Transcripts For KCSM Great Decisions In Foreign Policy 20171221

Great decisions is produced by the Foreign Policy association in association with thomson reuters, funding for great decisions is provided by Price Waterhouse coopers llp. dramatic music [radio host] a short time ago, an american airplane dropped one bomb on hiroshima. That bomb has more power than 20,000 tons of tnt. [narrator] the seeds of Nuclear Proliferation were sown when the us attacked hiroshima and nagasaki at the end of world war ii. It was mankinds first exposure to a weapon that would forever alter the calculus of war. The introduction of then called atomic weapons in 1945 had a very Significant Impact on geopolitics. At the time, i think all leaders were aware that this was something qualitatively different, they werent sure what it meant. When one plane can inflict the same level of damage that it previously took thousands of planes and maybe multiple raids by thousands of planes to inflict, i think everyone realized things would be different. The ending of world war ii brought victory but it also brought a whole set of complicated issues, that is, what would war look like in the future when the very possibility of total annihilation was now on the table through the delivery of one bomb . [narrator] like the us, the soviet union recognized the unprecedented strength Nuclear Weapons represent on the world stage. A Nuclear Arms Race had begun. They became, on the one hand, very desirable to big powers especially, and in some ways then started to drive global politics. It militarized Foreign Policy. The presence of these ever growing Nuclear Arsenals served as a limitation on world wars, the kind of world war in world war i and world war ii but at the same time it meant that we had these proxy wars which were destructive in and of themselves, but not as destructive as a nuclear war would have been. Reagan and gorbachev began to reverse the buildup in Nuclear Weapons. Today, the United States and the Russian Federation still deploy 95 of the worlds Nuclear Weapons, but in terms of overall numbers, theres substantially fewer now than there were at the height of the cold war in the 1970s and 80s. rocket rumbles [narrator] today there are nine nations with a total of 15,000 deployed Nuclear Weapons. Thats down from a cold war height of approximately 70,000 weapons. The most powerful Nuclear Weapon that the United States ever deployed was the b41 nuclear warhead, which had 25 megatons of explosive power, 25 million tons of tnt. Now to put that in perspective, during the entirety of world war ii, the United States dropped less than 4 million tons of tnt on both germany and japan. piano music the most powerful Nuclear Weapon in the us arsenal today has about 1. 2 megatons of explosive power, 1. 2 million tons of tnt, which is still 80 times the explosive power of the bomb that was dropped on hiroshima in august 1945. As they grew more powerful with the introduction of hydrogen bombs, they also began to be smaller, so you could put them on a missile, and this led to intercontinental range weapons of increasing accuracy. So then weapon yields got smaller, so you didnt need to have quite as large of a bomb if you could be very accurate. So we are modernizing our Delivery Systems, building some new missiles, were building new submarines, we are also extending the life of our warheads. So part of our policy is, and part of president obamas policies, were not gonna be building any new warheads. [narrator] within months of taking office, president obama declared a lofty goal. It was time, he said, to rid the world of Nuclear Weapons. This is the most immediate and extreme threat to global security. President obama began his administration with a famous speech which led the award to him of the nobel peace prize, and it was basically on the idea of a World Without Nuclear Weapons, a World Without the nuclear threat. Now the president promised to try to obtain that in 8 years, but nevertheless, to move very steadily and hopefully even more dramatically to bring about that kind of a world. The us military spending is still almost as much as the rest of the world combined, but the Obama Administration has called for a trillion dollar upgrading of the Nuclear Weapons system in the next several decades. This is a very ugly, difficult subject, because, again, in a perfect world, you wouldnt have any of this. And theres some suggestion that our efforts to modernize are compelling the russians and the chinese to do the same. Well, thats really unfair, weve stated clearly that we do not want to ever have to use a Nuclear Weapon. tense music [narrator] disarmament talks between the us and russia are often affected by a complicated political dynamic. Russia didnt attend the 2016 Nuclear Security summit in washington dc because of problems in the diplomatic relations between the United States and russia after crimea and the ukraine and other problems in eastern europe. A lot of this had to do with nato expansion. That went as far as offers to ukraine to join nato. 2008 and 2013, the ukraine is right on the Russian Strategic heartland, and certainly have been intolerable to them. speaking russian [narrator] india and pakistan have been engaged in an arms race of their own since india first tested a Nuclear Device in the 1970s. The indians have been developing a range of Ballistic Missiles from short range missiles to missiles with ranges of more than 3,000 kilometers. Theyve also built a Nuclear Powered submarine that will carry Nuclear Armed missiles just like the missiles that the United States, britain, france, china and russia have. Pakistan, for its part, has Nuclear Weapons that can be dropped from an airplane, it has missiles that will carry a Nuclear Weapon 2,500 kilometers, and it also has developed a new system to be used on the battlefield. To use Nuclear Weapons against indian tanks and soldiers in case there is a land war between pakistan and india. This of course raises grave risks of the escalation of a conventional conflict into an all out nuclear war. If the large indian force invades pakistan, they can potentially use a few tactical Nuclear Weapons to destroy some indian Armored Forces or ground forces, but at the same time, its signaling to india, right . You need to knock it off, because these are detonating on our soil, potentially, right, the Indian Forces that have already crossed into pakistan, but the next might detonate on your soil, and you dont know where this is gonna stop. [narrator] dangerous or rogue states pose another threat to Nuclear Security. Small countries like north korea have made great efforts to get them, and how they are going to use them politically or militarily is a question thats not been fully answered yet, we cant really assume that all the countries or groups that might get access to Nuclear Weapons are gonna look at them the same way or feel constrained the same way that the great powers who had them in the past have been. North korea probably has at least a dozen Nuclear Weapons right now. There have been estimates from other intelligence agencies around the world that suggest that by 2020 it could have as many as 100 Nuclear Weapons. It has certainly, under kim jong un, been working to progress its missile programs as well. It has missile programs of very diverse lengths ranging from short range missiles to medium and intermediate range missiles to intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. Those short range missiles could be used to strike south korea or us bases in south korea. Medium and intermediate range missiles could be used to strike japan, us bases in japan or maybe even us bases in guam, and finally intercontinental Ballistic Missiles could potentially be used to strike the us homeland. I usually dont use the term rogue state, i think its too liberally used, but in the case of north korea, i think it fits. You have a country with a very unpredictable leader. Its not clear when or how or why he would use Nuclear Weapons, but he is slowly developing their nuclear capability, not only with land based missiles, but with sea based missiles and so thats a real danger. piano music this is a perfect example of a 21st century security challenge that no one nation can solve alone. [narrator] most analysts say the weight of the International Community is the best tool to stop Nuclear Proliferation. They point to the Successful Use of sanctions and incentives that persuaded libya, south africa, and most recently iran to severely limit Nuclear Enrichment capability. Weve seen under president obama the effort to try to contain those countries who can acquire nuclear capabilities. In those negotiations, president s have at their disposal all kinds of gambits and tools from the lifting of sanctions for example, to the offering of greater aid and trade. I favor president obama and secretary kerrys negotiations with iran, i testified before congress four times in favor of the iran nuclear deal. I favor it because this agreement will make sure that iran does not become a Nuclear Weapons power in the next 10 to 15 years and that is a significant gain for the United States and for the entire world. It also means that weve accomplished this important agreement by negotiation, by diplomacy, and not by the use of force. The joint comprehensive plan of action, the jcpoa, the iran deal, i think was an example of exactly the kind of deal you can expect between a country thats fairly committed to retaining at least the option to getting a bomb and an International Community led by the United States thats equally committed to them not having the bomb. And thats a compromise that satisfies no one. It was an incredible important issue, because if iran became a Nuclear Weapons power, then that would unsettle the entire middle east which is already turbulent and violent and unstable. It would present an existential risk to israel, as well as to the sunni states of the gulf. [narrator] the Nuclear Status quo is changing. Information diffusion has increased access to technologies which could alter the strategic balance. Nuclear weapons are actually getting smaller. And the concern is that that makes them more usable. Nuclear weapons today, a small Nuclear Weapon with the explosive power of just a few kilotons or a few thousand tons of tnt would not incur the same level of civilian damage or Collateral Damage that a giant Nuclear Weapon of multiple megatons would cause. explosion rumbles there are two kinds of Nuclear Related Cyber Threats that governments are concerned with, the first is to the command and control infrastructure of Nuclear Weapons, so that if we were ever unfortunately to be in a place where those weapons were needed, we would have confidence that they would be available to us in an emergency. It also means that governments are concerned with protecting Nuclear Plants and ensuring that Nuclear Plants and the production facilities that generate Nuclear Materials arent subjected to attacks. Frankly, it doesnt have to be that complicated. You could put a cargo container in a liberian tanker and get it in the harbor here. Weve got intelligence and weve got other methodologies that try to ensure that doesnt happen. But Delivery Systems dont necessarily have to be so complicated, and thats one of the challenges in the world we face. Its what keeps me awake at night, because we do know that terrorist organizations want to get their hands on Nuclear Weapons, its been very clear for a long, long time. Therefore the only way we could deal with this is through nonproliferation tools by reducing and eliminating Nuclear Materials or keeping them very, very safe, secure and well accounted for. [narrator] alongside new technologies, antiquated systems are posing new threats. Were going to have considerable debate in the next few years not just in this congress over how much refurbishing we should do with our nuclear stockpile. Some critics, at least of current proposals will say about a trillion dollars could be spent by the time were finished, bringing all of our Nuclear Weapons up to speed. When you think of the prospects of some type of Nuclear Accident or the diversion of this material, theft of it or the diversion of it into the hands of persons who want to do us harm, through a dirty type of bomb mechanism, the prospects for that are real. [narrator] concerns over the security of some Countries Nuclear facilities linger. Were talking about materials used in research reactors, were talking about maybe spent fuel from power plan, these kinds of materials, if they were packed together with conventional explosive and just detonated in a neighborhood would create contamination. They would create panic, mass panic, and by contaminating an area they would also deny that area to economic use, make people move out of their homes for a long period of time until the cleanup could happen. clicking, beeping the real threat, the most serious one is pakistan. Pakistan has an advanced Nuclear Weapons program, the country has an extremely unstable country, Pakistani Nuclear specialists like Pervez Hoodbhoy for example, the physicist in pakistan, have warned that the system could be penetrable by jihadi agents who are all over the place. Its conceivable that there already have been leakages out of pakistan, the khan network and the status of pakistani Nuclear Weapons is pretty uncertain. A. Q. Khan was in a sense the father of the pakistani atomic bomb, he was not the only one, there are others but he was most prominent. He took the design of these centrifuges, these things that spin very fast to enrich uranium back to pakistan and he convinced the pakistani government to help him Start Building centrifuges. From there he branched out and began to sell some of his technology or exchanged some of this technology with other countries, most notably iran but also north korea and eventually libya. [narrator] ensuring Nuclear Security, analysts say will require a multi pronged approach. All over the world were working with countries to ensure that Nuclear Materials are safe, secure and well accounted for and that i think is one of the most important things about the president s Nuclear Security summits which he started under his administration back in 2010. We had the first of them, and the focus is to get all the countries that have Nuclear Materials to come to the table and pay strong attention to the necessity of protecting them from theft. You would hold out hope that we could have a world completely free of Nuclear Weapons, but the reality is our Nuclear Weapons, from our perspectives, are deterrents against the use of Nuclear Weapons. So until you have some iron clad guarantee that there is a revolution of thinking and structures in place to safeguard us from some kind of nuclear attack, we are not going to be empowered to get rid of our Nuclear Weapons and thats just harsh reality. The only way we can have a safe and stable world free of Nuclear Weapons is if there are no weapons materials in the world. Because if somebody keeps a stash of materials in the basement, then theres nothing to stop them deciding one day to make weapons again. So the goal has to be not to just secure Nuclear Materials, but to eliminate Nuclear Materials wherever we have them. [narrator] today, individual nations must adhere to Global Standards to safeguard their nuclear facilities, and cooperate with global agencies to track possible threats. If you would have asked say president kennedy in 1960 when he became president , how many countries he thought would have Nuclear Weapons in 2016 . Im sure he would have guessed at least two dozen. If you were to tell him its actually fewer than a dozen, i doubt he would have believed you, but thats been the reality. Every man, woman and child lives under a Nuclear Sword of damocles. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us. audience applauds, tense music south africa made Nuclear Weapons and then dismantled them all and gave them all up. So we actually have one country, instance of a country that had Nuclear Weapons and then decided that the right thing to do was to give them up. Other countries that could have made Nuclear Weapons chose never to do so. The nonproliferation regime around the world includes the bulk of countries in the world, so, whether youre talking about the Nuclear Suppliers group or the comprehensive test ban treaty, most countries in the world believe that they have an interest in reducing the spread of Nuclear Technology and the possibility of weaponization. The role of the International Atomic Energy Agency is going to grow and should grow significantly, setting standards not only for safety and Nuclear Plants and arrangements or agreements in that regard, but also oversight to ensure that certain types of nuclear, Civil Nuclear functions arent potentially diverted to militarization. piano music [narrator] keeping the Nuclear Issue in the spotlight is vital, as is guarding against complacency. Im old enough to remember the cuban missile crisis, and that had an effect on the national mood. It was an ever present issue in the back of peoples mind, we dont think very much about Nuclear Weapons in the way we did in the cold war. Whether were talking about the threat of Nuclear Weapons proliferation or whether were talking about Nuclear Material ending up in terrorist hands, the threats remain with us and weve gotta work on them. Most people are managing their own world, having economic difficulties or worried about the future of their children, how can i think about these other things . And in congress, were caught in what i call the tyranny of the urgent, or things that actually have direct meaningful impact on constituents lives, things that are measurable, and then again with no constituency behind thoughtful policy making in Nuclear Security it is simply harder to get to. The most essential questions about the future of humanity, its just hard to get to. When i first entered congress, there were two policy hearings going on at the same time, again, i was new and trying to do so many things. One was on the potential for iran to develop Nuclear Weapons the other was on north koreas march toward Nuclear Weapons capability. I went to the iran hearing first, gleaned what i could, and there were only a few Congress Members there. Rushed over to go to the north korea hearing, again, only a few Congress Members there. But in the hallway there was a big line of people desiring to get into another hearing. And i said to someone what is this hearing about . Oh its the satellite radio merger hearing. Questions about existential threats, the future of humanity, civilization itself, well thats important, but we really dont have the time. The radio merger is the most urgent question before us. You see the problem here . The incentives to look at these harder, deeper questions are not there for congress. Theres no constituency behind it. I think that many people in, and not just activists, believe that actually these weapons dont need to and shouldnt exist, in reality that as long as any of the big five Nuclear States continue to have Nuclear Weapons, there will be a proliferation issue almost by definition, and thats probably only more true given that youve got india and pakistan, israel also holding Nuclear Weapons. The viable strategy would be to eliminate them. You cant eliminate the knowledge that makes it possible to develop them. The number of live warheads could be sharply reduced. Some people have thought that proliferation is inevitable and that more and more countries over time will acquire the materials needed to make Nuclear Weapons. And its interesting that history teaches exactly the opposite, and in fact if you look more carefully you find that not only have the vast majority of countries in the world, 183 out of 193 promised never to make Nuclear Weapons, more than 100 countries have also signed treaties creating Nuclear Weapon free zones with their neighbors. So its not that more and more countries want them, its that the countries are actually trying to get rid of them and the countries that have Nuclear Weapons are struggling to hold on to them in the face of this enormous effort by the rest of the world to get rid of them including Public Opinion in many of the Nuclear Weapon states themselves, and so the challenge that we face is how do we deal with these concentrations of power . Military power, scientific power . And of policy makers that thing that Nuclear Weapons are a way for their country to be strong. piano music [narrator] whether you believe Nuclear Weapons prevent world wars or pose an existential threat to humanity, the need to safeguard Nuclear Technology will continue to challenge World Leaders in the decades to come. [narrator] great decisions is americas largest Discussion Program on global affairs, Discussion Groups meet in community centers, libraries, places of worship, and homes across the country to discuss global issues with their community. Participants read the eight topic briefing book, meet to discuss each topic, and complete a ballot which shares their views with congress. To start or join a Discussion Group in your community, visit greatdisions. Org or call 18004775836. Great decisions is produced by the Foreign Policy association, in association with thomson reuters. Funding for great decisions is provided by Price Water House Coopers llp. dramatic music [ midtempo music plays ] [ paper rustling ] [ dog barking ] [ dog whines ] [ wind whistling ] [ wind whistling ] [ engine turns over ] [ engine revs ] [ engine shuts off ] [ rainfall, footsteps splashing ] Film School Shorts is made possible by a grant from maurice kanbar, celebrating the vitality and power of the moving image, and by the members of kqed. Announcer welcome to in good shape. Coming up, voice problems, conditions that make your vocal cords go on strike. Crohns disease, living with a painful bowel disorder. Plus the benefits of tai chi, both for body and mind. Feet shoulder width apart, knees slightly bent. Face the palm of your right hand outwards. Other way around, thats right. Now we turn the ball. And back again. Now the left hand falls again. And the right one comes up. And back