Worlds two keen euclide powers the United States and russia with both sides threatening to upgrade their nuclear capacities and china is also expanding its Nuclear Arsenal not to mention other countries with Nuclear Ambitions such as of course north korea so our question here on quadriga this week is the new arms race a more dangerous world than to answer that question to discuss that question im joined here in the studio by constance who is an expert on International Relations and Security Policy with the Brookings Institution in washington she says the world has become a lot more dangerous in the last twelve months problems with effective arms control oh only one of several reasons also with us his motives for naming an author and editor of the berlin based daily newspaper to target. The argues that none of the great powers profits from any kind of military escalation the world is getting unpredictable very. Simple but not necessarily more dangerous. Than the warm welcome to take something home from the german section of the Nobel Prize Winning International Campaign to abolish Nuclear Weapons widely known as i can im she say since the adoption by the United Nations of a nuclear bomb last july i am optimistic that Nuclear Weapons can be abolished in my lifetime so i feel thank you very much for that note of optimism of a handsome long term note of optimism youre saying in your lifetime if tell us about how safe or unsafe the world the we currently live it is its terrifically unsafe and some say its even less safe than it was during the cold war. Weve had several conferences on the subject and experts of looked at it including Chatham House the problem of risk and they say that we really have some big problems and its not just a question of large scale mon montanus year modernization of Nuclear Weapons but also theres more cyber problems than before despite problems Cyber Attacks and there are more Nuclear Weapon states this is a totally unpredictable situation still you say that you believe that Nuclear Weapons could be abolished within your lifetime what would i mean people would say thats a fine dream but youre a dreamer its simply not going to happen well my experience shows it to be different actually in the in the worst times in the cold war those were the times when the best treaties were written and in my view it sometimes has to get worse to get better and i think were now in that phase where its got so bad that people are waking up to the problem and certainly one hundred twenty two states did just that last year and when they decided to adopt a treaty banning Nuclear Weapons so we have a majority already in the u. N. For a ban on Nuclear Weapons and that means to me that the chances of actually putting pressure on the Nuclear Weapon states has gone up and not down that they have to actually Start Talking about disarmament although theyre not at the moment prepared to do so constance a spokesman or youre nodding. Well i mean that i was nodding out that last part i mean i have i have enormous respect for what you do and what i can does but i but i think that a majority in the u. N. Is in at a time when International Law seems to be under attack from all sides when large and small states. Gearing up the military ability its not just Nuclear Weapons conventional weapons Cyber Capabilities hybrid warfare capabilities and are exhibiting the the will the intent to use them in all sorts of ways out of time when the russians are prepared to violate the principle of nonaggression in europe are still in a proxy war in ukraine and have illegally annexed a whole province of ukraine. Im somewhat less than confident that the Nuclear States are going to bow to that prescription much as i would like that to happen. And there with your religion respond to that well i can understand that of obviously of in the question of whether youre up to mystical pessimistic is mostly a personal one but in this instance i think the only realistic option to deal with this is not to lie down and say ok i resign the only thing that we can do is use any little bit of optimism that we have to actually stand up to the Nuclear Weapons states all of them and i dont just mean the United States and i certainly dont mean just russia or to north korea i mean all of them as a group and say from the rest of the world as it were that dont have Nuclear Weapons its time to lay them down its absolutely against International Law to be threatening each other especially with annihilation its about time that we understood that Nuclear Weapons are like biological and chemical weapons that we cannot possibly accept the use or threats of the use notes or naming of Larger Community two things is the focus of the show today the Munich Security Conference is the warden and the other one is there is the question is there a new Nuclear Arms Race emerging at this point in time the Munich Security Conference. Head of the one commentator said we live in an era we find ourselves suddenly in an era in which hard power increasingly trumps soft power is that a fair assessment. I would not say so i mean the the recent Nuclear Posture review from the United States which puts some billions and billions of money into modernizing the nuclear and low yield Nuclear Weapons. The question is we have the same discussion we were just talking about the eightys the eightys from mutually assured destruction is that enough when both powers have lets say ten intercontinental Nuclear Weapons and they could nearly the whole world actually then they switched over to a flexible response no we have to be credible and credibility is the new currency in this in these things so what is happening now in the United States they think about you will mention ing cyber war cyber war i think is the next battle but when a country like russia or china or any other country is going to cyber war how to react to low yield Nuclear Weapons deterrent against cyber war for example and all these questions are being asked in the surrounding so security is right now it is very hard to say how to how to be safe the next big thing is Nuclear Proliferation with to result in as ations i think these two threats are the biggest cyber war and Nuclear Proliferation so the Nuclear Posture review just modernizing the whole nuclear tomic weapons system is not dealing enough with these things they put one percent of the bucks of the pentagon put one percent of the budget to the anti cyber war so this is definitely not enough lets also not leave out of the picture political warfare. Or as one of my of my brookings colleagues and in the book has called it measures short of war which interfere in our politics in our societies in our economy is it something that the russians are doing but by no means only them the chinese the iranians the turks propaganda buying people doesnt from nation all these things which have a toxic effect a destabilizing effect which undermine the kind of trust that you would need in societies to get to the kind of agreement that you would like to see and that are arguably i mean happening every day and. You know we. Inflicting real time damage on our on our polity isnt on also szell cohesion as we speak and i think that is i think if we if we dont keep firmly in mind that that is where most of the aggression currently is happening were losing a big part of the picture as much as i agree but if were talking about war and insecurity two point four billion people are already connected to the internet. All cities and even aircraft carriers costing ten billions and more than ten billions of dollars are heavily reliant on computerization and detours ations if you need just to hackers to to let one of these that offertory is not not not fight anymore this is the next threat or the whole cities are reliant on energy on water supply and Everything Else you can sabotage them with cyber war so i think this is a very very big danger and im afraid that all of these waste of money for the Nuclear Armament thing is really nothing else than the waste of money. Concerns are just coming back to the security conference in the report that they issue in advance of this weekends gathering it says that in the last year the world got closer to the brink of significant conflict what does that mean closer to the brink of significant conflict i think it means we have seen a variety of actors who possess Nuclear Weapons but also significant conventional capability is threatening each other with actual warfare the North Koreans Chinese Americans russians or actually under undertaking it. All of these things add to a climate of uncertainty and risk and increase the risk of strategic miscalculation by any of the other ones and that i think in taken together has made the world significantly less safe than it was say a decade ago or even two years ago something i absolutely agree with that and i was so thin. That we have to see that the Nuclear Weapon states all of them involved in one way or another in conflicts around the world and at the moment also syria has several Nuclear Weapon states involved in it and i mean only just last week we had israel involved in a strike by one of its jets was was was brought down and so we see that the. Chances of escalation are just going up the whole time through the fact that theyre crossing each others paths with their militaries all the time and we still have the undersell problem between india and pakistan which keeps going up and down the old time and its always. Had to us on the brink of a major i mean just that for instance take that for what would happen if india and pakistan had a limited new nuclear war which we call limited but you say that when we work this out with this study did study what was happening fifty on both sides fifty Nuclear Weapons small Nuclear Weapons were used it would have effects globally that we never seen before just plunges into a period of time where there was. Less sunlight and less rain and we would literally have millions and millions of people dying from starvation because we couldnt grow enough food and those are things that the other no i would say. I might disagree a little because for example the Great Power Competition i think is not a real threat china has no improve will and vision not at all United States is in a way you war fatigue after afghanistan after iraq after all spending all these billions of dollars and in waste this wars i mean the experience with going to war is not so good even for the russians conquering the Crimean Peninsula is is they are stuck no in used ukraine losing. The soldiers wasting their money and for what gains they dont gain anything im going to have to is. The experience going to war the experience in the Nineteenth Century or the beginning of the Twentieth Century with the First World War as you can conquer let you can have resources you can even colonize other parts of the city whod been be bigger and more powerful these bigger and more powerful with going to war is nothing show me the war where people come old bigger more powerful you just dont have it. Yes it is true of the russians and with spectacularly bad real estate i mean not to set. A positive actually quite nice. And crimea nobodys idea of sort of really Strategic Acquisitions and i think what what was what was done here i think was more done for political purposes than for anything else however it is not true to say that russia and china currently are status quo powers the chinese are building out islands in the pacific hell for leather. The russians are revisionist are the americans have been messaging to that allies and to the world that they are considering the ability to socalled bloody nose strike against north korea most of their allies have been saying please dont do this there is no way of containing such a strike but it is being apparently very seriously considered in washington so we should not assume that while it is true that the american citizenry is tired of the wars in afghanistan and iraq there are still a lot of American Forces out in afghanistan and in iraq and are likely to remain there for a very long time and it is entirely possible that war will come to them even if they dont want to pursue it. And as we as we as we keep hearing in washington every day there are wars they. Willing to present ok ill break your searches for a second by the comes and goes and pitch is the key question were addressing on the show today is how great is the threat of Nuclear Conflict well that threat suddenly seemed very real very recently to the people of hawaii in the killing. Last month a false alarm about a Ballistic Missile attack caused panic in the us state of hawaii for nearly forty minutes it seemed as though i want to attack was imminent the public response may have had something to do with concerns about the international Nuclear Arms Race. For several years now north Korean Leader kim jong un has been provoking the us with Nuclear Weapons test. China has also increased its Nuclear Force which. Russia has modernized its Nuclear Arsenal. And several other countries are trying to develop Nuclear Weapons. Washington is taking these developments very seriously the u. S. Plans to spend one point two trillion dollars over the next three decades to maintain and modernize its Nuclear Arsenal are we now facing an increased threat of nuclear war. Something all of us episode in hawaii at the beginning of that report can you remember what went through your mind when you caught up with what was going on what was happening i remember very well how i reacted to that so i was thrown back into the eightys so as i remember personally a situation as a nineteen year old where i had to siren go off in birmingham where i was living at the time and i thought thats the end of the worlds its happening now and i have to find how can i get my loved ones and i knew i didnt have the time and i really really sympathized with people i know people in hawaii who got that message and wrote under that tweet so i was saying we dont know what to do we cant you know where should we go and it was just a horrible moment for me because it brought back actually the reason why i am working on the subject now. Well is there a sense yes ne ne completely agreed nuclear arms are still something that call the people nightmares. Still and invite you so i mean every use of a Nuclear Weapon would be immoral because innocent people would die and in the mollusc a that we know what a of us can conceive but in the age of Nuclear Deterrence is you are threatening with the use of something in order not to use it this is this is the logic the rational of deterrence so the whole formula saying the more people of threatening each other with the use of something the more likely it is that they go to war is per se not true in itself it can be there threatening in order not to use it and this you do you just have to have to this is the rest of Nuclear Deterrence so when when when ben donald trump the president the United States is talking about using any kind of Nuclear Weapons in lets say north korea his aim is hes talking about in order not to use it and to to come up with surely his message is actually quite explicit weve got so weve got a relatively unsophisticated a very impetuous us president whose whose message it seems to me is much more to the iranians to the North Koreans we will use of nuclear capacities. And this is met his message but his message doesnt mean he will use his metric is i give you the message in order not to use it so this is the red i live sorry i was the rest no off i dont want you to be n. W. But i cant follow. That lets read that somebody with an immoral act in order not to fulfill the act this is the logic of the terms yes it is yes but it is what i think it is it is work and no not in florida it is working now since forty five to please sorry i mean and i think you are i think you are climbing up a pole that you will. I find it very difficult to come down from and i would like like to prevent you from doing that. Right now weve got a situation that is completely different from the traditional logic of deterrence where you had essentially you know i c b ms intermediate range weapons and a small source told that as of tactical Nuclear Weapons that were carefully set up in such a way as to produce exactly the effect you suggest right now you have people talking about the actual battlefield use of Nuclear Weapons in ways that would have been considered outrageously irresponsible by their predecessors during the cold war and and i dont think i do it is very clear from the things that the president of america has said that he believes Nuclear Weapons can and should be used and hes not saying it just to threaten people in not saying that ho a little bit because of the way he said it because or because it is only because he looks so serious but because of the people who work for him will tire of this part of it yes thats thats what thats the reason why theyre terrified is that they believe that he believes he would use they should they should exactly so in other words i dont know that i know were going to contradict what youve just said no to terences not supposed to. Im sorry deterrence is not supposed to terrify the advisers of an american president its supposed to deter your opponents ok that there is a golden shook believe that im serious yes thats what theyre doing because youre doing that so its working no have a few times of course im sorry look its this is just not true and i think you know better in fact and its and i dont want to keep harping on the current american president the two president s ago dortch w. Bush had his advice work on nuclear a Nuclear Posture review which also considered the usability of tactical Nuclear Weapons in the form of socalled junk about busters and other and others and this was apt had no. Thing to do with deterrent as american specialists knew very well at the time so all the problem i think is and this is where i think you and i are closer to each other is is that we are seeing a loosening up of the logic and undermining of the logic of to tyrants which undermines it even for those weapons which are supposed never to be used there are the situations that they recently different we dont we dont have an ideological confrontation as in the cold war we dont have confrontations right no fighting about resources or anything else so its not its not the Great Power Competition were used to face so its what is letting is the whole rational of going to war what the rationale of going to war that might do i mean there is a great color competition all around us. You know just those mean you know youre running a Nuclear Weapon on north korea nothing else and its huge insecurity problem using old that my problem is not that trump will decide to use a Nuclear Weapon on north korea my problem is the to provoke possibly the use of Nuclear Weapons by accumulation by the retard that is been using and he putting hes putting him in a corner also i feel the same way i have to say about russia even if one sees them as being just as aggressive one sees also these corners that theyre pushing each other into through particular kinds of retard but id like to go back to what you said before about its worked for forty five years the fact is that to terences not kept the the peace in forty five years because there are several instances where it failed and and we can say at least one we know of with standard stuff petrof way he saved the world not to terence because they actually thought that. There was an antidote to that sorry yes thats absolutely true stanislav petroff saved the world in i can a country member the day in the late ninetys in the moment where he thought that there was a rocket attack coming in a missile attack coming in from the United States and he was absolutely sure that this could not be the case and so he didnt give that up to the line of command to for them to make the decision to send them to the right i dont know to be a malfunction of the of those right of the signal exactly but normally under the logic of your terence commercial law today we went against his training and said i will make a personal decision here and he decided not to do that and theres several instances where thats happened and we were just lucky. And i just want to take the conversation a little bit of a different direction you mentioned the countries that have signed up to the uns Nuclear Program mission treating what about the countries like the havent signed up like lets take a china for example lets take russia what kind of leverage does a Nobel Prize Winning organizations like your own have with governments like russia and china well i can is not just looking at to the nine it clear weapon states which are within your United Nations that havent signed up this i mean the point the point of the treaty is not to single out Nuclear Weapon states but to say these are the states that dont have Nuclear Weapons and they feel threatened by those that do and so they want Nuclear Weapons ban starts thats whats happened with this treaty and the idea is to use this treaty for those states to put pressure on the states that do have Nuclear Weapons to start negotiations on disarmament and thats thats the whole the using the idea of building a norm of digits of my using Nuclear Weapons and nuclear to terence in order to get us there because were stuck in a position at the moment where nothing is happening but modernization and an arms race is starting and so we have to do something very drastic you know when you talk about legitimacy yes or no legitimacy or not germany has Nuclear Weapons on its territory is it right to do so i personally think that theres no reason to have those and even if you were following the logic of the terence i dont see a reason to have those Nuclear Weapons here if one could use them in fact to signal that no one wants to move away from destruction of Nuclear Deterrence and the German Government has been consistently saying that theyre in favor of a Nuclear Weapon free world but i havent yet seen any concrete i mean look at the that the Coalition Agreement i havent seen any concrete ideas in this for how were going to be arrived at. Any company. Musics come up with an obsolete or theyre all. More dangerous well. Thanks for joining us until next month bye bye troops. Move. Move move move move move. Move move. Move move move move move move move move move move move. Move move. Move. Move move. Move move. Move move. Move. Move. Move. Move move. Move. Move. Move move move move move. Move move move. Move move move. Move. Move move. Move move Mahatma Gandhi. Fought against violence his whole life. Only to die for his convictions. Even waiting for the modern money in this one of the few states modified Mahatma Gandhi and you saw it in the boy in. The book dying for freedom Mahatma Gandhi. Fifteen minutes w. We have to do are we on the verge of a new world order. And who will defend europe. This year this Munich Security Conference takes place at a time of great insecurity internationally tom government officials important discussion. Forum looking statements. Will be there to cover it all. Security conference on need to. Explain the documents that before. Its all about the status in life. Its all about George Chance to discover the world from different perspectives. Join us in the inspired by distinctive instagram hours at g. W. Stories the two topics each week on instagram. Meet the germans new and surprising aspects of license culture in germany. U. S. American keep news that takes a look at germany to simplicities at their traditions every day lives and language at this time of my life. So im. Good at. The back especially if i am going to t. W. Dot com make the germans. He created movie milestone. Was an instrument of propaganda and persecution. It underwent a bankruptcy and restructuring. But it still turning out films today the fog in germany is a biggest and oldest film company. Osuna matic a story from the german empire to the present one hundred or so from a fox. Starting february eighteenth. This is deja vu news live from berlin shining a spotlight on security diplomats the phones ministers of World Leaders gathering at the Munich Security Conference to assess the worlds biggest security threats well hear from our correspondent at the summit to help shape global relations also coming up polands dispute over remember and so
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