Is There A New Nuclear Arms Race?
The Inquiry
BBC
4.6 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 14 April 2015
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Later this month 190 nations will meet in New York to discuss the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), 45 years after it came into force. The Treaty prompted several aspiring nuclear-weapon nations to give up trying to get the bomb, but it also committed nuclear-weapon states like Russia and the US to pursue disarmament. Progress has been made. Overall stocks of nuclear warheads have dropped significantly. But is that the whole story?
Both the US and Russia have committed huge sums – over a long timescale – to modernise their arsenals. One expert tells The Inquiry that these modernisation programmes amount to a new nuclear arms race - one which is creating a new generation of less powerful but more accurate weapons. Some argue that such ‘tactical’ weapons are more likely to be used. Another expert witness tells us that the failure of nuclear-weapon states to disarm threatens the NPT itself. And we hear disturbing testimony about the nuclear stand-off between India and Pakistan and a terrifying account of a largely forgotten incident in 1995 when the world came within two minutes of nuclear annihilation.
(Photo: Explosion nuclear bomb in ocean. Credit: Romolo Tavani/Shutterstock)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless |
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| 0:21.0 | And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less |
| 0:24.9 | searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:29.4 | BBC World Service this is Helen Helena Merriman with the inquiry. |
| 0:34.0 | This week, |
| 0:39.0 | Is there a new nuclear arms race. At 3.m. |
| 1:01.0 | at the 27th of March, after a low rumble in a sudden blast of fire, a Minuteman 3 missile without its warhead burst into the sky. |
| 1:07.0 | From the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, it would cover a distance of 10,000 kilometers in just 40 minutes. |
| 1:17.0 | It was the second test launch of an American intercontinental ballistic missile in less than a week. |
| 1:25.0 | But the US isn't just testing these missiles. |
| 1:29.0 | It's about to upgrade them, making them faster and more accurate. It's part of a modernization program of the entire nuclear |
| 1:37.6 | arsenal which could cost the country over a trillion dollars over the next 30 years. |
| 1:43.2 | Other nuclear states are doing the same |
| 1:46.4 | raising questions about their commitment to disarm. |
| 1:49.9 | So as the signatories to the non-proliferation treaty prepared to meet for a conference in New York at the end of this month, |
| 1:57.0 | 70 years after the first nuclear weapon was used, |
| 2:01.0 | we're asking, is there a new nuclear arms race. |
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