Analysis & Opinions

After viewing the movie Oppenheimer, Matthew Bunn, John P. Holdren, Mariana Budjeryn, Matthew J. Parent, and Calder Walton, and Sylvia Mishra offer their thoughts on its relevance to the world today. 

Ever since its seizure by Russian forces in March 2022, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant—Europe’s largest, with six reactors—has posed a serious danger of a radioactive disaster. Now, Ukrainian officials have charged that Russia has rigged the plant with explosives, while Russia claims that Ukraine plans an attack on the facility. On July 4, the site lost off-site power yet again, forcing its cooling systems to rely on backup power supply. How serious is the risk of a major radioactive disaster?

This was my second journey to Ukraine since the great war started. The formal reason for the trip was to participate in the Kyiv Security Forum, an invitation I gladly accepted on its own merit but also for the opportunity to visit Ukraine, to bear witness to my country at war, and to see my mother in Lviv in western Ukraine.

As Pakistan celebrated the 25th anniversary of its first nuclear tests last month, it also appeared to share more details than usual about its current nuclear posture. Speaking at a seminar hosted by the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad on May 24, retired Lt. Gen. Khalid Kidwai provided new details of Pakistan’s otherwise ambiguous nuclear doctrine. What Kidwai says matters because he is currently an advisor to the country’s National Command Authority (NCA), which controls research and development and all other policy matters concerning nuclear weapons. He’s also the former director-general of the Strategic Plans Division (SPD), which is responsible for formulating nuclear policy and strategy as well as the security of nuclear assets.

[I]f the Russians are not restrained in causing a major humanitarian and ecological disaster by blowing up a dam — as Ukrainian and Western leaders contend and is a war crime under the Geneva Convention — what else are they capable of? Would they cause a similar or worse calamity if the Ukrainian counteroffensive forces them to retreat from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant? After all, the Russian military reportedly mined the perimeter of the plant where tons of nuclear material is stored.

As the international community ponders these prospects, the ghost of the Chernobyl catastrophe, the world’s worst nuclear accident that in 1986 covered swaths of Ukraine and Europe in radioactive fallout, returns to haunt. The parallels are uncanny: Chernobyl, the Kakhovka dam destruction, and the potential disaster at Zaporizhzhia all expose the lies of the governments in Moscow and their callous indifference toward massive and needless human suffering.

It is extraordinarily challenging to re-read President Kennedy’s speech at American University 60 years ago and not feel a profound loss for a historical moment when negotiations on arms control were nascent and seen as an indispensable instrument for peace and stability worldwide.

In a June 10, 1963 commencement address at American University, Kennedy made the case that the horrors of potential nuclear holocaust made it urgent to find a path to peace and that doing so required both sides of the Cold War to change.

Ruhee Neog

Assuming that nuclear weapons are going to be around for the foreseeable future, I hope to see more focus on managing India and Pakistan’s growing risk environment, particularly those risks that could increase the probability of nuclear use. For this, I would expect examinations of bilateral (and trilateral, to include China) nuclear dynamics to be contextualised in at least three broader trends. The first is geopolitical. We acknowledge, narrowly, that US nuclear developments have an impact on the Chinese capability build-up; China’s on Indian strategic thinking; and thereon on Pakistan’s nuclear trajectory. What our research lacks is an equal recognition of the role of geopolitics—such as US-China relations and its impact on regional security, or the Russia-Ukraine war—in shaping the nuclear strategies of states like India and Pakistan. The second is demystifying the emerging military applications of technologies and their ramifications for nuclear deterrence, as both India and Pakistan are engaged in multi-faceted technological development. The third broad trend is nuclear nationalism. Keeping an eye on how identity politics interfaces with the two other trends (geopolitics and emerging technologies) will be key to deciphering nuclear risk and assessing the demands of risk absorption in Southern Asia.

Sitara Noor

Since the overt nuclearization in 1998, both India and Pakistan have come a long way in their nuclear learning process. Although heavily influenced by the Cold War experiences of the United States and the former Soviet Union, the nuclear learning process of New Delhi and Islamabad was not linear and carried both positive and negative aspects. Over the past 25 years, both nuclear rivals have gradually increased the number of nuclear weapons, diversified their delivery means, established command and control systems, and consolidated their nuclear policies to a greater extent. Nonetheless, they have largely gone against the contention of nuclear revolution theory that mutual vulnerability created by nuclear weapons will significantly alter the state behaviour leading to more cooperation among states to stabilize deterrence.  Unlike the Cold War model, India and Pakistan have failed to achieve strategic stability or establish some bilateral risk reduction measures. On the contrary, the recent Pulwama/Balakot crisis indicated a higher threshold for risk acceptance by both states.

Going forward, this behaviour indicates a precarious future where any miscalculation may lead to a serious crisis. In the next 25 years, South Asia is likely to witness a competitive nuclear approach that is already manifesting in the form of attempts to acquire nuclear superiority through the development of missile defence system, adoption of counterforce doctrines, the revival of limited nuclear war pursuits as well as the willingness to fight a conventional war under the nuclear overhang.

In the absence of meaningful political dialogue to resolve bilateral issues including Kashmir and alleged terrorism against one another and lack of effective communication channels to reduce the chance of inadvertent war,  the risk of any future crisis escalating to the nuclear level remains high.

This year’s heads of state meeting for the Group of Seven (G7) summit in Hiroshima, Japan demonstrated the agility of this body. The G7 leaders represent the powerhouse industrial democracies who are pulling their resources to maintain global economic stability and prosperity—and, this time, global security. In the course of 72 hours, Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and the invited delegations took significant steps on some of the most pressing issues facing the world—from delivering F-16 aircraft to Ukraine to bolstering relations between Seoul and Tokyo and countering China’s economic coercion.

This year's G7 summit in Hiroshima sees nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation sitting high on the agenda, amid rising tensions between the nuclear states and an increasingly divided international order.  Six contributors offer their analyses, including the Belfer Center's Mayumi Fukushima.