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This is World Today. Hello and welcome to World Today.
I'm Zhao Ying. Russia has announced it will stop abiding by the terms of a default nuclear missile treaty with the United States.
The 1987 pact, also known as the INF Treaty, banned ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers.
It was once held as a milestone in Cold War arms control.
The United States withdrew from the treaty in 2019 during President Donald Trump's first term, citing Russian violations.
Moscow denied those allegations and said it would keep its own moratorium, a position it has now reversed.
In a statement, the Russian foreign ministry said Moscow no longer considers itself bound by those limits, noting that the U.S. is moving to deploy intermediate-range missiles in Europe and Asia.
The announcement came just days after Trump ordered the repositioning of two nuclear submarines in response to what he called threatening comments from former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy chair of Russia's Security Council.
So is this the beginning of a new nuclear arms race?
What happens when nuclear posturing, once considered a taboo topic, plays out over social media between world leaders?
And 80 years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, have we forgotten the reality of nuclear war and the moral restraint that once held it at bay?
For these questions and more, we are joined by Kamal Mikhail Yaliev, Associate Professor at the School of Global Studies at University of Gothenburg, Joseph Siracusa, Professor of Global Futures at Curtin University in Australia, and Zhang Xin, Deputy Director of the Center for Russian Studies at East China Normal University.
Gentlemen, welcome to you all. And Professor Siracusa, let me start with you.
And let's start with the INF Treaty. Why was it considered such a landmark agreement during the Cold War?
What did it succeed in preventing? Well, it was a very important development in terms of nuclear arms control.
It came on the watch of Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, and they wanted to eliminate the prospect of a nuclear war in Europe happening precipitously.
The Soviets wanted to modernize their ground fleet in those days, that is the ground launch missiles, and the US countered with Pershing and Tomahawk cruise missiles.
And of course, this is at the behest of the West Germans and others.
And so NATO pursued a two-track policy. That is, they started to install these new missiles, American missiles, to protect Europe.
And at the same time, we were negotiating with the Soviets.
And there are a number of people behind Reagan who didn't want them to succeed.
They're much more conservative than he is.
And so they talked him into the idea of accepting some kind of deal with the Soviets where it's a zero option.
That is, we don't have to have any there.
And Reagan, of course, fooled everybody in the United States.
He accepted the deal. And so we got, in one stroke of the pen in 1987, we got rid of all these... intermediate range missiles, which of course have a range of about 5,500 kilometers and the shorter range.
Now, they could have had conventional warheads on them, but most of them had tactical nuclear weapons on them.
And so it was a very great moment in international history, because we eliminated an entire category of nuclear weapons.
So it was a very, very big development. It's gone on now for, what, 30 years or so.
And we have people today who know less about what the significance was, but the times have changed.
It's not the same kind of thing that was going on in the 80s, where Reagan had threatened war against the evil empire and Soviets are taking him seriously.
I think a lot of people today, particularly in the United States, who don't want to do these things, they want to drop out of these treaties, I think they're being more contrarian than strategic.
So I think that might be a mistake there.
Yes, we're headed in the wrong direction.
It is unhelpful what's going on. I'll tell you what, when this treaty was concluded, it was a very significant milestone.
Okay, so Professor Zhang, what, in your view, fundamentally led to the collapse of this IDNF treaty?
The treaty, unfortunately, comes to such a stage right now.
I think it largely reflects the imbalanced power structure between the leading powers in the world.
What was, at the moment, what Reagan and Gorbachev were dealing with was no longer in existence between today's Russia and the United States or the NATO or the collective West of the climate.
So both leaders from the United States and Russia are trying to adapt to this new power structure.
And during this process, nuclear disarmament was no longer regarded as something worth maintaining.
And during this process, I also would emphasize, during this process, another major factor to me is the gradual loss of mutual trust, which was, to me, a very important factor behind the successful nuclear disarmament deal reached between the United States and Soviet Union and the later Russia in the late 80s, early 1990s.
We see over time that kind of basic trust between the two new states gradually dissipating, have been dissipating gradually, and that also exacerbates the expiration of INFG, as well as other similar military and security deals between the United States and Russia.
Okay. So, Professor Makhilyariev, do you feel the collapse of this treaty is kind of inevitable, or was there a moment that it could perhaps have been saved?
Well, the treaty itself was concluded at the end of the Cold War, right before, around three and a half years before the Soviet Union actually collapsed. raising the questions of the whole dynamics of international relations and the continuation of the rivalry between the United States and Russia as a whole.
So at some point, we need to also acknowledge that the timeframe where the treaty was concluded and the events that happened afterwards may have doomed the treaty after its very, very landmark arrival. actually.
But I think the erosion of trust between the United States and Russia ultimately precipitated the whole collapse of the treaty because of how fast in terms of time the erosion of trust has happened.
And this dynamics in the, especially in the Eastern Europe in 2018 was this kind of marking point where there was no turning back because both United States and Russia have been working on development of new intermediate range missiles and At that point, when, for example, United States started accusing Russia of developing the new missiles to put in their Eskender core systems, have basically marked the point where the trust was so low that Trump administration decided to withdraw from the treaty.
Russia at the time countered with their own claims that the Aegis anti-missile systems that United States had in Eastern Europe were also incompatible with the INF.
And it seemed like the positions were so irreconcilable that the INF Treaty was already doomed.
I think what could have been done at that point in time prior to the withdrawal of the United States is basically more engagement with Russia in terms of how much of the development of the missiles would actually harm the dynamics.
Because the problem that both Russia and the United States have been seeing is the deployment of the missiles rather than just basic development.
The sides were still okay somewhat in tolerating the development, but they have come into disagreement about their deployment, especially in the region of Eastern Europe.
So the more negotiations, more engagement at the time could have saved the treaty.
But would it have been effective in the longer term?
That was always questionable in my opinion.
Okay. So, Professor Syracuse, now Russia says it will no longer honor the self-restrictions it maintained after the treaty expired, but some might argue the INF Treaty was already defunct when the U.S. left in 2019.
So, does Russia's formal exit now change anything in practical terms?
Well, it's an important signal to the United States that Russia wants a new kind of a deal on this.
In the past, a number of times in the United States, these treaties were never passed the US Senate, these kinds of arms deals, but the United States effectively honored them.
This is what Putin was doing. He was effectively honoring the treaty, even though the United States had pulled out of it.
But yeah, I think Putin was trying to send the Americans a very important signal.
Of course, this is the other thing, too.
This treaty, the INF Treaty, came along at the end of a great deal of busy arms negotiations, SALT I, SALT II, Limited Test Ban Treaty in 1963.
In 1945, 49, we didn't have any rules. There was no nuclear deterrence.
There was no history of the arms race. I mean, there was no taboo on these things.
Today, even though a nation may leave treaty, there is still a great deal of... things in place that will guide that nation.
I mean, they understand what deterrence is now.
They understand that there are rules, etc.
So while you may technically leave a treaty, you don't technically leave that space because you realize what you can and cannot do.
And of course, as your other panelists know, that the United States relations with the with Europe has changed substantially since 1987, not only with the Russians, but with the Europeans.
In 1987, it was one for all and all for one.
I doubt the Trump administration is going to go to war over some kind of development like this, a threat to Europe, to NATO, because Trump is calling NATO into accountability of taking care of itself.
So the circumstances has changed, but I think a lot of the memory is and the history of arms control have an impact long after the treaty is gone.
Yeah. So, Professor Mikhail Yeliev, why do you think Russia is making this move now, like years after the U.S. exited?
Is this just a reaction to the recent events like Trump's submarine deployment, or does it reflect some deeper strategic calculations?
Well, the reason behind what's happening right now is actually a little bit of smaller development comparatively to all the processes that are happening globally between the United States and Russia.
And it is that the United States initially accused Russia of deploying the system that can potentially carry the new intermediate range missiles.
However, Russia didn't have them in 2018 and 2019, simply didn't have the new ones.
But it made the potential by deploying the Iskander-Korn system in the Kaliningrad region of Russia.
So basically, right in the middle of Europe.
And that's what provokes the United States and that reaction that Trump administration, previous Trump administration had.
Today, Russia has developed new intermediate-range ballistic missiles uh within the rechnik system and i think this signals that russia is preparing to deploy them and deploy them in the strategic reading regions including kaliningrad um thus ending the self-imposed moratorium and uh going ahead um with the deployment of a new uh interage ballistic missiles so this also signals then globally that russia is going to be more assertive in its nuclear posture, it's going to be pressing ahead with much more sophisticated weapon development, because Russia didn't feel after the conclusion of the INF Treaty that it needed those kind of missiles, even in Europe, right?
That's where the agreement came from. initially.
But now the situation changed completely.
So that is going also to change the nuclear balance calculation.
Okay. So Professor Zhang, Trump says he ordered two nuclear submarines to be repositioned in response to those online threats from Dmitry Medvedev.
But these movements are usually highly classified, so we don't really know whether anything actually changed operationally.
So how serious should we take his claim?
President Trump's such statements, including also he's calling on Mr. Medvedev's recent comments as inflammatory statements, etc., can be regarded as as messaging, messaging on social media, and those messaging can have a potential audience, in this case, a large part of that potential audience may be within the United States, rather than on a global level.
Those messaging has a certain performative element to it, so in that sense, we shouldn't probably take this as an announcement of an immediate nuclear attack on Russia anytime soon.
But on the other hand, I think words, including those messages online, increasing on social media by a political figure like Mr. Trump, can have consequences, particularly in the back-and-forth exchanges between increasingly adversarial actors.
It may have the potential to amplify existing distrust and then could bring the situation into a disastrous stage, but also theoretically possible.
So I think that's how I would say how serious we should take Mr. Trump's claim.
Okay. So Professor Siracusa, what do you think?
I mean, this uncertainty may force Russia to guess whether the redeployment is real or just a bluff.
So does this affect the credibility of U.S. deterrence or may invite miscalculation from Moscow?
Well, it could do all of those things, I suppose.
But look, I've been around a long time. I've studied and written about these things since the nuclear age.
I just think we can only put so much confidence in the social media messaging.
I've seen very serious European parliamentarians wake up in the morning and see what's on Trump's social media, and they gear their whole day around it.
I think that's a silly way to go. I think the strategic community, that is the people in charge of military capability in Russia and the United States, have a little different little different thing going on on their hands.
And keep in mind this too. The nuclear weapons, I think, are very, very important because they're the only thing out there that can end civilization in an afternoon.
Climate change will take forever to kill people and all the rest of it.
So it's very serious. And the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has the doomsday clock at 89 seconds to midnight, a long way from You know, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, whatever it was.
So there are a number of people out there who can see the threat and we know what the capability is of nuclear weapons.
Now, during the Cold War, the United States intelligence community assumed that Soviet capability equals Soviet intentions.
Today, I don't think that's true. I don't think Russian capability equals Russian intentions.
Keep in mind, these treaties not only ban the deployment of these weapons, they ban the research and development that goes into them.
One of the reasons the US wanted to get out of this thing was they can study some other things.
Same thing on the Russian side. They don't want to be bound by that.
It's not just the deployment, it's about the research and development.
But I think there are some very serious people out there who think we've been painted into a corner, and we may have been.
And one of your guests is correct. I think there isn't enough going on between these countries in terms of confidence building.
We've lost a lot of trust in each other.
And I think once the war in Ukraine comes to an end, And we have peace in some other areas.
I think we'll be able to get down to the serious business at hand, which is the Russian-American relationship.
And behind that, the very, very important Chinese-American-Russian relationship.
In 1987, China was not a major player on the world stage in terms of nuclear weapons.
It is today. Where does it want to position itself?
I'm not quite sure. I'll leave that to experts in your country.
But the thing is, is that there are new players now, and it's time to get serious.
Okay, so Professor Mikhail Yaliev, what do you make of Trump's move?
Do you feel he is perhaps using this nuclear posturing to force a ceasefire in Ukraine?
And if that is his strategy, do you think it can work?
Or does it backfire like it may increase the risk of escalation or even miscalculation?
I think what we need to do, although it's very difficult with this kind of administration, is that we need to separate the public relations part from the actual strategy. and the moves that Trump makes militarily on the ground, I think, or at sea, if we're talking about the submarines.
I think a lot of focus is right now on if this actually have been, there have been a move at the sea and the submarines actually have been ordered.
As you say, as you know, the information is highly classified.
So if this has actually happened. But I think separating it from public relations is useful because of Trump.
It's very important to maintain a certain discourse internally and present himself as a very active and at the same time decisive leader.
That doesn't take any kind of threats from another rival country that is very resonant with his base at home.
So this social media posturing is one thing.
What actually happens on the ground, we don't know and we're not sure.
The movement might have been ordered, but that movement might have been insignificant from a nuclear posturing position.
And that is only known to the military intelligence community. uh in russia and of course for those who take the responsibility united states um but i would be very cautious in in connecting those two uh and trusting hundred percent in that the pr moves that the trump mason social media are actually equal um his tactics and strategy on the ground so um i think we need to take this with a grain of salt But of course, any kind of even the PR moves, they have a potential to serve as an irritant for the strategic moves of the other side.
In this sense, it's very risky. But Trump is known for playing this kind of games.
So maybe this has actually dampened the PR effect in terms of actual strategy, even from the opposite side.
When it comes to specifically the ceasefire of Ukraine, I think the strategy in Ukraine is also a little bit separate from this kind of upholstering, especially in the nuclear field.
That comes from the... historically from how Trump operated.
And in the case of Ukraine, it's more of a threat of economic sanctions and economic consequences for Russia.
That seems to be the strategy. I don't think Trump is using military, military posturing to pressure Russia and Ukraine.
I think Still, it's more connected to the PR move for the internal audience that likes this kind of decisive image of a leader that can take no threats from the other side.
So, Professor Zhang, as Professor Mercuriali have said, Donald Trump often combines his personal diplomacy and coercive economic threats and some unpredictable military signaling.
Do you think this kind of maximum pressure approach works? may backfire in a nuclear context where ambiguity can actually lead to some fatal misjudgments?
I think, theoretically, that's definitely a possibility.
As I just mentioned, words can have consequences, both positive and negative consequences, especially in this particular format of a social media set, you might say.
The current social media relative to traditional media has the potential of... reaching a much larger, wider audience at much faster speed and also has the potential to amplify certain kind of message, again, relative to traditional media.
So if we're talking about those messaging to be part of, as the previous speaker mentioned, a part of the PR, even if it's meant to be targeting mostly domestic audience, can have this amplifying effect to make the...
Lack of trust between international actors are even worse.
And then, as you mentioned, even backfire to make the worst scenario actually become a self-fulfilling reality.
Historically, we might have seen similar cases in the social media industry. mechanism may make that kind of mechanism even even more likely to uh to mature right thank you within talking to johnson deputy director of the center for russian studies at east china normal university kamal makiliyali associate professor at the school of global studies at university of gothenburg Joseph Syracuse, Professor of Global Futures at Curtin University in Australia.
Remind our listeners, if you want to hear this episode again or to catch up on previous episodes, just download our podcast by searching World Today.
And for further discussion, you can follow us on X at CGTN Radio.
Let's take a short break here. Coming back, we'll continue our discussion.
Welcome back. You're listening to World Today.
I'm Zhao Ying, joined by Kamal Makili-Yaliev, Associate Professor at the School of Global Studies at University of Gothenburg, Joseph Siracusa, Professor of Global Futures at Curtin University in Australia. and Dr. Zhang Xin, Deputy Director of the Center for Russian Studies at East China Normal University.
Professor Syracuse, actually Donald Trump often uses maximalist rhetoric before pivoting to diplomacy like back in 2018.
He made a similar nuclear threat to Kim Jong-un, and he said his nuclear button was much bigger and more powerful than Kim's.
But not long after, he sat down with Kim for a summit.
So could this current posture also lead to some high-level diplomacy, perhaps even a U.S.-Russia summit, too?
Oh, absolutely. Look, I think you have to discount that.
Donald Trump's rhetoric tends to be for domestic political consumption.
Your other panelists is correct. It's what his people around him want to hear and they like him to say.
But I think it belies the fact that around Trump, there are some very serious players. who makes sure that things don't get out of control.
And while I do not approve of Trump's rhetoric talking about North Korea before he went to visit Chairman Kim, I think it's very, very important for people to realize that Trump can step outside the boundaries very quickly and cut a deal.
I mean, he went to talk to Kim yesterday. whereas other administrations wanted the North Koreans to get rid of their nuclear weapons first.
Trump said he didn't care about that. He just made it very clear to the North Koreans they can build their nuclear weapons, but don't point them at the United States.
But Trump, as a maverick, can very easily step out of the traditional role.
And words are important. If anyone knows anything about the Japanese-American surrender movement, problems in 1945.
The Japanese couldn't understand exactly what Truman meant, and Truman couldn't understand exactly what the Japanese want, and lots of people died because they couldn't understand each other.
So the words are important. But I think Trump could surprise people, and I don't expect this to get too far removed from reality.
On the other hand, Trump is surrounded by people who who are not as versed on this topic as I think they should be.
Okay. Well, Professor Makulialiev, we know that Trump's announcement was triggered by Dmitry Medvedev's provocative social media posts.
Is this the first time a social media spat between world leaders has visibly triggered nuclear posturing?
And how dangerous is it when nuclear signaling plays out on social media platforms like X and Truth Social?
Well, this is actually dangerous if that would come to two sitting heads of states.
Dmitry Medvedev was a president some time ago of Russia, but his provocative social media posts have been marred also by a lot of nuclear threats and nuclear posturing, and for a very long time.
So it's not the first time Dmitry Medvedev has posted something as irresponsible as this.
So Trump's reaction is actually a new development, because before that, nobody really paid that much attention, especially on such a high-level communication channel, to what the Twitter media has actually been saying.
Those who monitor Russia and monitor Russian foreign policy know very well that after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, Dmitry Medvedev actually started this kind of very strong campaign of very nationalist rhetoric that was very uncharacteristic of that politician in Russia. and he slid into the social media post that have irritated a lot of diplomats on both sides of the conflict between the West and Russia.
But even at that level, it was kind of low key.
When the Trump announcement right now, what changed with the Trump announcement is that we're actually seeing the reaction on such a high level that this may lead to the changes, potentially to the changes in nuclear porturing of both countries. which is very dangerous.
But again, when it comes to specifically where it was announced and Trump's own social media and how it was announced, tells me that it's probably more of PR action from the Trump administration rather than an actual engagement with Russia in terms of both sides nuclear-pottering and actual nuclear threats.
So I don't really, I don't really, I understand that there is a potential there, but I don't really see this yet as something that can be critically dangerous and lead to nuclear spiral, for example, in rhetoric that can lead to dangerous consequences.
Okay. So Professor Zhang, what do you think?
Because actually in the past nuclear issues were shrouded in secrecy and seriousness but are we now seeing a breakdown in those norms and a normalization of those reckless nuclear rhetoric relative to um similar scenarios we see in history like the cuban uh missile crisis i think we are in uh somewhat different context.
One is that we have a brief discussion. We briefly discussed the potential amplifying effect of social media.
And the second is relative to 50s, 60s, when that kind of nuclear confrontation seemed to be real, we knew that the intention of leaders, the United States and the Soviet Union leaders, did have a genuine intention to use nuclear weapons. nuclear weapons against each other, or maybe even beyond each other.
That kind of intention so far is not completely confirmed, at least as I see it.
So there are a lot of performative messaging on both sides.
And third, another major difference is now we have a much larger nuclear family, you might say.
It's not only the United States and the Soviet Union, there was a major nuclear power.
A couple of countries have also become a nuclear state or have the very quick potential to become a nuclear state.
So those things, those factors, you know, Context factors in new context may work against each other.
But I think to me it's important to see, use some of the historical parallel, but see the difference between now and a possible similar historical parallel to have a better sense of how much the threat of the nuclear war is on the horizon.
Okay. Well, Professor Sergu says some have compared this to the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Is that an exaggeration or do we need to take seriously the idea that great power tension can now spiral from digital provocations?
Yeah, I think your use of the word the Cuban Missile Crisis is very interesting because While this doesn't reach that threshold, and this I think is important for the context of what the Russians are saying, in 2022, Putin got tired of asking the Americans to sit down and talk about NATO's creeping mission, about the advanced weapons systems that would appear in Ukraine, for example.
What he wanted was a summit on nuclear weapons in the future in that neck of the woods.
And that's exactly what happened in 1962 when Khrushchev introduced nuclear weapons, intermediate range weapons, in Cuba.
And President Kennedy made it very clear that this was a threat to the United States.
I mean, the time to deliver these things is only about 15 minutes, so you don't have much time to react.
But he also said it was upsetting the balance of terror.
And in 2022, well, Putin, of course, had made a career out of telling the Americans he wanted to return to the balance of terror, that is, have mutual assured destruction.
And the Biden administration ignored the Russians, ignored Putin, which I think was a major mistake.
I think the Ukrainian war could have been avoided. as a matter of fact, but that's my view.
But I don't think we've reached that threshold yet.
And of course, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy used public airwaves the same way people use social media.
He made it very clear to the Russians that an attack on the United States from Cuba would be regarded as an attack on the United States from Russia.
So he made it very clear that Moscow would have to be responsible for whatever happens there.
So he took them very seriously. But, you know, the thing is, is we didn't know what was going to happen for a couple of days.
And maybe we got lucky on that one. But I think this idea that something could escalate very quickly.
I mean, we should be able, the Americans and the Russians should be able to let each side know publicly, you know, as much as possible where their red lines are and what's at issue and what these weapons systems do.
We're not having that dialogue right now because of other issues and because of the demonization of Moscow and others in the U.S. intelligence community.
We're not getting that kind of information, that kind of dialogue, which I think should be restored pretty quickly after the Ukraine war winds down.
Okay. Well, Professor Makhilyaev, as you said, these online spat, those rhetoric may just be symbolic, but actually on the ground, Russia has confirmed its new intermediate-range missile, the Orishnik, will be deployed to Belarus.
And the U.S. also says it will deploy intermediate-range missiles in Germany starting in 2026. so does the reappearance of intermediate range nuclear weapons make nuclear war more likely maybe not through intent but through misperception or miscalculation yeah thank you for the question of course any kind of moves like that especially the redeployment of intermediate range missiles from both sides make the nuclear war more likely now Does that make the nuclear war more likely by a considerable margin?
Probably not, because again, the intention here is to come back to the situation of the deterrent that we had before the INF. and the NF only happened in 1987, so there was a whole period of Cold War where that situation was considered as normal at the time.
I would say, of course, this is a deterioration of the relations even further between the United States and Russia, if they feel that they need to redeploy interdeterange missiles in Europe.
But it is the end of a whole long trend since the end of the Cold War that have been pushing us back into this kind of stale nuclear aggression from both sides.
The thing that is actually concerning is also what Professor Siracusa said previously is that The INF had the goal not only to make the internet range missiles go away from the Europe and from any kind of range between the opposing powers, but also to stop the research and development.
And I think the deployment is just the end of the process of the research and development in the new intermediate range missiles from both sides that we're seeing happen right now.
The research and development of new missiles is actually a much more longer term and much more potent threat to the nuclear balance and is much bigger threat to a potential nuclear war than mere redeployment of the intermediate range missiles in Europe.
And I think this is what we should be watching, how much of the development of intermediate range missiles is going to happen on both sides, in Russia, in the United States, in Europe, and even in the Middle Eastern manufacturers of those kind of missiles.
The whole potential here is that we can reach a very dangerous saturation of this kind of missiles that are capable of carrying nuclear warheads, not only in Europe, but in other regions of the world in the longer term.
And that would actually be more dangerous for the nuclear war than the simple redeployment right now, starting in 2026.
Okay. Well, Professor Zhang, so now with the INF Treaty gone and the New START Treaty also will be expiring soon, so is arms control effectively dead?
And could we now see a full-scale arms race in both Europe and Asia?
To a large extent, I would agree with your statement that arms control, at least in the manner we have witnessed, particularly between the United States and the Soviet Union and later Russia, in that particular manner has come to an end.
Partly as a consequence, in the past 10, 15 years, we do see the beginning of a new round of arms race, not only in Europe, but also increasing in Asia Pacific.
The latter part, to me, is particularly important because at least officially, that's one of the major reasons that Russia, this time, decided to formally withdraw from INS because what the Russian state observed is the United States is going to deploy missiles and similar platforms not only in Europe, for example, the planned installment of a nuclear platform in Germany, a missile platform in Germany, but also in already in the Philippines and potentially in more countries and regions in the broad Asia-Pacific region.
That was actually one of the main official reasons that Russian states used to justify official withdrawal from the INF Treaty.
So, the kind of arms race we have seen in, potentially in Europe, partly as a result Russian-Ukraine conflict is very likely to be replicated in Asia Pacific.
So that's a real possibility. Any future arms control or disarmament mechanism, I feel if it's going to happen, will probably go beyond just the U.S. and Russia.
Any effective arms control mechanism needs to be built from a much larger basis, bringing more international actors into it.
And this is also a process that I think we haven't experienced before and didn't have much experience.
But to me, if there are any effects that arms control needs to be introduced in the near future, I think some form of a social movement on a global level, beyond just the two or three leading nuclear powers, needs to be introduced.
Otherwise, nothing would happen or even if the informality of the nuclear power New arms control will be introduced.
It won't be yet. OK, so Professor Syracuse, just how dangerous is this trend?
Because we are not only seeing the redeployment of nuclear weapons, but the research and development.
How dangerous is this? And is it still possible to reverse this trend?
No, I don't think it's possible to reverse the trend.
We have nine nuclear weapons states today.
We could have 15 of them on Monday morning if they wanted to.
I mean, it's a political decision. for a number of nations, whether they want them.
I mean, the important thing is having a nuclear weapon and putting it on a missile or a ship or a plane or something.
It's just delivering it. So I think we could have more of that.
While I... I think what these... these near misses or what this kind of language introduces, I think it makes some kind of nuclear war more possible and thermonuclear war less possible.
Thermonuclear war, there are no winners.
It's quite clear to me from President Eisenhower's time on when he developed tactical nuclear weapons that tactical nuclear wars can be fought and won, okay?
Tactical nuclear wars with much less than megatons or millions of tons of TNT can do quite a job on your enemy.
And that is what... President Putin has threatened a couple of times when Joe Biden was threatening to introduce too much into Ukraine.
That was his way of keeping the Europeans down, as a matter of fact.
I think a lot of people will start looking at tactical nuclear war as normal, and it could be normal because, you know, It has lower radiation.
It has a directed object, you know, like an airport or something like that, or an aircraft carrier.
I mean, I think people will start to look for a lower threshold of using tactical weapons.
And finally, we have never counted them.
You know, we've had all these arms control systems. since 1949, 1950.
We've been thinking about arms control, but we never got around to counting or prescribing what we do with tactical nuclear weapons, whether it's a 115-millimeter shell or something on a backpack or something like that.
We never counted them. And so there are thousands of these around, and I think people would be tempted to use these instead of losing 5,000 men and women in combat.
So I think we have to worry about that. But, you know, at the end of this, I remain a pragmatic optimist.
I think we can get through this. I know we've been lucky so far.
But, you know, one of the reasons we have not had a general war since 1945 is because of these nuclear weapons.
That's not an accident. People understand at the end of the day that they do have a deterrent value.
And I think deep down in people's DNA and their bones, they know that The existence of nuclear weapons means you've got to be very careful about whether you use them or not.
Okay. So, Professor Makhilyariev, would you agree that perhaps the existence of nuclear weapons, to some extent, has prevented us from entering into a nuclear war?
I would agree with that statement. I would say to even the larger extent.
I think the fact that we do not have a full-fledged World War III is because of a nuclear deterrent.
I would agree with that. I also would caution against putting too much faith in it because this needs to be a work... on all sides to collectively remember what the nuclear weapons potential is and how dangerous they actually are.
I also think that I'm even more optimistic when it comes to the use of tactical nuclear weapons because I think even though there might be the situation where the use become normalized, I still think that the discourse around the nuclear weapons and the threat is still enough to deter the countries from even considering using them on the battlefield, because that can lead to the loss of support for these countries from any ally or any other country.
Because it seems in the present discourse that the use of a tactical nuclear weapon by any country in the world would make that country isolated from the rest of humanity, if you will, due to the discourse around the nuclear weapons and due to the nuclear deterrent that we have right now, and especially the memory. of their use, but also of the memory of the nuclear meltdowns of several reactors and the consequences of those meltdowns.
These are very vivid and very painful memories, not only for the countries that have been affected, but for the whole world.
And I think this still holds a lot of weight.
And even the use of a tactical nuclear weapon can effectively isolate the country from everybody else.
Everybody is going to be against that country now, regardless of why this country have used the nuclear weapon.
So there is this kind of optimism here in terms of how harmful the use of even tactical nuclear weapon can be for the country itself.
And I think any country that has them understands that.
And the risk benefit calculation here is very, very difficult.
So I think we're still a long way from the use of nuclear weapons.
Although I also agree that the trend towards the full scale arm races is going to be very hard to reverse, probably impossible.
Okay, so Professor Zhang, if we were to seriously reinvest in nuclear disarmament, what could that look like?
And what concrete steps could be taken today to halt the drift toward a new arms race?
Let's just briefly mention, what I see the major way... potential that can bring us out of this nuclear rearmament race is through some broader social movement on a global level.
We see in the 60s and 70s across Europe and in some parts of the world, the anti-nuclear movement on a social level has a direct impact on the final disarmament, on the disarmament measures taken by national states, particularly between the nuclear power.
If we are going to reinvest only in these state rhetorics and state calculation, I'm afraid we'll be even more deeply stuck with this nuclear strategic dilemma.
Each one is doing what one thinks for its own self-defense, but as a result, increase the other party's sense of insecurity and then this escalation. will bring us into a nuclear war as a final result.
So the ground-based comprehensive social movement against nuclearization, to me, is the final social sort of guarantee that the human society won't move forward. towards that stage.
And we see somewhat a success in history.
I think that's what I think we should really reinvest in education, in media, about the horror of the nuclear threat, and also the social power behind the pure state decision.
We will try to prevent that. And this needs to be done on a a broad basis, not again, not just in the United States, in Russia, or in several nuclear powers.
Okay, so Professor Syracuse, are people today becoming increasingly desensitized when it comes to this topic?
As we know, this week marks 80 years since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
But as the last survivors pass away, are we losing the moral memory that once anchored nuclear restraint?
And do today's policymakers like Donald Trump, like Medvedev, do they truly grasp the horror of what a nuclear detonation would entail?
Or has the reality of nuclear war becoming too abstract to influence the real world decisions?
I think you've hit on it there with that word desensitization.
I think that people have been desensitized.
It's been five generations, 80 years since the use of nuclear weapons.
And people don't recoil so much from the thought of them.
I mean, there has been examples of conventional warfare that have wreaked the same kind of damage on places as nuclear warfare.
But I think people forget the actual capability of nuclear weapons.
You know, in war, people die one way or the other.
I mean, nuclear weapons makes entire cities disappear.
Those bombs used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were only 14,000 tons of TNT and 22,000 tons of TNT.
They're puny by today's standards. I mean, cities would disappear.
But I think we're going to have to get back to some kind of, well, social understanding of what's at stake here.
But keep in mind, while the United States for many, many years did not like nuclear weapons, the United States didn't.
The United States public paid for, let's see, nuclear weapons research and development in the United States was about number two or three in terms of what Americans spent between the Manhattan Project and the end of the Cold War.
Americans have spent billions, trillions of dollars. on nuclear weapons while they oppose them.
There's an irony here, and President Reagan pointed it out, where we try to deter nuclear war by threatening nuclear war.
Well, how long does that last? After a while, it just becomes philosophically and morally numbing.
That's where we are today. We have to understand how to get rid of these things while at the same time getting people to be very cautious about what they're saying and doing in high places.
And this is a return. This has got to be solved by the great nations.
It has to be solved by Washington and Moscow and Beijing and London and Paris and all the stakeholders.
And this is a decision. This course has got to be solved by the major players in the international communities.
This can no longer be dumped on the United Nations or someplace like that.
It has to be done by the real players. Okay.
Thank you, Joseph Syracusa, Professor of Global Futures at Curtin University in Australia.
Dr. Zhang Xin, Deputy Director of the Center for Russian Studies at East China Normal University.
Kamau Micheliadze, Associate Professor at the School of Global Studies at University of Gothenburg.
Thank you all for joining us. And that's all the time we have for this edition of World Today.
To listen to this episode again or to catch up on previous episodes, you can download our podcast by searching for World Today.
And for further discussion, you can follow us on X at CGTN Radio.
I'm Jiaming. Thank you so much for listening.
See you next time.
