War and Peace Reimagined: The Role of Nuclear Weapons

By Mihaela Pranjkovic-Kovac, Science and Technology

The past century has seen a rapid increase in scientific developments; included among these is the development of weapons. In 1915, the development of the tank was adamantly supported by Winston Churchill and in less than thirty years, in 1942, J. Robert Oppenheimer was put in charge of the Manhattan Project, which would eventually result in one of the most jarring scientific developments in modern history—the atomic bomb (Oxford Reference 2012). Just three years later, on August 6th, 1945, the first atomic bomb was dropped during warfare by the United States on Japan. Killing 70,000 people instantly, it was clear that not just warfare but all political relations across the world had changed (The Editors of Encyclopaedia 2024). This jarring number of casualties, however, is not the only role that nuclear weapons play in international conflict. By looking at historical examples, it’s made apparent that nuclear weapons have become a double-edged sword that simultaneously encourages and threatens peace in the international arena. 

An apt place to start is by analyzing the cases in which nuclear weapons have threatened peace. The reason why these weapons are regarded as such a threat is their ability to enact such a large amount of indiscriminate damage and destruction in a short matter of time. Such an ability renders nuclear weapons a grave threat to peace, even if they aren’t even used—just the threat of their effects is chilling enough. Consider how India and Pakistan nearly initiated nuclear warfare in 2019. This escalation was part of a larger historical context. The two countries have fought multiple wars against each other in the Kashmir region, which they have both claimed belongs to them since their independence in 1947 from Great Britain. The nations became nuclear powers at different times, India in 1974 and Pakistan twenty-four years later in 1998 (The Arms Control Center 2024). In just a little over twenty years after Pakistan’s acquisition of nuclear arms, the two countries would teeter on the edge of nuclear war. Former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo would recall in his memoir that the public was not adequately aware of how large the threat of nuclear war was during this time. India had launched air raids inside of Pakistan in 2019 because it blamed Pakistan for the death of forty-one Indian soldiers in the Kashmir region. Pakistan would retaliate by shooting down and capturing the pilot of an Indian warplane. Soon, both sides of the conflict became convinced that the other was preparing to deploy their nuclear weapons. The United States would later intervene and persuade both countries that the other was not engaged in such preparation, which eventually led to the de-escalation of the situation (Al Jazeera 2023). Jarringly, even a small nuclear exchange between the countries has the potential to kill twenty million in just a week, potentially triggering a nuclear winter that would put the lives of nearly two billion people at risk from starvation (The Arms Control Center 2024). 

A better-known example of when nuclear weapons threatened international peace would be the Cuban Missile Crisis, which occurred at the height of the Cold War. The Cuban Missile Crisis is in fact regarded as the closest moment the United States and the Soviet Union came to nuclear warfare. Beginning when the United States failed to overthrow the Cuban Castro regime during the blunderous Bay of Pigs invasion, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev made a deal with Cuban premier Fidel Castro to put nuclear missiles on the island as a form of deterrence from another invasion. The U.S. regarded the decision as a severe threat to its security upon discovery because of Cuba’s geographic proximity, which resulted in the ordering of a naval “quarantine” of Cuba. President Kennedy wrote to Khrushchev ordering the missile bases to be taken down and all weapons to be returned to the Soviet Union; Khruschev’s response was to label the quarantine an aggressive act. This correspondence would continue until Khrushchev demanded the removal of U.S. missiles from Turkey as a condition for any deal. Despite a number of hostile exchanges, the missile crisis would eventually de-escalate (The Office of The Historian).

The Cold War created many precedents when it came to nuclear warfare. The course of events would flow naturally into the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. It is a multilateral treaty with the objective “to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons…to promote cooperation in peaceful uses of nuclear energy and to further the goal of achieving nuclear disarmament and general and complete disarmament,” it was put into force in 1970. A total of 191 states that have joined the Treaty (The Office for Disarmament Affairs). The objective of the Treaty suggests the interesting idea that there can indeed be a sense of peace connected to nuclear weapons. There does in fact appear to be instances in which nuclear weapons specifically have promoted peace, though perhaps not in the manner originally envisioned by the treaty. 

The manner in which nuclear weapons can directly promote peace is  deterrence. When a country is aware of the damage its and retaliatory countries’ nuclear arsenals can cause, it often deters a country from the use of nuclear weapons, and  instead urges the search for a diplomatic means of addressing international issues. This observation is best exemplified by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, but this is not the only example. In 1972, President Nixon and General Secretary of the Soviet Union Leonid Brezhnev would sign a historic treaty that would limit the nuclear arsenals of both countries (The Guardian Archive 2013). Given that  nuclear stockpiling is what triggered the tensions of the Cold War in the first place, the treaty’s significance cannot be overstated. It proved to be an example of when nuclear weapons contribute to peace, putting both countries in a position to resolve their mutual tensions and better their diplomatic relations. 

The role of nuclear weapons in the international political landscape proves to be a shield and scourge simultaneously. These weapons have at various points threatened global peace and the lives of billions. Contrarily, they harbor the potential to incentivize countries to seek and practice peaceful diplomatic alternatives to nuclear warfare. It is precisely this dual role  that makes nuclear weapons so important; harnessing the power they have to promote peace begins with the awareness of their ability to do so. 

References

Al Jazeera. 2023. “India, Pakistan Came Close to a Nuclear War in 2019: Pompeo.” Al Jazeera, January 25. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/1/25/india-pakistan-came-close-to-a-nuclear-war-in-2019-pompeo. 

The Arms Control Center. 2024. “India and Pakistan.” The Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, https://armscontrolcenter.org/countries/india-and-pakistan/

The Editors of Encyclopaedia. 2024. “atomic bomb.” Encyclopedia Britannica, October 30. https://www.britannica.com/technology/atomic-bomb/Development-and-proliferation-of-atomic-bombs.

The Guardian Archive. 2013. “From the archive, May 27, 1972: Nixon and Brezhnev sign historic arms treaty.” The Guardian, May 27. https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2013/may/27/nuclear-arms-pact-russia-usa-1972. 

The Office for Disarmament Affairs. “Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).” The United Nations, https://disarmament.unoda.org/wmd/nuclear/npt/ 

The Office of The Historian. “The Cuban Missile Crisis, October 1962.” Department of State, 

https://history.state.gov/milestones/1961-1968/cuban-missile-crisis.

Oxford Reference. 2012. “Weapons.” HistoryWorld, https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780191737930.timeline.0001.