Godzilla Plus One
An update to Tom Lehrer's certified hood classic 'Who's Next?'.
I know, I know I should be writing about the science, reactors, then a critical assembly, first via a gun and then via implosion. Boosted fission weapons, staged radiation implosion and so on. But given current events I have to take a detour.
As of writing the IDF is kicking the shit out of the Iranians, achieving Desert Storm level air dominance within a couple of days. Iran apparently has Nero levels of corruption amongst its leaders and was totally unable to mount an air defense. Far more skimming off the top from the arms budget than even a cynical fool like me expected. The IAF just walks all over their skies like they own the place with only a pittance of ack-ack counter fire at best.
Officially this operation was to stop Iran from getting a nuclear bomb. Israel and Iran both are nations of religious fanatics but the Israelis are self aware enough to know that non Christian biblical destinies don’t sell well in white countries. They know enough to speak in a language westoids pretend to understand like the dangers of nuclear bombs. By contrast the Iranians never got this memo and the leaders still keep yelling about Allah where the CNN cameras can see them.
Anyway, officially, the goal of Israel was to destroy Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities. If you’ve been reading my atomic energy posts you know that uranium ore pulled out of the ground can’t sustain a chain reaction at an economically relevant scale without complicated reactors requiring specialized moderators or enrichment. Enrichment just means you refine the ore to contain a higher amount of uranium-235. Power reactors typically use ~3% enrichment up from the natural concentration of ~0.7%. Now typically if you want to build a bomb you use your enriched uranium to breed plutonium which you then refine chemically out of the uranium. But you can also keep refining uranium to higher and higher purity, though there really isn’t a reason to do this unless you’re running a crash nuclear program to get a bomb like the US in the 1940’s (though they also produced plutonium at the same time) or China in the early 1960’s after the Sino-Soviet split. Get uranium up to 80-90% purity and you can start making bombs.
Ah ha! I can hear the ADL fans now, That PROVES Iran is building a nuke! And it may very well be the case they’ve slapped together some crude Little Boy style uranium gun bombs or whatever1. If so it’s taken them a really, really, really long time to get there. Nukes aren’t that hard for a nation state to build, particularly if they have friendly relations with one or more of the big 5 ‘legal’ nuclear states under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The Iranians have allegedly been working on this for literal decades but even with CIA and Mossad ratfucking and the apparently high levels of corruption and skimming off the top in the Islamic Republic they should have something to show for it if a bomb was their true aim. I imagine now they’re desperately trying to get a bomb together for a show of force test if nothing else but I don’t think this was their original plan.
Everyone knows about Israel’s policy of ‘nuclear ambiguity’; that they refuse to confirm or deny if they have family atomics stashed away. This is largely a legal face saving measure for the United States who really cares about the performative liberal moralism of nuclear non-proliferation. In practice all nations behave as if Israel has nuclear weapons because they do. As such Israeli nuclear defense policy is effectively the same as all other nuclear weapons states, the classic Mutually Assured Destruction. “We have atom bombs, if you push us too hard we can wipe you off the map. Don’t try it”. Now given that none of Israel’s regional rivals have such a capability (current allegations against Iran notwithstanding) it gives them additional leverage but the MAD balance of terror principle is the same. You have big scary weapons so people won’t hassle you too much. But there is another option. Or rather I should say there was another option.
Threshold Nuclear Deterrence is the term those think tank dweebs use. Essentially you as a country have a mature nuclear industry with an ability to enrich uranium to a high purity or breed plutonium in reactors and refine it out of spent fuel or both. Then you take that stuff and just keep it on the shelf. Just let it sit there and let people know you have this capability. In short you have the entire technological suite to make a nuclear arsenal but don’t actually make the bombs. That keeps those cuckolds in the DOE and IAEA off your back2 but with the psychological benefit of a nuclear deterrent.
Nuclear weapons are psychological weapons in practice3 and this threshold idea takes that psychological war dimension of deterrence and abstracts it. From a guy with a his finger on the red button to the possibility that you could have a guy with his finger on the button relatively quickly if the geopolitical situation got too hot. You get the psychological benefits of deterrence without the geopolitical or economic costs of maintaining a standing fleet of bomber aircraft or nuclear ballistic missile submarines.
Iran seemed to be following this approach. Develop a large nuclear sector and always be coy about nuclear capabilities but let people know you have the material you can use to build a bomb if things get too rough. The technique has a long history with Japan being the most famous. Japan does it for both foreign and domestic political consumption as the locals have strong feelings about atomic weapons even if the people helping the country are a bit more realistic about geopolitics. South Korea too has recently begun moving in this direction while US State Department dorks clutch their pearls. Brazil has taken this one step further, building a nuclear powered if not (yet) nuclear armed submarine.
But now the entire model is blown away in a whoosh of IDF JDAMs. The psychological barrier of possibility has been shattered and the North Korean (and Pakistani and Chinese and Indian and American and Russian and British and French and Israeli) reality is now all that is viable. You actually need the bombs mounted on missiles and bombers for the magical deterrence spell to have any effect. If you don’t and someone calls your bluff you can still be hurt grievously even if your opponent doesn’t have nuclear weapons4.
In effect threshold deterrence is the atomic age equivalent of the Fleet in Being, a doctrine that stated that a navy only needed large ships in port to be effective as the threat of those ships would be such that rival navies wouldn’t challenge them for sea dominance. Over the course of the 20th century this doctrine was found to be wanting as sea zone control approaches with mobile fleets proved to be much more viable. Large ships sitting in ports could get blown to hell by small torpedo boats or even aircraft later on. You need something to back up the boast. Otherwise you end up like the burning Russian Fleet in Port Arthur or the Mullahs cowering in their bunkers, flinging little firecracker missiles in a vague Israeli direction while jet bombers and missiles pummel your military forces and infrastructure5.
All this to say, more countries are going to try for atomic bombs, regardless of what the UN or Yankees say. So, as Professor Lehrer sang, Who’s Next? Now like I said, it might be Iran, they might be able to quickly throw something together and do a test to try and get the Israelis to lay off. Given Israel’s own capabilities traditional MAD might possibly hold but I have my doubts. The Iranians might be too damaged to pull it off particularly if the US goes in.
For me, I figured for a long time that Brazil would be next to join the nuclear club. They have an NPT patron in France who is supplying them with nuclear technology and advisors, they have a long history of nuclear development including uranium enrichment and plutonium production and as mentioned they’re building a nuclear submarine.
Officially it’s to provide a deterrent in the event of a war; that Brazil can still strike back with her distant nuclear powered though not nuclear armed attack submarines. But without nuclear arms that deterrent is essentially nonexistent. Some dozen high explosive missiles raining down on a city is not going to be anywhere near enough to deter anyone. I suspect their nuclear attack sub is a prototype and there are likely plans for future nuclear armed ballistic missile boats in the works. I can see a Brazilian nuclear missile fleet analogous to the French Force de frappe or the UK Trident subs with 100-150 warheads spread over three or four submarines and a few air launched standoff missiles. More than enough for a rising regional player.
That being said, if I had to bet money today I’d wager on somebody in East Asia would be first. Most likely South Korea. Japan is a good bet too but Japan has a bunch of old pacifist boomers who would riot if the Diet even so much as hinted at the possibility of a Yamato nuclear arsenal. Taiwan would be a contender and they tried building nukes back in the day before the US (acting on behalf of the PRC) slapped them down. I think if they tried it today the PLA would simply attack Taipei and I don’t even think they’d try to do what the Israelis are doing to Iran now with a big non nuclear blitz. The PLA would go to a nuclear launch immediately. So Taiwan is off the table unless the US really shifts its stance towards the island and even then I don’t think it’s likely.
South Korea though has the nationalism, it lacks the hippie boomers6 and it has genuine security concerns that its imposed patron the ol US of A might be unwilling or unable to meet. There have been open calls for South Korea to embrace the threshold deterrence doctrine, but with that total collapse of that doctrine in the deserts of Persia the need for an actual nuclear capability is rearing its head. In addition given its geopolitical role between the US and China, South Korea can play the powers off each other in terms of diplomatic recognition or at least a tacit acceptance (analogous to the deals cut with Israel and Pakistan) of a nuclear weapons program. If both Koreas are nuclear armed then I think Japan will quietly get the atom bomb regardless of the pacifist pensioners.
Either way, we’re looking at an interesting situation for our friend the atom.
I say crude fission bombs because as far as the Israelis (and increasingly the Don) are saying, Iran was enriching uranium. No tritium production. Tritium you need for boosted fission or fusion weapons.
I say DOE because non-proliferation is a uniquely United States Government concern. Aside from the UK (which has been an appendage of the US since Suez) none of the other UN Security Council permanent members really care. I dunk on the IAEA because the UN is an FDR fever dream that never really made any sense. As such it reflects particularly American neuroses, elite American neuroses specifically. And I say this as someone who worked for the CCC; I like FDR fever dreams, some of them anyway.
I’ve seen no commentary on this but given that a lot of nuclear science pioneers, including some of those who worked on the Manhattan Project were sympathetic to the ‘consciousness is primary, material secondary’ view of looking at the world it makes sense that nuclear weapons would have this elaborate psychological pageantry associated with them.
The IDF as of writing has only used non-nuclear munitions in their war with Iran.
Now there is the question of the long term viability of ABM systems. If the number of attacking missiles and associated decoys is such that interceptor missiles are depleted then the war calculus will begin to change.
The South Korean left, such as it is is more fiercely nationalistic than the right and wants the US out and to stand on their own two feet in terms of national defense.