The exact number of existing nuclear weapons in the world today are hard to determine since they are normally treated as closely guarded state secrets, but the United States and Russia remain the biggest nuclear powers, holding between them approximately 93% of an estimated 15,695 nuclear weapons currently in existence.
Any discussion of the politics and dangers of nuclear weapons will be incomplete without generous references to the phenomenon of the Cold War, the well-known East-West rivalry waged along ideological, military, economic, scientific and cultural planes.
The Cold War was actually triggered by a race for nuclear arms supremacy, which started with the United States’ commissioning of the Manhattan Project in 1942. The ultimate testing and, so far, the only actual wartime use of any nuclear bomb in the closing days of the World War II, were in a bid to assert the U.S. as the pre-eminent power. The bombing of two Japanese cities – Hiroshima and Nagasaki, also served to open the eyes of the emerging superpowers to a more efficient means of delivering nuclear weapons.
Therefore, intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), an adaptation of space exploration technology became a necessary accoutrement to strategic nuclear weaponry. These are capable of hitting intended targets anywhere around the globe in shorter time space than an hour. There also exists an assortment of shorter-range nuclear missiles deliverable from battleships and submarines.
Although the U.S. at inception had a head-start over the U.S.S.R., a full-blown arms race ensured that the two achieved a rough strategic parity by the middle of 1970s. Since then, the nuclear weapons technology has proliferated dangerously. Quite apart from the two superpowers, a motley of other nations have acquired nuclear weapons capabilities at various level of capacity and advancement.
Although the Cold War officially ended some twenty and a half years back, the warring factions and their arsenals of war are still largely intact. And while the sabre-rattling of the cold war years may have largely abated, new dangerous dimensions seem to have been added to the looming threat of a nuclear Armageddon.
The threat had been accentuated by harsh economic realities confronting the remaining power centre in the defunct Soviet power bloc – Russia. In the years immediately following the collapse of the Soviet bloc, the splintering of the Soviet Union itself engendered, exposed or further compounded what have always been suspected to be a serious economic malaise plaguing the U.S.S.R.’s politico-economic system. The confusion which attended the collapse of the forced Union, meant the potential exposure of some of the nuclear weapons and materials to desperate hands.
However, while this challenge seems to have been somewhat better managed in a way that ensured the safe transfer of most of these weapons to the successor power to the Soviet Union, Russia, the seed of a more horrendous challenge lay elsewhere in one of the part fall-outs of the Cold War rivalry – the violent activities of political Islamists.
Political Islam provides an umbrella movement for those who long for the revival of a global Islamic political hegemony, which they reckon is realisable in the context of the establishment of some sort of an Islamic Caliphate either on a global scale or in specific country contexts. It has given rise to a band of radical elements who believe it can only be realised by violent, nay terrorist means. This desire has also been partly fuelled by a perception that the Western world represents all that must be made to give way to attain this objective.
The earliest manifestation of this scourge were the Mujahidins who paradoxically were massively armed by the West during the Cold War conflicts in Afghanistan. Out of this have since emerged more virulent groupings like the Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Other ideologically related groups are the Al-Shabaab, the Boko Haram, and lately the so-called Islamic State (or ISIS). The combined violent activities of these groups has resulted in more carnage and bloodshed that are probably only surpassed by the great modern wars.
By far, the greatest fear in most Western capitals today is that of any of these terrorist organisations getting hold of any kind of nuclear material or weapon to cause mayhem. The phenomenon that has come to be known as nuclear terrorism presents a rather horrifying spectre. The current U.S. President, Barack Obama called it the “single most important threat” to American national security. The immediate past director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei was quoted to have described Nuclear terrorism as “the most serious danger the world is facing.”
A few observers agree that the Islamic State and perhaps some other terrorist groups may have obtained an unspecified quantity of radioactive material, especially with the press reports of the disappearance since November 2015 of such material from an ISIS-controlled part of Iraq. Although some sources said they were later recovered, the reports were nonetheless confirmed by the IAEA and the U.S, State Department.
There is also the option of an attack on any existing nuclear facility in order to cause mayhem in populated areas. The fears are really not unfounded. A number of nuclear facilities are reportedly poorly policed including and especially those in Belgium.
It was against the background of these threats that the fourth Nuclear Security Summit was held in Washington late March 2016. The outcomes of that Summit attended by some 50 world leaders, though commendable in certain respects, were considered not adequately providing for measures to properly secure vulnerable nuclear plants around the world against terrorist attacks.
Quite apart from the threat from terrorists, the fact that the main parties to the Cold War still have a chunk of their nuclear arsenals largely intact means that despite all the deterrence and international safeguards, given the truculent and egoistic nature of men, it is not entirely misplaced to still entertain the possibility that a full scale nuclear war may materialise someday soon.
Therefore, the ultimate assurance of a peaceful world rests, not in humans who have set the stage for possible global conflagration, but in the Lord who has predicted that in this present world, we should expect wars – even nuclear wars. However, the Lord promises: “Peace I leave with you, my peace, I give unto you; not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid” (John 14:27).
Olushina Adisa sent in this write up from London, where he resides with his family