JOE CIRINCIONE – 3rd DEGREE INTERVIEW
A shorter version of this interview appeared in Los Angeles CityBeat June 12, 2008
When Joe Cirincione talks, people listen, and you would too when the ever-articulate president of the Ploughshares Fund, a global security foundation, holds forth on The Bomb. And hold forth he did in Santa Monica June 8 at the annual gala of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning group Physicians for Social Responsibility – Los Angeles where he received their 2008 Founders Award.
Author of Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons (Columbia University Press, Spring 2007), Cirincione was listed by the National Journal as one of the 100 people whose ideas will shape the policies of the next administration. That would be a most welcome development because if nuclear war or terrorism ever visits this increasingly desperate and overpopulated planet, it won’t matter if Your Maker wears a towel, turban or tutu — we’re toast.
CityBeat: The world is awash in nuclear weapons yet many people, especially young ones, seem to think they are relics of the Cold War and pose no danger unless terrorists get a hold of one. Is this a false sense of security?
Joe Cirincione: There are about 26,000 nuclear weapons in the world today, held by nine nations. Over 96 percent of them are held by Russia and the United States. The Cold War is long over but the weapons remain. Just one of them could destroy a city, a few dozen could destroy a country, and a few hundred could destroy the planet.
Nuclear terrorism is the number one threat, but not the only threat. Consider this: On June 5 the top military and civilian leaders of the U.S. Air Force were forced to resign because of the careless way the service is handling nuclear weapons. Last year, a B-52 bomber flew across country with six nuclear weapons under its wings that no one knew were there. They had been loaded by mistake. The equivalent of 60 Hiroshima-size bombs, they sat on the plane for overnight without special guards, protected only by a chain link fence. Every single one of the security checks that should have prevented this failed. A few months later, we found out that the Air Force had mistakenly shipped fuses for nuclear warheads to Taiwan. The country had ordered helicopter batteries.
If these mistakes can happen in the country with the best command and control systems in the world, what are the risks in Russia? Or Pakistan? The lesson is clear: we have too many weapons with too little purpose. We are an accident away from catastrophe. We have been lulled into believing that everything is under control and the only problem is bad guys getting these weapons. But the weapons are a threat wherever they are, whoever has them.
How would a limited nuclear exchange, say between Pakistan and India, impact the United States?
We would feel the fallout and climate consequences of even a small war, but if it got just a little bigger, it could be end life on the planet. Scientists, using the climate models developed over the past few years, now believe that as few as 100 nuclear bombs could trigger a “nuclear winter.” India and Pakistan each have enough nuclear material for about 60 to 120 bombs. They could have such a war. The mega-firestorms caused by the explosions would pour enough smoke and particles into the atmosphere to blanket the earth in a dark cloud, blocking sunlight. Most food crops would die, followed soon thereafter by us. So even what theorist used to call a “limited” nuclear war would have a global impact.
How would that impact the United States?
We would feel the fallout and climate consequences of even a small war, but if it got just a little bigger, it could be end life on the planet. Scientists, using the climate models developed over the past few years, now believe that as few as 100 nuclear bombs could trigger a “nuclear winter.” India and Pakistan each have enough nuclear material for about 60 to 120 bombs. They could have such a war. The mega-firestorms caused by the explosions would pour enough smoke and particles into the atmosphere to blanket the earth in a dark cloud, blocking sunlight. Most food crops would die, followed soon thereafter by us.
So even what theorist used to call a “limited” nuclear war would have a global impact.
The U.S. is seeking increased budget requests for our ballistic defense system. How much are those requests and is this money wisely spent?
The president wants $12 billion for these weapons this year ($10 billion directly for the Missile Defense Agency and about $2 billion more for related weapons). This is the largest weapons program in the budget. Much of the funds are for interceptors designed to shoot down long-range missiles. This is an obscene amount of money for weapons that don’t work and is not needed. The weapons have repeatedly failed tests and have never been realistically tested against the kind of missile we would actually face. Fortunately, there are fewer long-range missiles in the world now than 20 years ago, fewer countries with missile programs and fewer hostile nations with missiles. The threat is actually shrinking.
