EE190: Nuclear Weapons, Risk and HopeProf. Martin E. HellmanHandout #2, April 8, 2010Reading for next classRead this handout.Read at least #1, #2, #9 and #10 of the following brief articles (but not the reader comments) on the August 2008 Georgian war. The others are optional, but highly recommended. If you donʼt have time to read them all, try some at random to get a flavor. My goal is to illuminate the risk involved when Americans see unprovoked Russian agression, while Russians see themselves as attacked by Georgia:1. A Newsweek article on the danger of appeasing the Russians2. The view of a former Special Assistant to President Reagan3. The view of a former advisor on Soviet affairs to President Nixon4. The danger present even in our limited response5. The view of conservative columnist Patrick Buchanan6. More from Patrick Buchanan7. The view of a former State Department and Pentagon official8. Der Spiegelʼs take on the EU Investigation (when the report later came out, it found neither side was blameless, but that Georgia fired the first shots).9. A year after the war, there is danger of a rematch10. A dangerous Georgian hoaxEnvisioning the InconceivableMy article "Soaring, Cryptography and Nuclear Weapons," presents the ideas behind risk analysis in a non-technical way in a 10-15 minute read. However, it does not adequately link the danger of nuclear war with those of nuclear terrorism and proliferation. I am working on a re-write to do that, and in the meantime, this update gives the key change in that regard: The current version of the paper uses the following diagram to illuminate how a sequence of mistakes can lead to full-scale nuclear war.EE 190, Prof. Hellman, April 8, 2010, Page 1 of 5Most of the time, we are in a relatively safe state toward the middle of the worldʼs Current State. The danger occurs rarely – but not rarely enough – when we move to one of the riskier states closer to the brink. For example, the article lists six key steps that led to the Cuban Missile Crisis and describes modern-day analogs to five and a half of those that had occurred by July 2008. We have since recovered from that extremely dangerous situation and, since the last half step to a full-blown crisis did not occur, most people are unaware how close we came. (See the article for details.)In order to better illuminate the links between nuclear war, nuclear terrorism and nuclear proliferation, I am planing on using the new diagram shown below in the re-write.Now, World War III is the final state within a Nuclear Disaster super-state. The area between the World As We Know It and Nuclear Disaster is the nuclear threshold and is crossed when a first nuclear weapon is used in anger. The first state within the Nuclear Disaster super-state could be a nuclear terrorist incident, a nuclear war between India and Pakistan, or an accidental use of an American or Russian nuclear weapon. Clearly, once the nuclear threshold is crossed, we are in a totally new situation where the risk of a Russian-American confrontation is greatly increased. While fictional and with some holes in it, the movie The Sum of All Fears graphically"communicates how a terrorist nuclear attack"could produce a crisis with the potential to catalyze a full-scale nuclear war.EE 190, Prof. Hellman, April 8, 2010, Page 2 of 5The new diagram also helps illuminate the possibility of a solution by breaking down the move to a state of acceptable risk into the crossing of a positive threshold, followed by a sequence of moves that eventually lead to a state of acceptable risk. The new superstate is labeled New Thinking, based on Albert Einsteinʼs famous statement: “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” If “old thinking” leads to catastrophe, “new thinking” is needed to avert it. I define this new, positive threshold as being crossed when the worldʼs nuclear arsenals have been reduced to a total 500 weapons. While still a very dangerous state, that would imply that the US has less than 300 weapons and has moved beyond the current thinking that a very large number of nuclear weapons is essential to our national security. In contrast, Clintonʼs nominee for Secretary of Defense, Adm. Bobby Inman1, has signed my statement that says “Russia and the United States each have thousands of nuclear weapons, whereas a few hundred would more than deter any rational actor and no number will deter an irrational one. Either side could therefore reduce its nuclear arsenal with little to no loss in national security, even if the other side did not immediately reciprocate. In light of the growing specter of nuclear terrorism, a reduced nuclear arsenal could even enhance national security by lessening the chance for theft or illicit sale of a weapon.”These diagrams, and particularly the new one, help explain why people have difficulty envisioning both the negative and the positive possibilities. Right now, we are in one of the states in the middle of the World As We Know It super-state, and there is almost no chance of either World War III or reducing the risk to an acceptable level. But, just as six missteps led to the brink of the nuclear abyss in 1962 that was previously inconceivable, a small number of positive steps might take us to a vantage point from which we will be able to envision a world far better than any now conceivable. The brief euphoria surrounding the end of the Cold War, may have been such a time and could account for that eraʼs vision of Reykjavik that George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn are trying to revive.Excerpts from Peter Vincent Pryʼs book, War Scare (Praeger, Westport, CT, 1999)Note: If you would like to borrow my copy of the book or see all my notes on it, let me know. There was too much to ask you to read it all. Some have accused Pry of scare mongering, but reading just for the facts (and discounting his opinion) can eliminate any danger of that.Page x: (referring to the September-October 1993 Russian coup attempt) What were you doing on October 4, 1993? I was making a desperate phone call from EE 190, Prof. Hellman, April 8, 2010, Page 3 of 51 When a confirmation battle loomed, Adm. Inman withdrew his name and William Perry subsequently became Secretary of Defense.the headquarters of North American Air Defense and Space Command in Colorado Springs, to my wife in Washington, D. C. I