In addition to nuclear weapons, the model should take account of missile defense, precision-guided conventional strike, space and cyber developments. US-Russian strategic stability talks should address all these factors. They should also address doctrine. Case in point: escalate-to-deescalate. Most Russian experts assert that this never became official Russian doctrine.
However, the Pentagon believes it has, and that influenced the US nuclear posture review. At the least, each side appears to believe that the other has lowered the threshold for using nuclear weapons. That should leave no one comfortable. Formal nuclear arms negotiations will, for the foreseeable future, remain a bilateral US-Russian matter. That is due to the disparity in numbers. According to the Federation of American Scientists , the United States has about 3, nuclear warheads in its active stockpile, while Russia has about 4, No third country has more than about The Trump administration tried to bring China into a US-Russia negotiation, but it never articulated a plan for doing so.
That is no surprise. Those limits will remain in force until February Reserve or non-deployed strategic nuclear warheads, and non-strategic nuclear warheads—whether deployed or non-deployed—are unconstrained. After the Cold War, the United States dramatically reduced its non-strategic nuclear weapons, eliminating all sea-based and land-based systems.
Today, the only US non-strategic nuclear weapon is the B61 gravity bomb. Russia, on the other hand, maintains a large number and variety of non-strategic nuclear warheads—close to 2, for land-, sea- and air-based delivery as well as for defensive systems. This raises concern that Russia might be postured to use such weapons in a conflict. The US military maintains more reserve strategic warheads.
This reflects a desire to hedge against technical surprises or adverse geopolitical developments. As Russia modernizes its strategic ballistic missiles, it also is expanding its upload capacity. The logical next step for the United States and Russia would entail negotiation of an agreement with an aggregate limit covering all their nuclear warheads.
Retired but not yet dismantled warheads could be dealt with separately. For a notional agreement, assume an aggregate limit of no more than 2, total nuclear warheads. Within that aggregate, there could be a sublimit of no more than 1, deployed strategic warheads on deployed ICBMs, SLBMs and any new kinds of strategic systems with deployed warheads—the weapons most readily launched.
This approach would treat bomber weapons as non-deployed, since they are not maintained on board aircraft. Ideally, all nuclear weapons other than those on deployed strategic delivery systems would be kept in storage. A new agreement could also lower the New START limits on deployed delivery systems and deployed and non-deployed launchers.
This would be ambitious. That said, it would leave each nuclear superpower with eight times as many nuclear weapons as any third country. Even if the agreement did not entail such dramatic reductions, the structure would, for the first time, capture all US and Russian nuclear warheads. Such an agreement could enable the United States and Russia to begin to deal with third-country nuclear weapons states, and here is where nuclear arms control in the s might get into new territory.
The arms ban kept nuclear-tipped cruise missiles off the European continent for three decades. Of the 14, nuclear weapons on the planet, Russia and the United States own the lion's share, with a combined total of approximately 13, nukes.
The remaining 1, weapons are held by seven countries. North Korea, the latest unwelcome addition to the world's nuke club , remains the only country to test nuclear weapons in this century. Nuclear weapons produce enormous and dangerous explosive energy, and their blasts are measured in kilotons and megatons. Nuclear weapons, such as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima , which was 15 kilotons of chemical explosives, produced lethal ionizing radiation in addition to a shock wave and massive amounts of heat.
Nuclear weapons also have radioactive fallout, where debris is picked up by winds into the atmosphere and then settles back to Earth days later. Nuclear weapons produce more death, destruction, injury, and sickness than any other single weapon. The Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States caused both countries to increase the number of their nuclear weapons.
At their peak, the Soviet Union had a total of 33, operational warheads and the United States had 32, After the Soviet Union disintegrated, thousands of nuclear weapons on both sides were dismantled.
0コメント