Speaker 1: I'm Ruby Jones and you're listening to seven AM. Last week,
Speaker 1: Donald Trump instructed the US military to start testing nuclear
Speaker 1: weapons immediately. It was a startling order, one that breaks
Speaker 1: with more than three decades of protocol for the US, justified,
Speaker 1: according to the President, by the actions of Russia and China,
Speaker 1: and as these nuclear armed powers race to expand their arsenals,
Speaker 1: other countries closer to Australia are considering joining them. Today,
Speaker 1: Professor of Strategic Studies at the A and U and
Speaker 1: contributor to Australian Foreign Affairs Brendan Taylor on what Trump's
Speaker 1: order will mean for the nuclear arms race and what
Speaker 1: will happen if our neighbors go nuclear. It's Thursday, November six,
Speaker 1: so Brendan. Donald Trump recently said the Department of War
Speaker 1: in the US should start testing nuclear weapons, and he
Speaker 1: said that was because of China and Russia's recent actions.
Speaker 1: So to begin with, tell me what China and Russia
Speaker 1: have been doing. Well.
Speaker 2: China and Russia been pretty busy in the nuclear space
Speaker 2: of late, especially within the last week.
Speaker 3: Russian President Vladimir Putin's recent comments has once again turned
Speaker 3: the world's attention towards Moscow. Speaking to reporters, he announced
Speaker 3: that Russia is developing and testing new generation strategic weapons.
Speaker 2: Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, announced that Russia had tested
Speaker 2: two nuclear powered platforms. One was a nuclear powered cruise missile.
Speaker 4: Moscow says the Budivesnik winged missile has global reach and
Speaker 4: can stay in the air for hours thanks to a
Speaker 4: nuclear powered engine.
Speaker 2: And the second was a nuclear powered torpee called the Poseidon.
Speaker 5: Russia has conducted a test of a new nuclear powered
Speaker 5: and nuclear capable underwater drone known as Poseidon. Putin described
Speaker 5: it as a new weapon which cannot be intercepted.
Speaker 2: Putin has been talking about since about twenty eighteen a
Speaker 2: new suite of what he calls super weapons that the
Speaker 2: Russians have been developing. That this is kind of the
Speaker 2: first indication that these have actually been tested. The Chinese
Speaker 2: have also been busy. They too have been testing new
Speaker 2: and somewhat exotic weapon systems. Back in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 2: they tested and what they call a new FOB system.
Speaker 2: That's an acronym that stands for fractional orbital Bombardment system.
Speaker 2: This is a missile that essentially went into a lower
Speaker 2: orbit and flew all away around the.
Speaker 4: World, sending it into space and around the planet before
Speaker 4: it landed just twenty five miles away from its intended target.
Speaker 4: Hypersonic glide weapons can fly five times the speed of
Speaker 4: sound and lower than conventional weapons.
Speaker 1: The US does not currently have the ability to even
Speaker 1: track this weapon, much less defeated.
Speaker 2: It's significant because it gives China the capacity to potentially
Speaker 2: evade US missile defense systems. But the big news story
Speaker 2: from the Chinese side has not necessarily just been those
Speaker 2: new systems it's been delivering. It's been the alarming rate
Speaker 2: at which its nuclear arsenal has been expanding. China traditionally
Speaker 2: has had a very small nuclear arsenal consisting of about
Speaker 2: two to three hundred warheads. Over the last five years
Speaker 2: or so, it's more than double the size of that arsenal.
Speaker 2: So today we think that China has about seven hundred
Speaker 2: warheads in this arsenal. The Pentagon estimates that by twenty
Speaker 2: thirty that number could have increased to one thousand, and
Speaker 2: there are even some suggestions that by twenty thirty five
Speaker 2: the arsenal could have increased again to around about one thousand,
Speaker 2: five hundred warheads.
Speaker 1: Wow, Okay, so how does that compare China and Russia's
Speaker 1: capability is, how does that compare with the US It's
Speaker 1: nuclear capacity at the moment, Well.
Speaker 2: The United States has a fairly similar sized arsenal to
Speaker 2: the Russians. The US has about one thousand, seven hundred
Speaker 2: deployed nuclear weapons. That's about the same number as the Russians.
Speaker 2: I've actually deployed nuclear weapons. And then the Americans have
Speaker 2: about another two thousand warheads that are put in storage.
Speaker 2: The Russian arsenal is, contrary to what mister Trump told
Speaker 2: us last week, is actually slightly bigger than the American one.
Speaker 2: The Russians have got about two and a half thousand
Speaker 2: warheads in storage. So certainly those two arsenals are the
Speaker 2: biggest in the world by quite a margin, much larger
Speaker 2: than China's nuclear arsenal around seven hundred warheads.
Speaker 1: Okay, am, we're talking about the big superpowers here, the
Speaker 1: big players. But could you maybe just put this in
Speaker 1: a global context for me? Which other countries have nuclear
Speaker 1: weapons and who is considering getting them?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there's six other countries in the world that
Speaker 2: we know have nuclear weapons at the moment, the British
Speaker 2: and the French both have nuclear weapons, the Indians and
Speaker 2: the Pakistanis, and then the Israelis almost certainly have nuclear weapons,
Speaker 2: and the North Koreans we know definitely have nuclear weapons.
Speaker 2: The arsenals of all of those countries are much smaller
Speaker 2: than the superpowers. The British and French. There arsenals are
Speaker 2: in the range of the low hundreds, as are the
Speaker 2: Indians and Pakistanis. The Israelis have around about ninety warheads,
Speaker 2: we think, and the North Koreans it's a bit hard
Speaker 2: to tell because there's such a closed society, but we
Speaker 2: think they have around about fifty warheads with enough plutonium
Speaker 2: to be able to manufacture up to ninety as well.
Speaker 1: Okay, and the US hasn't done any nuclear testing for
Speaker 1: more than three decades now, So if that changes, what
Speaker 1: does that actually look like within the US on a
Speaker 1: practical level, A.
Speaker 2: Lot depends upon what mister Trump actually meant when he
Speaker 2: said that the US was going to resume nuclear testing,
Speaker 2: talking about literally presuming underground nuclear detonation tests.
Speaker 1: You'll find out very soon, but we're going to do
Speaker 1: some plastic Yeah, other countries do it.
Speaker 2: If they're going to do it, we're going to do
Speaker 2: It's unlikely that P's suggesting a kind of a return
Speaker 2: to the kind of mushroom clouds out in the desert
Speaker 2: of the types of tests that we saw during the
Speaker 2: Cold War. And intact, one of the things that it's
Speaker 2: important to recognize about nuclear testing is it has changed
Speaker 2: a lot. Unlike during the Cold War when those tests
Speaker 2: had to be conducted in the atmosphere, or after the
Speaker 2: nineteen sixties when that kind of testing was banned, when
Speaker 2: it tended to be conducted underground. Today countries are able
Speaker 2: to use supercomputers and other forms of high energy lasers
Speaker 2: to test the nuclear weapons, or at least to simulate
Speaker 2: what a nuclear explosion would look like. So even though
Speaker 2: there hasn't been testing in the United States for thirty years,
Speaker 2: it's kind of amazing to think that the US actually
Speaker 2: knows a lot more about how its nuclear weapons are
Speaker 2: likely to perform than whilst the case during the Cold
Speaker 2: War because of these technological advances that have been made.
Speaker 1: And how controversial would it be to restart testing.
Speaker 2: I mean, once again, I think it depends upon the
Speaker 2: types of tests. I think if we were it's very
Speaker 2: unlike but if we were to see a return to
Speaker 2: even those sorts of underground tests. I think it would
Speaker 2: be an incredibly controversial step to go down that particular path.
Speaker 2: In fact, I think it would be a great disadvantage
Speaker 2: to the United States to start testing nuclear weapons again
Speaker 2: in the way that it has previously, partly because it
Speaker 2: has so much more data than any other country in
Speaker 2: the world. The US historically has conducted more than a
Speaker 2: thousand nuclear tests already. The Russians have done about nine hundred,
Speaker 2: the Chinese have only done about forty five, so they
Speaker 2: actually don't have much access to data at all. So
Speaker 2: it would not only be a controversial step to start
Speaker 2: testing again in the United States, but I think the
Speaker 2: US would end up losing ground because it would potentially
Speaker 2: allow or give an excuse for the Russians and the
Speaker 2: Chinese in particular, to start testing again and give them
Speaker 2: access to data that they just don't have at present.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, Trump is saying that the rationale for
Speaker 1: this is because of what countries like Russia and China
Speaker 1: are doing. But that's how an arms race begins, isn't it,
Speaker 1: Because then Russia and China have a reason to go
Speaker 1: even harder on their end. So what's the risk here
Speaker 1: of this escalating.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think unfortunately we're already in the beginning
Speaker 2: stages of an arms race. I mean that's really been
Speaker 2: the whole story of the nuclear age, and certainly during
Speaker 2: the Cold War, whenever one country did something, there was
Speaker 2: almost an automatic tendency for another country to react, and
Speaker 2: you had this back and forth, this kind of action
Speaker 2: reaction dynamic going on. I think that we're in the
Speaker 2: beginning stages of that once again. But what really worries
Speaker 2: me is I don't think this arms race is one
Speaker 2: that is limited or is going to be limited just
Speaker 2: to the United States and China and Russia. I think
Speaker 2: it's an arms race that is also going to draw
Speaker 2: in other powers as well, and most worryingly from Australia,
Speaker 2: I think those powers are going to be within our
Speaker 2: own region. I think this arms race is going to
Speaker 2: be a lot more uneven. You're going to have a
Speaker 2: lot more players with arsenals of different shapes and sizes
Speaker 2: and levels of capability, and that's going to be an
Speaker 2: arms race. I think it's going to be much more
Speaker 2: difficult to manage, and there's also going to be more
Speaker 2: prone to accident talk or inadvertent escalations and misperceptions and miscalculations.
Speaker 1: Coming up the nuclear arms race, we could face much
Speaker 1: closer to home. So Brendan, how likely is it that
Speaker 1: countries in our region are going to be drawn into
Speaker 1: the nuclear arms race?
Speaker 2: I think that's a really good question. And I don't
Speaker 2: think we're going to wake up tomorrow and find out
Speaker 2: that South Korea or Japan has surprisingly gone nuclear. But
Speaker 2: I'd say over the next one to two decades there's
Speaker 2: a much higher chance than not that countries in our
Speaker 2: region will go nuclear. Certainly, in the case of some
Speaker 2: countries such as Japan, they have the technological capability to
Speaker 2: go nuclear relatively quickly. I think for Japan, the big
Speaker 2: constraints the domestic political constraints understandable reasons, because Japan has
Speaker 2: been the only country thus farther has been subjected to
Speaker 2: a nuclear attack when the US bomb Hiroshimar Nakasaki at
Speaker 2: the end of the Second World War. There's still very
Speaker 2: strong domestic political opposition to Japan acquiring a nuclear weapons capability.
Speaker 2: But I think it's a very different case in South
Speaker 2: Korea and looking across the border into North Korea and
Speaker 2: seeing North Korea building up its nuclear arsenal, but also
Speaker 2: keeping in mind the neighborhood that South Korea lives in,
Speaker 2: with the China that's building up its arsenal, with Russia
Speaker 2: the world's largest nuclear power, it's easy to kind of
Speaker 2: understand why the South Koreans might be thinking about moving
Speaker 2: that direction, particularly given concerns about whether the US, particularly
Speaker 2: a US that's adopted a very American first kind of
Speaker 2: mindset as the current Trump administration has, whether it will
Speaker 2: come to South Korea's defense, whether it will be willing
Speaker 2: to sacrifice a major US city to defend Soul, for instance.
Speaker 2: I think that's likely to push South Korea in that direction.
Speaker 1: And so what does all of this mean for Australia
Speaker 1: Because we signed the Nuclear non Proliferation Treaty in the seventies,
Speaker 1: but you know that was fifty years ago now and
Speaker 1: the world has changed a lot, and from what you're saying,
Speaker 1: stands to change a lot more dramatically right now. So
Speaker 1: where does that leave us?
Speaker 2: Well, I think it's going to cause some real dilemmas
Speaker 2: for Australia, and I'm not sure that we've really begun
Speaker 2: to think through these dilemmas as far or as fast
Speaker 2: as we should be thinking through them.
Speaker 6: Artificial intelligence is reshaping the foundations of our societies.
Speaker 2: I think Foreign Minster Wong has said some very helpful
Speaker 2: things at the United Nations about the risk of nuclear
Speaker 2: weapons intersecting with new artificial intelligence technologies.
Speaker 6: Nuclear warfare has so far been constrained by human judgment,
Speaker 6: by leaders who bear responsibility, and by human conscience. AI
Speaker 6: has no such concern, nor can it be held accountable.
Speaker 2: But I think our policy hasn't really caught up with
Speaker 2: a lot of the rhetoric. I think for Australia, one
Speaker 2: of the big challenges is what are we going to
Speaker 2: do if one of our friends or close allies goes
Speaker 2: nuclear you know, a country like South Korea for instance,
Speaker 2: or Japan, a country that's one of our leading trading
Speaker 2: partners and an increasingly close security partner for Australia as well.
Speaker 2: Are we going to join in international sanctions against South
Speaker 2: Korea and Japan and kind of stay true to our
Speaker 2: non proliferation identity or are we going to display a
Speaker 2: bit more sympathy and understanding. I think the other two
Speaker 2: big challenges for Australia is as there is indeed a
Speaker 2: nuclear arms race in Asia, or that's centered in Asia,
Speaker 2: one of the big questions is how far south does
Speaker 2: that go. I mean, it may seem very unlikely now
Speaker 2: that Indonesia could go new clear, Indonesia's one of the
Speaker 2: strongest advocates for nuclear non proliferation in the world at present,
Speaker 2: But it's worth keeping in mind that back in the
Speaker 2: nineteen sixties Indonesia did think seriously about obtaining a nuclear
Speaker 2: weapons capability. And sometimes it's country trees do become bigger
Speaker 2: and stronger economically, there's strategic personalities can change as well.
Speaker 2: So that certainly would be a nightmare scenario for us,
Speaker 2: and it might be one of the only factors that
Speaker 2: leads Australia to seriously consider developing a nuclear weapons capability
Speaker 2: of our own.
Speaker 1: Yeah, is there a certain point at which it becomes
Speaker 1: more dangerous for Australia to not have nuclear weapons?
Speaker 2: I mean, it's worth keeping in mind that it's the past.
Speaker 2: We've been down before. After China conducted as first nuclear
Speaker 2: test in nineteen sixty four, the Gorton government did actively
Speaker 2: think about developing a nuclear weapons capability. I think it
Speaker 2: would take us some time to kind of build back
Speaker 2: that capability and that expertise. But the other thing where
Speaker 2: we need to really build our capacity is just in
Speaker 2: the area of knowledge about nuclear strategy and policy and periferation.
Speaker 2: There's not a lot of experts in the country or
Speaker 2: even within government working on these areas, and I think
Speaker 2: part of the reason for that is ORCUS has become
Speaker 2: so all consuming. So certainly that's going to build up
Speaker 2: a nuclear expertise to some extent, but it's a very
Speaker 2: different kind of nuclear capability than the nuclear capabilities that
Speaker 2: are coming with this new emerging nuclear arms race. But
Speaker 2: as you said, Australia has been a longstanding supporter of
Speaker 2: nuclear non proliferation. I think we really need to double
Speaker 2: down on our efforts in that space, particularly at a
Speaker 2: time when the nuclear non proliferation architecture is really coming
Speaker 2: under strain and really crumbling and all but now falling apart.
Speaker 1: Well, Brendan, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1: You can read Brendan Taylor's article about the new nuclear
Speaker 1: arms race in the latest edition of Australian Foreign Affairs.
Speaker 1: It's called the Bomb Will Asia Go Nuclear? And it's
Speaker 1: out now. Also the News, the head of Australia's spy
Speaker 1: agency has issued a warning that foreign powers are willing
Speaker 1: and capable of assassinating dissidents on Australian soil. In a
Speaker 1: major address, ASIO boss Mike Burgers warned that some nations
Speaker 1: warned weaponize so called fault lines in countries they consider hostile,
Speaker 1: and said the organization has foiled an elaborate plot by
Speaker 1: foreign spies to convince several Australians to betray their country.
Speaker 1: After months of grooming, and New Yorkers have emphatically elected
Speaker 1: Zorin Mamdami as their next mayor. The thirty four year
Speaker 1: old will become the second youngest mayor of New York,
Speaker 1: as well as the first Muslim and only the second
Speaker 1: Democratic Socialist to run the US's largest city. I'm Ruby Jones.
Speaker 1: This is seven am. Thanks for listening.