Based on my reading of the latest upscaling of US rhetoric, one of the military options being considered by the Israeli-American axis is the nuclear option. Refer Trump says a ‘whole civilization will die tonight’ if deal isn’t reached, One News, 8 April 2026.

The possibility of Netanyahu and Trump thinking this way would reflect a widely-held understanding that World War Two ended not only with the atomic bomb, but because of those nuclear strikes on Japan. In particular, the prevailing American narrative is that Little Boy and Fat Man saved the United States from having to make a ground invasion of Japan.

My sense is that if Israel and/or the United States go for a nuclear strike, soon or sooner, it will be on a city or some other quasi-military site in the northeast of Iran, closer to Afghanistan than to the present Persian Gulf warzone; away from the energy infrastructure of the Gulf.

Not only is the northeast the birthplace of the late Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, it is also the part of Iran which gave least support to President Masoud Pezeshkian in the 2024 presidential election. Pezeshkian, a former heart surgeon, was elected as a moderniser. In 2024 and 2025 he was committed to evolving Iran away from being a Shia theocracy and towards being a typical BRICS’ middle-range geopolitical power. (See my The Enigma of the Iranian President, Scoop, 27 March 2026.)

If we look at the map here – the second round of the 2024 Iranian presidential election – we see that Pezeshkian’s support was most in the more secular northwest and least in the more Islamist northeast. I suspect that the Axis’ military planning will be to inflict as much damage as possible – in one or a few dramatic strikes – on the present Iranian civilisation which draws heavily on Shia Islam; hence focussing on the Shia heartland.

Finally, here, I draw attention to the movie Don’t Look Up. In that movie, the threat was an asteroid, not a nuclear war. The key theme was the widespread dispassion that prevailed, especially in the mainstream media, towards a known and imminent catastrophe. In the case of a nuclear strike on Iran away from Tehran or the Gulf or the Pakistan border, the present lack of mainstream outrage at the aggressions of the last month will probably continue on and beyond the day after.

————-

Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

Over the last week I have subverted the western geo-cultural tropes of ‘Good versus Evil’ and ‘Beautiful versus Ugly’. (Geopolitical Rugby: Bad plays Evil, for the final World Cup 16 Sep 2025 and Lookism11 Sep 2025; both on Scoop and Evening Report.) Here I consider our new version of the former tripolar world; that  tripolar world prevailed from 1945 to 1990. Pole A, essentially the former First World, is now the Western Alliance. Pole B is equivalent to the former Second World; B is, as before, the geopolitical adversary of A. Pole C, the new Third World, is the equivalent of the former non-aligned Third World; yes, that’s the literal meaning of ‘third world’, non-alignment, neutrality.

The emergent new Second World includes the decentralised Muslim world; and has power centres in Beijing and Moscow; thus, its geographical and cultural loci are in Eurasia. The new Second World (pole B) is ‘united’ by comprising the various named enemies of the new First World; with West Europe being the geographical and cultural locus of pole A. West versus East, with substantial nuclear armaments; four nuclear countries in the West, four in the East.

The new Third World is defined neither by its geography nor its economic status. It is the neutral pole; pole C. India – the only nuclear power not in A or B – is potentially the leader of the new Third World, as it was the political leader of the old Third World. India’s future alignment remains the big geopolitical unknown.

Where does Australasia – Australia and New Zealand – fit? Given the geography (literally ‘south of Asia’), the common-sense position would be for Australia and New Zealand to become firm members of the new Third World; strictly non-aligned. But the signs are that Australasia, with only a tiny proportion of the old First World’s population, and on the opposite side of the world from the new First World, will contrive to be a fully aligned far-flung component of the new First World alliance. Though not formal members of Nato.

Nuclear Conflict

The most likely scenario for Nuclear War Two (NW2) would begin with a ‘nuclear attack’ across the present A-B (ie West-East) geopolitical boundary, noting that an important part of that boundary is inside Donetsk province; and also noting that one country – Türkiye – is ambiguously placed and may itself be regarded as a boundary-zone rather than a boundary-line.

(Both the words ‘nuclear’ and ‘attack’ come with some ambiguity. Would a strike on a nuclear power station by conventional weaponry count? Would any breach of airspace or sea-space by a nuclear-armed vehicle count as an attack?)

Any part of the world can be reached by perhaps five countries’ nuclear weapons, either from long-range missiles or launched from naval vessels (especially submarines).

Nuclear calculus is essentially ‘what happens next’, and the associated probabilities of the different scenarios. To keep my argument simple, I will assume that the first strike of NW2 is intentional, targeted, and includes at least one nuclear explosion. Such an explosion may not be on target for a variety of reasons; not least that an attacking missile may be intercepted.

My Scenario One is that of a smallish first strike on the East by the West. As, in my view, the East is more pragmatic than the West, a response would take place, but most likely would be de-escalatory or proportionate in nature; a calculated response, much as the recent responses by Iran to Israel’s provocations. The critical point would then be the next move by the West: escalation or de-escalation. De-escalation should lead to at least a temporary truce.

Escalation by the West would be problematic; presumably, and irrationally, it would target the eastern country which is already involved. Retaliation through nuclear escalation is not rational, in that the expected final outcome would be harmful to all; including harm to the retaliator. Nevertheless, the conventional presumption is that nuclear powers, if subjected to nuclear attack, would to the best of their abilities retaliate through nuclear escalation. The ‘rational’ calculus of the ‘mutually-assured-destruction’ dogma is that attacked countries would respond spitefully rather than rationally; so therefore peace depends on there being no first strike.

My Scenario Two is that of a smallish first strike on the West by one of the East’s nuclear nations. If the West – acting out of contrived fury rather than pragmatism – escalates in response, we are left with essentially the same situation as in Scenario One.

Scenarios Three and Four would be a large-scale first strike, either East on West or West on East. In these scenarios, de-escalation would be seen as capitulation with all the associated consequences of total defeat. Therefore, in these cases the response would almost certainly be proportionate or escalatory.

In all four scenarios we face situations of how to respond to a medium- or large-scale nuclear strike.

If the ‘ball’ is in the West’s court (Scenario Three), then the most likely response I would see would be an equal or larger response onto the Eastern power already involved, in the hope of splitting the East, and achieving a backdown by the East’s belligerent. The East’s non-belligerent powers would at this stage pitch for neutrality; they would ‘align’ with the new non-aligned Third World.

In the other three scenarios, we are faced with the perceived need by the East to respond to the West’s nuclear escalation. The context is the West’s alliances of ‘collective defence’; the legalised geopolitical contract (eg Nato’s Article Five) that an attack on one is an attack on all.

The situation faced by the East when de-escalation is not a realistic option.

There are two other options: escalation or deflection. Escalation, as already noted, is not rational. Its rationale is that of ‘globally-assured-destruction’, given the substantial third-party effects of nuclear warfare.

The other option for a large Asian nuclear superpower would be deflection. Deflection here means a proportionate retaliatory strike on one of the more expendable nations in the Western Alliance. Deflection lessens the probability of continued escalation.

Deflection could mean a significant nuclear strike on a non-nuclear Nato country, with the sense that Nato as-a-whole might renege on its ‘Article Five’ clause. Such a strike might end the war, with both sides preferring to pull-back from the brink; with both sides cutting their losses, so to speak.

A better deflective off-ramp might be a proportionate nuclear strike on a non-nuclear non-Nato country openly allied to Nato. That would further enhance the possibility that the nuclear war would come to an abrupt end. Would it be rational for the United States, United Kingdom, France or Israel to retaliate to a nuclear attack on a small distant non-Nato member of the Western Alliance?

There would be an awareness in all the main nuclear powers’ capital cities that, while distance can no longer prevent a country from being attacked, a nuclear calamity far away from the world’s major population centres would limit global loss of life and limit the impact on global food chains.

The Tyranny of Distance?

In 1966, Australian historian Geoffrey Blainey wrote The Tyranny of Distance. It was about the higher costs of such things as travel, trade and collective defence. Australia – especially White Australia – had a long-lasting neurosis about an East Asian lebensraum. New Zealand was always a bit more relaxed; practically the same distance to western markets and further from any putative East Asian adversary.

Nevertheless, the tyranny of distance did not prevent New Zealand’s ‘second people’ from coming from literally the other side of the world. Maritime geography and geopolitics had its own logic.

The traditional tyranny of distance hypothesis was overstated. In practical terms, in the era of sailing ships and no trains, it was much easier to travel from London to Dunedin than to Vancouver. The costs of long-distance compared to short-distance transport persistently declined. And, from the time of the telegraph coming to Australasia in the 1860s, communication between ‘down-under’ and Europe was hardly any more expensive than over much shorter distances.

But there is a new tyranny of distance for Oceania. We saw it in South Australia in the 1950s with the British nuclear testing at Maralinga. And American and French testing at Bikini and Mururoa. We have seen this tyranny of distance more generally in the mining exploitation of ‘distant’ ‘peripheral’ lands in Africa and South America. These parts of the world, distant from the world’s major population centres, are relatively exploitable and expendable.

There is a new component to the new tyranny of distance; New Zealand is coming to be treated as a billionaires’ nuclear bolthole. Refer to these 2025 stories (among many others): Billionaire boltholes: inside the doomsday hideouts of the super-rich (complete with picture of Peter Thiel), The oligarch’s guide to sitting out a nuclear winter, and Apocalypse now: Doomsday bunker secretly installed on New Zealand property – confirmed. In some privileged circles, there is a misguided belief in New Zealand exceptionalism; that Aotearoa New Zealand may be some kind of global life raft.

The presence of these people in Oceania increases the likelihood of Australasia being a nuclear target. So does Australia’s formal membership of AUKUS. So does New Zealand’s Minister of Defence signalling for Aotearoa to become an ally of Nato (refer: Judith Collins makes secret visit to site of Russian missile attack in Kyiv, TVNZ, 4 Sep 2025).

On Deflection

Far from being the least likely part of the world to become a victim of nuclear war, Oceania may indeed be the most likely venue for a deflective nuclear strike. If Aotearoa New Zealand can stifle its latent militarism (and can instead become an influential advocate for the new Third World), then the far side of Australia might be more at risk; Australia is already firmly in the European geopolitical camp, despite its obvious self-interest to maintain close ties with its Asian neighbours. Nuclear weapons are most likely to be targeted at cities, and any city far away from any other city becomes an excellent candidate for nuclear victimhood.

In the United States in 1945, there was a high-level debate about the best way to use its incipient nuclear weapon. Henry Stimson, United States Secretary for War, said “not Kyoto” (refer The man who saved Kyoto from the atomic bomb, BBC 9 August 2015). Even from the outset, war-torn Europe never looked like a good bet; indeed the July 1944 Bretton Woods Conference was conducted on the basis that allied victory was just a matter of time. The ‘dovish’ option was to perform a ‘demonstration’ drop, to show what might happen if Japan did not immediately capitulate. The problem was that, by July 1945, Japan had already been bombed to smithereens and it had still not capitulated. The alternative to a demonstration drop was a gratuitous drop or two or three on a significant Japanese city. (The next two cities on the nuclear list were Kokura and Niigata; the plan was to bomb them around November 1945, when new warheads had been manufactured.)

In the end, the Americans did do two demonstrations. In August 1945, the value to Americans of a Japanese life was no higher than the value of life of a Gazan is to an Israeli Zionist. The bombs over Japan were demonstration drops; the real audience of the demonstrations was Josef Stalin, not Emperor Hirohito. Japan was a good site for a ‘show and tell’ because it was far from both Europe and North America. Japan – like Bikini and Mururoa, later on – was a Pacific test site.

In the present geopolitical environment, and if a nuclear war starts, a deflective proportionate retaliatory nuclear strike may be the only offramp; a way to avoid assured-global-destruction. From an Eastern standpoint the ideal target would be a place which is overtly allied to its Nato foe (and, to boot, is part of its adversary’s communications network), which can produce rockets and other high-tech componentry for Nato, which is sufficiently far away from major population centres to lessen environmental harm, which has a small (thereby relatively expendable) population, which has minimal anti-missile defences, and which has in its midst a number those enemy billionaires who helped to create the geopolitical problem in the first place.

Conclusion

Nowhere is safe. Rationally, distance may make a place less safe, not more safe, from nuclear destruction. While great-power brinkmanship is far from rational, rational thinking under great pressure will be required to end a nuclear war once started. Even the most rational decision-process will involve many casualties. The frontlines of a nuclear war are not the same as the frontlines of a conventional war.

*******

Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

People of a certain age will be aware that the 1962 Cuba Missile Crisis was, for the world as a whole, the most dangerous moment of the Cold War. The 1962 ‘Battle of Cuba’ was a ‘cold battle’ in the same sense that the Cold War was a ‘cold war’. (Only one actual shot was fired, by Cuba.) Nevertheless, it is appropriate to ask, “who won”?

In military events hot or cold – it is surprisingly difficult to answer such a question. But it’s actually quite easy in this case.

The cold Battle of Cuba was about three countries, and three charismatic leaders: Nikita Khrushchev (Soviet Union), John F Kennedy (United States), and Fidel Castro (Cuba). Following the disastrous American invasion of Cuba in 1961, Cuba had taken on the role of a Soviet Union ‘client state’ – hence a military proxy – of the Soviet Union. (Prior to the Bay of Pigs assault, Cuba, while a revolutionary country, was not a communist country; though at least one prominent revolutionary, the Argentinian doctor Che Guevara, was certainly of the communist faith and took every opportunity to convert Cuba into a polity that followed the Book of Marx. The actions of the United States facilitated Castro’s eventual conversion.)

The situation that Khrushchev faced in late 1961 was that NATO had an installation of American nuclear-armed missiles in Turkey (now Türkiye). While Turkey had a common border with the Soviet Union – Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia – the missiles were essentially facing north across the Black Sea, into Ukraine and Russia. This was a clear and open – though not widely publicised in ‘the west’ – security threat to the Soviet Union.

Taking advantage of the political fallout between Cuba and the United States, Khrushchev – in an act of bravado, indeed brinkmanship – negotiated with Castro to install nuclear-capable missiles in Cuba, one of the few genuine security threats that the United States has ever faced.

The world trembled at the prospect of imminent (and possibly all-out) nuclear war. Castro looked forward to a hot battle which he was sure Khrushchev and Castro would together win. But Castro was doomed to disappointment. Khrushchev dismantled his missiles in Cuba, and Kennedy dismantled his missiles in Turkey.

So, compare, say, October 1963 with October 1961. The only real difference was that in 1961 there were American missiles in Turkey pointing in the direction of Moscow, and in 1963 there were not. Game, set, and match to Khrushchev. (And of course, the whole world was the winner, in that not a nuclear missile was fired in anger. Though the Cubans did shoot down an American reconnaissance aircraft.)

That’s not the narrative which the western world has taken on board though. In the West, it’s interpreted as a Soviet Union backdown, in the face of relentless diplomatic pressure from the Kennedy brothers (with Robert Kennedy playing a key negotiating role). Certainly, the world was on tenterhooks; brinkmanship can go disastrously wrong.

There are some analogies with the current Ukraine crisis. Though the Ukraine War is certainly a hot war.

Brinkmanship failed in 2021 and 2022. Nevertheless, Volodymyr Zelenskyy does pose as a good analogue to Fidel Castro (though not as an incipient communist!).

Donald Trump’s brinkmanship re China and the European Union

Trump’s war is a ‘trade war’, Winston Peters’ rejection of the ‘war analogy’ notwithstanding. This is a war that uses the language of war. Two longstanding mercantilist economic nations (China, European Union) and one mercantilist leader are slugging it out to see who can export more goods and services to the world; the prize being a mix of gold and virtual-gold, the proceeds of unbalanced trade.

(Historically the United States has also been a mercantilist nation, going right back to its origins as a ‘victim’ of British mercantilism in the eighteenth century. The United States has always been uneasy about its post World-War-Two role as global consumer-of-last-resort and its historical instincts towards mercantilism; an instinct that contributed substantially to the global Great Depression of 1930 to 1935. ‘Mercantilism’ is often confused by economists with ‘protectionism’, and indeed the American Smoot-Hawley tariffs of 1930 were a mix of both.)

My reading of Donald Trump is that he is a mercantilist, but not a protectionist; that he’s not really a tariff-lover, just as Khrushchev was not really a missile lover. Instinctively, China and especially the European Union are protectionist as a way of supporting their ingrained mercantilism. But a country that is ‘great again’ – in this ‘making money’ context – can prevail in a trade war without tariffs. Indeed, that’s exactly why the United Kingdom moved sharply towards tree trade in the 1840s and 1850s. England had not lost its mercantilist spots. But at the heart of an English Empire within a British Empire, London had the power to win a ‘free trade’ trade war. It was the other would-be powers – the new kids on the global block; the USA, Germany’s Second Reich, and later Japan and Russia – which turned to tariff protection in order to stymie the United Kingdom.

Trump’s super-tariffs against China and the European Union – trade weapons, economic ‘missiles’ – are designed to get those two economic nations to remove their various trade barriers that existed in 2024. Once they do that, then Trump may remove his tariff threats.

Trump is playing brinkmanship in the way of Khrushchev. Xi Jinping is Kennedy; so, in a way, is Ursula von der Leyen. Canada, in a sense, is Cuba. (Though Mark Carney may not like to think of himself as Castro!)

If Trump gets his way, the United States’ economy in 2026 will be as free as it was in 2024. The Chinese and European Union economies will have significantly fewer tariff and non-tariff import barriers than in 2024. Significantly fewer ‘trade weapons’ poised to ‘rip off’ the United States! Canada will be much the same in 2026 as in 2024, albeit with a newfound sense of national identity.

Implications for the Wider World, and the Global Monetary System

The wider world will probably not be better off with a mercantilist war, albeit a free-trade war. When hippopotamuses start dancing …!

We already see how free trade in ‘big guns’ is creating military instability in Africa and South Asia. And we must expect to see the United States’ special role as the fulcrum of the world’s monetary system dissipate if the United States significantly reduces its trade deficits; requiring some other deficit countries to take up that challenge. Canada? Australia? India? United Kingdom? A new anti-mercantilist British Empire? I don’t think so. Türkiye? Saudi Arabia? Brazil? Maybe not. Japan? Maybe. Russia? If the Ukraine war ends, Russia will struggle to import more than it exports; though I am sure that Donald Trump would like to see the United States exporting lots of stuff to Russia.

The International Monetary Fund? Maybe, but only if it changes some of its narratives. The challenge here will be for it to reform itself in line with John Maynard Keynes’ proposals at and after Bretton Woods, the 1944 conference which set itself the task of establishing the post-war global monetary order. Keynes envisaged a World Reserve Bank; though he didn’t envisage monetary policy – with New Zealand in 1989 acknowledged as the world’s lead ‘reformer’ – falling into the hands of the ‘monetarists’ and their false narratives about inflation.

*******

Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

Pacific nations and smaller states are being urged to unite to avoid being caught in the crossfire of a possible nuclear conflict between China and the US.

On the cusp of a new missile age in the Indo-Pacific, a nuclear policy specialist suggests countries at the centre of the brewing geopolitical storm must rely on diplomacy to hold the superpowers accountable.

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Ankit Panda said it was crucial smaller states and Pacific nations concerned about potential nuclear conflict “engage in meaningful risk reduction, arms control and broader diplomacy to reduce the possibility of war.”

“States [which] are not formally aligned with the United States or China were more powerful united,” and this “may create greater incentives for China and the United States to engage in these talks,” the think tank’s nuclear policy program Stanton senior fellow said.

North Korea and the United States have been increasing their inventories of short- to intermediate-range missile systems, he said.

“The stakes are potentially nuclear conflict between two major superpowers with existential consequences for humanity at large.”

The US military’s newest long-range hypersonic missile system, called the ‘Dark Eagle’, could soon be deployed to Guam, he said.

Caught in crossfire
A report issued by the Congressional Budget Office last year suggested the missile could potentially reach Taiwan, parts of mainland China, and the North Korean capital of Pyongyang if deployed to Guam, he said.

“Asia and Pacific countries need to put this on the agenda in the way that many European states that were caught in the crossfire between the United States and the Soviet Union were willing to do during the Cold War,” Panda said.

In 2022, North Korea confirmed it had test-launched an intermediate-range ballistic missile capable of reaching Guam.

Guam is a US Pacific territory with a population of at least 170,000 people and home to US military bases.

Guam’s unique position
Panda said it could be argued that Guam’s unique position and military use by the US as a nuclear weapons base makes it even more of a target to North Korea.

He said North Korea will likely intensify its run of missile tests ahead of America’s presidential election in November.

“If [President] Biden is re-elected, they will continue to engage with China in good faith on arms control.

“But if [Donald] Trump gets elected then we can expect the opposite. We’ll see an increase in militarism and a race-to-arms conflict in the Indo-Pacific,” he said.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

In this the eighth episode of A View from Afar for 2023, political scientist Dr Paul Buchanan and Selwyn Manning examine the risks of a 21st century nuclear war.

The movie Oppenheimer has renewed interest in the dawn of the nuclear era. Almost 80 years later, are we safer from nuclear war than we were in the years immediately after 1945?

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved its Doomsday Clock hand to 90 seconds before midnight, the highest threat level since the Cuban Missile Crisis.What does that say about contemporary international security affairs?

No new nuclear arms limitation agreements have been signed in over a decade, several have lapsed and most nuclear armed countries are not signatories to them anyway.

Countries like China are rapidly expanding their arsenals and others like North Korea and Iran are seeking to join the nuclear armed club.

Has nuclear arms control failed?

What is the future of the Non-Proliferation Treaty?

Although conventions against the use of chemical and biological weapons are widely recognised, violations of the prohibitions have occurred regularly, most recently in Syria. Weapons like white phosphorus and cluster munitions continue to be used by many states.

The Questions include:

• Has non-nuclear arms control failed as well?

• Russia’s Putin Regime has threatened to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine and NATO. Is the nuclear genie about to come out of the bottle, even in a tactical use?

• Are we seeing the return of weapons of mass destruction (WMD)?

• Are we on the brink of Oppenheimer’s nightmare: nuclear Armageddon?

• And importantly, what are the solutions to this most serious and dangerous threat?

INTERACTION:

Paul and Selwyn encourage their live audience to interact while they are live with questions and comments.

To interact during the live recording of this podcast, go to Youtube.com/c/EveningReport/

Remember to subscribe to the channel.

For the on-demand audience, you can also keep the conversation going on this debate by clicking on one of the social media channels below:

• Youtube.com/c/EveningReport/
• Facebook.com/selwyn.manning
• Twitter.com/Selwyn_Manning

RECOGNITION: The MIL Network’s podcast A View from Afar was Nominated as a Top Defence Security Podcast by Threat.Technology – a London-based cyber security news publication. Threat.Technology placed A View from Afar at 9th in its 20 Best Defence Security Podcasts of 2021 category.

You can follow A View from Afar via our affiliate syndicators.

In this the eighth episode of A View from Afar for 2023, political scientist Dr Paul Buchanan and Selwyn Manning will examine the risks of a 21st century nuclear war.

The movie Oppenheimer has renewed interest in the dawn of the nuclear era. Almost 80 years later, are we safer from nuclear war than we were in the years immediately after 1945?

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved its Doomsday Clock hand to 90 seconds before midnight, the highest threat level since the Cuban Missile Crisis.What does that say about contemporary international security affairs?

No new nuclear arms limitation agreements have been signed in over a decade, several have lapsed and most nuclear armed countries are not signatories to them anyway.

Countries like China are rapidly expanding their arsenals and others like North Korea and Iran are seeking to join the nuclear armed club.

Has nuclear arms control failed?

What is the future of the Non-Proliferation Treaty?

Although conventions against the use of chemical and biological weapons are widely recognised, violations of the prohibitions have occurred regularly, most recently in Syria. Weapons like white phosphorus and cluster munitions continue to be used by many states.

The Questions include:

• Has non-nuclear arms control failed as well?

• Russia’s Putin Regime has threatened to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine and NATO. Is the nuclear genie about to come out of the bottle, even in a tactical use?

• Are we seeing the return of weapons of mass destruction (WMD)?

• Are we on the brink of Oppenheimer’s nightmare: nuclear Armageddon?

• And importantly, what are the solutions to this most serious and dangerous threat?

INTERACTION WHILE LIVE:

Paul and Selwyn encourage their live audience to interact while they are live with questions and comments.

To interact during the live recording of this podcast, go to Youtube.com/c/EveningReport/

Remember to subscribe to the channel.

For the on-demand audience, you can also keep the conversation going on this debate by clicking on one of the social media channels below:

• Youtube.com/c/EveningReport/
• Facebook.com/selwyn.manning
• Twitter.com/Selwyn_Manning

RECOGNITION: The MIL Network’s podcast A View from Afar was Nominated as a Top Defence Security Podcast by Threat.Technology – a London-based cyber security news publication. Threat.Technology placed A View from Afar at 9th in its 20 Best Defence Security Podcasts of 2021 category.

You can follow A View from Afar via our affiliate syndicators.

New York, December 2021 – We live in worrying times. The climate crisis, stark inequalities, bloody conflicts and human rights abuses, and the personal and economic devastation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have put our world under greater stress than it has faced in my lifetime.

But the existential threat that cast a shadow over the first half of my life no longer receives the attention it should. Nuclear weapons have faded from headlines and Hollywood scripts. But the danger they pose remains as high as ever, and is growing by the year. Nuclear annihilation is just one misunderstanding or miscalculation away – a sword of Damocles that threatens not only suffering and death on a horrific scale, but the end of all life on earth.  

Through a combination of luck and judgement, nuclear weapons have not been used since they incinerated Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. But with more than 13,000 nuclear weapons held in arsenals around the world, how long can our luck hold? The COVID-19 pandemic has brought a new awareness of the catastrophic impact of a low-probability event.

Following the end of the Cold War, nuclear arsenals were dramatically reduced and even eliminated. Entire regions declared themselves nuclear-weapons free zones. A deep and widespread repudiation of nuclear testing took hold. As Prime Minister of my country, I ordered Portugal to vote for the first time against the resumption of nuclear testing in the Pacific. 

But the end of the Cold War also left us with a dangerous falsehood: that the threat of nuclear war was a thing of the past. 

Nothing could be more mistaken. These weapons are not yesterday’s problem. They remain today’s growing threat.

The risk that nuclear weapons will be used is higher now than at any point since the duck-and-cover drills and fallout shelters of the Cold War. 

Relationships between some countries that possess nuclear weapons are defined today by distrust and competition. Dialogue is largely absent. Transparency is waning and nuclear weapons are assuming greater importance as national security strategies find new contexts for their use. 

Meanwhile, technological advances and the emergence of new arenas of competition in cyber space and outer space have exposed vulnerabilities and increased the risk of nuclear escalation. We lack international frameworks and tools that can deal with these developments. And today’s multipolar global order means that regional crises with nuclear overtones threaten to draw in other nuclear-armed countries. 

The nuclear landscape is a tinderbox. One accident or miscalculation could set it alight. 

Our main hope to reverse course and steer our world away from nuclear cataclysm is the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons – better known as the NPT – which dates from the height of the Cold War in 1970. 

The NPT is one of the main reasons why nuclear weapons have not been used since 1945. It contains legally binding commitments to achieve nuclear disarmament, including by the five largest nuclear-armed countries. It is also a catalyst for disarmament – the only way to eliminate these horrendous weapons once and for all.

The 191 countries that have joined the NPT – representing the vast majority of the world – have pledged not to acquire or develop nuclear weapons. And these pledges are policed and enforced by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

One month from now, the countries that are members of the NPT will meet for their regular five-yearly conference to look at the Treaty’s progress.  

Another United Nations conference for a treaty with an acronym may not seem particularly newsworthy. But the NPT is critical to the security and prosperity of all people on earth. 

We must seize the opportunity of January’s NPT Review Conference to reverse dangerous and growing trends and escape the long shadow cast by these inhumane weapons. 

The review conference must take bold action on six fronts: 

• Chart a path forward on nuclear disarmament. 
• Agree new measures of transparency and dialogue, to reduce the risk of nuclear war. 
• Address simmering nuclear crises in the Middle East and Asia. 
• Work to strengthen the global frameworks that support non-proliferation, including the IAEA. 
• Promote the peaceful use of nuclear technology for medical and other uses – one reason why the NPT has won the adherence of non-nuclear-weapons states. 
• And remind the world’s people – especially its young people – that eliminating nuclear weapons is the only way to guarantee they will never be used.  

I urge governments to approach the conference in a spirit of solidarity, frank dialogue, and flexibility. 

What happens in the NPT negotiating rooms in January matters to everyone – because any use of nuclear weapons will affect everyone.

The fragility of our world has never been clearer. 

I hope people everywhere will push governments to step back from the abyss and create a safer, more secure world for all: a world free of nuclear weapons.

A View from Afar: Selwyn Manning and Paul Buchanan present this week’s podcast, A View from Afar, where they analyse:

Revelations that the People’s Republic of China has further developed missile silos in its north-west desert. How does this fit with proliferation of nuclear silos in the west?

How do great powers enforce their nuclear deterrence dogma and strategy in 2021 compared to when the first Cold War was chilling the world’s expectations of longevity?

And what of new nuclear powers like Israel, North Korea and others – with their lack of ability to sustain a total annihilation attack, do they pose a real first-strike threat? And, if so, is nuclear deterrence rendered an obsolete strategy?

And what of Aotearoa New Zealand, does its nuclear-free position, placing it independent of so-called ‘protections’ of the United States’ nuclear umbrella keep us safe from becoming a target? Or has the weaponising of space, the practice where RocketLab sends payloads of US military-tech into orbit, bring New Zealand into scope?

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By Deandra Madeena Moerdaning in Vienna

A year ago on July 7, 2017, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution that pushes forward a new treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

The agreement is the first of its kind that categorically prohibits nuclear weapons and hence focuses merely on disarmament. The treaty will only enter into force once 50 nations have ratified and acceded to it.

As a nation whose representative was among vice-presidents leading negotiations of the treaty and as a vocal opponent of nuclear weapons, it is crucial that Indonesia ratifies the Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty immediately.

Here are the key reasons why:

• As a member of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and a coordinator of its working group on disarmament and nonproliferation since 1994, Indonesia was among co-sponsors of the resolution.
• Indonesia signed this UN Treaty on September 20, 2017, the day when it opened for signature at the UN headquarters in New York. Ironically, Indonesia is not among the ten nations that have ratified the treaty through national legislation.

It is of vital importance that Jakarta maintains its leadership role and show commitment to shared international security interests of developing countries, the majority of NAM member states. Jakarta and NAM have always been vocal about attempts to eliminate double standards in international security, particularly regarding nuclear security.

Excellent example
On top of being an excellent example to ASEAN countries regarding compliance with non-proliferation regimes, Jakarta continues to encourage ASEAN member states and beyond to improve the persistently slow progress of the nuclear disarmament.

In a joint effort with ASEAN member states to combat the threat of nuclear weapons, during its chairmanship of the Association Jakarta opened the door for consultations between member states and nuclear-weapon states (NWS), to encourage the latter to sign the Southeast Asian Nuclear Weapon Free Zone Treaty (SEANWFZ).

-Partners-

Jakarta was praised for its efforts in promoting the spirit of the treaty beyond the region.

By ratifying the new Treaty, ASEAN member states would prove their determination to disarmament and making the region free from all kind of nuclear threats. Currently, only Thailand and Vietnam have ratified the treaty.

Others, including Indonesia, were had signed the deal, while Singapore chose to abstain.

Indonesia should immediately follow the path of Thailand and Vietnam and together persuade Singapore to support the Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty in the spirit of Southeast Asia’s nuclear weapons-free zone.

Once all ASEAN member states have ratified the Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty, they can continue pressing wider acceptance of SEANWFZ to nuclear weapon states.

Previous failure
The previous 2015 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference was dubbed a failure due to absence of consensus on nuclear disarmament. Thus all parties including Indonesia must prepare themselves better for the next 2020 Conference and keep trying to achieve a shared vision on disarmament.

The 2015 conference manifested the non-nuclear-weapon states’ concerns over the scale and pace of disarmament.

These states believe there have been too many restrictions and demands for them regarding peaceful use of nuclear technology. They also think nuclear weapon states have been ignoring their obligation to disarm their nuclear arsenals.

The 2020 Conference will be an excellent platform to reaffirm Jakarta’s demand for nuclear disarmament and security as well as to pressure nuclear weapon states to manifest their commitment to nuclear disarmament.

Indonesian delegates should continue expressing concerns about international security, including the US administration’s decision to withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

According to the Foreign Ministry, Affairs, Indonesia regrets this decision as Jakarta believes that the JCPOA is an achievement of diplomacy and can maintain stability in the region and the world. Indonesia is still optimistic about the future of JCPOA and hence urges other JCPOA’s signatories to maintain support for the agreement.

Nuclear weapons present a real and imminent threat to humanity, thus Indonesia should not loosen efforts towards nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament. Ratifying the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons means Jakarta is greatly concerned about the slow pace of disarmament.

Deandra Madeena Moerdaning earned her master’s degree from King’s College in London’s War Studies Department. She is interning at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz