Nuclear Weapons, Legitimate Violence, and International Enforcement - Week 8

This weeks’ readings brought up the question of authority and violence in the international realms, as well as bringing us back to questions of sovereignty as previously discussed. Bruce Blair’s article Increasing Warning and Decision Time (De-alerting) was very interesting as it sets out a plan for lowering the readiness or “de-alerting” the world’s nuclear systems. Although he lays out a detailed plan for how this process could happen, with the agreement and coordination of both the United States and Russia, the whole time I was reading I could only think that this would never happen. Or that even if lots of international agreements and treaties were signed, there would still be no way to KNOW if each side complied in lowering their nuclear readiness. However, I did find his idea that the Cold War never ended very interesting in light of current relations between the U.S. and Russia.

The goal of a nuclear free world is rather lofty, as we seem to only hear more and more about nuclear weapons in the news each day. Despite perhaps an unrealistic goal, the author does bring about an important argument that the increase in technology combined with our nuclear readiness is rather terrifying when one stops to think about the reality of that system being hacked and therefore starting a chain of events that are irreversible. And although I doubt we'll ever have a nuclear free world, I do think measures should be taken to increase a margin of safety, increasing the time and steps that must be enacted from the time one sovereign power decides to use nuclear weapons to the time of impact.

Although the article points to both the U.S. and Russia as the main culprits, tying it back to the Cold War, there is also mention of China and the hope that their government would follow suit. This made me think that there are more than just these three countries with nuclear weapons that would need to follow the plan, thus increasing the difficulty of coordination and agreement. North Korea for example, which generally falls into the category of autonomous and hard boundaries, has made known their capabilities involving nuclear weapons and has threatened to use them. And due to this, the international actors have a difficult time “enforcing” rules over them because, as we have discussed many times in this class, there is no overarching system or ruler to ensure all actors are held accountable.

This brings up the question as to whether or not the use of nuclear bombs during WWII were a “legitimate” use of violence to end the war. If the U.S. had been on the receiving end of those bombs would it have simply been accepted and the war ended? Would a precedent like we have now, that nuclear weapons are not to be used, have been made?

So in light of the article, history, and current events, I think nuclear weapons that are available for immediate use pose a risk to the international world as there is increasing globalization and improving technology, thus increasing the risk that they could be activated on mistake or by an outsider. I also believe Blair’s plan is a good start, as it  focuses on little by little making nuclear weapons less of a risk. However, for this plan to be successful, there should also be a focus on how to incorporate countries such as North Korea as well, since they are often outside the influence of the other international actors.