Portside

The capability upgrade has happened outside the attention of most government officials, who have been preoccupied with reducing nuclear warhead numbers. The result is a nuclear arsenal that is being transformed into a force that has the unambiguous characteristics of being optimized for surprise attacks against Russia and for fighting and winning nuclear wars.

The post-coup chaos in Turkey, home to NATO’s largest nuclear weapons storage facility, is an alarming reminder about the risk of siting nuclear weapons in unstable regions where they serve no clear strategic purpose, but pose a clear and present danger. At issue is not only the obvious risks of nukes falling into unfriendly hands, but also, after the fall of the USSR, who are these hydrogen bombs, a quarter of NATO’s theater nuclear weapons, to be used against?

The U.S. had very big plans for the little atoll of Bikini. Forcing the 167 residents to relocate, they started to prepare Bikini as an atomic bomb test site. Two test bombings scheduled for that summer were intended to be very visible demonstrations of the United States’ newly acquired nuclear might. Who could have foreseen that even now – 70 years later – the Marshall Islanders would still be suffering the aftershocks from the nuclear bomb testing on Bikini Atoll?

To use a term that has become commonplace in our world when discussing commerce, the prospect of nuclear conflict has globalized war and it’s a nightmare of the first order. In the post-Cold War world, Exhibit A in that process would certainly be the unnerving potential for a nuclear war to break out between India and Pakistan.