Historical story

New nuclear arms race between Russia and the United States in particular

The time when the United States and the Soviet Union trumped each other on powerful (nuclear) weapons seems to be a ghost from the past. But many weapons from that era still exist, and new ones are being added at a rapid pace. Is a new conflict looming?

“You can absolutely say that there is an arms race. Much is being invested in new weapons or the modernization of old systems, but above all:the rhetoric we know from the Cold War is back," says Sico van der Meer, researcher at the Clingendael Institute in the field of nuclear weapons proliferation. “There have even been overt threats with nuclear weapons, which is something we haven't heard in decades.”

Indeed, in the summer of 2017, Donald Trump promised fire and fury — or “fire and fury” — if North Korea were to attempt an attack on the United States. North Korea then said it was considering an attack on the island of Guam (with a US air base). The altercation festered for months. Trump called North Korean leader Kim Jong-un Rocket Man and boasted that his "nuclear button" is bigger. After that, the situation calmed down and there was even rapprochement. The leaders met twice, in 2018 and 2019, but failed to reach an agreement on phasing out North Korea's nuclear program. Now, a year later, corona crisis or not, North Korea is launching test missiles again. Business as usual.

In recent years, the Russians have also become increasingly involved in the (verbal) clash of arms. In recent years, President Vladimir Putin has presented one weapon system after another that can hit enemies around the world. Lightning-fast nuclear torpedoes, nuclear-powered missiles with virtually unlimited range and so-called hypersonic missiles that hit their target 'like a meteor'.

The development of new weapons goes hand in hand with the collapse of treaties that prohibit this. Russia and the US have withdrawn from various treaties in recent years. Negotiations on extending existing agreements are on hold. Is a new Cold War brewing and what weapons are the superpowers bringing to the battlefield?

Breaking of treaties

They seem to fall like dominoes, the treaties that should put a brake on the development of new weapons and the containment of existing arsenals. In February 2019, it became Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty (INF) denounced by both Russia and the US. This treaty prohibited the development of (nuclear) missiles with a 'medium' range of 500 to 5500 kilometers. Both countries accused each other of violating the treaty by secretly developing weapons. In the meantime, that is no longer secret and they openly develop these missiles.

The agreement reached by the members of the United Nations Security Council in 2015 with Iran to end Iran's nuclear program is off the table and the Treaty on Open Skies, that allows countries such as Russia and the US to monitor each other's military build-up from the air is under pressure. The question is also whether the treaty New START holds up. In it, Russia and the US agreed in 2009 to reduce the number of operational nuclear bombs to 1,550. At that time, both nations had multiples of that in their active arsenal. The treaty expires next year and negotiations on the renewal of this treaty are deadlocked. Trump previously labeled New START a bad deal for America.

According to Van der Meer, the first domino to fall was the so-called Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that forbade the signatories to erect a defense against intercontinental ballistic missiles. In 2002, the Americans decided not to renew the 30-year treaty. In fact, they started developing a missile defense shield.

This led to unrest among the Russians. An operational US missile defense shield would make their weapons less effective or useless. The response was not a Russian missile defense shield but the development of weapons that evade this defense. Almost twenty years later, Russia has the hypersonic missile Avangard and a nuclear-powered missile Burevestnik with a reportedly almost unlimited range.

'Lower' the betting threshold

The search for weapons to trump the adversary is, of course, as old as the existence of armed conflict. In the course of the Cold War and the period after that, we see the emphasis of that quest constantly shifting. In the 1940s and 1950s, the superpowers trumped each other with ever heavier nuclear bombs. It is estimated that more than two hundred bombers loaded with regular bombs were needed to equal the devastation of the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima - also known as 'Little Boy'. Yet the power of that bomb pales in comparison to the so-called 'Tsar Bomba' that the Soviets tested over Nova Zemlya in 1961. This, in turn, was over 3,000 times more powerful than Little Boy and, with an equivalent of 50 megatons of TNT, the most powerful artificial explosion ever. “Put all the World War II bombs in a pile, multiply that number by ten, and detonate it once. That is the strength of the Tsar Bomba”, says Van der Meer.

But when do you deploy such an extremely powerful weapon? In what situation is such absurd destructive power justified? “After a decade of arms race, those responsible scratched their heads and asked what to do with it,” says Van der Meer. After the Tsar Bomba, no more powerful weapons were developed, but the emphasis was more on numbers. That led to an equally pointless race. At the height of the Cold War, in the mid-1980s, America and the Soviet Union had a combined total of 65,000 nuclear weapons. More than enough to erase each other from the world map.

Nuclear weapons (fortunately) have a high deployment threshold, they mainly serve as a deterrent and have not been used in conflict situations since the Second World War. But what if you're pretty sure the opponent won't use them? That led to the next bizarre step in the arms race:a quest to lower the wagering threshold. “At the end of the Cold War, we saw smaller and smaller (nuclear) weapons again,” says Van der Meer. “A weapon with which you flatten a district of a city is in a sense 'more credible' than a weapon with which you wipe the entire city off the map. The fact is that with this you can get into a nuclear conflict faster that can escalate from one small nuclear weapon to much larger nuclear violence.”

Breaking the cycle

The new weapons from Russia, among others, can be classified as ways to keep the deployability of weapons credible. President Trump says he is against nuclear weapons, but adds that it is important - as long as the weapons exist - to have more of them than the opponent. In doing so, he points to China and says that they should also participate in future treaties on reducing the nuclear arsenal. China — with an arsenal of some 300 nuclear weapons — says Russia and the US should look to themselves first, because they have multiples of China's nuclear weapons. This way everyone keeps pointing at each other.

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It turns out to be difficult to break the cycle to more and more weapons. Van der Meer mentions Barack Obama (president from 2009 to 2017) who at the beginning of his term of office advocated a world free of nuclear weapons. Yet disarmament in his own country alone proved more difficult than expected. He did not get the hands of the military rulers and the arms industry together for the complete abolition of weapons. As an alternative strategy, he chose to 'modernize' the existing systems, then at least no new weapons would be added. Bottom line, Obama is now one of the presidents who has invested a lot of money in nuclear weapons.

The nuclear treaties are the most important means of breaking the arms race, according to Van der Meer. “You don't get rid of those weapons right away, but they have a 'relaxing' effect. The countries involved were prepared to get rid of certain weapons and to check each other accordingly. Such cooperation inspires confidence and slows down the arms race.” It is precisely this brake that seems to be loosening in recent years.