'Oppenheimer' stirs fears on elusive nuclear 'grand bargain'

I am a child of the Cold War.

I remember vividly the duck-and-cover drills and the radiation symbol marking the entrance to the basement shelter at my school. Today's students don't much worry about being vaporized - just shot.

I remember the fear that played across my mother's face when the TV news reported that the threat of thermonuclear war between America and the Soviet Union was menacingly real during the Cuban missile crisis.

I thought about all of this as I watched the seminal film Oppenheimer, which transports us back to the dawn of the atomic era and the emotions and debates that attended the creation of a single weapon capable of destroying an entire city. Was it moral to use such a weapon? That debate will never die.

The scientists were well aware that such a weapon made a mockery of the Geneva Convention's "rules of war" designed to protect civilians, but then so did the indiscriminate V2 attacks on London, and the conventional fire bombings of Dresden and Tokyo.

Oppenheimer believed that America's possession of the bomb was a moment of maximum leverage to place such weapons under United Nations control and preemptively stop the arms race that would eventually provide the U.S. and the Soviet Union with the means to destroy each other many times over.

It would take more than 20 years before the completion of the Non-Proliferation Treaty attempted to control the spread nuclear weapons with a simple bargain - the vast majority of nations would not seek nuclear weapons if the acknowledged nuclear powers pledged to reduce their arsenals with the ultimate goal of eliminating these weapons.

Some nations - India, Pakistan and Israel - did not sign. One - North Korea - withdrew from the treaty. Iran has threatened to leave even as it violates its treaty obligations. Half a century on, the bargain remains unfulfilled.

Through SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) and START (Strategic Arms Reduction Talks) America and the Soviets/Russians whittled down their arsenals. Under New START - in force since 2011 - the ceiling is 1,550 warheads/bombs.

China is not a signatory to New START and the Pentagon believes China now has 400 weapons, a level they did not think the Chinese would reach until 2030. China has rejected calls for it to enter into negotiations with the U.S. and Russia.

So, here we are. Hiroshima and Nagasaki demonstrated to the world the horrors of nuclear warfare but those who believed that we are safer with a sufficient number of nukes in our back pocket have always won the day in national security debates.

In the past year, Vladimir Putin has rattled his nuclear saber in Ukraine, suggesting he would cross a threshold and use a lower yield tactical nuclear weapon, a kind of weapon not covered by New START.

President Biden and President Putin agreed to extend New START until 2026 within days of President Biden taking office, but relations with Russia in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine are more than strained.

As such, we find ourselves at a dangerous moment. The grand bargain of the NPT is stalled and eroding. China and North Korea are adding weapons. Iran is closer than ever to a breakout. Other nations debate whether they need their own nuclear umbrellas, unsure that America's will protect them.

Creating the momentum for successful negotiations takes time and enormous diplomatic effort, but diplomatic effort is the only thing that has ever caused the danger of nuclear catastrophe to recede.

Even with treaty limits, we are spending vast sums to modernize our arsenal, as are the Russians and Chinese. New START will expire during the next President's watch. Who will lead that diplomatic effort?

• Keith Peterson, of Lake Barrington, served 29 years as a press and cultural officer for the United States Information Agency and Department of State. He was chief editorial writer of the Daily Herald 1984-86.