US, Russia Reach Nuclear Arsenal Agreement

Peace Corps Library writes "The United States and Russia, seeking to move forward on one of the most significant arms control treaties since the end of the cold war, announced that they had reached a preliminary agreement on cutting each country's stockpiles of strategic nuclear weapons, effectively setting the stage for a successor to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start), a cold war-era pact that expires in December. Under the framework, negotiators are to be instructed to craft a treaty that would cut strategic warheads for each side to between 1,500 and 1,675, down from the limit of 2,200 slated to take effect in 2012 under the Treaty of Moscow (PDF) signed by President George W. Bush. The limit on delivery vehicles would be cut to between 500 and 1,100 from the 1,600 currently allowed under Start. Perhaps more important than the specific limits would be a revised and extended verification system that otherwise would expire with Start in December. The United States currently has 1,198 land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-based missiles and bombers, which together are capable of delivering 5,576 warheads, according to its most recent Start report in January, while Russia reported that it has 816 delivery vehicles capable of delivering 3,909 warheads. 'We have a mutual interest in protecting both of our populations from the kinds of danger that weapons proliferation is presenting today,' said President Obama."

Comments

Fallout

[Anonymous Coward]

boooo, there goes my hopes of one day having a child that would roam the wastelands and be the savior of all humanity.

Re:Fallout

[kestasjk]

China is also reducing its arsenal, it's the trendy thing since the people like it and you can still keep enough weapons to destroy your enemies several times over.

Re:Fallout

[debrisslider]

The Chinese actually have a really smart nuclear policy: no first use. In a nuclear war, there are different kinds of targets: counterforce (sending warheads to blow up other warheads in an attempt to minimize retaliation) and countervalue (detonating warheads over strategic cities). The Chinese have never had the arsenal necessary to threaten a convincing first strike (the whole purpose of a first strike being to do enough damage to another nation's capacity to strike back that losses are kept to an 'acceptable' amount), but they have had just enough capability to threaten a significant counterstrike to the aggressor's cities. The whole point of submarine and mobile missiles is to maintain the ability to send a large enough retaliatory response if a nation implements a nuclear strike against them; Britain's entire nuclear arsenal is submarine-based so that it would be impossible to wipe out a strategically meaningful amount of their total capacity (submarines carry MIRV'd missiles, which are basically impossible to defend against with any modern antiballistic missile system). Having a hidden, unpredictable, mobile striking capacity is actually a good thing: it keeps everyone honest. While there's always the possibility of limited war, with such a small arsenal, there'd be no way to meaningfully survive a counterattack and hence no reason to initiate war, and similiarly, with a sub and truck based launch platform, there's no way to guarantee you'd be able to take out enough of their retaliatory capacity in a first strike.

I can't speak to the buildup of their conventional capacity, but China's nuclear intentions are about as honest as you're going to get from a nuclear power.

Robert Strange McNamara 1916 - 2009

[eldavojohn]

The indefinite combinations of human fallibility and nuclear weapons will lead to the destruction of nations. - Robert S. McNamara

Slightly offtopic but in high school I read a few books by Robert S McNamara who died yesterday. It's too bad he didn't get to see this agreement between old enemies. He was Secretary of Defense from 1961-1968. Although I did not agree with a lot of his views he shaped a lot of the nuclear buildup during the cold war. I believe he was responsible for abandoning Eisenhower's policy of massive retaliation in the event of a nuclear war. He was first tasked by Kennedy of explaining nuclear fallout. McNamara favored non-nuclear power and one of the books I read "In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam" shed a lot of light on the Vietnam war for me.

If you haven't seen Erol Morris' "The Fog of War" you should.

Rest in peace Robert Strange McNamara. You revealed to me the horrors that leadership must face during war.

Re:Robert Strange McNamara 1916 - 2009

[MozeeToby]

I've really got to love our society. A more than slightly crazy musician and probable child molester dies and it's all the news can talk about for three weeks as people cry in the streets and memorial concerts are held all over the country. A man who was partially responsible for guiding the world through the cold war without destroying modern civilization dies and no one even knows who he is.

Down to 95% of the world's arsenals!

[fantomas]

BBC radio is reporting this will bring the USA and Russia down to owning a mere 95% of the world's nuclear weapons. Go USA! Go Russia!

Seriously, good work both countries for making a step in the right direction. But keep going, you've got a long way to go before you can start preaching to countries with a dozen or nuclear weapons about the need for restraint.

Re:Down to 95% of the world's arsenals!

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

As one of the Rand Corporation's stone cold game theorists said, those would be "tragic, but distinguishable, outcomes".

Nuclear weapons are powerful, extremely so by the standards of just about anything else(short of real sci-fi stuff, or fuel air bombs representing a week of the western world's refinery output); but they are hardly powerful enough that a dozen and a thousand are the same.

Even if we overestimated and supposed that, for ease of calculation, a single nuclear strike could completely eliminate a city, all but the very smallest countries have substantially more than 12 cities, and a fair amount of hinterland. Not to mention the fact that unpleasant side effects like nuclear winter and social chaos, which would presumably do most of the killing after the first couple of days, would be far more severe with more warheads rather than fewer.

Re:Down to 95% of the world's arsenals!

[A. B3ttik]

But keep going, you've got a long way to go before you can start preaching to countries with a dozen or nuclear weapons about the need for restraint.

I don't buy that. One madman with a nuke is worse than a peaceful leader with a thousand nukes.

It's not our number of nukes that allows us to preach to Iran and N. Korea, it's the fact that our leaders are held to certain standards. Our presidents get in trouble for misspeaking or forgetting to bow or not dispensing enough foreign aid; the leaders of the aforementioned countries give speeches advocating genocide... to thunderous applause.

Re:Down to 95% of the world's arsenals!

[dkleinsc]

As one of the Rand Corporation's stone cold game theorists said, those would be "tragic, but distinguishable, outcomes".

General Turgidson: Mr. President, we are rapidly approaching a moment of truth both for ourselves as human beings and for the life of our nation. Now, truth is not always a pleasant thing. But it is necessary now to make a choice, to choose between two admittedly regrettable, but nevertheless *distinguishable*, postwar environments: one where you got 20 million people killed, and the other where you got a 150 million people killed.

President Muffley: You're talking about mass murder, General, not war!

General Turgidson: Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than 10 to 20 million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks.

Re:Down to 95% of the world's arsenals!

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It is either amusing or disturbing; but that part of Dr. Strangelove is very nearly a string of quotations from actual military theorists. One Herman Kahn in particular.

Re:Down to 95% of the world's arsenals!

[readin]

Madmen dictators are not 4-year-olds. They don't decide whether to build nukes based on their dad setting a good example for them. The calculate their self-interest and make their decision. Or they calculate whatever mad purpose they have (genocide against Israel) and make their decision. They don't think about the need to defend against American nukes because they know that the US refrains from using nukes except when attacked by nukes. Building nukes for themselves increases the risk of being a victim of a US nuke attack. The only kind of attack the dictator's nukes deter are conventional attacks - and that has nothing to do with the US already having nukes. The US abandoning nukes would make it even more attractive for smaller countries to build them. Right now, NK's nukes merely deter a conventional American attack. Remove American nukes and threats of nuclear retaliation, and suddenly NK's nukes give them the ability to extort anything they want from their defenseless neighbors. Americans and western Europeans need to give up their patronizing attitudes toward other countries. Those other countries aren't children who will imitate our adult ways like a child imitates his parents. Those other countries are ruled by adults who calculate their self-interests the way an adult does.

Re:Down to 95% of the world's arsenals!

[Anonymous Coward]

Cite some examples, I think most of your numbers are hog-wash and made up on the spot.

Re:Down to 95% of the world's arsenals!

[Martin Blank]

You are really underestimating the power of nuclear weapons, or you're using a different definition of complete destruction than everyone else. If by complete, you mean "vaporized," then you may be correct. However, according to this site, a one-megaton surface blast would leave a crater 200 feet deep and a thousand feet across, and everything within about 3200 feet of of the detonation would be gone except for some foundations. Out to 1.7 miles, only heavily reinforced building still have some remnants. Out to 2.7 miles, some multi-story buildings would still have their skeletons standing, and significant damage to structures would extend out to about 4.7 miles.

This doesn't get anywhere close to the documented blast of Tsar Bomba, which was a 50MT bomb that had a 4.6km fireball, caused damage at significant distances (with atmospheric lensing causing damage hundreds of miles away), and would have caused third-degree burns to creatures 60 miles away. It was detonated on the island of Novaya Zemlya, and it broke windows in Finland and Sweden.

I don't think that either nation could ever have blanketed the entire planetary surface with nuclear weapons; blast effects and areas just don't match up. But to suggest that nuclear weapons are little more effective than conventional weapons -- which is essentially what your post says -- is dead wrong.

Re:Down to 95% of the world's arsenals!

[TheBracket]

(See The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, and also "The Pentomic Army" for sources on this)

The 200-300m quoted distance is the "100% probability of kill" range, I believe. Double that range, and the probability halves.

You also have to remember that Hiroshima was almost perfectly designed to be obliterated in a nuclear blast. The topography is that of a bowl, so overpressure actually wraps around rather than just releasing in an outwards pattern. Also, a lot of the buildings were made of very weak materials - residences had a lot of paper and wood, which a) burned really well, and b) did little to absorb the blast overpressure on the way through.
Nagasaki actually fared quite a bit better, as have various test ranges around the world.

In a modern concrete and steel city, the reflective/absorbitive properties of building materials considerably reduce the spread of blast overpressure on a lateral trajectory. Additionally, few cities are built inside a bowl (New Orleans excepted!) - so most of the time, the overpressure only hits you once.

There really are only four lethal mechanisms that accompany a nuclear blast inside the atmosphere: prompt radiation, fireball, blast overpressure (and sometimes a secondary overpressure from air rushing in to fill the resultant vacuum), and residual radiation.

Prompt radiation travels in a straight line, and is blocked quite effectively by earth, heavy metals and some types of clay. At larger distances, even curtains can help with the flash. If you are in direct line of sight to the flash, within lethal range - you are dead. If not, you're probably ok - and the radiation types released in the flash typically don't stick around.

The fireball is typically not very large, but will incinerate whatever it comes into contact with. Most modern designs try to air-burst, and the fireball often won't ever touch the ground.

Blast overpressure hits just like a conventional explosive: a sphere of rapidly moving blast pressure, reducing in power over distance, and also losing energy as it hits things. The same protections against prompt radiation help here: a good wall of dirt does wonders for stopping overpressure, whether it's from regular artillery or a nuclear explosion. Note that studies have shown that blast overpressure is the primary kill mechanism for regular nuclear bombs, just like any other bomb.

Finally, you get residual radiation. This can be avoided almost completely with a carefully designed airburst - most "fallout" and residual radiation occurs when dirt is sucked into the fireball and irradiated there. Burst high enough to not have the fireball encompass a lot of dirt, and you don't have very much long-term radiation. It's largely unknown what the long-term effects of residual radiation are; the area around Chernobyl didn't behave at all like the models we had!

Then there are different bomb designs to consider. A really small nuclear bomb behaves a lot like a really large conventional charge: you could set it off in a football stadium, and probably not worry too much about damage to buildings a few hundred yards away; man-portable nukes were designed on that assumption, as were things like the horribly-design Davey Crockett round.
"Neutron bombs", which really should be called "reduced blast bombs" focus on enhancing prompt-radiation release at the expense of a MUCH smaller blast/fireball (and consequently very little residual radiation). Why would you want to do that? a) It greatly reduces long-term contamination of your target area (meaning you might get to go there!), but more importantly b) it's FAR more effective at taking out tanks and similar. Tanks are really, very, very good at withstanding blast overpressure (it's pretty much their primary defensive purpose - survive artillery and shells while they move forward). It's not at all practical to burst enough regular nuclear weapons to reliably take out a distributed, dug-in tank force. However, they are almost entirely made of metal - and prompt radiation does a "wonder

Re:Down to 95% of the world's arsenals!

[shutdown -p now]

By the way, one thing you Westerners should keep in mind.

In my school days in Russia (which were late 90s, far more liberal and pro-Western than it is today), we still studied things such as an effect of an urban nuclear explosion, complete with a diagram of the bombed city with affected areas, and a simulated aerial photo. We were taught how to behave to maximize the chances of survival during the initial blast, how to find proper shelters and secure them (and what kinds of shelters are good enough at various distances), and so on. I think that's still being taught.

Russia and the US have already done this before...

[phoxix]

Its called Nunn-Lugar/CTR.

Basically the United States gave Russia a billion or so and tactical/technical/administrative support every year to reduce their weapons stock pile.

So even when Bush and Putin had their panties bunched up, great work was being done cooperatively by both sides. The program considered pretty successful by government standards.

I know, I know, the idea of good news from government is a scary one!

Would any country ever give up ALL their nukes?

[Trip6]

I think not! These weapons are with us for good.

Keeping Count

[DynaSoar]

START requires only that the weapons be deactivated, not destroyed. The US currently has over 4,000 "deactivated" nuclear weapons. Believe someone who used to shove them up a Buff's (B-52) belly, they can be reactivated in short order.

Also, START is 'Strategic' Arms Reduction Treaty. It says nothing about tacticals, either battlefield or ship based weapons, or EMP devices.

Re:Really?!?

[YrWrstNtmr]

Also, this is 500 launch vehicles and 1,500 warheads so I assume there are some MIRVs in there.

'Launch vehicles' also includes aircraft. B-1, B-2, B-52, and F-16. All of these can also be used with conventional munitions. So bringing down the total number of 'launch vehicles' to 500 will, of necessity, bring the numbers of these aircraft down to some very low, possibly unsustainable, number.

I'd fully agree with bringing down the number of actual warheads. But when you include aircraft that can also be used for other functions, we may be getting into a place where the conventional forces are too small to do anything.
The argument could be made that this is a good thing, but that's a discussion for another day.

Re:Afro-American Racism Against Whites and Asians

[MightyYar]

It isn't governments job to "pull them out of their bad position" its their own individual job.

No, but it is the government's job to stop the majority from actively keeping them in a bad position. Jim Crowe was only a few years ago.

but this is 2009 not 1950

Try the late 60s, which weren't so long ago. Many people who still hold a lot of sway were either part of the problem or are directly descended from those people. I'm white and I hear what other whites aren't afraid to say about blacks when there aren't any blacks around. To imply that racism is dead among whites is very disingenuous.

Asians make more on average than whites, shouldn't whites get special treatment now?

No. Asians tend to make more in the US because they tend to come here as well-educated people who bear well-educated children. This is not an injustice, just a statistical anomaly, and a direct result of our immigration policy. Visit Asia sometime if you think that Asians can't be poor and ignorant. Blacks come from a history of being ACTIVELY held down, and it's going to be a while before this nation recovers from that. Having blacks in powerful positions helps their cause, and they know that and vote accordingly.

Re:Afro-American Racism Against Whites and Asians

[MightyYar]

Is there a white equivalent of the NAACP?

No, why would there be? Was there a white equivalent of slavery in the US?

Our histories are parallel and intertwined, but not equal. Without injustice, the NAACP would not be necessary. The NAACP was started in the early 1900s, when blacks often couldn't vote or stay in the same hotel or use the same drinking fountain. The NAACP is a demonstration of exactly what I'm talking about - we still haven't healed.

Face it - in the US it is still a tremendous advantage to be a white man.

At a certain point, the effects of ancient history have dwindled to nothing. I'd say that point is already past.

The numbers disagree with you. Blacks are still disadvantaged. If you, as a white guy, don't see racism on a day-to-day basis then I'd say you aren't paying much attention, or you are very lucky and live in a place which I would love to move to.