Transcript ocw.uci.edu

Intl.St. 12 / Pol. Sci.44a
Global Issues and Institutions
Spring Quarter 2009
Instructor: Bojan Petrovic
Global Issues:
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Nuclear Proliferation
Energy Crisis
Ethnic Conflict, Peacekeeping and Nation Building
International Trade and Financial Globalization
Great Power Competition
International Terrorism
Population Growth, Environment and Food Production
Poverty, Diseases, and Development
Global Values and Cultural Differences
The Spread of Nuclear Weapons
From the Manhattan Project to A.Q.
Khan
"The Manhattan Project"
 More than 200,000 worked on this including several
thousands scientists and engineers, many of European
background.
 July 16, 1945: the first atomic bomb was tested in the
Alamogordo desert in New Mexico.
 On August 6 an atomic bomb with an explosive yield
equivalent to 12.5 kilotons of the explosives TNT
(trinitrotoluene) was dropped on the Japanese city of
Hiroshima, instantly killing some 70,000 of its inhabitants.
Five immediate destructive effects from a
nuclear explosion:
 the initial radiation, mainly gamma rays;
 an electromagnetic pulse, which in a high altitude explosion
can knock out electrical equipment over a very large area;
 a thermal pulse, which consists of bright light (even many
miles away) and intense heat equal to that at the center of
the sun);
 a blast wave that can flatten buildings; and
 radioactive fallout, mainly in dirt and debris that is sucked
up into the mushroom cloud and then falls to earth.
Three longer-term effects from a nuclear
explosion:
 1. a delayed radioactive fallout;
 2. a change in the climate;
 3. a partial destruction of the ozone layer.
What’s the danger of nuclear proliferation?
 The greater the number of countries with nuclear
weapons the greater the chance that the nukes will
be used?
Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear
Weapons:
 also referred to as the Non-Proliferation Treaty, or
NPT, which opened for signature on July 1, 1968.
Other Nuclear Arms Control Agreements:
 Limited Test-Ban Treaty (1963).
 Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty (1996). Among the
countries that had still to sign and/or ratify the treaty were
Afghanistan, Cuba, India, Iraq, Iran, Israel, North Korea,
Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and the United States (United
States ratification has so far been stopped by the Senate).
A third category of states:
 Cuba, India, Pakistan, South Africa, Israel, North
Korea.