Nuclear detonations: Contemplating catastrophe

Africa is ill positioned to contend with disasters. But natural disasters like drought, flood, and desertification have long wreaked havoc on the continent. This, along with extreme poverty, poor governance, and infectious disease, helps explain why Africa, though it is massively endowed with natural and human resources, has not yet managed to exploit its advantages fully.

Making matters worse, Africa has endured enormous bloodshed over the decades—during the Cold War, during the continent's wars of political liberation, and in more recent civil wars. And because of the explosive remnants of war that are left behind, lives and limbs continue to be lost long after hostilities cease. Anti-personnel landmines, cluster munitions, and unexploded ordnance remain an ugly scar on the face of the continent. If anyone requires evidence that conflict creates humanitarian catastrophes, Africa is the best place to look for it.

Though nuclear weapons do not exist in Africa now—South Africa has disarmed, and today the Treaty of Pelindaba, which establishes a nuclear-weapon-free zone, has been ratified or at least signed by almost every African country—they remain the ultimate weapons of mass destruction. Africa would be altered in the twinkling of an eye if a nuclear device were detonated there, and the continent would suffer grievously if a nuclear weapon were used elsewhere in the world. That is why African nations have not only established a nuclear-weapon-free zone, but have also enthusiastically supported the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the goal of nuclear disarmament.

May Africa arise. In March of this year, the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs hosted a conference in Oslo to consider the humanitarian effects of a nuclear detonation, and whether the world could in any meaningful way cope with a detonation. The conference created momentum toward a treaty that would ban the use of nuclear weapons and mandate their elimination, and it has led many stakeholders—people involved in defense, security, diplomacy, human rights, agriculture, and the environment—to approach the issue of nuclear weapons with renewed vigor. African nations are taking a leading role in this effort, and representatives of a number of African states spoke eloquently at the Oslo conference.

Africa would be severely affected by a nuclear detonation even if the explosion occurred far away. A detonation anywhere in the world would likely reverse the continent's recent development gains. Efforts to meet the Millennium Development Goals would be rendered essentially useless. Most available resources would be redirected toward mitigating the nuclear catastrophe and attempts to meet the Millennium Development Goals would be cast by the wayside.

A nuclear detonation anywhere in the world would have profound implications for the work of organizations that provide disaster relief, refugee assistance, and health care, as well as those that promote human rights, food security, poverty alleviation, and environmental sustainability. These organizations would likely divert their resources to disaster mitigation elsewhere in the world, and African countries would be deprived of assistance.

Africa's vast distances and inadequate infrastructure, along with the barriers that separate people along cultural, linguistic, and geographic lines, make the continent a very challenging environment to establish disaster preparedness—and if a detonation occurred in Africa, no nation on the continent would be equipped for it. No hospital could handle the burn cases created by a detonation. Blood transfusion services are already strained to their limit in this era of HIV/AIDS, and it is difficult to imagine that they could function properly if a nuclear weapon were detonated. In a city suffering a nuclear detonation, municipal services such as firefighting, sewage, and housing, to name but a few, would fail. Transportation, education, and water systems would be negatively affected, both in the immediate aftermath of a detonation and for a long time thereafter. African economies' gross domestic products are already very low in most cases, and diverting economic resources toward recovering from a nuclear detonation would only exacerbate the situation, leading to more hunger, poorer health, and more political instability.

Because Africa would suffer such enormous negative effects from a detonation, African countries should continue to play a leading role in the movement toward abolishing nuclear weapons. If Africa is to avoid increased hunger, the spread of new and emerging diseases, and political instability—all of which would make development a mirage—the possibility of a nuclear detonation must be averted.

In early 2014, Mexico will host a follow-up event to the Oslo conference. There, African countries should take stock of, and make clear to others, what they stand to lose in development terms if a nuclear weapon is used. If ever it were true that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, now is the time.

Most countries are parties to instruments of international humanitarian law such as the Geneva Conventions, the Biological Weapons Convention, and the Chemical Weapons Convention. International humanitarian law seeks to address the humanitarian problems that arise, directly or indirectly, from armed conflict (whether or not the conflicts are international). It limits combatants' ability to utilize certain methods and weapons of war, thus protecting civilians and their property from harm. Many nations that have chosen to become parties to instruments of international humanitarian law have done so for one of two reasons: They favor peace in general, or they fear large, catastrophic events such as nuclear detonations.

Several basic principles underlie international humanitarian law. One is the principle of distinction, which requires militaries to target only combatants, never civilians. But a nuclear attack, even if it were theoretically aimed at an exclusively military objective, would carry severe consequences for public health. It would raise civilians' risk of developing degenerative diseases—notably cancer of the skin, liver, kidneys, stomach, and lungs. The most extreme effects, sadly, would appear in the most vulnerable segments of the population: children and the elderly. The health risks would extend to food, which would be harmful to people in the country affected and could not be exported, worsening the economic disaster that would afflict any country where a detonation occurred. So a nation could be left with little edible food; few financial resources; and a greatly reduced population. Any state affected in this way would have no choice but to declare itself a radiological emergency zone and ask for international support to help protect its population. Meanwhile, civilians would likely mount an exodus toward non-contaminated or less contaminated territory, even if this meant crossing borders. (This did not occur in the aftermath of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, largely because at the time there was little awareness about the health effects of high radiation doses.)

A second principle is that of proportionality, which prohibits attacks causing fatalities, injuries, and property damage that are excessive in relation to the concrete military advantage that is anticipated. A nuclear explosion inarguably violates this principle, for it unavoidably affects very large territories and very large populations. A third principle, expressed in instruments such as the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property, prohibits attacks on sites of cultural importance. But nuclear detonations are indiscriminate, and it is hardly possible to carry out a nuclear attack without destroying sites of cultural importance. Civilians in affected areas, suffering from enormous casualties, continuing health risks, and property destruction, would only be more likely to flee if they saw their cultural heritage destroyed as well.

Utterly vulnerable. In the event of a nuclear detonation, nations will be best equipped to respond to and mitigate the catastrophe if they possess certain basic elements of infrastructure. These include, at a minimum, a national architecture for radiation detection, a radiological emergency response center, a suitable communications center, a hospital specializing in radiological emergencies, a center for the decontamination of people, and adequately trained personnel, including civil defense and radiological emergency brigades. In countries where radiological accidents have occurred, the effects have often been mitigated in short order thanks to adequate national response capacity. However, countries with few economic resources in the first place have little response capacity.

After a nuclear detonation, the poorest countries would be utterly vulnerable: They lack the necessary infrastructure and the qualified personnel to respond effectively. The humanitarian effects of a detonation in such a country, both immediately and over the medium and long terms, would be incalculable. In middle-income countries, the consequences would be somewhat less but still catastrophic. Not even developed countries, where state-of-the-art technology is readily available, would be prepared to deal adequately with the consequences of a nuclear explosion. In fact, no one in the world is prepared to face a disaster on the scale of a nuclear detonation.

Nuclear weapons are frighteningly destructive in both humanitarian and environmental terms, and any individual or group of individuals who ordered their use would arguably be guilty of a crime against humanity. The world must continue to work for the day when nuclear weapons are abolished.

The prospect of a nuclear detonation anywhere in the world is horrifying but, for a variety of reasons, it is not entirely implausible. The suspect logic of deterrence that pertains among nuclear adversaries could unravel amid changing geopolitical circumstances. Disgruntled non-state actors could gain access to the know-how and materials needed to fashion a nuclear weapon. Or a simple accident might result in a detonation. In any of these situations, a single detonation could create a spiral of retaliation.

Before turning to the humanitarian effects of a nuclear detonation, it is perhaps appropriate to acknowledge that a detonation would not necessarily inspire the world to roll back nuclear history—to forsake the atom. Ever since the power of the atom was first unlocked, attempts to contain that power have proved tortuous (witness the weapons programs that continue to be initiated, and the importance of civilian nuclear energy in many places). The extent to which a detonation might cause the world to forsake the atom would probably depend on the scale of the detonation and on whom it affected most. If the detonation took place in a privileged enclave of the Global North, the international attention devoted to it would be vastly greater than if the detonation were to occur in a more marginalized setting in the Global South—even though population densities are often much higher in developing countries and loss of life would probably be higher too. Unfortunately, the values attached to human life are not always consistent, and this strongly influences what might be called the politics of grief.

Meanwhile, a detonation would serve as a grim reminder of the distrust that still prevails among human beings; of the myopia characterizing the outlooks of both major and middle powers; and of the "technologies of killing" that Robert Jay Lifton recently discussed in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. A nuclear detonation would amount to a monumental failure of international public policy, and would threaten not only the ecosphere that human beings inhabit but also their very humanity.

Dire circumstances. But given all that, how would a nuclear detonation affect poor and middle-income nations and their development goals? To begin with, nations situated well beyond the blast site would feel the effects. The world today is deeply interconnected and events can no longer be confined to the areas where they occur. The United Nations Development Programme underscores this reality in its 2013 Human Development Report, which argues that "as global development challenges become more complex and transboundary in nature, coordinated action on the most pressing challenges of our era, whether they be poverty eradication, climate change, or peace and security, is essential." And efforts to contend with the four areas of development upon which the report focuses—"enhancing equity, including on the gender dimension; enabling greater voice and participation of citizens, including youth; confronting environmental pressures; and managing demographic change"—would in every case be seriously complicated by a nuclear detonation.

Indeed, as argued succinctly by Ray Acheson of the disarmament organization Reaching Critical Will, a detonation would seriously compromise efforts to achieve all the Millennium Development Goals. It would undermine poverty alleviation initiatives as well as cooperative efforts to foster development; limit agricultural productivity; undermine women's and children's well-being; damage national infrastructures; and reduce the planet's biodiversity.

In my view, a nuclear detonation's impact on poor and middle-income nations would be most disconcerting along three specific dimensions. First, a detonation would likely exacerbate the already abysmal nutritional conditions that exist in many countries. It would disrupt normal global patterns of food availability and distribution, generating pathological economic anxieties that, as Acheson suggests, would cause people to hoard food. A detonation would also have deleterious effects on the quality of soil, water, and air and would harm agricultural productivity. These effects would inflate prices for agricultural commodities and reduce poor people's access to food, even in nations far from the blast site.

Second, a detonation could destroy many people's livelihoods because of its environmental effects. Many poor nations are predominantly agrarian; they are also characterized by fragmented land holdings and poor returns on cultivation. People dependent on the land for a living would in the event of a detonation—which could alter climate, creating some version of "nuclear winter"—face further impoverishment and disenfranchisement. Under circumstances so dire, even a wave of farmer suicides would not be inconceivable. Thus the economic cleavages that already exist in structurally disadvantaged economies could become even deeper.

Third, the health and well-being of populations in the developing world would be seriously threatened. Not only would food prices increase, but essential drugs would likely be in short supply—both in the areas directly affected and, as supplies were directed to these areas, in other regions as well. The well-being of women and children in particular might be severely threatened—as Acheson observes, "women suffer disproportionately in disasters and … their specific needs are usually ignored during relief and rehabilitation initiatives." She also notes that "violence against women soars under the stress in post-disaster environments." The negative impact on women's quality of life would likely have a direct bearing on the well-being of children: Women's capacity to care for their children would be diminished, and children would be affected in areas ranging from nutrition to cognitive development.

The poorest nations would suffer deeply along all three of these dimensions, but I would argue that middle-income countries are not a very different kettle of fish. Conspicuous inequities often characterize these countries' economies, and segments of their populations are already ill fed and suffer from dehumanizing poverty. The ability of middle-income nations to make basic investments in human development would take a serious hit after a detonation. Redressing income inequalities would become more difficult if a detonation caused the global economy to contract. Nonetheless, middle-income countries exhibit greater state capacity than the poorest countries do and would be somewhat better positioned to absorb the shock of a nuclear detonation.