The focus of this year's Education for Public Inquiry and International Citizenship (EPIIC) course is "Our Nuclear Age: Promise and Peril." Although my friends have enjoyed teasing me about giving up my social life in exchange for learning about "nukes," I've found great relevancy to our lives in this experience.
Most students at Tufts were born after the end of the Cold War, but for our parents and previous Tufts students, the nuclear arms race was a part of daily life; it was a serious concern and a heavily debated issue. Unfortunately, these debates are no longer a part of life at Tufts. The rest of this piece will attempt to prove that this debate is still worth having on campus.
Nuclear weapons are still a part of our lives despite the end of the nuclear arms race and continued nuclear disarmament. Although the United States no longer tests nuclear weapons, France was actively testing nuclear weapons until 1996, both India and Pakistan tested nuclear weapons in 1998, and North Korea tested nuclear weapons in 2006 and 2009. The nuclear arms race has changed, not gone away. Israel has never openly tested nuclear weapons, but the Federation of American Scientists estimates that Israel has anywhere from 75 to 400 nuclear warheads. While Iran does not have nuclear weapons, it has been developing and testing ballistic missiles which could serve as delivery vehicles for nuclear warheads. Iran also has not been forthcoming in providing the International Atomic Energy Agency with information regarding its nuclear program and as a result the international community has no way of accurately knowing what the Iranians are truly up to.
The debate over nuclear weapons is not a one−sided debate in favor of disarmament, as there are many reasons that having a nuclear arsenal is better for the United States. Deterrence provided by American nuclear weapons gives non−nuclear weapon state allies reassurance that they can have the powerful deterrent force of nuclear weapons without having their own nuclear arsenal. Countries like Japan need not worry about threat from nuclear weapons states because the United States is jointly responsible for Japan's national defense. There has also not been a major conflict on the scale of a world war since the atomic bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Since 1945 there has been what some international relations scholars call a "nuclear peace" that explains the lack of major conflict in the second half of the 20th century and the present day.
In the unfortunate age of terrorism that we live in, nuclear terrorism is also a threat that some experts view as a very credible threat in the years to come. Many experts who study the possibilities of nuclear terrorism, including political scientist and Harvard professor Graham Allison, Harvard professor Matthew Bunn and former CIA intelligence officer and Department of Energy Director of Intelligence Rolf Mowatt−Larssen (who will all be presenting at the EPIIC Symposium held at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy Feb. 23−27), have all called nuclear terrorism a preventable catastrophe against which the United States has done little to protect itself.
What makes the nuclear−weapons issue such an interesting point of debate is that the effects and repercussions of our nuclear age are long−lasting and more complex than condemning nuclear weapons as dangerous to the world. In order to get the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) ratified by the Senate, President Obama pledged $85 billion to be spent over the next 10 years to modernize the infrastructure of the nuclear weapons program infrastructure. This $85 billion promise, however, does not include funding for replacing the current nuclear stockpile, much of which has been in operation longer than intended.
Recently in Congress there has been a push to lower the federal budget and cut government spending. The pressure to cut government spending raises an interesting question: What will happen to the $85 billion currently slated to be spent on reviving and rebuilding the U.S. nuclear weapons infrastructure? The funding of the national labs and plants has remained stagnant since the end of the Cold War — this $85 billion commitment would bring much−needed modernization to some of the facilities that are still operating in buildings that date back to World War II. Does the need to modernize our nuclear infrastructure, weapons and arms control programs outweigh the need to cut federal spending?
Nuclear weapons once again entered the public's eye in December, as the Senate battled over New START's ratification. Unfortunately, though, little discussion on nuclear weapons took place outside of EPIIC. The Daily for the most part ignored the issue with the exception of a couple articles that merely focused on the partisan political debate revolving around the treaty and not what New START meant outside of the political realm. Given the importance of nuclear weapons in foreign policy and international relations and as an indirect factor in our every day lives, the debate over nuclear weapons is certainly one fitting for a college campus like Tufts. As future leaders in our fields — whether as scientists, journalists or peace negotiators — it is important that we form opinions on issues that will shape the world we live in outside of Tufts.
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