Bombs away? Losers, not winners, will emerge from thermonuclear war

Bombs away? Losers, not winners, will emerge from thermonuclear war
by Harlan Ullman
Washington DC (UPI) Aug 6, 2025

Eighty years ago today, the first of two atom bombs was used in anger. Hiroshima was vaporized. But one plane, one bomb, destroying a city was inconceivable.

The Japanese now could understand how massive B-29 raids could kill hundreds of thousands of people in Tokyo or Nagoya in a single night.

It took a second B-29 and a second bomb dropped on Nagasaki three days later to shock and awe Japan into abandoning its insistence on suicidal resistance and surrender unconditionally to the allies.

Then came the H-bomb and thermonuclear weapons. The explosive power of nuclear weapons is measured in thousands of tons of TNT equivalents or kilotons, or KT. Thermonuclear weapons are measured in million-ton equivalents of TNT, or MT,

While at one time it was feasible to consider the tactical use of nuclear weapons, thermonuclear weapons present an existential threat not to a city, but to society.

The reason for restraint is evident. For the first time in history, no winners and only losers would emerge from a thermonuclear war. Thus, since 1945, no nuclear weapon has been used in combat, war or as a "demonstration" shot in a crisis.

And those who possess these weapons have not spread to many dozens as was once feared. Today ,there are 10 nuclear weapons states -- the United States, Russia, Britain, China, France, India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan and, of course, Russia.

Questions of nuclear safety and security, proliferation and terrorists or others seeking to do grave harm by acquiring them remain as pertinent as they were since these hugely destructive weapons were invented.

American, Chinese and Russian leaders once agreed that these weapons could never be used and that no one would win a catastrophic war. Yet, Russian President Vladimir Putin has raised the specter of nuclear weapons use in the Ukraine War should the United States, NATO or other states intervene.

Was Putin serious? Was his threat just a bluff or a signal about the importance of the Ukraine war to him and even to Russia? Since NATO was not going to intervene, the answer is obvious.

Still, war games obviously have played the use of nuclear and thermonuclear weapons, including having some "detonated" where no damage was done, over the ocean or in desolate land masses, to shock and awe the enemy.

Some fear that North Korea's supreme leader, Kim Jung Un, is so irrational that, in a crisis he deemed existential, he could easily fire off a nuclear weapon. Suppose in 1950, had Kim been alive and in charge and had a nuclear weapon -- possibly obtained from the Soviet Union, which tested its first in 1949 -- would he have used it after the U.S. landing at Inchon, Seoul's seaport, sending the North Korean army fleeing northward toward the Yalu River and the border with China?

If one reviewed the history of nuclear weapon accidents and near-misses in the United States and the USSR/Russia, it would not be pleasant reading. And, too often, the United States is not sufficiently knowledgeable on the state of other nuclear powers.

During the Bush 43 administration, the threat of Pakistani extremists stealing nuclear weapons was taken very seriously. Ironically, while Pakistan had only a small fraction what the U.S. inventory of nuclear weapons was, its warheads were better controlled in terms of security than America's and depended on a three-key system for use once higher authority gave the order, rather than the U.S. two-key system.

For the Cold War, the doctrine of MAD -- mutual assured destruction -- prevailed as U.S. doctrine. The thesis was that after absorbing an enemy first strike, the retaliatory attack would kill enough people and destroy enough of the economy to make war unwinnable. The acronym, to some, had a double meaning to include insanity.

For the bulk of the past 80 years, it was the U.S.-Soviet/Russian nuclear balance that was crucial. The analogy of two scorpions in a bottle represented MAD. With China dramatically increasing its inventory of nuclear weapons and delivery systems, are there now three scorpions in the same bottle? And how do the other nuclear states play in this?

After ending the endless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States returned its strategic focus to the current challenges of today: China, Russia, Iran and North Korea in this reincarnation of Bush 43's infamous axis of evil.

In this shift in thinking, no issue has greater urgency and need than ensuring that these weapons of true mass destruction will never be detonated in anger or, possibly worse, by accident, precipitating a crisis of unprecedented magnitude.

Harlan Ullman is UPI's Arnaud de Borchgrave Distinguished Columnist, senior adviser at Washington's Atlantic Council, chairman of a private company and principal author of the doctrine of shock and awe. His next book, co-written with Field Marshal The Lord David Richards, former U.K. chief of defense and due out next year, is Who Thinks Best Wins: Preventing Strategic Catastrophe. The writer can be reached on X @harlankullman.