The Prague Project

Most comic book movies end with the superheroes saving the world from imminent destruction. To add realism, X-Men: First Class takes place at the closet the world has come to actually being destroyed – the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The movie is great on its own. But its historical setting raises some under-appreciated points about the actual Cuban Missile Crisis. Joe Cirincione and I wrote a blog at Huffington highlighting the film’s nuclear angle: The X-Men Didn’t Save Us.

In the blog, we write about a terrifying episode form the actual crisis that was unknown to me until just this week:

Vasili Arkhipov: The Man Who Saved the World

There really was a submarine escorting the missile-carrying cargo ships to Cuba. But it was a Soviet sub, not a mutant one. On October 27, US destroyers dropped depth charges on the Soviet submarine, B-59 — unaware that the sub carried a nuclear-tipped torpedo.

Cut off from communications with Moscow and with charges exploding overhead, the exhausted Soviet captain ordered the torpedo readied for launch. “We’re going to blast them now!” he said, “We will die, but we will sink them all.” But firing the torpedo required the 3 top officers to all agree. They voted. It went 2-1with Second Captain Vasili Arkhipov voting against. The order was never given, the sub surfaced and nuclear war was averted.

As this story has been told since 2002, it turns out the world owes a debt of great gratitude to Vasili Arkhipov – in addition to the usual cast of Kennedys and advisors – for averting nuclear war on the world’s most dangerous day.

That’s my lasting takeaway from writing the blog. My lasting takeaway from the movie: Kevin Bacon can afford some really fancy naval reactors.

You can learn more about the Cuban Missile Crisis at GW’s archives.

The United States spends roughly $54 billion a year on nuclear weapons and related programs, with plans in place to spend roughly $10 billion more per year on new nuclear submarines, missiles, and bombers. If plans go through, it could overshadow U.S. efforts to reap the security benefits of reducing the role and number of nuclear weapons in its military strategy.

The Tucson Graveyard for Retired B-52s

The U.S. needs to bring its nuclear budgets and guidance in line with its efforts to reduce its nuclear arsenal. Daryl Kimball, Executive Director of the Arms Control Association, makes this potent argument in his editorial “Trimming Nuclear Excess” in this month’s issue of Arms Control Today. He writes:

Maintaining and modernizing U.S. strategic forces at current, higher levels is not only unnecessary, but prohibitively expensive. If Congress and the White House are serious about reducing defense expenditures by $400 billion by 2023 to reduce the ballooning federal deficit, they should start by deferring or curtailing the Pentagon’s ambitious plan to upgrade and replace the strategic triad, which is projected to exceed $100 billion over the same period.

Current plans to replace the strategic triad of nuclear submarines, missiles, and bombers are designed to preserve the status quo – with 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear weapons once New START is implemented – through the second half of this century. We do not need that many weapons to preserve our security today, let alone in 2080. Nor can we afford that many.

The U.S. Needs to Get Control of its Nuclear Budget

As Kimball suggests, the process begins with the Obama administration’s update of the decade-old presidential guidance on nuclear force structure and employment policy. By eliminating Cold War requirements from this guidance, like the ability to launch nuclear weapons on a moment’s notice, President Obama can reorient the Pentagon toward maintaining a smaller nuclear arsenal.

This will eliminate the antiquated justifications for keeping thousands of nuclear weapons, put the U.S. on track for deep nuclear reductions, and, in the end, save perhaps hundreds of billions of dollars.

None of this will be easy. Nuclear weapons constituents in Congress and the Pentagon will attempt to defend their inflated nuclear budgets to the last dime – no matter how divorced these budgets are from strategic and fiscal realities. Given the climate in Washington, these nuclear constituents will struggle to uphold their hypocrisy of demanding budget cuts while buying weapons we do not need at costs we cannot afford.

That is why the upper hand goes to sensible policy-makers who put the U.S. on course to achieve nuclear reductions, save cash, and improve its national security.

The State Department is throwing an event on March 30th to bring together a cohort of young nuclear wonks and some seasoned experts.  With a little luck, nuclear knowledge will osmose between nuclear MVPs and conference attendees.

Ellen Tauscher will keynote the conference with Assistant Secretary Rose Gottemoeller and Amb. Susan Burk as confirmed speakers. Kingston Reif of Nukes of Hazard fame is slated to represent the youth perspective on an intergenerational panel with Deputy Assistant Secretary Frank Rose and Amb. Linton Brooks.

Registration deadline: Monday, March 28 at 3:00 PM.  Full details below:

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The U.S. Department of State

cordially invites you to a special event:

“Generation Prague: Arms Control and Nonproliferation in the 21st Century”

Please join us for a very special event that will look at challenges and opportunities facing the “Post Cold War Generation”  working in  arms control and  nonproliferation.  Panel discussions with  senior Administration  representatives, academics,  nongovernmental organization experts, and  other governments will address the following topics: “Progress  on the Prague Agenda,” “Intergenerational Attitudes and Perspectives,” “Engaging New Audiences,” and “Education, Training  and Professional Development.”   Confirmed speakers include: Under Secretary Ellen Tauscher; Assistant Secretary Rose Gottemoeller; Ambassador Susan Burk; Deputy Assistant Secretary Frank Rose; former National Nuclear Security Administration Director Ambassador Linton Brooks; and many more.  This event is open to all ages and experience levels.

DATE: Wednesday, March 30, 2011

TIMING: 9:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m.Please arrive no later than 8:30 a.m. for identification check and registration.

LOCATION: U.S. Department of State, East Auditorium, George Marshall Conference Center(Enter at 21st St. NW, between C St. & Virginia Ave., Washington, D.C.)

Please RSVP to PublicOutreach@state.gov no later than3:00p.m. EST Monday, March 28, 2011.

All RSVPs MUST include the following information:Full name, organization, title, date of birth

For U.S. citizens: U.S. drivers license number and state of issuance

For non-U.S. citizens: foreign passport number and country of issuance

Please include “Generation Prague Conference” in the subject line of your response email and please indicate if you require any special accommodations. Seating is limited.

Leave it to scientists to find yet another way in which nuclear weapons are, surprise, bad for us. A small-scale nuclear exchange involving even 100 nuclear weapons could cause long-term damage to ozone layer, resulting in drastic harm to humans around the global. Global Security Newswire picked up this latest iteration of the story, though the basic argument has been around for decades.

Last year, when an Icelandic volcano shut down the skies over the Northern Atlantic, the ash caused considerable discomfort for global travelers. Alex Bell and I took the opportunity to explain how much greater that discomfort might be if it were a handful of nuclear explosions, instead of one volcanic one, that clouded the skies with ash.  Below is a long excerpt from our article in GOOD, “What the Volcano Can Tell us About Nuclear War.”

Even though “duck and cover” drills have gone the way of the dodo and VHS, people still understand that a nuclear explosion would cause unfathomable death and destruction. What they probably do not realize is that if a nuclear war broke out anywhere, the fallout would have global consequences that would kill millions of people, disrupt climate patterns, and threaten global agricultural collapse. How do we know that would happen? Volcanoes.

The 1815 explosion of Mt. Tambora in Indonesia was the biggest volcanic eruption in the past 500 years. The ash and dust it kicked up spread around the world, blotted out the sun, and cooled global temperatures by five degrees Fahrenheit for a year. The next year, 1816, became known as “The year without a summer” and New England saw crop-killing frosts every month. With crops failing, grain supplies dropped, food prices skyrocketed, and farmers sold animals they could not feed. Widespread famines began setting in.

Climate scientists have applied lessons from volcanic eruptions like Tambora to estimate how nuclear fallout would affect the global climate. The projections aren’t good.

Put aside Cold War ideas of a U.S.-Russian nuclear exchange, India and Pakistan are the world’s tensest nuclear rivals. Both nations possess more than 100 nuclear weapons and they have mobilized for nuclear war with each other—twice. The scientists Alan Robock and Owen Brian Toon estimate (pdf) that in even a limited exchange—perhaps 50 nuclear explosions on each side—20 million Indians and Pakistanis would die from the nuclear blasts, fires, and radioactive fallout. But that’s just the beginning. The firestorm ignited by the bombs would spread heavy smoke across South Asia and send 5 million tons of particles into the atmosphere. Within 49 days, the particles would “blanket the earth, blocking enough sunlight that skies would look overcast perpetually, everywhere.” With less sun, the global average surface-air temperature would drop by 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. Precipitation averages would fall and climate patterns would change dramatically.

With shortened and disrupted growing seasons, global agricultural production would be pushed to collapse. These declines in agricultural output would be felt everywhere simultaneously, grinding international markets to a halt. Since most cities or countries only keep enough food on hand for a very short period, hunger would start in a grocery store near you. Scientists estimate that the total grain stored on the planet today would only feed the earth’s population for about two months. After that, the world could start looking like The Road.

The ash cloud from Eyjafjallajökull provided a dramatic example of how fragile our interconnected economy can be. We should remember that when we consider the importance of eliminating nuclear weapons.

Global nuclear stockpiles dropped from a Cold War high of over 70,000 nuclear weapons in 1986 to about 23,000 weapons today—with 96 percent in the United States and Russia alone. But less than half a percent of the existing global stockpile could devastate the globe. Right now nuclear weapons are being sought by terrorists; held by tense military rivals, poised on alert to launch on a moment’s notice; and occasionally lost by the most powerful country in the world. Our only hope for real security is to keep working towards a world without nucear weapons.

A couple of days ago I wrote an article for The Huffington Post with Joe Cirincione, president of Ploughshares Fund, on the nuclear dimension of Egypt’s revolution.  Here is our premise:

As a free Egypt transforms itself, analysts are nervously watching for signs of new nuclear ambitions. Concern revolves around three issues:

• There are unanswered questions about Egypt’s past nuclear activities.
• Egypt has the know-how and networks necessary to ramp up its civilian nuclear power program.
• Egypt plays a central role in the global non-proliferation regime and is key to agreement to rid the Middle East of weapons of mass destruction.

Egypt has a nuclear and conventionally superior neighbor, Israel, with whom it has fought territorial wars. The military is well-respected in Egyptian culture (as evidenced by the smooth transition of power from Mubarak to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces). The state has trained many nuclear scientists and has a long history of nuclear research. And, as a leader of the Arab world, Egypt wants to play a prominent role in world affairs. As [Robert] Einhorn observed, these are some of the tell-tale signs of nuclear ambitions.

For now these are just warning signs. But while doing all it can to help Egyptians satisfy their ambitions for freedom and prosperity, the United States needs to keep clearly in mind that Egypt remains key to the future of the nuclear nonproliferation regime.

Fortunately, the United States has some leverage.  We have contributed around $2 billion annually to Egypt in the form of military and economic aid since 1979.  Moreover, the U.S. and Egyptian militaries have a robust relationship, which has grown ever-stronger since their cooperative deployment during Operation Desert Storm.

To read the full article, click here.