BOOK REVIEW: THE NUCLEAR AGE: AN EPIC RACE FOR ARMS, POWER, AND SURVIVAL
By Serhii Plokhy / W.W. Norton
Reviewed by: Michael J. Ard
The Reviewer: Michael J. Ard is a former CIA analyst and Deputy National Intelligence Officer for the Western Hemisphere. Ard is program director for the Master of Science in Intelligence Analysis program at Johns Hopkins University.
REVIEW — In “The Nuclear Age,” prolific historian Serhii Plokhy delivers a brisk and compelling history of the development of nuclear weapons, from Edward Rutherford’s splitting of the atom in 1917 to the current efforts to block Iran’s nuclear weapons program. The Harvard University-based Plokhy has authored several well-regarded histories of Ukraine and the former Soviet Union, as well as a study of Chernobyl and other nuclear disasters. This new book demonstrates Plokhy’s mastery at telling a high-level, geopolitically focused story and rewards readers who want a good introduction or a refresher on this fascinating and troubling topic.
Plokhy begins by raising the question on whether harnessing the power of the atom has been worth the effort. Peaceful nuclear energy has never quite been delivered as promised—only 10% of the world’s electricity is supplied by nuclear power—and its weaponization has created wicked problems with existential implications. Pioneering nuclear physicists like Leo Szilard, who warned of the dangers of making the bomb, stand out as prophets. The bomb might be used for deterrence, but as often for blackmail. Plokhy argues we have entered a new and more dangerous phase of the nuclear age and believes our security situation is more dangerous now than during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.
Throughout the book, fear often underpinned a national decision to pursue the bomb. The U.S. and Great Britain feared a potential Nazi bomb. The Soviets feared a U.S. monopoly of the bomb. Mao’s China, in turn, feared great power hegemony over the bomb, and so on. Even cash-strapped countries scrimped to fund nuclear weapons development. In the imitable phrase of Pakistan’s prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, to oppose India’s program, his country would get the bomb, “if we have to eat grass and leaves.”
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Well-intentioned projects like the U.S. “Atoms for Peace” ironically enabled more bomb development, as it did for India, Iran and South Africa and India. Yet it is remarkable how even U.S. leaders like Eisenhower, who initially saw the bomb as just another useful weapon, came to regret having any nuclear weapons at all. Yet other leaders, like Mao and Cuba’s Castro, bordered on the psychotic in disdaining the impact of a nuclear showdown.
Great power maneuvers unintentionally contributed to nuclear weapon proliferation. Plokhy argues that the U.S. decision in 1957 to deploy nuclear weapons to South Korea encouraged communist North Korea to pursue its own weapons program. Likewise, the decision to deploy nuclear-armed missiles to Turkey probably encouraged Khrushchev’s 1962 gambit to send nuclear-armed missiles to Cuba and to precipitate an international crisis.
Plokhy appears to sympathize with “mutually assured destruction” (MAD) concept as a way of stabilizing the relationship between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. nuclear superpowers, which he judges among “the sanest” years of the nuclear age. Plokhy explains the negotiations between the Nixon administration and the Brezhnev regime on SALT I and sees that treaty as a breakthrough. However, it did nothing to stop the manufacture of more warheads between the Cold War rivals, which would peak in numbers by 1986.
Plokhy keenly describes how geopolitical necessities often trumped efforts at nuclear arms control or denuclearization. In 1979 SALT II, negotiated between the Carter administration and an aging Brezhnev regime, failed in the U.S. Senate after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The U.S. lifted sanctions on Pakistan to curb its nuclear weapons program when we needed Islamabad’s help against the Soviets.
President Reagan upended the previous MAD logic by announcing the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) and negotiating with his Soviet counterpart Mikhail Gorbachev on ending the nuclear arms race. Although failing to eliminate nuclear weapons, the Reagan-Gorbachev summits did lead to the important Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty (1987), which pulled intermediate nuclear-armed missiles out of Europe. Further negotiation undertaken by his successor, George H.W. Bush, resulted in the watershed START treaty (1991), which significantly reduced nuclear arsenals on both sides.
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In the 1990s, the world was entering a promising period of nuclear disarmament. Nuclear-capable nations began giving up nuclear weapons programs. South Africa, whose secret nuclear program was a key defense strategy for Pretoria’s apartheid regime, gave up the bomb when it started on the path to democratization and former Soviet republics Belarus and Kazakhstan soon followed.
Plokhy excels in describing the difficult and lengthy effort in persuading Ukraine to surrender its large nuclear weapons arsenal after the fall of the Soviet Union. Ultimately, Ukraine’s weak economy and need to join the international community convinced it to surrender its strategic weapons, but eventually, Plokhy argues, leaving it vulnerable to a future Russian invasion. Plokhy assumes that Putin’s Russia would have been deterred by a strategic nuclear force in Ukraine but given Putin’s risk-taking and indifference to lives lost since 2022, that assumption seems at least debatable. Moreover, Plokhy believes that Russian nuclear blackmail has not discouraged NATO’s support for Ukraine, but fear of nuclear Russia probably persuaded Washington and Berlin to act more cautiously in adding Ukraine’s defensive efforts.
Lamentably, the period of voluntary nuclear disarmament, so promising in the 1990s, was short-lived, with international negotiations failing to prevent North Korea building the bomb in 2006. We could not provide enough carrots or sticks to influence Pyongyang. In the 2000s, the U.S. ended participation in the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and the START II Treaty never went into effect. We have not seen a revival of serious disarmament talks among the great powers.
At 422 pages “The Nuclear Age” is a substantial text, but still the reader might feel shortchanged by the later chapters on the “second nuclear age.” Plokhy mentions the Israeli destruction of Osirak in Iraq in 1981 but omits Libya’s abandoning its program in 2003, the bust-up of the A.Q. Khan nuclear proliferation ring in 2004, and the destruction of Syria’s secret reactor in 2007. The book does not include the August attacks by Israel and the U.S. on Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities, but the author clearly believes preemptive war against nuclear weapons programs raises the fear factor and contributes to proliferation.
Despite impressive scope and thoroughness of “The Nuclear Age,” some important questions remain unanswered. Plokhy avoids exploring why, despite innumerable threats since 1945, the bomb has not been used. Nor does he examine whether the bomb has delivered on its chief justification, deterring interstate wars. The record seems mixed, as nations have been willing to challenge nuclear-armed states, as China did to us when it attacked us in Korean war in 1950, as the Arab states did when they attacked Israel in 1973, and even as his native Ukraine did when it invaded Russia territory last year. Also, if the bomb really gives a nation security and prestige, then why do so few, only nine out of 193 nations, have it?
Still, it is hard to argue with Plokhy’s final judgment that, without a return to a great power consensus to curb nuclear proliferation, this unsettling period of nuclear instability will continue.
All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official positions or views of the US Government. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying US Government authentication of information or endorsement of the author’s views.
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