It has been 8 years, 4 months and 29 days since the last detonation of a nuclear weapon on Earth, and this is also the longest period without such events since the nuclear age began.
Since that decisive day in the deserts of the American Southwest in 1945, it is truly astonishing how many nuclear weapons have been detonated.
Dylan Spaulding, a senior fellow at the Union of Concerned Scientists, highlighted this long period without detonations with a post on his blog, explaining that since the Trinity test, 2,000 nuclear weapons have been detonated by 8 nations.
Since the 21st century has been largely explosion-free, that means that some of the early years of the Cold War would have seen over a hundred nuclear test explosions in a single year; In fact, there were two years like that.
In fact, January 14 marked the longest period humanity has gone without any party detonating one of these deadly weapons, dating back to North Korea’s last test in September 2017. All other nuclear-armed states conducted their last nuclear tests between 1990 and 1998 when Pakistan ceased its nuclear tests.
“In 1996, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) was opened for signature and has since been signed by 187 nations and ratified by 178, an overwhelming majority globally,” Spaulding reports, describing the CTBT outcome as creating one of the strongest “taboos” in modern diplomacy.
An actor (North Korea being the only example) that violates the test ban treaty is labeled a pariah state and excluded from most world affairs. Although the United States has signed but never ratified the treaty, it has nonetheless maintained a ban on supercritical testing of any kind.
Any potential benefits of posture or technical expertise gained from a nuclear test will surely be outweighed by the detriment to national reputation and future diplomatic leverage against developing or aspiring actors.
When discussing nuclear weapons policy, it is important to maintain a long-term perspective. Today, despite this long period without a detonation, there are many reasons to fear nuclear exchanges between armed states. That has always been the fear because then, as now, there were many reasons to be afraid.
There was more than one occasion, mind permitting, when a nuclear war between the USSR/China and NATO was just minutes away, or separated by the simple click of a button, by chance malfunction, or by the split-second decision making of a stressed commanding officer.
EFFORTS TO IMPROVE THE WORLD:
- Nobel-worthy Prime Minister Tries to End Century of Ethnic Hatred of Armenians
- These trees survived Hiroshima: a group plants their seeds around the world to preserve their memory
- A tribute to Mikhail Gorbachev – The man who ended the Cold War (1931–2022)
The world is never far from those days, but substantial progress has been made, and more could be done if, as in the past, wiser minds prevail.
As for nuclear testing and the documented detrimental health effects that accompany it, each passing day can be celebrated as a new record and a new reason to continue to hope that right minds can, will, and someday, perhaps definitely, prevail.
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