation of 116,000 and subsequent relocation of some 220,000, radioactive contamination of about 150,000 square kilometres of the former Soviet Union, in which about five million people reside; the fallout affected ‘practically every country in the northern hemisphere’ (UNSCEAR, 2000: 453–566).
A scientist trained under Atoms for Peace presided over the development of Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme from 1972 until 1991. Pakistan was, however, not alone in taking advantage of the training offered by the Atoms for Peace plan. Altogether, 84 countries sent a total of over 13,000 scientists for training in nuclear science and engineering between 1955 and 1977 (Comptroller-General, 1979).
In the 1990s, poverty in Pakistan doubled, with about one in three Pakistanis living below the poverty line at the end of the 1990s (Hussain, 2003: 23), and the national adult literacy rate was about 45 per cent (ibid. 11).
The new nuclear weapons being developed by the United States include earth-penetrating weapons intended to destroy deeply buried bunkers, and low-yield nuclear weapons that would aim to reduce ‘collateral damage’ (i.e. civilian casualties). But a recent memo from the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, the agency responsible for US nuclear weapons design and development, urges weapons scientists to ‘take advantage of the opportunity’ offered by a November 2003 Congressional mandate and funding to consider ‘novel nuclear weapons concepts’ (Greg Mello, personal communication).
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Mian, Z. At War with the World: Nuclear weapons, development and security. Development 47, 50–57 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.development.1100021
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.development.1100021