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Editor’s Note: This is the second in a series of analyses on the feasibility and relevance of nuclear weapons in the 21st century.
About 110 U.S. B61 tactical nuclear weapons were removed from the Royal Air Force base at Lakenheath in Suffolk, England, the Federation of American Scientists said June 26. This removal of the last U.S. nuclear weapons maintained in the United Kingdom follows similar reductions at Ramstein Air Base in Germany in 2005 and in Greece in 2001. The reductions are emblematic of a continued — if slow — move away from the nuclear posture of the 20th century.
For the better part of that century, the existence of nuclear weapons was defined by the Cold War. That legacy still largely informs global nuclear dynamics to this day. Today’s nuclear force structures — especially in the United States and Russia — often reflect past rather than present or future geopolitical dynamics. In our second analysis on nuclear weapons, we examine the relevance of nuclear weapons in both the last century and the current one.
Major and rapid shifts in the global nuclear dynamics will be difficult without a return to regular nuclear testing. Without that return, the knowledge base for nuclear weapons design will become increasingly theoretical and decreasingly practical — even with the aid of some of the world’s fastest supercomputers. But the nuclear weapon genie is out of the bottle, meaning nothing can be ruled out.
Three Types of Nuclear Arsenals
Stratfor classifies nuclear arsenals into three main types: peer-to-peer competition, legacy arsenals and negotiation tools. These classifications help delineate underlying motivations for acquiring and maintaining nuclear weapons, some of which have shifted but many of which hold true.
Peer Systems
There is no more compelling motivation to spend the vast sums required to back a nuclear program than a serious adversary. Indeed, it was the fear of a German nuclear program that gave urgency to the Manhattan Project. When the United States dropped “Little Boy” on Hiroshima, Japan, on Aug. 6, 1945, the Soviet Union began a crash program and intensified its espionage efforts. The Cold War balance between the United States and the Soviet Union represents the most long-standing and clear example of a peer program.
Attempting to level the strategic playing field asymmetrically is a subset of the peer program. Israel, for example, exists at a profound size disadvantage, with Arab animosity in the years after the foundation of the Jewish state doing little to ease Israeli concerns. Israel acquired nuclear weapons not because a peer had them, but in an attempt to defend itself. In the special case of the Israelis, it was also justified as an “existential guarantor” by a society still haunted by the Holocaust. Generally speaking, if a small or disadvantaged country can successfully field a weapon, it will have gained an additional — and uniquely compelling — layer of defense.
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