NUCLEAR POWER IN WORLD POLITICS

[Music] 2,500 feet beneath the top of Cheyenne mouth headquarters of the North American Air Defense Command here in the combat operations center teams keep track of everything that flies planes satellites or missiles within minutes this information can set in motion an American response to an enemy attack 830 solid fuel Minuteman missiles each carries a one Megaton warhead the equivalent of 1 million tons of TNT 600 b-52 long-range jet bombers they carry several twenty Megaton bomb 54 Titan 2 missiles they have a range of 12,000 miles each carries of 5 to 18 Megaton warhead 34 nuclear submarines each with 16 Polaris missiles a total of 544 missiles each missile has a point 7 Megaton warhead that's 35 times the power of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima a strike against the Soviet Union could wipe out 77% of all Russian industry and kill about 100 million Russian people official estimates of Soviet nuclear capability are of course classified but unofficial estimates run something like this 270 intercontinental missiles of two kinds one carries a 10 Megaton warhead the other carries a 30-plus Megaton warhead that's 1,500 times the size of the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima in 1963 Marshall krill off the Soviet rocket commander quoted American estimates that at the start of a nuclear war 71 American cities would be destroyed and 53 million people would die Marshall commented one must say that these calculations have a sound basis since then American officials have been giving West wadis estimates their present guest is that a full-scale Soviet attack would kill from a hundred million to 150 million American in 1952 Britain became the third member of the nuclear Club Britain has 80 of these victor and vulcan bombers they carry air-to-ground missiles for the 400 mile range if they could reach their targets these planes to destroy any country they attack they do represent worthwhile addition to the strategic forces of the West and we believe that we can use them politically in order to promote agreements inside the Alliance which will discourage the further spread of nuclear weapons February 1960 France exploded a nuclear device in the Algerian Desert and against United States opposition joined the nuclear Club the French decision to build a nuclear force from the point of view of the major powers marks the beginning of the spread of nuclear weapons how is it possible mr. messed ma'am that a nuclear force that is relatively small could prevent the Soviet Union from attacking don'ting the deal Duke won't get any day it is certain that if France wanted to enter into a war of military conquest our atomic power would be useless but this is not our problem our problem is to defend our territory to defend our independence and our freedom problem facing a possible aggressor then is to know whether his aggression against France would be advantageous enough to make it worth his while if Frances atomic force is strong enough to make him pay dearly for his aggression it is likely he will hesitate this is what we call a deterrent now that the French have their own nuclear weapons like every other member of the nuclear club they do not want anybody else to get in but they are hard-boiled realists about it and they recognize that as other nations feel the need and have the means to construct a nuclear force they believe that they will do it they also point out that it is becoming increasingly easier for nations to build nuclear weapons poorer countries can get the a-bomb provided they're able to get the material which is necessary for producing a chain reaction costing something around six thousand dollars a pound and it only takes much of this material at the very core and an a-bomb is essentially this the central critical core surrounded by a great mass of high explosive which at the proper time is imploded so that this is crushed the chain reaction converts this object the size of a baseball into a fiery hot ball a fire equal to 20,000 tons of TNT that's an atomic explosion of the type which destroyed Hiroshima now there's a new wrinkle introduced by the hydrogen bomb technology if you so to speak fill this in around here with the element lithium which is a cheap material and make certain modifications you can convert this bomb into one which is equal to 20 million tons of TNT a thousand times bigger but not a thousand times more costly a bombs can be made for a few hundred thousand dollars apiece but this bomb a thousand times more powerful than Hiroshima can be made for a million dollars this film came out of communist China in October 1964 it showed the first Chinese nuclear explosion intelligence reports and air samplings indicated Chinese nuclear technology was considerably more advanced than the outside world had thought one of the major consequences of the Chinese making an atomic bomb is that suddenly we have shifted from the rich countries so that now we have the bomb being produced by a poor country and thus it seems to me is a revolutionary new development in the whole nuclear age nuclear weapons within two or three years we expect you to have both warheads and delivery capability to carry out such aggression against the nations within a radius of perhaps five or 700 miles one of these nations is India January 1966 Prime Minister Shastri was dead Shastri had pledged he would never make nuclear weapons but pressure for him to renounce his pledge had been building up what his successors continue to resist these pressures I would very much like the Government of India to put this blunt question bluntly to the Russians and the Americans are they prepared to guarantee the defense of India against Chinese blackmail or attack with atomic bombs and answer this question within a definite period of time so that the Americans and the Russians define their position on this question very clearly if an answer is not forthcoming then the Indian Prime Minister should give the green signal for making the bomb in short what I am saying is an Indian Prime Minister whoever he is has either to produce a guarantee in the Indian Parliament or to produce the bomb if India were to produce the bomb most experts agree Pakistan will follow then Japan Australia and possibly Indonesia for 18 years and all its borders Israel has been at war with its Arab neighbors facing an enemy sworn to wipe Israel from the map it is to defend against this that over strong United States opposition some Israelis want to build a nuclear bomb the Arab governments and especially the government of the United Arab Republic and Colonel Nasser continually state that they wish one day to attack Israel in order to destroy her sovereignty and her integrity you cannot always assume that politicians believe the opposite of what they say therefore in our defense planning we take into account the possibility that this is a real threat the reasons Washington doesn't want Israel to do it are perfectly clear in the first place we feel that any more nations in the nuclear Club make life just that much more dangerous but Israel is also a very special case there are border incidents every day if either side had nuclear weapons these could turn into nuclear incidents with the Soviet Union in the United States involved on opposite sides such an incident could very quickly escalate into a nuclear confrontation like the Cuban Missile Crisis so we don't want nuclear weapons in the Middle East the United States feels in a solved Israel's security problem the United States Sixth Fleet is in the Mediterranean Jets are ready to protect Israel if Israel is attacked but some Israelis don't accept the validity of this guarantee Western guarantees do not exist in a real way in the Middle East as far as Israel is concerned checking some of the Western guarantees if I'm not wrong there like something like 58 of them but all of them are a guarantee against an attack or an enemy which belongs to the Communist world I do not know about any single location well by them the United States of America or any other Western power really guaranteed then against any other assault of an enemy these high tension wires lead into the Negev desert there at Damona heavily guarded is a nuclear reactor no outsider is allowed near it this picture was taken secretly this is the Israeli nuclear reactor at Damona Israel does not allow it to be inspected they have very active 24 megawatts and they have the Platini what is what would be the result the result would be to produce atomic weapons this will be a threat to us and all the Arab countries so if we are sure that they are preparing the atomic weapons we have to begin a protective wall but for the time being you're not sufficiently preventive what is known about no I am Not sure it waits and it depends upon the concrete information which would be able to help and once you had that you think that the necessity for a preventive war would be there well of course it would be a matter of life for our best to us then to make the decision to go nuclear the next generation may feel that Israel's security demands that they build atomic bombs openly or in secret the Israelis do have this option at Damona and they do keep it in the background this is the wall that divides Germany that still divides Europe in the Cold War many guitar game places master must be on beneath this is the new West German army the backbone of labour [Music] it is on German soil that defense of Western Europe would begin there's no doubt that in case of war be it a nuclear war in non-nuclear war my country will be the first to be attacked and probably destroyed for this reason we think it is a legitimate right for my country to ask for a participation in nuclear responsibility nuclear sharing very many of the thousands of nuclear weapons Secretary of Defense McNamara says are in Europe or in fact in West Germany from small hand carried weapons to thermonuclear bombs but the power to use them is held by the United States they can be used only as in the case of all US nuclear weapons with the president's permission and there are elaborate safeguards to prevent the Germans from using them on their own without that permission nevertheless German pilots now fly f-104 fighter bombers which carry nuclear weapons Germans are intimately involved with other weapons systems designed to deliver a nuclear strike but this is inevitable according to US planners and view of their key role in NATO in European defence forces there's been more than 20 years since the end of World War two the Germans no longer want to be treated as a defeated nation they want to be treated as an equal with France and Britain one area of equality would be their sharing in a nuclear decision making in the NATO alliance the idea of German sharing and nuclear decision-making which perhaps could lead to a German finger on the nuclear trigger it's not at all appealing to many a thien's on both sides of the Iron Curtain though allied with the new Germany the British have never fully conquered their fear that the Peace of Europe may once again in the future be threatened by marching Germans the government recognizes the need to share Alliance responsibilities with the Germans but the British want no German finger on the nuclear trigger France is determined that Germany should never have her own nuclear force or that Germany should ever have ownership or control in any nuclear force or for that matter that Germany should have any part in the decision to use any nuclear force if the argument is made that frustrated and their nuclear ambitions the Germans will turn to the East the French reply let them go to Moscow and see how much satisfaction they can get there Russia suffered a nightmare at the hands of the Hitler armies six million dead and 14 million wounded nobody here will ever forget it the Soviets are adamant on West German nuclear sharing they say they cannot conceive of any manner of sharing that would relieve their fear of a German finger on the trigger right now the Germans do not want to own nuclear weapons but they do want to share in the decisions about their use in the defense of Western Europe if they are frustrated getting what they feel is a satisfactory role in NATO nuclear decision-making or if they continue to be treated as a second class nation it could come to the point where they would decide to go nuclear Geneva the 18-nation disarmament conference the question of Germany's nuclear role dominates the talk among the your paeans and the corridors of geneva they are convinced no treaty to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons can be negotiated until the United States and the Soviet Union agree on an answer on the other major question being argued by the delegates the United States and the Soviet Union find themselves on the same side facing the non-nuclear nations countries being asked to forego the development of nuclear weapons have some counter demands of their own they want to know what the United States and Russia in exchange for an effective non-proliferation treaty India for example has suggested as an essential condition that the nuclear powers must end their own arms race and begin turning it down many high-ranking military men feel as they did about the test ban that the United States would have to give up too much to get such a treaty that the United States might damage the believability of its nuclear deterrent one of them put the dilemma this way as a citizen he said I'd like to see nuclear weapons become a dirty word I think for the future of civilization we ought to get rid of all nuclear weapons but he went on our security is built on the credibility of our nuclear weapons the other side has to believe that we will use them and if nuclear weapons do become a dirty word our willingness to use them is going to become less credible every nation here says the spread of nuclear weapons must be stopped but so far they have done nothing nations still want nuclear weapons for security or prestige to halt their spread would require security guarantees to non-nuclear countries nuclear arms cutbacks by the superpowers but at Geneva so far the nations haven't been able to agree on the first step a non-proliferation treaty that would buy time to solve the basic problems there are now five nuclear powers if the spread of nuclear weapons continues there could be 40 by the end of this century it would take about 20 minutes by the clock for a missile launch from the farthest point across the world to reach any American city