Marshal White

Christina Giarrusso
26 October 2016
ENC2135
Rough Draft 2
On the dark day of 6 August 1945, the United States of America made the executive
decision to bomb Hiroshima, Japan with a uranium nuclear weapon. According to icanw.org, this
nuclear weapon was solely responsible for the deaths of just over 140,000 people in only a few
short months. Over the course of the following years, many other people lost their lives to the
radiation-based poisoning that lingered after the explosion of the nuclear weapon. Just a brief
three days after the first uranium bomb was detonated over Hiroshima, the United States had a
new plutonium-based nuclear weapon created and dropped over Nagasaki, Japan. Before January
of the following year, over 74,000 people that were living in Nagasaki lost their lives to the
explosion and the nuclear radiation (icanw.org). Both of these nuclear weapons that the United
States used to utterly crush Japan in the first world war were the result of an initiative called the
Allied Manhattan Project. The detonation of these two nuclear bombs has stained history as
mankinds first and last use of nuclear weapons to wipe out large populations of people.
However, just because nuclear weapons have not seen massacring entire cities of people
since the first world war, that goes against the implication that nuclear weapons have sense been
permanently decommissioned and done away with for the good of humanity. Unfortunately,
many of the worlds most power militaries are centered around nuclear arsenals and massive
strongholds of nuclear warheads with much more destructive capability than the two bombs used
in 1945. According to icanw.org, only nine countries possesses a grand sum of over 15,000
nuclear weapons. Of those 15,000, the United States hold roughly 7,200 warheads and Russia

holds about 7,500 warheads making both of these countries neck and neck in the running for the
most dangerous country on planet Earth. Just two nuclear weapons created in haste during the
1940s were enough to annihilate close to 200,000 people, so what are the implications of 15,000
nuclear weapons created over the course of the following 70 years? Surely, great strides have
been made in technology and the implication that these current warheads outclass the two bombs
from 70 years ago goes without saying. In essence, if the United States and Russia were to go to
nuclear war today, the explosion from the nuclear weapons alone would enough to wipe out most
of the human population. Nuclear weapon research and development should be halted with
permanently for the sake of all people around the globe because of the ethical dilemmas that
result from stockpiling and using nuclear weapons, the threat that these weapons pose to
international security, the consequences that the environment could suffer in the event of nuclear
catastrophe, and the economic burden that nuclear weapons places on our country.
The most blatant argument from the human rights point of view against nuclear weapons
is based upon the simple truth that nuclear weapons and warheads are capable instantaneously
destroying hundreds of thousands of people. According to armscontrol.org, approximately
23,000 nuclear warheads exist across every country on the planet (remember that nine countries
contain the vast majority of these). Of the 23,000 nuclear weapons, just over 2,000 are given
high alert status. This status is given to nuclear weapons and warheads that are able to be
launched instantly at the sight of any given threat that warrants nuclear measures
(armscontrol.org). To make the situation even more dangerous, the nuclear weapons are divided
among countries with political and military tensions (the United States and Russia, for example).
Unfortunately, the situation continues to worsen. According to icanw.org, many of the countries
that are designated Nuclear Weapon States are in violation of the Nonproliferation Treaty and the

Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (icanw.org). Both of these treaties were put into place
by the United Nations in order to diminish the growth of nuclear weapon arsenals, but just about
every country, including the United States, is in violation of these treaties. According to
armscontrol.org, the Nuclear Weapon States: China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, and the
United States are officially recognized by the Nonproliferation Treaty and despite the fact that
the nuclear arsenals of these countries are considered legitimate, they are still technically illegal
because they violate the treatys proliferation clause that states that it is illegal for a country to
grow and maintain a large nuclear warhead arsenal in perpetuity. In Article VI of the treaty, each
state-party is to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of
the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament Unfortunately, that is not the
case. During the year 2000, the five countries that belong to the Nuclear Weapon States listed
above pledged to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of
the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament (armscountrol.org). The five
nations have clearly gone against the treaty and instead pursue the interest of their own
respective countries. This has resulted in the growth of nuclear arsenals on a global scale.
More careful analysis of the human rights perspective shows that the Nuclear Weapon
States are doing much more than simply defying treaties set in place by the United Nations.
According to Dr. Stuart Casey-Maslen, honorary professor at the University of Pretoria and legal
advisor to the Swiss delegation in the negotiation of the 2013 Arms Trade Treaty, Human rights
laws regulation of the use of force encompasses two core rules. First, any force used must be
only the minimum necessary. Second, force used must be proportionate to the threat (CaseyMaslen 2). Clearly, nuclear weapons are only the minimum necessary force when threaten with
another nuclear weapon. So in essence, nuclear weapons are only considered necessary because

other countries have nuclear weapons. So if no countries were stockpiling nuclear weapons in the
first place, according to international human rights law, nuclear weapons would never be a
necessary circumstance. According to Dr. Nick Ritchie, senior lecturer in the department of
politics at the University of York states that, at some point in a nuclear arms reduction process a
state will face a simple binary choice: deploy a minimum capability in a minimal way or fall
below the threshold and exert zero deterrent effect. The UK and France argue they are at that
point (Ritchie 7). What Dr. Ritchie is pointing out is that the United Kingdom and France have
determined that maintaining their respective nuclear arsenals is not worth the benefit of
nuclear deterrence. It only holds to impede upon human rights and cause ethical dilemmas.
Coinciding with the argument that nuclear weapons have the ability to desecrate entire
cities of people in an instant, it is not unreasonable to assume then that growing and maintaining
large nuclear arsenals is a threat to security on an international scale. If approached logically,
large-scale nuclear weapons do not actually solve any of the foreign or domestic conflict seen in
the present. If domestic terrorism is used as an example, as it is one of the most controversial and
relevant topics this day in age, clearly the United States would have trouble using nuclear
weapons to deter terrorists that have already made it into the country. So if the nuclear weapons
display no purpose for domestic terrorism, what about deterring foreign conflict? The idea that
nuclear weapons somehow prevent conflict from happening is just that, an idea. Nuclear
weapons have been the explicit cause for armed conflicts overseas such as Operation Desert
Storm. According to the Arms Control Association, the United States invaded the middle east on
the premise that Saddam Hussein was hiding nuclear and chemical weapons and using them
against citizens in the Iran-Iraq war. It was even believed that he had plans to head research and
development of these weapons in order to wage war with other foreign countries

(armscontrol.org). It is important to note that the United States had zero concrete evidence that
Saddam Hussein actually had any of these weapons, but just the idea that nuclear weapons had
fallen into untrustworthy hands was enough to engage in a small-scale war with middle eastern
countries in 2003. In hindsight, if nuclear weapons had been abolished after the bombings in
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it is possible that this conflict could have been prevented in its entirety.
Moving to another example that proves the monumental risk to security of nuclear
weapons, the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 was arguably the closest the world has been to being
brought to nuclear ruin. According to James E. Doyle, an independent nuclear security specialist
that was on the technical staff of the Nonproliferation Division at the Los Alamos National
Laboratory from 1997 to 2014, We know that nuclear deterrence can fail, either through poor
decisions, escalation during a crisis, a series of mechanical and human errors, or malicious acts
that lead to inadvertent use. It has nearly failed several times, the most famous example being the
1962 Cuban Missile Crisis (Doyle 11). Doyle goes on to discuss how in the year 2002, more
information was released that shows just how close the United States came to launching a
nuclear assault that purely the result of an accident. On 26 October 1962, a United States Naval
Destroyer USS Beale was tracking and dropping small charges no larger than hand grenades onto
a Soviet Russian submarine in order to signal it to rise to the surface. Unknown to the US forces,
that soviet submarine was armed with a 15-kilotonne warhead and was strongly considered
defending itself due to the fact that it was surrounded by US ships and was running low on
oxygen for the crew. The captain of the soviet submarine ordered the nuclear warhead to be
armed, but fortunately for every living human on the planet, the submarine brigade commander
was also on board and made the decision to overrule the captains order and saved both countries
from launching nuclear attacks on one anothers fleets (Doyle). This is one example of many

provided during the Cuban Missile crisis that brings to light how many times the United States
was inches away from nuclear war with Russia.

Works Cited
"Arms Control Association | The Authoritative Source on Arms Control since 1971." Arms
Control Association | The Authoritative Source on Arms Control since 1971. N.p., n.d.
Web. 15 Oct. 2015.
Casey-Maslen, Stuart. "The use of Nuclear Weapons and Human Rights." International

Review

of the Red Cross 97.899 (2015): 663-80. Print.

Doyle, James E. "Why Eliminate Nuclear Weapons?" Survival (00396338) 55.1 (2013): 734. Print.
Ritchie, Nick. "Waiting for Kant: Devaluing and Delegitimizing Nuclear
Weapons." International Affairs 90.3 (2014): 601-23. Web.