The presence of nuclear weapons among global powers is an uncomfortable thought for many, especially with the current reality of escalating tensions globally. How much longer do we have left before these weapons are deployed against each other, hence leading the world down an irrevocable path of self-destruction?
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Nuclear Weapons in the Modern World.
For as long as independent state entities exist, war will always remain to be an expected inevitability. War is as old as human civilization, given that human societies will always have differences between them and interests will always collide. The Post World War era has been the most peaceful in human history given the fact there have been no major wars fought in between.
It beats logic that after all those centuries of warring and conflict, a period of relative peace would only come when humanity is at its most technologically advanced and with the largest ever population in history. One would expect that with more people with access to even more sophisticated weapons, wars would be more rampant now than ever before.
Several factors come into play when one considers why no major global conflicts have been fought in the recent past. Most apparent of all is the advent of globalization, where the world has become an ‘interconnected global village’. Globalization has helped push the advancement of International Trade, encouraging countries to cooperate in trading goods and services. Specialization is encouraged as each country can focus on producing what it can in the most efficient way possible, relying on imports to supplement that which it cannot. International Trade has also encouraged countries to open up their boundaries, which allows for cross-border movement of people of all nationalities, allowing the global population to be more interconnected.
The emergence of the internet has allowed people from all walks of life from all over the world to connect over a shared global platform. By connecting over such spaces, people can easily gain an understanding of each other, and many personal bonds and connections have been made over various platforms. Social media, despite its many flaws, has been an important tool in connecting the world. Furthermore, many business transactions can now be done over the Internet all across the world, allowing for the growth of global commerce. Goods and services can now be sold across the world, at any time.
Technological advancements in major fields of human development have helped raise the global standards of living. All in all, the period of relative global peace that we are currently alive in has been achieved by encouraging global cooperation over competition.
However, just because we seem to live in a relative peace period does not mean our interconnected global relationships have always been rosy. Each country in the world has its national interests, whose pursuit it prioritizes over everything else. Many of these can collide with the interests of other countries which can put them at loggerheads with each other. The situation is probably most apparent between the global powers. Recently, we have seen the differences between the United States and China escalate into a trade war between the two countries.
Furthermore, continued differences between Russia and the European Union have also escalated, resulting in sanctions and trade blockades. Despite the concerted movement towards global cooperation, there are times when countries are willing to go to war to defend their national interests.
War and Nuclear Weapons
The presence of nuclear weapons, especially between the global powers complicates such situations. When the United States dropped the twin bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki back in 1945, the whole world got a taste of just how destructive these weapons can get. Consequently, over the Post-war reconstruction period, the rest of the global powers were in a rush to develop nuclear weapons of their own. The Soviet Union, in particular, developed a nuclear weapons program that rivaled that of the United States and for the latter half of the twentieth century, the two were locked in a fierce nuclear weapons arms race.
Nonetheless, one can argue that it is the presence of these nuclear weapons between them that prevented the two powers from directly going to war during that period. Neither would want to bear responsibility for global annihilation as a result of deploying nuclear weapons
The Cold War period, lasting from the end of the Second World War to the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of the century, saw some close calls between the two powers. The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1961 is a perfect example of just how close the two came to war, as the presence and ability to launch nuclear weapons by either power remained an ever-present reality. Given that every other country with the resources to do so was developing nuclear weapons at the time as well, why then were no global wars fought with the use of these weapons during that time?
Firstly, most of these countries are aware that the mutual use of these weapons in war would result in a situation of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD). Consequently, despite possessing these tools in their arsenal, they are very skeptical about deploying them in war unless it is an action of last resort. It is on this rationale that the global powers ratified the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which was a commitment towards scaling down on respective nuclear programs and doing away with nuclear weapons in the long run. All these powers, except for a few rogue states in North Korea and Iran, have agreed to shoulder the responsibility for the fair use and utilization of these weapons.
While the elimination of nuclear weapon programs remains a distant reality, their presence has helped these powers to employ the use of cool heads in dealing with each other, knowing that an unmitigated escalation in conflict will lead to the mutual destruction of each other, and of humanity as a whole.
Skating on Thin Ice
All in all, nuclear weapons act as a form of deterrence even amid exacerbated conflicts between any two or more nuclear-wielding countries. Countries with sizeable nuclear weapons treat each other with a level of decorum, perhaps in reverence to the number of resources and intellect required to have such programs. The possession of a Nuclear Weapons Program within a country is an identifier of its military capabilities and it thus convinces all those involved to treat it with reverence. One only needs to look at North Korea to see how this is manifested in the real world.
The Non-Proliferation Treaty, even with the good intentions that it was set up with may have been used as a tool to lock out the rest of the world from developing nuclear weapons. That may have been for the better as with greater power comes greater responsibility, and these global powers have been responsible for maintaining global peace despite possessing such destructive weapons. Who knows how different the situation would have been if everyone was allowed to have these weapons!
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