Talk:History of nuclear weapons/Archive 1

From Nuclear Weapons Timeline, likely to be deleted--ragesoss 02:24, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

The nuclear age began on July 16th, 1945 when the US detonated a nuclear weapon in the New Mexico desert. However, The US did not hold the secret for long and through espionage, partnerships and discovery other states acquired the technology. The advances made during the Manhattan project were a necessary component in the nuclear equation and these discoveries were leaked to both hostile and allied states. Tracking the progression of nuclear technology from one state to another provides an interesting perspective of both cold war politics and the future of proliferation. HG Wells, always the prophet of modern Science Fiction, predicted the birth of a new form of energy so great it would change the world. He made this prediction in a work titled The World Set Free, published in 1913 on the eve of the First World War. Holston, the fictional character responsible for splitting the atom, has to deal with the moral dilemmas of such a powerful weapon and valuable source of energy. “'It has begun,' he writes in the diary in which these things are recorded. 'It is not for me to reach out to consequences I cannot foresee. I am a part, not a whole; I am a little instrument in the armoury of Change. If I were to burn all these papers, before a score of years had passed, some other man would be doing this. . .” Eventually the world is drawn into war, utilizing these weapons, and Wells describes carnage beyond belief. He was far from the predicting the actual power that nuclear weapons would eventually produce and the degradation that would take place after the blast. It began in a remote section of the New Mexico desert coined “Trinity Site” by Robert Oppenheimer. It is suggested that the name was chosen in reference to the Hindu cycle of life. “For Hindus, whatever exists in the universe is never destroyed. It is simply transformed.” In Oppenheimer’s scientific mind this belief meshed perfectly with the Law of Conservation of Mass (matter cannot be created nor destroyed), a scientific law that was later used by Einstein to develop the equation E=mc2. As the clock counted down, the scientists hoped that they would not make such an impact on scientific law that these norms would no longer hold true. Some scientists worried they would set off a nuclear chain reaction that could not be stopped. The mood at the test site was tense as science crossed into the unknown. “Just before her husband was preparing to leave for the Trinity test, Elsie McMillan asked him what might happen. "We ourselves are not absolutely certain what will happen," Ed McMillan, one of the discoverers of plutonium, said. "In spite of calculations, we are going into the unknown. We know that there are three possibilities. One, that we all [may] be blown to bits if it is more powerful than we expect. Two, it may be a complete dud. Three, it may, as we hope, be a success, we pray without loss of any lives."” On July 16th, 1945 the blast that shook the world was actually only heard in three states. Trinity had been a hollow success as its designers realized the implications of the weapon they had just created. The great scientific step was overshadowed by the destruction it would soon create. Less than one month later, President Truman ordered the first deployment of the atomic bomb. Hiroshima became the target and on August 6th, 1945 70,000 people died in the first of two attacks on Japan. The second attack killed 40,000 people in the city of Hiroshima three days later. “Stalin was dismayed that after all the Soviet sacrifices in  the war to defeat Germany  the American bomb had radically transformed  the balance of world power. At a single stroke the huge Soviet conventional army was rendered far less powerful.” The nuclear age had begun and the United States would soon face competition and the possibility of their weapon being turned against them. The fallout from WWII was more than just nuclear; it was political. America had flexed its muscles and proven itself technologically superior in military strength. The publicity behind the Trinity test and, more importantly, the nuclear attack on Japan proved that the US was both ready and willing to dispatch history's most deadly weapon. The attack was a warning to Moscow and the first move in a race that would become known as the Cold War. “The dropping of the atomic bombs was not so much the last military act of the Second World War as the first major operation of the cold diplomatic war with Russia now in progress." No Peace Treaty was signed to end the Second World War and the two remaining powers began vying for control over Europe. The US started out with the advantage of the Nuclear weapon. However, the USSR had a more experienced military that was closer in proximity to the region. They sought the nuclear weapon to gain an advantage over the US. “Washington and London are hoping we won't be able to develop  the bomb ourselves for some time," Stalin told his subordinates. “And meanwhile, using America's monopoly,. . . they want to force us to accept their plans on questions affecting Europe and the world. Well, that's not going to happen." It was not the first time the Soviet political establishment had turned toward the technology as a military solution. Although the US had conducted the first successful test of a nuclear weapon, several states had nuclear programs directed towards military purposes, Russia amongst them. Russia may have been the first to develop the weapon having an older program and more nuclear resources. However, the German attacks inside Russian territory during the war had severely hampered Russian advances.

The physics institute in Moscow was unable to function for eighteen months. Another important research laboratory in Kharkov was seized by the Germans, although much of its equipment was secreted beyond the Ural Mountains. Raw materials were difficult to obtain, and transport to the uranium mines in Central Asia was impossible, after the German armies reached the Black Sea.

The US had won the race to be the first but other states would follow them closely over the finish line. Although much of the Soviet atomic program remains shrouded in secrecy, they were the first to end the US monopoly on nuclear weapons. What is known is that Stalin changed the urgency of his plans after the first use of the bomb and called in several prominent physicists to begin a push for Soviet detonation. These scientists, and the nuclear program, were placed under the direction of Lavrentii Beria, the chief of the secret police. Stalin began diverting much of his resources, both scientific and within the military and intelligence fields, to the acquisition of an atomic bomb. The Soviet scientists had a pivotal source of information, spies. The Soviet nuclear program would not have come to fruition without the information being collected in the US. “The atomic secrets passed to the Russians by Nunn May and other émigré scientists working on the Atomic Research Project, such as Klaus Fuchs and Bruno Pontecorvo, may have accelerated the Soviet acquisition of a workable atomic bomb by a year or two.”  However, the actual method of constructing the weapon was shared within the scientific community of Germany, France, the UK, the US and Russia. Despite the fact that the first Soviet bomb was a copy of the Fat Man bomb used on Japan, most of the actual science behind the bomb was accessible. The espionage was directed towards building an effective trigger and disgracing the US by displaying the effectiveness of Soviet espionage. Much of the science behind the weapon either originated in England or passed this way via the US. Klaus Fuchs, the famous Soviet spy who worked for the Manhatten project, passed his information through the Soviet embassy in London. Many of the spies living in the US and England were closely aligned with socialist movements and considered their work for the greater good. The US recognized this threat and was shocked at the speed in which the Soviet Union had developed functional weapons. In the Red Scare era of McCarthyism, the US began a public campaign to rid itself of this threat. “In spite of, or paradoxically because of, Senator McCarthy's crusade against clandestine Communists within the American government, the British government continued to trust ex-Communists in its own ranks and services.” The US continued to pass secret information to the British despite the fact that they refused to clean house. The science that went into the development of a nuclear weapon did not begin in the US. Although they were the first to harness the power of a nuclear explosion, most of the technology was borrowed. A long list of scientists, mostly European, pioneered the technology with standouts including the New Zealand born and English educated Ernest Rutherford, who was conducting atomic studies in the early 20th century. In addition, political situations have often forced prominent nuclear scientists to defect. An excellent example of one such scientific defector is Enrico Fermi, an Italian who initiated the first nuclear self-sustaining reaction in 1942. The work for this achievement began in Italy but after traveling to Sweden to accept a Nobel Prize in 1938, Fermi defected to the US. During his stay in Sweden, “The Italian Fascist press severely criticized him for not wearing a Fascist uniform and failing to give the Fascist salute when he received the award. The Fermis never returned to Italy.” For this reason, nuclear proliferation was increasingly prominent in Europe. Scientific discoveries had not been sanctioned by governments before the outbreak of WWII and during the course of the war scientists, and their knowledge, were dispersed. Although the first Russian test in 1949 came as a shock to many Washington politicians, intelligence insiders knew the reality. With the fear of tactical weapons use in the European theater, the US turned towards its chief ally. The British nuclear program was backed by the US as information sharing and technological support intensified. But this was not always the case. America had taken strong steps to ensure the nuclear capabilities remained in US hands. The Russian bomb and British diplomats who posed the problem of defending the European arena finally convinced the US to relent:

It is likely to be the greatest single factor in deciding the outcome of any future world conflict. It must therefore play a vital part in all US and British strategic meetings, in the framing of defense policy, in the shaping of strategical and tactical plans, in the planning of war potential, in the design of equipment, in the training of the men who will use it and in planning the protection of those who may have to withstand the weight of attack from the enemy. If we fail to prevent war and are to make the best use of the atomic weapons in war it is vital we should share knowledge of it, and concert our thinking on every aspect of its development. . . . in a future world conflict, US and British forces will find themselves fighting side by side and the principle of standardization has already been accepted in other fields. It is common sense that it should be extended to cover the most vital field of all so that the design of US and British equipment and the technique of US and British production and tactics can proceed as far as possible.

Although the British nuclear program officially began in 1947, under the direction of William Penny, the beginning of the 1950’s marked the British membership into the Nuclear Club. British diplomats had successfully convinced the US of their country's military significance and, in return, had been granted the missing ingredients of a nuclear weapon. In 1952, Britain tested its first weapon, coined Hurricane, in Australia. The first test, which yielded a 25-kiloton explosion, was celebrated by the British establishment. It was overshadowed by the first thermonuclear detonation performed by the US 28 days later. Coined “Mike”, the hydrogen bombs explosion on the Eniwetok Atoll yielded 10.4 megatons. The Americans had clearly upped the ante and displayed what nuclear weapons were capable of. The 1950’s remained a period in which only three states possessed nuclear weapons. However, the threat of nuclear war, according to the magazine Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, was the most severe. The magazine had begun the doomsday clock in 1947 with the intent of predicting how many “minutes” remained until “midnight”. Nine months after the first detonation of the hydrogen bomb “Mike”, the Soviets responded with a layer-cake warhead designed to emulate the hydrogen bomb. Although it was not a “true” hydrogen bomb, the Soviet propaganda machine announced it as such; the doomsday clock moved to two minutes till midnight. As of the writing of this paper this moment was the single closest it has been to midnight. The threat of nuclear war changed the mentality of many governments during the 1950’s. States began to view nuclear weapons as the ultimate equalizer and a measurement of true power. Two hemispheres of nuclear proliferation occurred beginning in the late 1950’s. In a typical bi-polar Cold War fashion, proliferation occurred to oppose the growing threat of either the US or USSR. “As the months of 1958 went by, however, the United States clung to its position, formulated in the very beginning of the atomic age, that it would not carry other nations through the door into the atomic club and would not hand over nuclear weapons to the exclusive jurisdiction of any other country.” The United States was not willing to hand the technology out but they hoped to put more weapons in Europe through NATO. France was the obvious target and the next country to join the nuclear club in 1961. However, it was not the United States that put them there. They serve as an anomaly in terms of nuclear proliferation. Two things led to the French detonation: a well established nuclear power infrastructure and “The nagging fear that its allies were on the verge of downgrading France's position clearly centered on the fact that the British and Americans could manufacture atomic weapons and France could not.” Testing became the measure of a country's relative power. The bulk of the testing by the two superpowers took place within their own border; Nevada had the most tests, Kazakhstan the second most and Russia the third. The new members of the nuclear club had a different policy towards testing. France and Britain sought a location to test that wouldn’t impact their territory and they turned towards their colonies. The US nuclear family tree began with Britain in the 1940’s and dispersed from there. The British, having detonated their own weapon, began spreading the technology into areas that suited their interests. This was done with little regard for prevailing situations in these regions and was short-sighted. Nuclear technology found its way into many of the former colonies and weapons into at least two states, South Africa and India. They were not alone in aiding the programs of other countries. However, they often had direct interests in former colonies, both financial and political. The Indian nuclear program was the product of several competing factors. Problematically, “Existing literature on the nuclear issue lacks a comparative account that explains its rise as a symbol of sovereignty and security in the subcontinent. There are either accounts of developments of nuclear policies and installations in the two countries, or a barrage of accusations against each other or by Western analysts in the name of history.” Having one of the most capable scientific communities in the world, often educated in British schools, and with a hostile neighbor, India looked like an immediate candidate for nuclear weapons. In addition, their geographic position made them a primary candidate for backing by the Western world. However, India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, “Considered the key conflict in the world to be between the atomic bomb and the spirit of humanity, he foresaw an independent India representing the spiritual rather than the atomic side of humanity.” The Indian perspective was changed by fear. China was the last member of the Permanent five members of the UN Security Council to detonate a weapon in 1964. It was perceived, at the time, that much of the technology was granted through the Soviet Union. Although this might be true, recent Cold War scholars have begun to progress ideas about inter-communism state relations. On the outside that propaganda machines of these two states wanted the democratic world to believe they were working in harmony. In reality, internal conflict was prevalent. Nuclear sharing between the states happened, but it was not at the same degree perceived by Western powers. This being said, China was threatened by the United States on at least three occasions with the use of nuclear weapons, two of these occurred during the Korean War. The Chinese also feared the Soviet Union, which had signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty along with the United States and Britain in the mid-1960’s. In this respect they shared the same motivations as France. Both states abhorred the “hegemonistic nature of superpower-inspired non-proliferation.” They sought to free themselves from the hegemonic shadow and viewed atomic weapons as the necessary tool to do so. However, the Chinese differed in two respects: 1. the Chinese had no interest in non-proliferation and 2. publicly announced they would USE weapons against other nuclear powers if provoked by conventional forces. They were not building status symbols, they were building weapons. The Chinese stance included five distinct policy points:

1. China had to "go nuclear" because of the increasing nuclear threat posed first by the United States and then by the Soviet Union. 2. China's nuclear weapons were meant for self-defense only and Beijing pledged never to use nuclear weapons first, and not to use them against non-nuclear states. 3. Beijing would not have developed nuclear weapons if its demands for the complete prohibition and thorough destruction of nuclear weapons had been met. 4. China was opposed to any arms control agreement, such as the NPT, which curtailed the sovereign rights of non-nuclear states and perpetuated superpower hegemony. 5.China hoped that a greater number of countries would be able to make nuclear weapons but it was unrealistic to expect Chinese help in any nuclear aspirations that they might have harboured.

China’s stance on nuclear weapons did not last into the 1970’s. It was during this period that the permanent five members began cementing non-proliferation policies. For China, the political climate of Asia was a key factor in policy. India and Pakistan had fought three wars when India detonated their first atomic weapon in 1972. Pakistan immediately recognized the threat that this posed and began a program aimed at evening the odds. China was willing to directly take part in this Pakistani objective. The multi-lateral reasoning behind super-power proliferation is often so complex it needs to be simplified:

Russia often sells weapons technology because its economic crisis leaves officials and ministers grasping for chances to earn hard currency, and the US leaks weapons know-how because it simply can't contain its explosion of technology. China, by contrast, more often exports high powered weapons and technology in a cool pursuit of specific policy goals ... Over the years, China has shown remarkable persistence in its use of weapons sales ... to achieve its goals, regardless of world opinion or even the threat of sanctions. Occasionally ... China slows the pace or shifts tactics under international pressure ...  China is a strategic proliferator.

Countries that seek nuclear weapons as a symbol of powers are often not as dangerous as those countries whose programs come to fruition and remain under a veil of secrecy. The Pakistani nuclear program that began in 1972 was benefited by US leaks, Chinese strategic arms trading and Russia’s limited financial interactions. It is safe to say that Pakistan had a working warhead as the 1980’s began. However, for political reasons they kept it in the dark until 1998. It was unveiled after India tested six underground weapons in May of that year. The Indian tests came as a shock to the nuclear club and the world community. US Congress began a series of investigations and according to testimony by Assistant Secretary of State Inderfurth, "We were told privately and publicly that India would continue to show restraint in the non-proliferation field, and would do nothing to surprise us." Pakistan responded to the Indian threat by detonating six warheads 17 days later. The speed in which Pakistan had responded was a measure of their competence. The nuclear club is comprised of those countries that have acknowledged successfully tested nuclear weapons. However, under certain circumstances it is beneficial to neither admit nor deny a nuclear program. A simple analogy can be made by comparing international politics to chess. In chess, an opening move in which a player sacrifices a pawn to secure a strategic advantage is termed a gambit. Countries, as in chess, often fail when attempting a gambit leaving themselves exposed to a counter. The repercussions can be extremely damaging. Iraq attempted to build a nuclear plant in the 1980’s and was bombed by Israel. Again, in the second Gulf War, it refused to allow inspectors into its facilities giving the Bush Administration cause to enter into conflict. Although these examples are of failures, Iran has had some success in procuring the resources necessary for a nuclear weapons program. They have gained a series of lesser capitulations from the nuclear powers. Israel is a political role model for countries desiring a weapons program. The program was started in 1948 by Ben Gurion and was carefully conceived and executed. Understanding that Arab pressure would never allow for a Jewish bomb, the program had to remain leak free and therefore the timeframe was extended. Since much of the Jewish state was immigrant dependent, strong ties remained to Europe. Ben Gurion hoped to send the most talented young physicist abroad to study and convince Jewish scientists abroad to defect. The program focused on France, which had a strong nuclear energy program and fledgling arms division. In every facet the program was aimed at obtaining nuclear energy to then be secretly redirected towards weapons. This “Israeli Method” was brilliant in that it was able to buy nuclear technology from both France and more importantly the US, which opposed any Israeli weapons program. The Israeli nuclear facility was a brilliant example of inspector deflection. Israel’s secret reactor, Dimona, was shielded by an AEC built reactor, Soreq, that was purchased from the US, a state which condemned any Israeli nuclear military use. “The construction of the Soreq reactor by AMF was an important factor indicating why the United States failed to identify Israel's other, top-secret nuclear project, namely, Dimona.” By the time the United States recognized the mistake it was too late. “During 1967-70, first under Levi Eshkol and, after March 1969, under Golda Meir, Israel moved from nuclear ambiguity to nuclear opacity. By 1970 it became publicly known that the U.S. government considered Israel to be in possession of an operational nuclear weapons capability.” The Israeli method acted as a lesson for other governments seeking an operational program. Through deflection and superpower concession a program can be built under the guises of a “safe” nuclear program. Both Iran and North Korea have benefited from this political move. When a state announces its intention to began a weapons program superpowers often grant concessions to pacify the state. In 1992, it was discovered that North Korea had a secret enrichment program and they began threatening to withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Through a series of negotiations intending to reduce the threat of conflict, the US granted North Korea two “safe” reactors and aid. In return, North Korea ended its plutonium enrichment program and allowed inspector oversight. This solution was short lived and may have aided the enrichment program that was restarted in 2001. The United States gave North Korea additional reactors and technology beneficial to a nuclear arms program. In today’s world nuclear weapons are not as difficult to construct as is popularly perceived. “A competent group of nuclear physicists, and electronic and explosive engineers, given adequate resources and access to the literature, would have little difficulty in designing and constructing such a weapon from scratch. They would not need access to any classified literature.” It has also been declassified that the United States was able to successfully detonate two nuclear weapons that used a less enriched fuel similar to that used in reactors. These types of fuel are accessible to several countries that claim to have no interest in nuclear weapons.