2010: year zero for nuclear zero?

Like the Sword of Damocles,

nuclear destruction has hung

over the world since the mid-1940s.

But a nuclear conflict

never happened. Why not?

It’s dumb luck that

we haven't had a nuclear catastrophe

in the last 65 years

since the Second World War.

Nothing to do with good leadership

or the inherent stability

of the nuclear armaments system.

It's sheer dumb luck.

We got lucky, pretty much, for 65

years and didn't have a nuclear war.

It's unreasonable to think

that the luck will continue forever.

Stories of near nuclear disaster

during the Cold War are easy to find.

My favourite one dates

from the Cuban Missile period

when we now know that there were

nuclear weapons on Cuban soil

and on Soviet submarines in the area,

not just the one that was coming in

by ship that was blockaded.

One of the incidents was that during

the course of this naval blockade

the US was dropping

depth charges just to indicate

that it wasn't to be fooled with,

not intending to destroy anything,

and one of those knocked out

the communications

in a Soviet submarine,

and the protocols said that

when submarines lost

communication

and didn't know if the war was on,

was that the decision as to whether

to fire their nuclear weapons

was left to a vote of the three

senior personnel on the submarine.

It went to a vote whether they would

fire their nuclear-tipped torpedo,

and by 2 to 1

the decision was that they wouldn't.

We came within the vote of one

Russian sailor of World War Three.

During the Cold War a deterrent was

seen as being in the national interest.

Now, some see

the reverse as being true.

We are going to be

the one who is attacked

by terrorists or revolutionary states.

So we’re better off

trying to mobilise everybody

to make these weapons anathema,

and that's a basic national interest.

Whatever utility

nuclear weapons might have had,

as a stabilising force

during the Cold War years,

in the 21st-century, the retention

by anybody of nuclear weapons

is causing

far more trouble than it's worth.

Nuclear weapons serve

primarily as a deterrent,

but apart from that

how useful and safe are they?

The military around the world

don't like them,

because they take money from

other things that they could have,

and they don't think

they can use them.

So, they are pretty useless,

and yet they threaten us all.

We still have 2000 weapons

on very high alert.

We have command

and control systems

that are not that much better

than they were during the Cold War,

and in some countries not good at all,

that now have nuclear weapons.

And we have the prospect of much

more sophisticated cyber attack.

Misinformation going into systems,

generating confusion,

anxiety,

possible machine and human error.

The US and Russia

are part of a coalition

insisting that the Islamic Republic

of Iran face consequences...

This changing view

has led to new attitudes

on both disarmament

and proliferation.

I don't think the problem is worse

than it was at other times.

It's that we have less

utility for nuclear weapons.

So we feel less inclined

to defend nuclear weapons

and find them more problematic.

So when someone else wants them,

it seems a much worse thing.

The two leading

nuclear weapons states

have committed themselves to

moving down the path towards zero.

You know the steps may be

of a halting nature

and not particularly large steps,

but the direction is a positive one.

And so we reach 2010. With such

a spotlight on nuclear issues,

will it be a key year

in the nuclear odyssey?

When you add together

the things that are on the table,

the two conferences,

the summit on nuclear security

and the review conference in May,

then there are other issues as well,

including the big one of Iran.

If we can get through the year

with net positives on most fronts,

the momentum can be sustained.

They are important, the nuclear

posture review in the US is important,

we have had one in Russia already.

But I don't think

it's going to be a sort of crucial year.

The world knows

that the administration in Washington

would like to have disarmament

and there would be

a certain forgiveness about that.

So there would be

more like a time out now.

Regardless of progress made in 2010

some nuclear threats may

remain completely unpredictable.

I worry about India and Pakistan

in the sense that if and when

there is another Mumbai attack,

there's a big terrorist attack on India,

the Indians have said

they won’t be restrained

and will teach Pakistan a lesson

for supporting terrorist organisations.

Pakistan says:

We’ve listened to the US,

we've moved our forces

to fight in Afghanistan.

We're vulnerable to India.

So if India tries to teach us a lesson,

we will use nuclear weapons.

Given that the probability of a terrorist

attack in India is much higher

than Al Qaeda

acquiring nuclear weapons,

the nuclear threat I worry about is

a conflict between India and Pakistan

that neither one of them wants.