A Conversation With MV Ramana

Professor Ramana is the Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security at the University of British Columbia. His latest book is Nuclear is Not the Solution. He argues that there is a strong link between nuclear power and nuclear weapons. I put a few questions to him on that link.

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Ahmad Faruqui (AF): What is the connection between nuclear power and nuclear weapons?

MV Ramana (MVR): There are five overlaps between nuclear energy and nuclear weapons: technical, historical, geographical, personnel and institutional. 

The technical challenge to making nuclear weapons is obtaining the necessary fissile materials, namely highly enriched uranium or plutonium. Neither is found in nature. Technically, there is an overlap between making nuclear weapons and energy because the production of nuclear energy often involves the use of enriched uranium, and the facilities used to produce low enriched uranium fuelling nuclear power plants can be modified to produce weapons usable highly enriched uranium. Plutonium is a byproduct of nuclear reactors that use uranium as fuel.

Many countries used materials from their first nuclear reactors to produce plutonium, including the US and India. The latter used a reactor provided by Canada for peaceful purposes to produce plutonium used in its first nuclear weapons test in 1974.

Geographically speaking, there is a large overlap between which countries have nuclear power plants and those that have nuclear weapons or are part of military alliances with nuclear weapon states.

There is also an overlap in the training needed to have personnel that can design and operate nuclear power plants and that can produce fissile material for nuclear weapons. Examples include Pakistan and Iran, both of which received training for scientists and engineers from the United States. The Iranian government has maintained that it does not have a nuclear weapons program. But it is the overlap between enrichment for nuclear power and nuclear weapons purposes that motivates all the diplomatic activity to constrain Iran’s activities.

Finally, there is a large overlap in the institutions that oversee nuclear energy and weapons programs, as exemplified in the US by the Department of Energy.

AF: Does empirical evidence prove the existence of the link?

MVR: Yes, there are many countries that started nuclear energy programs and then moved onto making nuclear weapons. Examples include India and Pakistan. These examples show that for countries with nuclear energy programs, it is largely a matter of intention, not capability, to make nuclear weapons. And intentions can change.

Many countries used materials from their first nuclear reactors to produce plutonium, including the US and India

AF: Does the presence of nuclear weapons lower the risk of war, either conventional or nuclear, breaking out between long-standing enemies?

MVR: Not necessarily. Decisions to go to war are complex and are influenced by various considerations, of which the presence of nuclear weapons is but one factor. Although the fear of the devastation caused by nuclear weapons should serve to reduce the propensity to go to war, fear that the other country might launch a first strike can lead to government leaders or defence officials launching military action. Nuclear weapons also allow political leaders to assume that their nuclear arsenals provide a cover that would prevent conflicts from escalating, thus increasing the risk of small-scale conflicts, which in turn increases the probability of large-scale conflict. Therefore, nuclear weapons cannot be relied on to keep the peace. What they offer is the threat of nuclear destruction on top of the devastation from conventional war.

AF: After India carried out five nuclear tests in May 1998, Pakistan responded with six. Prior to the nuclear tests, both countries had gone to war many times with conventional weapons. A year after the nuclear explosions, they fought a conventional war in Kargil. Doesn’t that disprove the theory that nuclear weapons prevent war?

MVR: Yes, absolutely. The Kargil conflict in the summer of 1999 has been the largest direct war between two nuclear-weapon states ever. Earlier the most serious episode was the clash between the Soviet Union and China in March 1969 along the banks of the Ussuri River, which led to about 300 casualties. Estimates of the number of deaths in Kargil vary but even the official death tolls put it at close to 1000, with unofficial numbers being much higher.

AF: Once countries have nuclear weapons, should they not reduce the size of their conventional forces, since a conventional war might escalate into a nuclear war?

MVR: This is what advocates of nuclear weapons claim. Kenneth Waltz, in The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: More May Be Better: Introduction, stated that in a relationship dominated by the logic of deterrence, “force comparisons are irrelevant. Strategic arms races are then pointless.” While arms races are indeed pointless, they do occur, as was the case with the United States and the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union literally went bankrupt trying to match the United States militarily.

AF: Do military expenditures divert government spending on civilian priorities, such as economic, human and social development. The “guns v butter” trade-off is particularly acute in developing countries where millions cannot eat two meals a day. It even exists in countries such as the US where millions are homeless and deprived of medical assistance. Yet some argue that the trade-off no longer exists. In other words, governments can spend more on their military without depriving the country of its economic, human and social development. What’s your view?

MVR: Yes, the trade-off between spending on weapons and on human development is pretty apparent to any observer. There is no reason to think that spending large amounts of money on preparing for war will not incur tremendous opportunity costs at home. Apart from its direct and indirect economic impact, this kind of spending reveals that human and social development is low on the priorities of governments and powerful institutions that control budget decisions. That perverse prioritisation stifles human development where it is needed most, in developing nations.