“Humanity is one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation.” The warning, somber but realistic, was made this Monday (1st) by the Secretary-General of the UN, the Portuguese António Guterres.
He delivered it at the opening of the NPT’s tenth review conference, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the flawed but most comprehensive multilateral instrument for controlling atomic arsenals. “We have been extraordinarily lucky so far. But luck is neither a strategy nor a shield to prevent geopolitical tensions from degenerating into nuclear conflict,” he said.
Sharing the assessment of leading experts on the subject, he stated that the risk of such a clash today “has not been seen since the height of the Cold War”. Without having to name, the War in Ukraine and Vladimir Putin’s open and veiled threats to use his nuclear weapons guide this reading. The fear of a Third World War returned to fashion.
A few days before starting the war, in February, the Russian made a big simulation using the main weapons in his arsenal. On the day of the invasion, February 24, he gave a speech and said that anyone who interfered would suffer consequences unprecedented in history. Three days later, he put his strategic forces on alert.
As the war progressed, speculation arose that Putin could use lower-powered tactical bombs in case the conflict escalated to the Kremlin. Here and there, in denying nuclear intentions, he and other Russian officials reminded the world of the country’s power in the sector, with relative success, as the West did not intervene with troops, only sending weapons to Kiev.
Today, Moscow and Washington have a similar arsenal, slightly larger on the Russian side, which is equivalent to 90% of the 13,000 warheads available in the world. If it looks little compared to the 70,000 of the late 1980s, it’s more than enough to obliterate civilization.
This same Monday, Putin stated the obvious: “Nobody would win a nuclear war.” The day before, however, he had recalled that the US and the NATO military alliance are the biggest threats to Moscow and made the eulogy of the introduction of the nuclear-capable hypersonic missile Tsirkon in the Russian naval fleet this year.
It is not just the tension in Europe that is worrying. The US and China embarked on the so-called Cold War 2.0 in 2017, which gives daily signs of a heartbeat such as the visit of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Asia. She neither denies nor confirms that she will be able to visit Taiwan, the island that Beijing considers its own, and on Monday the Chinese government said its military would not “sit around waiting” for such a trip to take place.
The Chinese have about a fifth of the operational nuclear warheads that the US and Russia keep on permanent alert, and there are several investments in atomic military infrastructure that suggest a breakthrough in the sector by the end of the decade. Americans, in turn, continue to exercise their capabilities.
On the Korean peninsula, for a few months there have been expectations that the Kim Jong-un dictatorship will carry out a new nuclear test to try to provoke North Korea’s negotiations with the South. And India and Pakistan remain atomic archrivals in South Asia.
The NPT is no panacea, but it has helped the world establish some kind of control over the most destructive weapons ever created by man. It has 191 adherents, almost the entirety of the UN club. It was signed in 1968, coming into force two years later.
Indeed, among those who do not sign are nuclear powers that emerged after their negotiation: India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel, with the Jewish state’s arsenal a secret of jumping jacks. Nor is dysfunctional South Sudan.
Its control mechanisms, operated by the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), are complex and depend in many cases on so-called additional protocols, which aim at more specific monitoring of fissile material produced by countries with peaceful nuclear programs.
Several signatory nations of the treaty, such as Brazil, do not agree with such protocols and consider them a threat to their sovereignty. The rules, after all, were written with the heavy hand of the five major nuclear powers, all adherents of the NPT:
The USA, Russia, China, France and the United Kingdom, not by chance the winners of the Second World War and holders of permanent seats in the UN Security Council. Earlier this year, before the war, they made a commitment that none of them would start an atomic conflict, but none support the new, more comprehensive Treaty on the Comprehensive Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
Such as Sheet showed last month, a new chapter in Brazil’s struggle is underway with the request to handle fuel for the nuclear-powered submarine that the country is developing. Like Australia, which by 2024 should be equipped with similar Anglo-American technology, Brazilians are looking to prove that there will be no military use other than to make the vessel sail.
The most recent TNP exam conference was in 2015, and it ended up with no deal. The then UN Secretary General, South Korean Ban Ki-Moon, wrote an article last week for the website Foreign Policy saying that that failure today resulted in a naturalization of the nuclear war theme that makes the environment more dangerous than during the Cold War.
Indeed, the balance of that period between the US and the Soviet Union was terrible, but it was maintained precisely by the notion enunciated by Putin of mutual destruction. The new meeting, which runs until the 26th, is “an opportunity to reinforce the treaty and adapt it to today’s world,” Guterres said.
