Intl.St. 12 / Pol. Sci.44a Global Issues and Institutions

Spring Quarter 2009Instructor: Bojan Petrovic

Global Issues: Nuclear Proliferation Energy Crisis Ethnic Conflict, Peacekeeping and Nation Building International Trade and Financial Globalization Great Power Competition International Terrorism Population Growth, Environment and Food Production Poverty, Diseases, and Development Global Values and Cultural Differences

The Spread of Nuclear Weapons

From the Manhattan Project to A.Q. Khan

"The Manhattan Project" More than 200,000 worked on this including several

thousands scientists and engineers, many of European background.

July 16, 1945: the first atomic bomb was tested in the

Alamogordo desert in New Mexico.

On August 6 an atomic bomb with an explosive yield equivalent to 12.5 kilotons of the explosives TNT (trinitrotoluene) was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, instantly killing some 70,000 of its inhabitants.

Five immediate destructive effects from a nuclear explosion:

the initial radiation, mainly gamma rays; an electromagnetic pulse, which in a high altitude

explosion can knock out electrical equipment over a very large area;

a thermal pulse, which consists of bright light (even many miles away) and intense heat equal to that at the center of the sun);

a blast wave that can flatten buildings; and radioactive fallout, mainly in dirt and debris that is sucked

up into the mushroom cloud and then falls to earth.

Three longer-term effects from a nuclear explosion:

1. a delayed radioactive fallout;

2. a change in the climate;

3. a partial destruction of the ozone layer.

What’s the danger of nuclear proliferation?

The greater the number of countries with nuclear weapons the greater the chance that the nukes will be used?

Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons:

also referred to as the Non-Proliferation Treaty, or NPT, which opened for signature on July 1, 1968.

Other Nuclear Arms Control Agreements: Limited Test-Ban Treaty (1963).

Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty (1996). Among the countries that had still to sign and/or ratify the treaty were Afghanistan, Cuba, India, Iraq, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and the United States (United States ratification has so far been stopped by the Senate).

A third category of states:

Cuba, India, Pakistan, South Africa, Israel, North Korea.