«Nuclear war is madness. If a nuclear weapon were launched against the United States, even by a rogue nuclear-armed nation like North Korea, American policy dictates a nuclear counterattack. This response would almost certainly set off a series of events that would quickly spiral out of control. “The world could end in the next two hours“General Robert Kehler, former commander of the United States Strategic Command, told me in an interview.” Annie Jacobson, American investigative journalist, former finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, describes the risks of nuclear weapons in an article on the Mother Jones website. The article is an excerpt from her new book, just published in the United States and Germany, Nuclear War: A Scenario (“Nuclear war. A scenario.” The German title, 72 minutes until annihilationis more disturbing) and has given rise to a broad debate on the risks of nuclear deterrence. That is, that military strategy which «consists in preparing measures such that the enemy, in view of the consequences of his attack, is dissuaded from implementing them. In this sense it is linked to the arms race that began after the Second World War, and constitutes its conceptual framework and ideological justification” (the definition is by Treccani).
In the 1980s, when the peak of 70,481 nuclear weapons in the world was recorded, the risks of atomic war were very present and widely discussed by public opinion. With the end of the Cold War, the thaw and the reduction of armaments (today in the world there are approximately 12,500 nuclear weapons divided between nine countries) the danger of nuclear conflict began to seem increasingly remote. Today this is no longer the case: the Russian war in Europe against Ukraine and the threat of conflict between Israel and Iran they have made that risk tremendously more current. Although so far deterrence has worked against Russia.
What’s interesting and scary about Jacobsen’s book is that it shows that the decision of a single person would be enough to unleash the nuclear apocalypse, it doesn’t matter if he is an unpredictable and paranoid dictator like Kim Jong-un, or given to shows of strength like Vladimir Putin, or a democratically elected president. It is a fact well known to insiders: «During the Watergate crisis, Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, worried that a drunk and thoughtful Richard Nixon might decide to launch a nuclear attack, reportedly told Pentagon leaders to consult him or Secretary of State Henry Kissinger before following a directive from the White House” recalls the New York Times in its review of the book. Jacobsen for her part is convinced that many military experts spoke to her because they think the public should know that something like this can happen.
«The United States maintains a nuclear launch policy called “Launch on Warning”. This means that if a military satellite indicates that the nation is under nuclear attack and a second early warning radar confirms that information, the president launches nuclear missiles in response. Former Defense Secretary William Perry told me, “Once we are warned of a nuclear attack, we prepare to launch. This is politics. Let’s not wait.” The President of the United States has the sole authority to launch nuclear weapons. He doesn’t ask anyone’s permission. Not the Secretary of Defense, not the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, not the United States Congress,” explains Jacobsen in an article in The New Scientist.
«When the President learns that he must respond to a nuclear attack, he only has 6 minutes to do it. Six minutes is an irrational amount of time to “decide whether to unleash Armageddon”the president complained Ronald Reagan in his memoirs. “Six minutes to decide how to respond to a jamming signal on a radar… How can you apply reason in a moment like that?” Yet, the President must respond. Because it takes an intercontinental ballistic missile about 30 minutes to get from a launch pad in Russia, North Korea or China to any city in the United States, and vice versa. Nuclear-armed submarines can reduce launch time to target to 10 minutes or less. Today they are there nine nuclear powers, with a total of more than 12,500 nuclear weapons ready for use. The United States and Russia have approximately 1,700 nuclear weapons each: weapons that can be launched within seconds or minutes after their respective presidents give the command,” Jacobsen says. However, the United States only has 44 missiles to intercept and detonate enemy warheads. And the next American president could be Donald Trump.
«I did a series of interviews with the physicist Richard Garwin, who is now 95 years old. He’s probably the most knowledgeable person on nuclear weapons on the planet, and he probably knows the most about politics in the long run of history, because he was 23 or 24 years old when he designed the first thermonuclear bomb. In the “Ivy Mike” test, the bomb exploded with a force of 10.4 megatons, about 1,000 Hiroshimas. Garwin told me that his greatest fear was, and always had been, the madman theory. He used the French expression Après moi, le déluge – after me, the flood – referring to the idea that a crazy, maniacal, selfish and narcissistic leader can launch a nuclear weapon for reasons no one will ever know” Jacobsen tells Mother Jones.
In 1983 the United States made a simulation of possible war scenarios in a game called Proud Prophet, in which various experts participated. Among them was a Yale professor Paul Bracken who, Jacobsen says, was allowed to talk about it in general terms: «He wrote in his book that everyone left very depressed, because it doesn’t matter how the nuclear scenario begins — whether whether NATO is involved or not, whether China is involved or not — it always ends the same way, the most terrible way, because America has a “launch on alert” policy. Let’s not wait to absorb a nuclear blow. Once a missile is inbound and there is secondary confirmation from ground radars, the president is asked to launch a counterattack».
The point is that it is not possible to know whether the missile contains a nuclear warhead. But the president must still decide immediately whether to respond. And if he decides to do it with nuclear warheads the atomic apocalypse it becomes inevitable. Starting from this assumption Nuclear War: A Scenario tells in detail and moment by moment what would happen if North Korea launched a missile at the United States.
«The book leaves open the question of what drove North Korea to commit this act of madness. Would dictator Kim Jong-un really be crazy enough to attack the United States? Is he imagining he can survive the inevitable counterattack? According to US intelligence, North Korea has been building the world’s largest underground bunker system for decades. The country’s leadership is presumed to have enough food, water and medicine to entrench themselves underground for years. Or is it just a misunderstanding, a terrible accident? Is this an out-of-control missile test? In this fictional scenario, it is unclear why the missile was launched. Pyongyang remains silent, just like in reality. Between January 2022 and May 2023, North Korea conducted approximately 100 missile tests. The country did not announce even one in advance. The shocking thing: for the rest of the scenario, it doesn’t matter whether the launch was intentional or accidental” notes Spiegel.
One of the most problematic points is that leaders only have a few minutes to decide if a potential attack is detected. It’s such a burdensome responsibility that it is George W. BushThat Barack ObamaThat Joe Biden they wanted to change the “launch on alert” policy. But they didn’t do it because no one has ever found an alternative to the policy of nuclear deterrence. Another problematic element is the Russian “early warning system” which is “unreliable”: according to American experts there is the danger that it signals non-existent attacks as real, triggering a chain reaction (a problem aggravated by the fact that the presidents of United States and Russia are not currently communicating.)
Jacobsen’s description of the chain reaction of nuclear deterrence is so terrifying that Denis Villeneuve, the director of Dunes, bought the rights to make a film. Paradoxically it could be the only good news brought by the book. Jacobsen tells us why, again in the interview with Mother Jacobsen: it has to do with the most famous film ever about the nuclear apocalypse,The Day Afterwhich — released in 1983 — made the whole world understand the risks of nuclear war. “It’s a fictional story of a nuclear war between America and Soviet Russia, and half the country watched it. Interestingly, behind the scenes, ABC received a lot of pressure not to air it – Jacobsen recalls -. Well, a very important American looked at him: Reagan attended a private screening at Camp David. His chief of staff tried to advise him not to look at it, but he did. In his diary he wrote that he was “very depressed”, picked up the phone and called the then Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, and the two leaders talked to each other, which is really the only solution to all this. Thanks to those communications, their conference and the treaty, the insane nuclear arsenal was reduced to around 12,500 today, a considerable reduction. Before seeing “The Day After” the President had a much harsher and more aggressive approach. He changed his position and became much more cautious.”
Tags: Nuclear war minutes world
