It is normally assumed that nuclear war must result in massive loss of human life, but this is not necessarily the case if the protocol outlined in this letter is adopted. This protocol should be adopted by all nations, because it would be foolish to rely for our safety on the continuance of peace loving men at the helms of the nuclear powers.
This protocol is:
There should be no attempt to deliberately kill civilians. To the contrary, every effort should be made to minimise such casualties. To this end a country to engage in nuclear war against cities should give advance warning of seven days, to give time for evacuation. When a country declares nuclear war they must warn of the cities they intend to strike. only infrastructure, and defense capability should ever be destroyed by nuclear weapons.
This protocol is written in the faith that even if an aggressive man leads one of the nuclear powers, he will not be so evil as to deliberately set out to kill as many civilians as possible. But in case he is, there must be deterrents.
For this protocol to be effective, the following should occur:
MAD or Mutual Assured Destruction is what is credited with preventing nuclear war between the United States of America and the Soviet Union during the last century. This mutual assured destruction would have involved the loss of infrastructure as well as the loss of perhaps of the order of one hundred million lives.
But the purpose of my protocol is to reduce the stakes such that civilians are saved from destruction and only infrastructure and defense capabilities are jeopardised or destroyed.
Saving civilians should not, I hope, significantly increase the chance of nuclear war, because although one nation might be more likely to start nuclear war, the enemy would be less likely to provoke nuclear war, as the threat is more credible.
But still I believe that the Mutual Assured Destruction of both countries’ infrastructure should be sufficient to deter nuclear war. And then for the first time MAD will become slightly sensible.
Then the worst thing that could happen in a war is:
First, Russian tanks roll into Western Europe and win war. Then Western Europe says if you do not get out we will destroy evacuated Moscow and several other evacuated cities in Russia. Next, Russia destroys evacuated London, Berlin and Rome. Finally Russians go home
Bad though this scenario is, it is better than all out nuclear holocaust and why should not all sides, agree to limit the threat of nuclear war, to just such a scenario.
The more time available for evacuation the better, as civil defense is made easier the further civilians are from the source of radiation. Small shelter towns or additional shelters in small towns would be the ideal place for evacuation. These could be built using unemployed labour, using some of the defense budget for civil defense. Military targets and defense personnel should be sited away from concentrations of civilians.
As a nuclear winter may reduce food supply, and as a large amount of food might be destroyed in a nuclear exchange, an adequate reserve food supply should be maintained. Whenever the world produced surplus food, it could be stored. This food could also be used for famine relief.
Failure to follow this protocol may cause, by reason of retaliatory strikes, millions of a nation’s people to unnecessarily perish. Therefore that country’s people should put to death their leader if he wages an unannounced nuclear war. To signify this I propose that once a decade all nations’ peoples turn their light on at midnight that their leaders might understand that they would not tolerate such irresponsibility.
It has been said that the reason to have nuclear weapons in defence, is to ensure that nuclear weapons are never used in attack. This is best achieved by reducing first strike advantage. This means it should cost more in terms of money and firepower, to destroy a nuclear weapon than to build one.
Western Europe’s nuclear weapons should not be able to be captured or destroyed. Otherwise they must be fired early in a conflict, and limited response with further deterrence is then no longer possible.
Countries which think that they are least likely to be the aggressor in a nuclear war, most need to decrease the ratio of first strike: second strike capabilities. They can and should proceed along this path unilaterally.