Stepping Back from the Nuclear Brink: A Talking Policy Roundtable

Introduction

Lindsay: Are we at the start of a new nuclear arms race?

The risks seem to be proliferating.

[John Scott: “As more countries get nuclear weapons, the risk increases largely, because now the complexity of the situation is much larger. And the unpredictability is going to go up.”]

Arms control and global cooperation are breaking down.

[Alex Bell: “All the work that we did to build a rules-based international order, international structures to use diplomacy as a tool of first resort. These institutions that we built are eroding.”]

What are the best ways back from the brink?

[Jerry Brown: “Looking ahead, we are on the razor’s edge and we have to be alert. And what is required is some persistence, some powerful belief in our common humanity that keeps pushing us forward.”]

In this special episode, I’ll talk with three people who have devoted much of their careers to nuclear weapons security: Governor Jerry Brown is the former governor of California, executive chair of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and has long warned about the dangers of nuclear weapons; John Scott is a nuclear scientist and the Division Leader of X-Theoretical Design at Los Alamos National Lab; And Alex Bell is the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Affairs in the Bureau of Arms Control, Deterrence, and Stability at the U.S. State Department.

Together we will try to answer the question: how can the world step back from the nuclear brink?

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Lindsay: You don’t have to be an expert in nuclear weapons to know that concerns about them seem to be growing. Russia has threatened to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. North Korea has intensified its testing of intercontinental ballistic missiles. And China is rapidly building up its arsenal.

There are some influential voices who are saying that we’re entering a new, extremely dangerous nuclear era that will lead to an arms race. And there are others who say that the dangers are greatly exaggerated.

So which is it? Governor Brown, you go first.

Jerry Brown: Yeah, well, I’m inclined to the dangerous side. There [are] nine nuclear weapons countries. All these weapons are held together by fallible human beings and by hardware and software that can fail. So the potential of a blunder—mechanical or human—is great. The chance of a miscalculation is also highly possible.

And looking ahead, it strikes me that a nuclear exchange is inevitable on the course we are [on], unless the nuclear powers adopt a very different approach than they currently have with respect to each other.

Rivalry has completely triumphed wisdom, and wisdom is what we need, not more rivalry.

Lindsay: John, what about you?

John Scott: So I think the concern is growing just because nuclear weapons were a big concern in the ‘80s and ‘90s, then 9/11 happened. We had two decades of what I’ll call a focus on terrorism, and now that we’ve focused away from that, we’ve come back to it.

You just noted, we have China on the rise with their weapons. We have North Korea. And those situations [are] different today than I think before the ‘80s and ‘90s, in the sense of now we have this kind of three-near-peer situation, which is unfamiliar to everybody who’s kept track of nuclear weapons throughout their history. And so I think that that is the challenge that we face today.

Lindsay: Alex, how about you?

Alex Bell: First, thanks for having me. I’m really glad to be on this panel with my esteemed co-speakers. But second, who are these people who are saying there isn’t a rising threat? I don’t know how you would look around the world right now and not see how dangerous this has become. You know, we have an opaque and rapid buildup of the Chinese nuclear arsenal. We have Iran and North Korea continuing to flout international law and their commitments to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and we have Russia absolutely wrecking 60 years of structures that we built together to safeguard this planet from nuclear disaster. And when I say wrecking, the Russians are wrecking it, and so we’ve got a lot of work to do.

I think John’s totally right, I would actually take it back to the end of the Cold War when everyone sort of said, “glad that’s done,” and sort of shook out their hands and focused elsewhere. The problem never went away. We’ve been trying to manage it, and unfortunately, the conditions have become worse now. So we’re going to need leaders, governments, legislatures, academic institutions, and the public refocusing on this problem and making sure that we are safeguarding this planet for future generations.

Lindsay: To set the stage for our listeners, I want to ask you, John, as the nuclear scientist in the room, if you could help us establish some basic facts about nuclear weapons, like how many nuclear weapons are there in the world? How many countries have them? And remind us, like, what do nuclear weapons do? What makes them different from other weapons?

John Scott: So there are eight declared nuclear states, right? The United States, Russia China, France, the U.K., India, Pakistan, and North Korea. People often like to say there’s nine—the ninth never actually likes to say if they do or do not have weapons.

In the middle [of the] 1980s, there were about 70,000 weapons total across all those who have them. Today, there’s about 12,000. The vast majority of the weapons that exist today belonged to the United States and Russia. China has approximately 500, and the reports are that they’re building up to 1,000 by 2030.

Nuclear weapons have been used once—or, actually, twice during World War II against Japan. Those were Little Boy, used against Hiroshima, and Fat Man, used against Nagasaki.

I think their ability to destroy was quite evident when used, right? You had a couple hundred thousand deaths between those two events, very dramatic. I think even talking to Hiroshima or Nagasaki survivors today, they can communicate the impact there.

Nuclear weapons derive their explosive power from nuclear reactions as compared to conventional weapons that derive their power from chemical reactions. The easy way to think about the energy difference between the two is that the energy release in a nuclear reaction is about 50 million times that of a chemical reaction. So, just on a per reaction basis, that’s 50 million times more energy. That just gives you a feel for the difference in power, right? That’s a huge difference.

And then lastly, there’s been a lot of technical advances since World War II, and that allows us to make nuclear weapons that are much more destructive than the ones that were used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Lindsay: When a lot of us think about nuclear weapons, we think about Hiroshima, which you mentioned. We maybe saw “Oppenheimer”. But the weapons that were used in World War II were, in some sense, primitive compared to what we have today.

Today, the destruction that would be wrought from using a thermonuclear weapon is so vast, and so horrible, and so complete, that the thinking goes, that simply having these weapons constrains anyone from using them. And there’s a belief that, actually, we can thank nuclear weapons for the fact that there haven’t been any world wars between superpowers since World War II.

I’m curious if you agree with this logic, and if you do, do you think this logic will hold indefinitely?

Alex Bell: So this is an interesting question, and one I have heard debated a lot, but I always think it misses the big picture.

The dawn of the nuclear age also coincided with the worst war we’ve ever experienced as humankind, that followed on the heels of another “worst-ever war” that we had experienced. So we go through World War I, a global depression, World War II, and then, you know, understanding what is at stake with nuclear weapons.

It’s everything that came out of that period of time that created a structure, a global structure to create stability. All the work that we did to build a rules-based international order, international structures to use diplomacy as a tool of first resort. That was all part of what stabilized against another catastrophic war. And nuclear weapons and deterrence have played a part there, there’s no doubt. But it’s part of a broader structure that we created to protect ourselves—for lack of a better term—from ourselves.

And the problem we’re seeing now is that these tools, these institutions that we built, are eroding, and I think some of it [is] intentional. As I mentioned, you know, Russia running roughshod over international law and their own commitments to the international community and to individual countries.

But you also just have sort of a lack of acknowledgement globally that these structures need tending. You can’t just build things and put it up on a shelf and assume everything will go to plan. The world changes, countries change, priorities change, and we have to change and amend these structures along the way to make sure they’re keeping up with the threats and challenges that we’re facing.

It’s for all of us now to look at these nuclear dangers, as Governor Brown mentioned, to avoid a new global nuclear arms race.

Lindsay: So you’re saying that it’s not just the destructive power of nuclear weapons that has constrained their use, it’s also the investment in these diplomatic structures and arms control treaties. Governor Brown, what’s your take on this?

Jerry Brown: Well, the big word is deterrence. And the fact that we’ve avoided a nuclear exchange definitely has to be tied back to deterrence in some way. We don’t know for sure. It may be huge, it may be more of an illusion.

One thing I will say is that deterrence, as it works, is consistent with and fosters a continuing, building, and maybe slow escalation, but escalation nevertheless. You look at the latest expression of congressional perspective, the bipartisan commission, that’s pointing in the direction of more building, more weaponry, more competition. So as we move, the Chinese move and vice versa—and Russia, and the others.

What is needed is some understanding among the competing powers. That may sound utopian, that may sound unrealistic, but I assert that an arms race ends in only one of two ways: either the parties come to some understanding, or they have an exchange, a fight, a war, an explosion. So there’s where we are.

Lindsay: John, what do you think about the idea that nuclear weapons have, in some sense, secured the peace?

John Scott: So, I think the idea largely worked when it was just the United States and the Soviet Union. But I think actually, you know, I’m more concerned when it comes to the risk associated—as more countries get nuclear weapons, the risk increases largely, because now the complexity of the situation is much larger. And the unpredictability is going to go up. Even, like, in a three-way race, if you think about [the] U.S., China, and Russia, you will always have less than the other two combined, if you just think about that situation, that’s gonna be hard, right?

And so that just brings to light the importance of arms control, and how you’re going to need people at the highest levels of the government to be talking about this. And so, that is gonna be the way to make the situation better, I think, is everybody coming to the table and talking through nuclear weapons and “what exactly are we going to do?” Because we can’t race, right? Because nobody wins when there’s more than two players, because you’re always going to lose to some combination of the other players.

Jerry Brown: Well, that’s a very important point. If American security requires that we have as much as China and Russia, that’s a formula that will stimulate [a] never-ending race. Whether you like it or not, talk, you’ve got to communicate. I personally think—and I base this on my long experience in government—that the government officials are very much the product of their own little bureaucracies. Not talking is dangerous, and yet it is the norm right now.

Lindsay: I want to ask about modernization, which each of you has touched on. There’s a strong effort underway to modernize America’s nuclear weapons system and arsenal. And this includes everything from updating the design of nuclear weapons, strengthening the delivery systems, building new facilities and, of course, increasing the absolute number of weapons. And there are strong voices for this, and strong voices against this.

I want to ask each of you: do more and better weapons make us safer, or do they make us all more vulnerable? And John, let’s start with you.

John Scott: So let me restate your question a little bit, because I think I want to kind of clear up what modernization might mean.

So just because the weapon’s being modernized doesn’t mean it’s becoming more destructive. Many of the weapons that are in the stockpile were built when I was a teenager, or in elementary school when Governor Brown was my governor. And if you think of the electronics at the time, or the technology at the time, those components age, they need to be replaced.

So when you modernize, when it comes to the nuclear package, you aren’t necessarily increasing its yield or making it more powerful, right? This is about modernizing in the sense of ensuring that they will work as we expect them to when we need to use them.

Now, along with that could come delivery-vehicle improvements. You can get more accurate and that could lead them to being able to hit a target more adeptly, will lead them to be more effective.

Does it make the world a more dangerous place? I’m not convinced that just because we have modernized weapons to bring them up to technology today… Effectively, we’re not changing the capabilities in the stockpile. We’re not adding new capabilities. In fact, what we’re doing is just trying to replace what we have. I argue that that isn’t necessarily changing things significantly in terms of the calculus that’s involved. Nuclear weapons are still nuclear weapons. They’re still very destructive, and that has always existed, since nuclear weapons have existed.

Lindsay: Alex, you work in the Bureau of Arms Control, Deterrence, and Stability. Does modernization challenge U.S. efforts to reduce the risk of conflict?

Alex Bell: No, I don’t think so at all. I think we’re very clear about the fact, as was said, we need a safe, secure, and effective deterrent for as long as nuclear weapons exist. We want to make sure, you know, they are safe and if—God forbid—they need to be used, that they will work in the way that they were designed to work, and this has really been a bipartisan consensus about the need to do this. At the same time, we need to be pursuing arms control measures in service of our ultimate goal, which is a world without nuclear weapons.

So these two things need to go together, and it’s one of the reasons my bureau name actually recently changed to include “deterrence,” to make clear that both arms control and deterrence are necessary for the security of our country. They are mutually reinforcing concepts and they will allow us to maintain stability as we pursue these arms control measures with countries that are somewhat loath, at this point, to talk to us about such measures.

But the one thing I think we have going for us is the United States is nothing if not persistent in the pursuit of our goals. And so we appreciate, at the State Department, that NNSA [the National Nuclear Security Administration], that our weapons labs, are making sure that we have a deterrent that is fit for purpose, that is focused on quality rather than quantity, and as NSC Director for Arms Control, Pranay Vaddi, said recently, we don’t need to increase the nuclear forces to match or outnumber the combined total of our competitors to successfully deter them. And I think that’s the message that we’re bringing to conversations in the multilateral to international partners, that our deterrence is focused on defending this country and our allies and partners, and we will maintain it for that purpose. At the same time, we are going to keep pushing the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, the North Koreans to come to the table and find diplomatic solutions.

Lindsay: Well let’s talk more about global cooperation. The Trump administration pulled out of two nuclear treaties—the Iran nuclear deal and the INF Treaty—and New START, the last remaining arms control pact, was suspended by Russia in February 2023. It hasn’t been a great era for arms control recently.

Alex, what are the best ways to revive global cooperation around nuclear security?

Alex Bell: You know, we’ve got to get Russia back to the table. The U.S. has made clear we are ready to negotiate on strategic stability issues without preconditions. We know exactly what we want to talk about. We know exactly what we want to do. My brilliant colleagues have a whole plan for when the Russians come back to the table, because I think the Russians understand this is in their security interest to have these kinds of structures in place, not only the reduction part of it, but the data exchanges, the on-site inspections, to get a real-time image of each other’s nuclear forces so we’re not posturing ourselves based on misperceptions and miscalculations about each other.

We need to get China to the table for the first time, in a real way, on a bilateral basis or a multilateral basis, whatever suits them, but they need to be engaging. They have the same obligations that we do, and they are obligated to be working with us. And this, you know, massive buildup on their side is in contravention of everything the NPT stands for. So we need to get them to the table. But I understand that we need to do that on their terms. They aren’t Russia. We don’t have the same kind of forces. We do have asymmetries that we would have to account for. And so we’re thinking through those things too, and we need to be patient. It’s going to take us a while. It took us a long time to get the Russians into legally binding reduction treaties. It’s not going to go from zero to 60 with the Chinese. We want to start with risk reduction, again, commonsense crisis communications, crisis prevention measures with them.

We need to push the international community to keep the pressure on North Korea and Iran, to work with the international community to reduce those threats. Got to get these multilateral organizations functioning again. We have a whole body called the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva that’s supposed to negotiate these broad multilateral treaties, like the Chemical Weapons Convention, which banned the production, stockpiling, and use of chemical weapons. It’s a vanguard arms control treaty, the kind of thing we should be striving for, and we haven’t been able to get anything else like that out of Geneva since the early ‘90s. So we’re thinking through that all the time. How can we make things work there again?

We also need to be dealing with how emerging and disruptive technologies are going to affect strategic stability. The pace of technology is actually running faster than our ability to build good, commonsense structures to make sure those emerging and disruptive technologies aren’t going to destabilize our security environment further.

The good news is, it’s actually not as bad of a time for arms control as you might think. Yes, we aren’t doing big bilateral treaties right now, but we’ve been doing a ton of normative work and sort of making lemonade out of all these lemons. We got broad international support for a ban on direct-ascent anti-satellite testing at the UN two years ago. Last year, we got 164 countries to agree with us that it is time for the globe to negotiate a ban on state-based use of radiological weapons or “dirty bombs”, which would be the more common term there. Why we didn’t have that in the first place, I don’t know, but it’s time for us to do it and we got broad support for that. We have a political declaration on the responsible military uses of AI that we have, I think, approaching 60 countries that have signed on already, and we continue to push that.

You know, in some ways, it’s a really interesting time to be doing arms control because we’re no longer the stewards of all the structures that were built before us, and we’re just simply maintaining them. It is the responsibility on all of our shoulders, collectively, to build an entire new set of structures that’s fit for purpose, that responds to this security environment, and while that can be relatively daunting, it also gives purpose. This is necessary. We have to find a way. And, in fact, I often quote the late John Lewis, and what he said, “we will find a way to make a way out of no way.” And that’s the position we’re in right now. But I do think it’s possible, and I think that’s the history of arms control, is assuming that we can find a way eventually if we keep pushing.

Lindsay: Governor Brown, you’ve often called for more dialogue with China, and you have very publicly lamented the bipartisan hard line on China in Washington. I’m curious what you think about what are the things that the United States could be doing to pave that road that we’re not doing?

Jerry Brown: Well, first of all, let me just say, yeah, we have to explore every possible avenue. And I’m glad to hear that there are so many things that are positive. The problem is that nuclear policy is hostage to conventional rivalry. And the politics of Ukraine, that war, the Middle East, conflicts that we have over the South China Sea and other things going on between [the] U.S. and China. All these things make dialogue at the nuclear level more difficult.

Now when it comes to Russia and China, yes, they’re not coming to the table, which makes no sense at all. However, I think we have to acknowledge that by Bush pulling out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, that certainly didn’t help. And also, then Trump pulling out of the two nuclear arms treaty, that doesn’t help either.

And then you have the politics, and I say politics in the broad sense. There’s a lot of rivalry going on. Decisions that are made by the U.S. and the other countries. And, of course, there’s a lot of politics going on in our own Congress. So, to get conversation going is very difficult, and nuclear as the topic is complicated. Difficult. So it takes a real focus on the nuclear danger. I’m afraid that people don’t really understand the danger of nuclear weapons. Trump—certainly the way he talked about nuclear weapons—didn’t seem to indicate he understood the full destructiveness.

The public is asleep. Congress is asleep. This nuclear issue is a non-starter. I can tell you, I talk about it a lot. You can talk about a lot of other things, but people don’t want to hear about nuclear. And if you want to be at all effective, or listened to, don’t bring up the topic. I bring it up because I think we have a hell of a challenge just getting the topic on the table.

Lindsay: Yeah, that’s an interesting point about nuclear weapons not being on the radar of the public.

John, I’m curious what you think about the sort of disappearance from the zeitgeist of nuclear weapons as an issue. I mean, there are so many other pressing challenges in the world. Can people be faulted for not spending their time thinking about nuclear weapons?

John Scott: The thing that’s very different today than there was in the past, was in the past, it was just “nuclear weapons, that’s the thing we need to deal with.” But you think about today, everybody’s thinking about climate change and energy security. We’re thinking about, you know, we are highly reliant on space, right? Satellites for communication and whatnot. So that’s another place where we have to worry about what’s going on there. Cyber is another issue. And so I think I’m just highlighting what’s already been said. It’s just a very complex problem and trying to figure out what piece you want to grab onto and right first is tricky, because they are interconnected.

There’s just all this competition for discussion about the things that we need to be worried about. And now nuclear is just on a long list of stuff, and so it’s a challenge, right? You know, in my job every day, we’re talking nuclear weapons, Governor Brown. So, you know, you can come visit if you want. I’d be happy to have a discussion.

Jerry Brown: It’s been a long time since I’ve been. I went to Los Alamos when I was governor the first time.

John Scott: Maybe all three of us should get together there.

Jerry Brown: I would enjoy that.

John Scott: But, you know, it is unfortunate that I think nuclear has kind of dropped out of the spotlight, just in the sense of, I think the longer you get from events like Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the harder it is for people to relate to it. Just as there are fewer and fewer survivors left from that, it becomes harder to actually then communicate or connect on a human scale, because you’re not able to talk to many people who experienced that. And that’s going to be a challenge to communicate to people just the power of the weapons that you’re dealing with here. And it is important that you discuss the potential for their use, trying to deter their use, or just having fewer weapons around and the importance of doing that.

Lindsay: Alex, when we were talking about modernization, you mentioned the importance of, on the one hand, modernizing the U.S. nuclear weapons system, while at the same time working towards arms control and the ultimate goal of disarmament. Those two things feel really at odds with each other and I’m wondering if underneath those dual goals is an assumption, or maybe a worry, that we probably can’t get rid of nuclear weapons.

We all remember 2009, when President Obama famously imagined a world free of nuclear weapons, but is that really possible?

Alex Bell: Of course it is. Everything is possible. You know, I don’t know what the end of poverty would look like or what making sure that we eliminate hunger globally looks like from a structural standpoint, the steps we need to take. But I know those are the things that we need to be pursuing. I know that’s in line with the United States’ principles, goals, and morals.

Also, we have committed to this in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to pursue in good faith steps towards disarmament, and we have made a lot of headway, but unfortunately, the easy part is over. Coming from very, very large stockpiles, as John noted, almost 70,000 nuclear weapons in the world, to where we are now, right around 13,000, if you were to look at the public estimates, that was the easy part.

Every point from here, the lower the numbers go, the more rigorous the verification mechanisms have to be, the more rigorous the accounting has to be, the more intrusive inspections need to be if we’re truly on the way to irreversible and verifiable disarmament. That’s going to be a lot of work, and money, and technical prowess. These are all things we’re capable of, but we have to be investing.

As Governor Brown said, we need our leaders at the very top of our governments engaged on this and pushing the process forward. Every president since Truman at the very dawn of the nuclear age has talked about the need for control and eventual elimination. And, you know, it was Reagan himself who talked about “a nuclear war could never be won, so must never be fought,” and was a huge proponent of moving towards nuclear zero, and he made a lot of progress. He had a good partner in Mikhail Gorbachev. That’s what we need to have. The clear vision, good partners, and just keep working the problem. It may seem Sisyphean, but if we stop pushing that rock up a hill, it’s going to roll right over us.

Lindsay: John, a world free of nuclear weapons: a pipe dream or an achievable reality? What do you think?

John Scott: I would love to not have a job like the job I have, right, if we get to a world free of nuclear weapons.

I’ll take a little bit of a different spin on this. I agree wholeheartedly with the notion that nuclear weapons are now—they’re not this single issue, and they are caught up in a bunch of other things, and figuring out how you get to that discussion is really hard. But in the meantime, we are going to have them, right? That was part of Obama’s speech as well. He reiterated that so long as they exist, the United States is going to have a safe, secure, effective stockpile.

What does that mean? That means that I have to have people who can do that job well, right? So I, in my job, as the lead of the weapons-physics designers at Los Alamos, I’m always on the hunt for finding good technical people who are willing to spend their careers working on these things, right? Because this is a very challenging scientific topic. And so, actually, having the awareness of the issue will actually, in my opinion, help me recruit people to have the United States maintain the stockpile that we have, and keep it safe, secure, and effective until we get to that point in time.

You know, I work on these things every day, but boy, I do not want to see one be used because that is just going to be a bad day, right? A day that none of us are going to forget who are alive at the time, and it’s going to change the world when it occurs. But until the time we get to the point where we don’t have these anymore, you know, I think about my day-to-day and how I walk this out in this world, I’m just trying to make sure that we do the job that we are asked to do for the nation and in terms of maintaining our stockpile.

Lindsay: Governor Brown?

Jerry Brown: Look, theoretically, you can get rid of nuclear weapons. In fact, dozens and dozens of countries believe that. They’ve signed the Ban Treaty. So I think the elimination of nuclear weapons is certainly conceptually possible, but we have so much other work to reduce the competition to get the danger of nuclear weapons acknowledged.

I know the P5, the five members of the Security Council, all made the Reagan and Gorbachev statement, that nuclear weapons can never be used and nuclear war can never be won. Yeah, they said that, but I don’t think they believed it. And I think that President Putin appears that he has an unrealistic view of what he’s dealing with. I don’t know about President Xi, and Biden, I think he gets it. But the way the debate goes in Congress, I think there’s a lack of awareness of just how dangerous we are. So yeah, you can get rid of them, but we’re nowhere near there. But there’s plenty of important work to do, and it unfortunately involves other conflicts, other issues, and if we don’t deal with those, we’re never going to be able to get into conversation about how we reduce and ultimately eliminate nuclear weapons.

Lindsay: Yeah, Alex go ahead.

Alex Bell: Yeah, I will just note Governor Brown mentioned the P5. So it’s the five states recognized as nuclear weapon states under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. And we did, in January of ‘22, issue a statement where all five of us, for the first time, acknowledged at the leader level that a nuclear war cannot be won and so must never be fought. And the United States thought that was a good step in the right direction. The P5 had been meeting to talk about nuclear issues for about a decade. And finally, we were in a place where we were starting to do things, not just talk about things.

Unfortunately, a month and a half later, the Russians decided to further invade Ukraine, and sort of derail the process that we had really begun there to sort of move the P5 from talking to actions.

In a good note, we have found a way subsequently, even though for the most part, we and the Russians aren’t talking, because the Russians don’t want to talk to us bilaterally about these issues. We have been able to meet at the expert level, among the five of us, over the course of the last couple of years, and develop a really strong expert-level conversation where we’re talking about nuclear doctrines, we’re talking about nuclear posture, we’re talking about nuclear risk reduction. And those conversations, while they haven’t necessarily yielded results yet, what we’re doing is getting a clear idea of each other’s perspectives.

We’ve spent entire days talking about nuclear postures, asking each other questions about those postures. We’re developing relationships among the experts there. That kind of dynamic can be useful in the future. So while it is a very difficult time again, we’re trying to make the best out of a bad situation, and there are a lot of things happening at these very sort of quiet levels that are keeping these conversations going, and can hopefully provide a foundation for progress in the future on multilateral arms control, not just bilateral arms control.

Lindsay: We’re coming up very quickly on a very consequential presidential election here in the United States. The decision of when to use a nuclear weapon is one of the few areas where the president has complete and sole authority. So we might imagine that a president would consult with various advisers before making the decision to launch a nuclear attack, but there is no legal requirement to do so, and no one can legally stop him or her.

The president also obviously greatly informs how far and how fast any nuclear buildup will go, and the prospects for cooperating with our allies and partners. Given that this is such a highly consequential presidential area, I’m interested in what the three of you think about the role of the president, in terms of nuclear security, heading into this presidential election.

John Scott: So I think part of my answer actually originates from your question, in the sense that it’s the president that has that sole decision-making authority. It’s the president who needs to lead our government in finding the best solution, given the environment that the world is in today.

I really do believe that it’s the president who’s going to have to lead the nation on a dialogue and drive that conversation. Because as you said, right, it’s the president who gets to make that decision. I don’t see why we don’t naturally expect the president to lead on such issues, given the tremendous consequences of use, the history around nuclear weapons, the importance they’ve had to our national defense.

My expectation as a voter is that the president is going to lead us on these issues, and drive that in terms of our international relations. Because the president can put it on agendas, right? Can make it an important part of his or her administration. And so a quick, short answer for me to this question is I look to the president to help drive this policy, and help drive the world to a solution.

Jerry Brown: I think the question, or the topic, of the president has the sole power to blow up the world, that he can launch and doesn’t seem, legally, there’s anybody to stop him. Maybe practically people might stop, but we got a nuclear monarchy.

One guy or one woman can do what the hell they want. Now, unlikely they might do that, but human beings are fallible, and the brain, who knows where it might lead someone. So I think how you constrain the president’s power: that’s a whole ‘nother question. A debate, a discussion at the highest levels, and in Congress, and in the public about what do we do about having one guy, without the Congress, without the Supreme Court, without anybody, being able to launch a nuclear weapon, a horror that might end civilization. We don’t know what an answer might be.

But it would be a very important conversation to get going and to talk about it, because it would illustrate the very dangers that we’ve been talking about, so that’s good to just get it going.

So now the next question you had was the president shaping policy. Yes, the president can shape policy. Do they do it? Not much. Why? Because the politics, the power, the power of our allies that want our nuclear posture to be a certain way, the power of the military-industrial complex and all the money they make, the power of entrenched thinking, many different factors.

So yes, the president can shape nuclear policy, but it remains on us who are not the president to try to create the best conditions for a president taking much greater initiative in making a saner nuclear policy.

Lindsay: Yeah. Alex, what’s your take on this?

Alex Bell: So I think it’s fortunate that presidents, throughout the nuclear age, have clearly taken serious the enormous responsibility they have as the commander in chief, and in terms of sole authority, to decide on the use of nuclear weapons. And I think throughout history, we’ve also had presidents who’ve clearly seen the utility of leading on arms control, and that’s happened, you know, on a bipartisan basis, that presidents have decided to avail themselves of these diplomatic tools and really push for progress.

But the president also needs to empower the interagency to go and actualize those deals and support them as they push to negotiate possible solutions to these things. And then you have Congress. The president needs to engage Congress about the importance of ratifying treaties. We’ve got three nuclear-weapons-free-zone, negative security assurance protocols up on Capitol Hill right now. They could give their advice and consent to ratification tomorrow if they wanted to. But getting them to move on this, and to fulfill our parts of international agreements, that requires the president too.

That’s a lot on someone’s shoulders, and I think the electorate has to keep that in mind as they think about who they want in that particular position.

Lindsay: Yeah. You have worked on these issues, all three of you, for many years. John and Alex, as part of your day jobs, and Governor Brown, you’ve been a very strong voice in this space for decades. Each of you is committed to making the world safer, to making the world better than it is.

For those of us for whom this subject provokes a lot of anxiety and dread, and fear about not having control. Can you tell us, where do you find reassurance?

John, do you want to start?

John Scott: So let me start by saying no one should feel alone if they have anxiety towards nuclear weapons. The use of a weapon can have such grave consequences, right, and that just, I think, generates a lot of visceral feelings in people.

I take comfort in that they got used once in World War II [and] haven’t been used since. To me, that indicates, actually, that there are responsible parties out there who are thinking about the dire consequences, because they haven’t been used since.

I also see that there are many people who are trying to make sure that they are not going to be used again. And I actually believe, too, that as the perceived risk of their use increases, you’re going to see folks rising up and saying, “we can’t use these in a war.”

I guess, to some degree, I’m putting my comfort in that in the end, we are going to find a way, out of no way, as Alex has said. The question will be how soon can we get there, and what will be that tipping point, that will turn no way into some way?

Lindsay: Alex, why don’t you go next?

Alex Bell: Yeah, I feel like a bit of a quote machine here, but JFK once talked about these issues and he said, “peace is a process, the sum of many acts.” And I think that’s what we have to realize, is there’s no grand, elegant solution to these problems that we find ourselves in. We have to accept the challenges that are in front of us, the risks that exist, that motivate us to keep pushing. And every step that we’re on, we’re making progress. And if we fall back, then you know, we gotta pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and try again.

And what gives me hope is how many young people have been joining the field. I’m excited at the growing diversity in the field, the number of women, people of color, people from different demographic, economic backgrounds entering this conversation. This field looks different to me now than it looked when I was a junior staffer just starting out, and having to Google what acronyms were, and I’m proud of the progress that we’ve made. And I know that these people that have joined the fight will help us find a way. They’re not shackled to the past. They can look at what we’ve done and learn from it, but go in new ways that make sense for now.

So I have so much faith in the colleagues that have joined this fight, and patience and persistence will get us there.

Lindsay: Governor Brown, lastly to you, you’ve been a strong voice in  helping us all understand the problems that we face. But where do you find hope?

Jerry Brown: Hope derives from only one factor: the future is uncertain.

We don’t know what will happen. So we can’t assume we’re going to blow it up or do some horrible nuclear exchange. We don’t know. So that means it’s possible that our future can be much better.

Now, as far as comfort, forget comfort. You gotta learn to live in discomfort. We need more discomfort. I’d like to see people in Washington less comfortable

So looking ahead, we are on the razor’s edge and we have to be alert. And what is required is some persistence, some powerful belief in our common humanity that keeps pushing us forward. Yes, the world’s uncertain. It’s unpredictable. So there’s still a chance.

Militating against that, of course, is if you look at the growth over time of power, the power to destroy—whether it’s in nuclear or other technologies. Humankind is increasing its power to destroy. On the other hand, is wisdom growing? If you graph the growth in power, that’s going steeply upward. The growth of wisdom is completely flat. So our challenge is to increase the wisdom with which we are living, and with which our whole lives are motivated, and affected, and surrounded by.

So yes, there’s time. We don’t know how much time. So we’ve got to not be comfortable, not luxuriate in our meetings, in our intellectual explorations, but in the urgency of the moment, which is to wake up from the sleep that too many in high positions currently find themselves in.

Lindsay: Governor Brown, Alex Bell, John Scott. Thank you for joining us on Talking Policy. This has been a great discussion.

Alex Bell: Thanks so much.

Jerry Brown: Thank you.

John Scott: Thanks, everybody.

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Credits

Lindsay: Thank you for listening to this episode of Talking Policy. Talking Policy is a production of the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation. This episode was produced and edited by Tyler Ellison. To ensure you never miss an episode, subscribe to Talking Policy wherever you get your podcasts.

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