How modern IS can enhance Gorbachev’s nuclear disarmament strategy (Part 2)

In my last post we examined Gorbachev’s nuclear deterrence strategy. Gorbachev saw how previous negotiation strategies of threats and intimidation were flawed. These strategies led to increased tensions between nations and further increases in their nuclear armouries. Gorbachev noted these failures and instead adopted a strategy that involve creating close relationships between nations and increasing trust. This trust allows nations to feel secure when reducing their stockpiles of nuclear weapons as they believed that other nations would also do the same. This strategy was very successful and resulted in the USSR and US dismantling the majority of their nuclear arsenals. See last week’s post for a more in-depth analysis of Gorbachev’s nuclear disarmament strategy. In this post I will discuss why today’s leaders should learn from Gorbachev’s disarmament strategy and also examine some new information systems (IS) that could be included into Gorbachev’s strategy of trust and cooperation.

Figure 1: Photo from (Mosher, 2020)

Current Tensions

While Gorbachev’s strategy was very effective for the goal of nuclear disarmament, there has been recent tensions that puts the results of his and President Reagan’s achievements at risk. Under the rule of new presidents, these superpowers have returned to negotiating with each other through threats rather than cooperation. Recently current US president Trump has withdrawn from the INF treaty that Gorbachev help to create and that has created the recent era of nuclear disarmament. Trump claims that the Russians are in breach of this treaty due to a new missile that they have created which exceeds that maximum range allowed by this treaty (Marcus, 2019). Russia denies these claims but have also suspended their obligations to this treaty in response to the US withdrawal. This treaty has been a key factor ensuring peace in the past decades.

"Russia is solely responsible for the treaty's demise," Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement on Friday. (Marcus, 2019)

Figure 2: Trump brags about US nuclear capabilities on twitter

In addition, these two superpowers are no longer the only ones that have access to nuclear weapons anymore. Soon after the US and the Soviets developed their nuclear weapons, the UK, China and France also developed their weapons. In the 1970’s long-time rivals India and Pakistan also engaged in their own arms race in an effort to get an upper hand over the other, creating larger stockpiles and more powerful weapons. As recent tensions between these two countries escalate over the Kashmir conflict, it is likely that this arms race will accelerate and bring these two countries closer to nuclear war. It should be noted that the weapons available today, are much more powerful than the two atomic bombs dropped over Japan during World War II. The levels of destruction that is capable is immensely more than what was available in 1945. It has been estimated that a nuclear conflict between Pakistan and India could kill 125 million people and result in global famines and Ice age temperatures (Bendix, 2019).

Figure 3: Global Nuclear Warhead Arsenals (Marcus, 2019)

This recent global arms race has been encouraged by US president Trump. Trump has bragged about the nuclear capabilities of the US in a tweet in 2016 (Figure 2) and has welcomed the next arms race with Russia, stating on MSMBC (Ed Pilkington, 2016)

“Let it be an arms race. We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.” (Trump 2016)

The Solution

It is clear that actions need to be taken in order to halt this global arms race before it is too late. Countries should learn from Gorbachev strategy of cooperation and trust in efforts to solve this problem. However, this problem has outgrown the US and Russia and for a solution to be fully effective it will require regulations to be enforced globally and all countries to cooperate in this disarmament. Without global cooperation on nuclear disarmament, each individual nation will be forced to maximize their own nuclear capabilities in fears of being threatened by other nations. Without global cooperation, nations will continue this nuclear prisoner’s dilemma. One of the reasons why these nuclear treaties are being disregarded is due to the lack of verification involved in ensuring nations are following the terms of these treaties. This verification is difficult as the information a nation provides on their nuclear systems, threatens the security of their nuclear deterrence strategy. Without this verification, nations are not likely to trust that others are following the rules of treaties. This lack of trust threatens the effectiveness of Gorbachev’s disarmament strategy. However, there are several new information systems that show potential for aiding this verification problem.

One of these technologies is block chain. This technology offers a ledger of records that is distributed across many computers. The advantage to this is that no one party can alter a record in this chain as the other holder of this record will prove it to be invalid. Block chain technologies have been proposed as potential tools to aid in the transparent management of nuclear materials (norton rose fulbright, 2018). This technology can be used to analyse the management and supply of materials such as nuclear materials used for nuclear energy. Most current nuclear fission reactors use uranium to generate energy. However, this material can also be used for the creation of nuclear weapons. Due to this many national regulators require records to be taken for the sourcing of uranium and the long-term store and the spent materials. However, there is a risk that these records may be tampered with in order to use these materials for the undisclosed creation of weapons that are in breach of regulation. There is also a risk that these materials may be sold to another nation or terrorist group, increasing the number of agents that nations need to be wary of. By using block chain as a medium to offer a transparent, tamper free method of recording the management of nuclear materials, it reduces the risk that this nuclear material can be re-purposed for nuclear weapons. This will give the armed nations peace of mind that other nations are following nuclear treaties and that more nations will not acquire nuclear weapons that could pose a threat to them. This reassurance would provide armed nations security and may convince them to reduce their armoury of nuclear weapons.

Figure 4: (Photo from The Street)

Recently another new information system has be developed by the Horst Görtz Institute for IT Security that as the potential to aid in verifying that countries abide by disarmament treaties (Weiler, 2018). This technology aims to monitor the number of missiles that are stored in silos and containers to ensure that countries are not adding to their stockpiles. Due to the top-secret nature of nations nuclear weapon strategies, nations are very reluctant to release any information to regulators necessary for verification. This is where this new information system, developed by an international team of researchers could help. This technology is capable of monitoring the storage of nuclear weapons without revealing any sensitive information such as location. This technology creates a radio wave map of the storage. Any changes in the resulting map (e.g. If a war head was added or removed) would then be alerted to regulators. To ensure that these radio maps are valid and not just previously stored maps, a mirror system will be added in the storage location. The regulators will have remote control access to this mirror system and will be able to rotate these mirrors to a certain angle without the knowledge of the armed country. The resulting map can then be analysed to ensure that the mirror is in the correct angle set, proving that there was not interference by the host nation. This system contains 20 mirrors, resulting in billions of sextillions different combinations of mirror positions. This makes the prediction of the requested mirror positions impossible. This technology will allow all nations to follow any disarmament treaty with confidence and trust that all other nations are also following this treaty.

Figure 5: The project team in Bochum: Ulrich Rührmair, Christian Zenger and Christof Paar (from left to right) (Weiler, 2018)

This is just a sample of the tools that Gorbachev could have used as part of his nuclear disarmament strategy and may have resulted in an even larger decrease in the global stockpile of nuclear weapons. With the need for further disarmament of nuclear weapons being more paramount than ever, Gorbachev’s strategy of cooperation and trust and these information systems for validation offer leaders today a path to begin dismantling their arsenals. It is important that these technologies get more attention and that further research be done in this area. These technologies may be what prevents further nuclear escalations and possibly save millions of lives.

References

Bendix, A., 2019. If India and Pakistan have a nuclear war, scientists say it could trigger Ice-Age temperatures, cause global famine, and kill 125 million people. [Online] Available at: https://www.businessinsider.com/india-pakistan-nuclear-war-death-famine-2019-10?r=US&IR=T [Accessed 8 2 2020].

Ed Pilkington, M. P., 2016. 'Let it be an arms race': Donald Trump appears to double down on nuclear expansion. [Online] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/23/donald-trump-nuclear-weapons-arms-race [Accessed 8 2 2020].

Marcus, J., 2019. INF nuclear treaty: US pulls out of Cold War-era pact with Russia. [Online] Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49198565aut [Accessed 8 2 2020].

Mosher, D., 2020. Trump's unpredictability is making nuclear-nonproliferation advocates nervous as the US takes an aggressive posture against Iran. [Online] Available at: https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-iran-attack-tactical-nuclear-weapons-war-consequences-2020-1?r=US&IR=T [Accessed 7 2 2020].

norton rose fulbright, 2018. Applying blockchain to the nuclear sector. [Online] Available at: https://www.nortonrosefulbright.com/en/knowledge/publications/5f320cc5/applying-blockchain-to-the-nuclear-sector [Accessed 8 2 2020].

Weiler, J., 2018. New technology for monitoring nuclear disarmament. [Online] Available at: https://news.rub.de/english/2018-04-18-it-security-new-technology-monitoring-nuclear-disarmament [Accessed 8 2 2020].