The Economist June 4th 2022 BriefingThe nuclear taboo 17programme in return for relief from sanc-
tions, was hanging by a thread, with the Is-
lamic republic closer to a bomb than ever.
It is now closer still (see Lexington). And
the lack of progress towards disarmament
by America, Britain, China, France and
Russia, the nuclear-armed states party to
the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
(npt), was continuing to erode the legiti-
macy of the regime that treaty established.
The invasion of Ukraine has torn fur-
ther holes in this ragged fabric. With Rus-
sia waging a war of conquest and members
of natoproviding Ukraine with increas-
ingly capable weapons with which to fight
back there is a small but real risk that the
two sides might stumble into a war which
escalates beyond the nuclear threshold.
There is also a separate fear that should
things go very badly for Mr Putin (and a
mortifying defeat is the preferred outcome
for many countries in nato) he might use a
nuclear weapon to shock Ukraine into
standing down rather than see his armed
forces annihilated, or Crimea lost.
Some pretty strong personal feelings
The severity of these risks and how to han-
dle them is fiercely debated. Emmanuel
Macron, France’s president, has warned
against the “humiliation” of Russia. Polish
and other eastern European officials, along
with British ones, argue that escalation
risks have been over-egged by Germany, It-
aly and France. But the war’s impact on the
nuclear order is not confined to the ques-
tion of whether nuclear weapons will be
used in the conflict itself. It is also about
the effect their presence in it will have on
the norms and incentives according to
which other states make decisions in other
places. How nuclear weapons are thought
about and talked about is changing. What
Russia is doing, says Dr Tannenwald, “is
very damaging to the nuclear taboo”.
Again, the damage is being done to
something already suffering neglect. After
North Korea tested an icbmthat could
reach America in 2017 Donald Trump, a
president with little time for taboos,
threatened North Korea with “fire and fury
like the world has never seen”. In 2018 Kim
Jong Un, the Korean leader, warned that his
nuclear button was “always on my ta-
ble”—a comment that prompted Mr Trump
to retort that his button was “much bigger”.
At an election rally in 2019 Narendra Modi,
India’s prime minister, addressed Paki-
stan’s reminders that it had nuclear weap-
ons which would deter India with mock-
ery. “What do we have then?” he asked, rhe-
torically. “Have we kept it for Diwali?”
Such loose talk might have its origins in
the political currents of the past decade,
say Oliver Meier and Maren Vieluf of the
University of Hamburg. They argue that
nationalist-populist leaders, a category in
which they include Messrs Putin, Trump
and Modi, are more likely to speak irre-
sponsibly about nuclear weapons. Machis-
mo might be an issue, as might the sort of
taste for shock and flirting with the unsay-
able seen in edgelords online. So might a
general scorn for international opinion. It
is often among policy elites that the nuc-
lear taboo is treated most seriously. To a
man like Mr Trump that makes it suspect
in and of itself.
“This kind of open discussion goes
even further in reducing that taboo quality
of nuclear weapons for many people,” says
Scott Sagan, a political scientist at Stanford
University. “You see open discussions
about nuclear superiority and being able to
win a nuclear war in the Wall Street Jour-
nal—stuff that I think is pretty wild. Once
you start having people writing about that
in major papers, it has an impact on public
perceptions.” When ideas about winnable
nuclear wars were raised by members of
Ronald Reagan’s administration in the ear-
ly 1980s there was widespread outrage. To-
day not so much.
Part of the issue may simply be one of
time and forgetting. Save for Queen Eliza-
beth II (see leader), there is no one any-
where near the corridors of power who re-
members, as an adult, hearing the news
from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. All but the
most precocious of the children who
picked up on their parents’ dread at the
time of the Cuban missile crisis are in their
late 60s. The cold-war shadows in which
the nuclear taboo grew up, which only
started to disperse after Reagan and Mikh-
ail Gorbachev agreed that “a nuclear war
cannot be won and must never be fought”,
have been gone for 30 years.
There is also the fact that breaking the
taboo on the use of chemical weapons—a
taboo which, unlike the nuclear one, is
codified in international law—has turned
out to have lower costs than might have
been expected. Bashar al-Assad used them
in the Syrian civil war but remains in pow-er; poisoners working for Mr Putin and Mr
Kim have used them, too. Their use when
other options were possible hints that
breaking the taboo is a signal all on its own.
It is also possible that the population at
large was never as squeamish on the sub-
ject as their leaders. President George H.W.
Bush privately ruled out any use of nuclear
weapons in the first Gulf war, though he al-
lowed some obfuscation on the subject in
public statements. But 28% of the Ameri-
can public told pollsters they were fine
with the use of tactical, or low-yield, nuc-
lear weapons against Iraq. Among people
told it might save the lives of American
troops the number was 45%.Not saying we won’t get our hair mussed
Similar feelings might well hold sway to-
day. In 2017 Dr Sagan and Benjamin Valen-
tino of Dartmouth College ran an experi-
ment in which subjects were told that Iran
had destroyed an American aircraft-carri-
er, that America had invaded Iran to over-
throw its government in response, and
that the invasion had stalled. Should
America use nuclear weapons on the city
of Mashhad to “shock” the government in-
to surrendering? A clear majority said yes:
killing up to 2m Iranian civilians was an
acceptable price for avoiding 20,
American deaths that would result from a
continued invasion. It is worth noting that,
mutatis mutandis, this is quite similar to
the scenario in which Mr Putin uses a nuc-
lear weapon to cow Ukraine if it achieves a
decisive advantage.
A follow-up published this February by
the original authors and Janina Dill of Ox-
ford University showed that this grim cal-
culus held beyond America. Majorities or
near-majorities in Britain, France and Isra-
el were supportive of using nuclear weap-
ons in conflicts with non-nuclear nations
if they were more effective than conven-
tional ones. That is not a way people think
about something which is truly taboo.United States
FranceIsraelChina NorthKoreaRussiaIndiaPakistanBritain
5,5,428 16522529090 20160350Stockpiles expected to: increase remain stable decreaseSource: Federation of
American Scientists *Includes deployed, reserve and retired warheadsGrim tally
Estimated nuclear-warhead inventories*
February 2022