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Alejandres Gannon
Global Geopolitics and International Conflict
Video of the Day
• Not all nuclear wars are created equal
• Escalation potential and population density
War – what is it good for?
Section Uno (One)
Nuclear Chemistry
The Effects of a Nuclear Explosion
1 kt device
13 kt device (Hiroshima)
1 mt device
= 1,000 tons of TNT
= 13 X 1,000 tons of TNT
= 1,000 X 1,000 tons of TNT
1. Acquire fissile material
2. Enrich or produce the fissile material
3. Assemble the bomb
4. Option upgrade: fusion
5. Mount bomb on delivery vehicle
How to Build a Nuclear Bomb
Plutonium• Doesn’t exist in large quantities naturally, must be produced
in a nuclear reactor by Uranium 238
Uranium• Occurs naturally as mixture of U-235 (weapons grade) and
U-238 (not weapons trade)
1. Acquire Fissile Material
Plutonium
• Pu-239 is easily fissionable
• Pu-240 is not
Uranium
• Enrichment – increasing the proportion of U235 to higher than 90%
• U235 is called HEU (weapons grade)
• U238 is called LEU (nuclear reactor grade)
2. Enrich or produce fissile material
Fission weapons
• First type of nuclear weapon
• Assembled using plutonium (Pu-239) or enriched uranium (U-235)
• Gun assembly – fissile uranium fired at fissile uranium target to split the uranium atom
• Implosion – fissile material surrounded by high explosives that compress the mass
• Limited in size and hard to assemble larger ones
Fission-fusion weapons
• Requires fission to trigger the fusion
• Fuse two hydrogen isotopes (deuterium and tritium)
• Much larger explosion and variable-yield
Types of Nuclear Reactions
How to Build a Nuclear Bomb
Uranium Plutonium
Fission: Gun Method Implosion(Up to 500kt)
Fusion: H-bomb (“Thermonuclear”)(Up to 100mt)
Nuclear PhysicsSection Dos (Two)
3 Types of delivery systems1. Gravity bombs
• Delivered by planes/bombers
• Very large and heavy, limited accuracy
2. Ballistic missiles (strategic nuclear weapons)
• Carried by a missile using a ballistic trajectory
• Exit the earth’s atmosphere
• Largest range weapons
3. Cruise missiles (tactical nuclear weapons)
• Fly at low altitude using GPS
• Shorter range but difficult to detect early
• Have flight maneuverability
B1, B2, B52 66 B52s (20 SNWs) 95 B1s (24 TNWs or 8 SNWs) 12 B2s (16 TNWs)
Recallable and flexibleSlowestForward deployable
Gravity bombs
Launched from land (ICBM) or sea (SLBM)
Flight path
• Boost phase – 3-5min phase going towards the atmosphere
• Midcourse phase – 25min phase in spaceflight
• Reentry phase – 2min phase as it reenters the earth’s atmosphere above the target
MIRV – multiple independently targeted reentry vehicles
Ballistic Missiles
Ballistic Missiles1. First stage
boost motor2. Second stage
boost motor3. Third state
boost motor4. Post-Boost
vehicle separates from rocket
5. Preparation for re-entry vehicle deployment
6. Deployment of re-entry vehicles
7. Re-entry into the atmosphere
8. Boom
Ballistic Missiles
Section Tres (Three)
Causes of War
Why do conflicts turn into war?
Conflicts over interest vs conflict of ideas
A) General
1) Territorial disputes1) Historically important
2) Strong norm exists today about the sanctity of borders
3) Means current territorial disputes are deadly
4) West Bank, Gaza Strip, Golan Heights, Kashmir, Spratley Islands
B) Conflicts Over Interests
1) Government disputes1) Control the leadership of various countries
2) Soviet Union (Czech 1968, Afghanistan 1979), United States (Grenada 1983, Iraq 2003, Syria 2013)
2) Economic conflict1) Economic transition affect balance of power but rare
2) Military leverage not effective in economic conflicts
B) Conflicts Over Interests
1) Ethnic conflicts1) Ethnocentric origins
2) Ethnic group may want own state or to join neighboring state or have no home
3) Kurds in Turkey, Iraq, etc
C) Conflicts Over Ideas
1) Religious conflicts1) Fundamentalist movements challenge secular political organizations
2) Difficult to de-escalate
3) Compromise unlikely
2) Ideological conflicts1) Affects revolutions that are destabilizing because sudden change
2) Easier to mobilize domestic support
C) Conflicts Over Ideas
Section Cuatro (Four)
Nuclear Deterrence
Deterrence
A situation in which the threat of force is used to prevent a state from engaging in behaviour that it threatens to undertake
Compellance
When the threat of force or the use of force is applied to another country or actor in order to coerce them into altering behaviour that threatens us
Difference between the two
Deterrence exists to prevent changes to the status quo
Compellance forces a country to change its current behaviour using the threat of force or the use of force
Crisis Stability
Crisis Instability – Propensity to escalate from peace to crisis and crisis to war• Crisis stable – rarely get to crisis and crisis rarely gets to war• Crisis unstable – many things causes crisis and crisis often cause war
What makes deterrence work?
Both actors must engage in rational purposive behaviour motivated by a desire for survival
The targeted actor is unitary meaning they can enforce compliance with the demand articulated by the threatener
Communication of Intentions
Weapons exist primarily for the purpose of projecting intentions and having those intentions communicated persuasively to an adversary
If a deterrence posture can’t be communicated to the adversary then the adversary cannot be deterred
1)Limit the inflationary value of threats
2)Limit lines drawn in the sand
3)History of follow up
4)Automatic response
5)Graduated escalation
Effective Deterrence
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/256925/november-30-2009/better-know-a-lobby---ploughshares-fund
Section Cinco (Five)
Hotspots
Facts
• 1,480 SNWs, 1,022 non-deployed SNWs, 2,000 TNWs
Magnitude
• Size of countries
• Horizontal escalation
• Dead Hand
Timeframe
• Minutemen III
Probability
• Accidents
• History
United States vs Russia
90 Chinese missiles, 240 warheads
De-mate missiles, missile location, refueling
“Minimum deterrent posture” and NFU pledge
Counterforce vs Countervalue targeting
United States vs China
• Territorial-base conflict• Resources in the region• Oil
• Natural gas
• No forum for negotiations
South China Sea
• Territorial-base conflict• Resources in the region• Oil
• Natural gas
• No forum for negotiations
South China Sea
1947 – partition of British India
1998 – nuclear capable
India vs Pakistan
Missile delivery
• India – short range ballistic missiles
• Pakistan – F16 air strikes
Lower yield weapons
Public health infrastructure
India vs Pakistan
Only Middle East country with operational nuclear weapons
Covert nuclear capability and deterrence
”Samson grasped the two middle pillars on which the house rested, and braced himself against them, the one with his right hand and the other with his left. And Samson said, “Let me die with the Philistines!” And he bent with all his might so that the house fell on the lords and all the people who were in it. So the dead whom he killed at his death were more than those whom he killed in his life” - Judges 16: 29-30
Israel
• Small area but a lot of empty space
• Regional relations and ethnic/tribal ties
• No other nuclear countries
• Iran
Middle East
North KoreaBrief History
1956 – Soviet Union begins training
1984 – Nuclear reactors built
1989 – US confirms nuclear program
1993 – Missile testing begins
2002 – AQ Khan
2006 – 1st nuclear test (0.5kt)
2009 – 2nd nuclear test (2kt)
2012 – missile test
2013 – 3rd nuclear test (6-7kt)
North KoreaWeapons• 50-60kg of plutonium
• ?? HEU
Section Seis (Six)
Non-Nuclear Hotspots
14th Century Black Plague – 25% of European population
Spanish Flu after WWI – 100 million dead, disease adapted to host
Types
• Choking agents (chlorine)
• Blister agents (mustard gas)
• Blood agents (cyanide)
• Nerve agents (sarin gas)
Ideal chemical weapon is:
• Highly lethal (inevitable immunity and pop density)
• Easy, cheap, and safe to produce and store
• Easy to distribute (speed of spread and response time)
Chemical weapons
Types• Viruses (Smallpox, Ebola, AIDS, Foot & Mouth) • Microorganisms that produce toxins (Botulinum, Ricin, Tetanus)• Bacteria (Anthrax, Cholera, Plague)
Ideal biological weapon is:• Highly lethal
• Easy, cheap, and safe to produce and store
• Easily spread
• Has a long incubation period
Biological weapons
It’s not that bad
• 9/11 - 2,000 dead
• Difficult to pull off
• Al-Qaeda weakening
• Access to WMD
It’s that bad
• Fear and panic, infrastructure
• Access to WMD
• National response
Terrorism
