Asia Treads the Nuclear Path, Unaware That Self- Assured DestructionWould Result from Nuclear War

OF THE NINE COUNTRIES known to have nuclear weapons, six are located in Asia and another, the United States, borders the Pacific Ocean. Russia and China were the first Asian nations with nuclear weapons, followed by Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea. Most of the world’s nuclear powers are reducing their arsenals or maintaining them at historic levels, but several of those in Asia—India, Pakistan, and North Korea— continue to pursue relentless and expensive programs of nuclear weapons development and production. Hopefully, the nuclear agreement reached in July 2015 between Iran, the European Union, and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council will be a step toward eliminating nuclear weapons throughout Asia and the rest of the world. As we will discuss below, any country possessing a nuclear arsenal is on a path leading toward self-assured destruction, and is a threat to people everywhere on Earth. Nuclear-armed countries are a threat to people everywhere partly because of the destructive power of single weapons—one weapon is enough to destroy a small city— and partly because of the growing ability of nations to launch missiles across the globe. Nuclear powers such as India and North Korea, the latter of which is thought currently to have a very small nuclear capability that is not in the form of useful weapons, are working on the means to deliver weapons globally. Each has capabilities now to launch weapons from submarines, and both are working on intercontinental ballistic missiles. India has already launched satellites to the moon and Mars, but these missiles are not thought to be suitable for India’s current nuclear warheads. However, it is not just the brute force attack, which kills people in the geographically limited target zone, that threatens people everywhere. Most people have forgotten nuclear winter. Many think that the theory was disproven, or that the end of the nuclear arms race and the subsequent reduction of Russian and American nuclear arsenals eliminated the dangers of global nuclear war. But they are wrong. Nuclear winter is an assault on the global climate system caused by smoke from fires ignited by the bombs. As the smoke rapidly spreads globally in the stratosphere, it will reduce temperatures and rainfall and destroy the global ozone layer, which shields us from harmful ultraviolet radiation from the sun. Recently it has been shown that even the smoke created by the use of