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There are a number of flaws underpinning the logic of this activity between political leaders and nuclear industry executives. PM Abbott insisted at the time of signing the nuclear deal with India that the Agreement would be safe. In fact, the Abbott government has committed to selling uranium to an ambitious nation that barely conceals its intentions to expand its nuclear weapons arsenal and has refused to become a full signatory to the NPT and, along with the US, China and Pakistan, has not ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).
Prime Minister Modi is a pro-business politician and hardliner on Pakistan and Muslim populations in India and favours a security policy based on nuclear deterrence. The BJP holds a commanding majority in the lower house of Parliament. There is little reason to assume that Indian relations with Pakistan – or indeed with China – will soften by furnishing India with greater means to project its military power in the region. The surge of fundamentalist and jingoist forces in South Asia and rising military budgets and tensions between India and Pakistan on the one hand and China and the US, Japan and its allies on the other, aggravate the security situation in the region. Further, India has been waging an on-going long-term campaign against an insurgency within its borders, and it cannot guarantee against theft of nuclear-related materials.
Fourth, the option of nuclear power as the ‘clean’ alternative is nothing of the sort. Although the fission operation of nuclear power stations may be ‘cleaner’ than coal-fired power stations in terms of carbon emissions, and although the heat from fission may produce more energy and less waste per volume of uranium than coal, many problems remain unresolved. These include the safe storage of long-lived nuclear waste, long build time of reactors in proportion to rapidly accelerating effects of climate change, enormous financial costs, use and contamination of vital resources required across the nuclear cycle from mining to waste production (including water and fossil fuels),55centralised monopolisation of power management necessitated by nuclear power generation, excess heating of the atmosphere through the discharge of excess heat through water and air, danger to ecologies downwind or downstream from venting while refueling reactors, and increased potential for large-scale and long-term damage from accidents.
Given the advances of wind, solar, tidal and geothermal energy production which have become cheaper and more productive, as field-tested in China, Germany,56 Spain and other countries, and the abundance of these sources of energy in countries like Australia, the myth of base-load power is less sustainable than it was in the heady renaissance days. India’s pitch to rapidly increase economic growth has been embraced by the transnational nuclear industry as it represents an opportunity to expand the nuclear industry, and an opportunity to diversify from reliance on the Chinese market. But when typical cost-benefit analyses are extended to include the actual costs of the above-mentioned scenarios (nuclear weapons exchange, public health effects from industrial pollution from uranium mining and nuclear reactors, nuclear reactor disasters, nuclear waste storage, renewable energy alternatives), in an already fragile ecology in India, India’s nuclear energy plan reflects neither deep commitment to climate change mitigation nor serious concern for India’s impoverished populations.
Why does the Australian, Indian, the United States and Japanese governments (among others) and their affiliated transnational corporations, continue to accelerate nuclear related operations despite these significant obstacles?
It is unlikely that the Japan-India Nuclear Cooperation Agreement went unsigned because of any putative scruple Japan may have about selling nuclear technologies to India as a non-NPT nuclear weapons state. As the Modi and NPCIL accommodation of American supplier demands demonstrates, the liability clause can be flexible. It remains unlikely, however, that India will consent to opening all of its reactors for inspection.60 Rather, it is likely that Japan is awaiting an American executive decision on the liability issue and the possible inclusion of India into the NPT as a nuclear weapons state, since prior agreement would appear to abrogate Japan’s NPT obligations.
That PM Modi reasserted India’s customary ‘no first use’ policy does not mean that he does not intend to stockpile and bolster India’s nuclear arsenal. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) estimates that India possesses 90 to 110 nuclear weapons.61 In June 2014, the IHS (Information Handling Service) Jane’s military research group identified what they believe to be a new uranium hexafluoride (enrichment) facility at the Indian Rare Metals Plant near Mysore. As with its other military plants, this plant is not within IAEA safeguards. Estimated to be operational by mid-2015, it would produce roughly double the amount of enriched fuel (160 kilos a year enriched to 90 percent purity) required for India’s ballistic missile nuclear submarine fleet.62 The IHS analysts surmise that the surplus could be used for thermonuclear weapons (mixing enriched uranium and plutonium stockpiles).63 It could also be used to fuel nuclear submarines, space satellites, tactical and intermediate ballistic missiles, and multiple warhead Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (Agni V ICBM MIRVs) with the ability to reach cities in China and Pakistan. India joins the US, Russia, UK, France and China in possessing the ICBM with MIRV, leaving Pakistan further behind in terms of weapons parity, particularly in navy, air and ground forces, and missile capabilities.64 As India seeks to rival China, it could further destabilize relations with Pakistan by intensifying the ongoing arms race between the two. Regional tensions could be further exacerbated by Pakistan’s border skirmishes with Afghanistan and Iran over its support of the Taliban in Afghanistan.65 Along with increasing tensions involving US-Japan-India and China, this is precisely the scenario that NPT members have tried to avoid by subscribing to IAEA safeguards.
Since the late 1950s, there have been elements in the Japanese government (led by Abe’s grandfather and former Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke) who have advocated the procurement of tactical nuclear weapons as an entitlement under the nation’s right to self-defence as stipulated in the UN Charter. Although the US has long discouraged Japan’s nuclear weaponisation with assurances of extended nuclear deterrence, in 2003 US Vice-President Cheney stated that Japan’s possession of nuclear weapons could be tenable if it were aligned to US strategic deterrence policy.68 As an NPT signatory, Japan has accumulated the fourth largest stockpile of ‘civilian’ plutonium, the largest stockpile of any non-nuclear weapons state.69 Despite reprocessing programs having been closed down by many other countries, Japan claims that its significant nuclear reprocessing and fuel fabrication program is for ‘energy autonomy’ by which it means ‘closing the nuclear fuel cycle’. This relies upon the ability to separate plutonium from spent fuel and reprocess and fabricate it ‘upwards’ so as to produce more plutonium than is consumed, thereby facilitating an endless loop of fuel production and consumption. In this scenario, the Japanese government regards spent nuclear fuel and stockpiled plutonium as an ‘asset’ rather than a ‘debt’.
This ability should not be understood as solely for the reduction of reliance on foreign fuel imports or even of nuclear waste. In 2009, Ernest J. Moniz, an MIT professor and United States Secretary of Energy in 2014, admitted that uranium, once thought to be scarce, was now so abundant as to raise doubt over the necessity for nuclear fuel reprocessing.70 As of March 2011, despite the recommendations by the Japan Atomic Energy Commission and the Science Council of Japan of both direct disposal and limited surface storage of spent nuclear fuel in dry casks over fuel pool storage and reprocessing, the Japanese government would not rule out the reprocessing option. If the closed fuel cycle ever did eventuate, it would negate Japan’s dependence on the import of vital energy resources (uranium, oil, natural gas) so as to achieve ‘energy autonomy’. This would drastically reduce fuel costs and would also reduce vulnerability to sanctions should Japan breach the NPT (or other international agreements) in its decision to ‘go nuclear’.
Japan’s long-term investment in co-developing this high-level technical capability has made it the second most powerful missile power in the world, and the only nation outside the US with both low and upper-tier defences reputedly capable of intercepting missiles beyond the Earth’s atmosphere.72 Given this long-term commitment, it was not surprising that the Abe government in 2013 decided to declare the constitutional right to participate in ‘collective security’ operations with the US and other allies.
This technology, and Japan’s ambiguous intentions concerning nuclear and space weaponisation, means that the US and Japan, in collaboration with partners such as Australia and India (in sea-going operations in particular), could potentially integrate not only their BMD systems but also their nuclearized capabilities. As South Korea and Taiwan have also expressed interest in reprocessing their spent nuclear fuel (as have other states such as Saudi Arabia), these developments carry strong potential for proliferation.
One of the major implications of this distributed form of ‘self-defence’ is that US Pacific Command would further extend the pre-emptive strike capacity of its global nuclear strike force. With Japan’s recent release of space assets for military use (reconnaissance, communications, navigation, early warning) in collaboration with the US, this further augments the current period of US ‘nuclear primacy’ and a return to the conditions prior to 1963 when the Soviets had developed long-range bombers to deliver their nuclear payloads over US territory. Nuclear primacy transcends the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction in its ability to win a nuclear war, which the US is proposing to do by eliminating retaliatory capability with a single massive attack called ‘Prompt Global Strike’.
Under the Australia–India uranium trade agreement, India will use Australian yellow cake to diversify its nuclear program. If and when the Japan–India Nuclear Cooperation Agreement is concluded, it will supply the nuclear technology India requires to build its industrial capacity and indirectly enhance its nuclear arsenal. Negotiated almost simultaneously and in coordination, both of these Agreements, together with and following the US–India nuclear agreement, tacitly legitimise India’s nuclear status and assist in its ambitions for greater international influence. Australia and Japan, both NPT and NSG members, have become complicit in India’s nuclear weapons program and partially responsible for increasing the risk of nuclear accident in India, and for potentially aggravating nuclear rivalry in Asia.
India claims to need more electricity for domestic and industrial growth as well as to lift a significant population out of poverty. Yet there are many factors which create the conditions for the advance of India’s poor, just as there are many forms of alternative energy generation beyond nuclear and coal which would be safer, more reliable and powerful if given comparable investment and with smart power grid distribution networks.76 To the extent that governments and corporations continue to invest in nuclear power construction and reprocessing as a source of ‘renewable energy’, they diminish the potential to stem the destructive and exponentially increasing effects of climate change.77 China, Germany, the United States, India and even Japan are presently leading the world in investing in renewable energy technology. Yet, with the exception of Germany, this is being done in parallel with plans to expand nuclear power production.
The ongoing contamination from radiation dispersed from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant came, in part, from Australian uranium.78 When the benefits of uranium trade are weighed against the potential and actual costs and damages from uranium mining, the actual risks of nuclear reactor accidents and mismanagement, the decline in costs and advances in renewable technologies, potential nuclear weapons use (broadly defined) and proliferation, and the steady production of nuclear waste, it becomes clear that state-corporate policies to expand the industry are ill-conceived.
In 2014, as in 1945 and throughout the intervening decades, uranium mining, nuclear power generation and nuclear weapons remain ineluctably tied to the formation of a global power structure of nation-states and transnational corporations and instrumental in their overarching ambitions.
Adam Broinowski is an ARC postdoctoral research fellow at the School of Pacific and Asian History, College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University. His recent work includes a chapter, ‘Sovereign Power Ambition and the Realities of the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster’ in Nadesan/Boys/McKillop/Wilcox (eds.), Fukushima: Dispossession or Denuclearization?, The Dispossesion Publishing Group, 2014, and a forthcoming article, ‘Conflicting Immunities: Priorities of Life and Sovereignty amid the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster’, European Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies, December 2014. His book, Cultural Responses to Occupation in Japan: The Performing Body during and after the Cold War is forthcoming in 2015.
Recommended citation: Adam Broinowski, “Undermining Nuclear Non-Proliferation: Energy and Security Politics in the Australia–India–Japan–U.S. Nuclear Nexus,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 12, Issue 46, No. 2, November 1, 2014.
1 R. A. Paulsen, The Role of Nuclear Weapons in the Post-Cold War Era, Maxwell Airforce Base: Alabama Air University Press, 1994, pp. 1–11.
2 William Burr (ed.), ‘The Creation of SioP-62: More Evidence of the Origins of Overkill’, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing book No. 130, 13 July 2004.
3 Government of United States of America, Joint Chiefs of Staff, ‘Berlin Contingency Planning’, June 1961, National Security Archives.
4 F. Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983, p. 269. To what extent they calculated the ‘bonus kills’, as General LeMay put it, from radiation exposure is unclear, but it was likely a very conservative estimate.
5 For example, Uranerz Energy Corporation announced a net loss in the second quarter of 2013. See, ‘Uranerz Records Q2 Net Loss of $4.45 million’, 11 August 2014.
6 See Suzuki Tatsujiro in Mycle Schnyder and Anthony Froggat (eds.), World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2014, 18 August 2014, pp. 4, 76, 155; Aaron Sheldrick, ‘Global nuclear power contribution falls to lowest since 1980s’,Reuters, 29 July 2014; Jim Green, ‘Uranium – how low can it go’, Business Spectator, 29 May 2014.
7 Schneider and Froggatt, ‘Executive summary and conclusions’, World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2013, July.
8 David von Hippel, James H. Williams, ‘Nuclear safety concers with China’s growing reactor fleet’, NAPSNet Policy Forum, 28 October 2014.
9 John Mathews and Hao Tan, ‘China shows there is more to renewable energy than fighting climate change’, The Conversation, 11 September 2014.
10 Daniel Cusick, ‘Power companies in Japan move to restrict solar’, Scientific American, 2 October 2014.
11 Aaron Sheldrick, ‘Global nuclear power contribution falls to lowest since 1980s’, Reuters, 29 July 2014.
12 Paddy Manning, ‘Producers bullish on Japanese demand’, Sydney Morning Herald, 18 December 2012.
13 Andrew Picone, ‘Mining companies now have more rights than the community in Newman’s Queensland’, SBS News, 1 October 14. Between 2013–14 and 2017–18 Australia’s uranium production is projected to increase by 32 per cent to total 9590 tonnes, as supported by the Alliance Resources’ Four Mile mine in South Australia, ore extraction at Ranger uranium mine and Toro Energy’s Wiluna mine in Western Australia. Other additional mining operations such as Cameco’s Kintyre and Yeelirrie projects as well as potential projects in Queensland are not projected to begin until 2017–18. Government of Australia, BREE, Resources and Energy Quarterly, October 2013, p. 26.
14 ‘Toro signs NT deal with AREVA’, The West Australian, 29 September 2014.
15 The World Bank estimates that nearly 400 million Indians have no access to electricity. World Bank, ‘Energy’.
16 At the recent opening of a coal mine, Prime Minister Abbott was quoted as declaring ‘Coal is good for humanity, coal is good for prosperity, coal is an essential part of our economic future, here in Australia, and right around the world.’ Editors, ‘Coal is good for humanity’, The Australian, 15 October 2014.
17 ‘Nuclear power in the USA’, World Nuclear Report, 23 October 2014.
18 Mitsubishi CEO Kojima Yorihiko quoted by Rick Wallace, ‘ Billions to flow from Shinzo Abe visit, says Mitsubishi chairman’, The Australian , 7 July 2014.
19 Editor, ‘Exports that defy reason’, Japan Times, 20 April 2014.
20 The Defense Ministry of the Abe government has sought a 3.5 percent increase to ¥5.05 trillion for the fiscal year of 2015, an unprecedented military budget for the nation. Takenaka Kiyoshi, Reuters, 29 August 2014.
21 P. Kallender-Umezu, ‘Japan Quietly Builds Limited Counter-A2/AD Capabilities’, 17 September 2013, Defense News.
22 The Howard government proposed the expansion of uranium mining and uranium exports, establishment of a uranium enrichment industry, and construction of 25 power reactors. Others in Australia propose 20 nuclear by 2050. See Government of Australia, Prime Minister and Cabinet, 29 December 2006, ‘Uranium mining, processing and nuclear energy – opportunities for Australia’.
23 United Nations, UN Security Council Resolution 1172.
24 For more discussion on this, see C. Rovere and K. Robertson, ‘Australia’s Uranium and India: Linking Exports to CTBT Ratification’, Security Challenges, Vol. 9, No. 1 (2013), pp. 51–61.
25 ‘China wants Australia’s uranium’, ABC, 17 October 2005.
26 ‘Reliance Arm paid $3.45 million to UXA for uranium exploration’, The Hindu Business Line, 28 May 2008.
27 Later, it was admitted that Indian projections are overly ambitious, and they would scale down from 20,000 MWe of new nuclear capacity to 11,080 MWe by the year 2020.
29 IAEA, Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage, International Atomic Energy Agency.
30 Government of India, ‘The Civil Liability For Nuclear Damage Act’, 2010.
31 Editors, ‘U.S.-India Business Council Statement on Nuclear Liability Law’, Reuters, 30 August 2010.
32 Government of India, ‘Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Rules 2011’.
33 Indrani Bagchi, ‘India gives US insurance plan for nuclear plants’, The Times of India, 13 March 2014; Kapil Patil, ‘Untying the Civil Nuclear Liability Knot in the Indo-US Nuclear Deal’, Nautilus Institute, 30 September 2014.
34 Kapil Patil, ‘Untying the civil nuclear liability knot in the Indo-US nuclear deal’, NAPSnet policy forum, 30 September 2014.
35 Paul Meyer, ‘India and the meltdown of Canada’s nuclear non-proliferation policy: Ottawa abandons principled position for greater access to India’s economy’, Reuters.
36 Editors, ‘Yellow cake fever: Exposing the Uranium industry’s economic myths’, Australian Conservation Foundation, April 2013, p. 27.
37 Editors, ‘India dismisses NPT as ‘flawed’ treaty’, The Times of India, 23 March 2007.
38 Demetri Sevastopulo, Caroline Daniel, Jo Johnson, ‘India nuclear deal takes Congress by surprise’, Financial Times, 19 July 2005.
39 Yusra Mushtaq, ‘A Blatant Violation Of NPT’, 26 September 2014, Eurasia Review. See also, IAEA, Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, ‘IAEA Topic 2: The Implementation of the NPT for the Non-Supporters of this Treaty’.
40 Government of Australia, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, ‘Australia’s uranium export policy’.
41 John Carlson, ‘Is the Abbott Government abandoning Australia’s nuclear safeguards standards for India?’, The Interpreter, 1 October 2014 (part 1) and (part 2).
42 K. Subrahmanyam, ‘India and the nuclear deal’, The Times of India, 12 December 2005.
43 Crispin Rovere, ‘Australia–India nuclear treaty: a non-proliferation disaster’, Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 14 October 2014.
44 Comprising six open-cut pits and five underground mines, the Carmichael mine will cover an area seven times that of Sydney Harbour. Despite warnings from the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and UNESCO that this will place it ‘in danger’, plans to dredge and dump about 3 million cubic metres of the Reef into a wetlands sanctuary to make way for port expansions for 480 additional ships to access 330 million tonnes of coal per year from this mega-mine will use 12 billion litres of fresh water per year and will affect the habitat of humpback whales, sea turtles and dugongs. With 130 million tonnes of carbon dioxide produced every year for ninety years, this will cancel out the Queensland Direct Action target of 131 million tonnes of carbon dioxide reduction. Adani Enterprises has a dubious track record including illegal large-scale exports of iron ore at its port and numerous cases of environmental pollution. It has also been a significant supporter of the Bharatiya Janta Party. Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Citi, Morgan Stanley and possible JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs have refused to fund the project while the ‘big four’ Australian banks seem to be giving their approval. India is the third largest producer, consumer and importer of coal in the world and the fourth largest energy consumer in the world. See, Mary McCarthy, ‘Darwin and Adelaide likely export hubs for Queensland uranium’, ABC Rural; Ben Pearson, ‘ Carmichael coal mine impacts will be felt for generations,’ ABC Environment , 28Jul2014, William Rollo, ‘Carmichael Coal and Rail Project: Queensland mine gets Federal Government approval’, ABC News, 29 July 2014; Candace Dunn, ‘India falls back on imported fossil fuels’, Business Spectator, 15 August 2014.
45 ‘Indian activists take on Adani coal mine’, Geelong Advertiser, 9 October 2014; ‘Ramping up against coal’, Beyond Zero Emissions, September – August 2012.
46 In support of the claim for the rapid shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy and energy savings, the United Nations’ Secretary General Ban Ki-moon stated ‘We need to limit global temperature rise within 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. This is what the international community has recognised as the upper limit of safety. Beyond 2 degrees, the consequences will be unpredictable, highly dangerous and perhaps irreversible’. See, United Nations, ‘Secretary-General’s remarks at Climate Leaders Summit’, 11 April 2014. It is estimated that at least two thirds of proven fossil fuel reserves must stay in the ground and that carbon utilities and infrastructure must be developed beyond 2017 as 80 percent of cumulative emissions allowable between 2010 and 2035 are already locked into existing power plants, factories, buildings and services. In addition this will result in significant positive in health effects, job production, biodiversity conservation, energy independence and stronger sovereignty and resilience. Although several countries have moved to end public finance for coal and other fossil fuels, Australia has yet to do so in a significant manner. See WHO – 7 million premature deaths linked to air pollution and Climate Change – IPCC Response Strategies.
47 Editors, ‘A new engagement: The Indo-Australian nuclear deal signals a paradigm shift in the quality of the relationship between the two nations’, The Hindu Business Line, 8 September 2014.
48 Neeta Lal, ‘India’s Nuclear Energy Imperative’, The Diplomat, 8 October 2014.
50 Joby Warrick, ‘Obama and Modi announce agreement on U.S.-India efforts to fight global warming’, Washington Post, 30 September 2014.
51 Government of the United States, The White House, ‘U.S.-India Joint Statement’, 30 September 2014.
52 M. V. Ramana, ‘Indian activists detained for protesting against India-Australia uranium agreement,’ Dianuke, 5 September 2014.
53 While there are conflicting reports, in contrast to studies based on dose estimates in accordance with institutional levels (such as the ICRP), an Indian Doctors for Peace and Development (IDPD) epidemiological study found in 2007 that living within 2.5kms of the mining operations increased rates of illness (2118 households) and was upheld by the Jharkhand High Court in 2007. This was supported by a study in 2004 by Koide Hiroaki who found the level to be 10mSv/y around the mine and over 1 mSv/y in the villages. The UCIL managers have used the As Low As Reasonably Achievable (ALARA) principle to set permissible radiation exposure limits and precautionary measures and have shown disregard for the conditions of indigenous peoples living in the area. See, Shakeel ur Rahman, ‘Study on Health status of Indigenous people around Jadugoda uranium mines in India’, IDPD.
UCIL Chairman Diwakar Acharya denied any correlation and blamed ordinary socio-economic factors (malnutrition). Stephanie March, ‘Australia to sell uranium to India but at what cost to its people?’, ABC 7:30 Report, 3 September 2014; Uranium Corporation of India hopes to get renewal of Jaduguda mine lease soon PTI, 6 October 2014; Rakteem Katakey, Tom Lasseter, ‘India’s Uranium Boss Says Deformed Children May Be ‘Imported’,’Bloomberg, 24 July 2014.
54 Mari Yamaguchi, ‘Sendai reactors vulnerable to eruptions, state-picked volcanologist says’, The Japan Times, 18 October 2014.
55 France, which until recently has drawn roughly three quarters of its energy supply from nuclear power stations, uses 40-50 percent of the nation’s mostly fresh water supply to cool its plants.
56 Germany, for example, prior to the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011 was heavily reliant on nuclear and fossil fuels. Over the past decade, however, its use of renewable energy mainly from solar and wind, has tripled. In 2013, however, renewable energy accounted for 24 percent of the nation’s total electricity supply. Despite government subsidies of roughly EU 16 billion, the Government claims to have created new businesses worth 40 billion euros per year and created additional employment to 400,000 people. Emily Steward, ABC, 29 October 2014.
57 See for example, Jeremy Rifkin, ‘No nukes!’, Los Angeles Times, 29 September 2006.
58 Nagao Shigeru, ‘Why Japan needs India as a Strategic Power’, Defence and Security Alert, 26 October 2014.
59 Vince Scappatura, ‘The U.S. “Pivot to Asia”, the China Specter and the Australian-American Alliance’, Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 12, Issue 36, No. 3, September 9, 2014.
60 Bhattacharjee, S., A. Sasi, ‘Japan wants slice of the nuclear pie, warms up to liability law’, Indian Express, 12 June 2014.
61 Editors, SIPRI Yearbook 2014.
62 Along with the P-5 states, India and Pakistan also continue to develop new systems capable of delivering nuclear weapons and are expanding their capacities to produce fissile material for military purposes. India conducted successful tests of the 5,000-km Agni-V, India’s first ICBM. Along with its shorter-range Prithvi missiles, India’s 2,000-km K-4 SLBM and its Agni-I (700-km), Agni-II (2,000-km) and Agni-III (3,000-km) missiles were tested under Strategic Forces Command in March 2014. It is still to test the 750-km K-15 SLBM in India’s first indigenous nuclear-powered submarine the INS Arihant in sea trials in late 2014. Rajat Pandit, ‘Pakistan surges ahead of India in nuclear stockpile: Report’, The Times of India, 17 June 2014.
64 Pakistan possesses roughly the equivalent nuclear weapons as India, which serves as a cheap deterrent in the face of India’s overwhelming conventional superiority. Nevertheless, Pakistan is developing shorter-range cruise missiles to evade ballistic missile defence and is planning a long-term build-up of its nuclear arsenal and delivery systems, including tactical short-range missiles, as a ‘full spectrum deterrent’. See for example, Tim Craig and Karen DeYoung, ‘Pakistan is eyeing sea-based and short-range nuclear missiles, analysts say’, Washington Post, 21 September 2014; Kyle Mizokami, ‘If Pakistan and India clash: 5 Pakistani weapons of war India should fear’, The National Interest, 24 August 2014; Kyle Mizokami, ‘If Pakistan and India went to war: 5 Indian weapons of war Pakistan should fear’, The National Interest, 16 August 2014; Amin Saikal, ‘Pakistan must de-escalate conflicts with three of its neighbours’, Canberra Times, 4 November 2014.
65 Amin Saikal, ‘Pakistan must de-escalate conflicts with three of its neighbours’, Canberra Times, 4 November 2014.
66 Kageyama Yuri, ‘Japan pro-bomb voices grow louder amid nuke debate’, Associated Press, 31 July 2012.
67 Adam Westlake, ‘Surprisingly Japan declines 16 UN outlawing nuclear weapons’, Japan Daily Press, 23 October 2012.
68 M. Mochizuki, ‘Japan tests the nuclear taboo’, Non-Proliferation Review, vol. 14, no. 2, July 2007.
69 M. Pomper and M. Toki, ‘Time to stop reprocessing in Japan’, Arms Control Today, January/February 2013.
70 Matthew Wald, ‘U.S. Panel shifts focus to reusing nuclear fuel’, New York Times, 23 September 2009.
71 Missile shield deployments are currently in Alaska and the Aleutian Islands, Greenland, Britain, Norway, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Poland, the Czech republic, Turkey, Georgia and potentially in Ukraine.
72 Chester Dawson, ‘Japan shows-off its missile defense system’, Wall Street Journal, 9 November 2012.
73 While Japan may have a powerful missile system integrated with the US, one should not overlook the US-initiated NATO interceptor missile system that incorporated the U.S.–Germany-Italy Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS) and NATO’s Active Layered Theatre Ballistic Missile Defence (ALTBMD) program and is being deployed in the ongoing military build-up in Eastern Europe. See for example, ‘SM-3 BMD, in from the sea: EPAA & Aegis Ashore’, Defense Industry Daily, 13 October 2014.
74 Government of the United States, Department of Defense, ‘Nuclear Posture Review Report’, April 2010.
75 K. Lieber and D. Press (2006), ‘US Primacy in Foreign Policy’, Foreign Affairs, March/April, pp. 42–54.
76 Andrew Picone,‘Queenslanders have more reason than ever to be concerned about uranium mining in the sunshine stateMining companies now have more rights than the community in Newman’s Queensland’, SBS News, 1 October 2014.
77 Yusra Mushtaq, ‘A Blatant Violation Of NPT’, Eurasia Review, 26 September 2014.
78 Dave Sweeney, ‘Fukushima: Australia’s Radioactive Rocks And Responsibility’, New Matilda, 29 August 2014.
Amazingly, half of all Americans say they don’t care about government surveillance — and during a random sampling of people on the streets of New York City not one could identify Edward Snowden, or what he did.
That’s despite an Academy Award winning documentary on his release of classified documents about the spying activities of a National Security Agency called Citizenfour.
The government is collecting data from you all the time. From your phone, computer, tablet, credit cards, travel records and more. We know they are doing this because of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
John Oliver traveled to Moscow where Snowden, wanted by the U.S government, has asylum for the next three years. There he interviewed Snowden in an attempt to find out why more Americans don’t care about the government spying on their personal lives.
Based on Snowden’s explanation of the government’s spying activities, here are five basic questions every American should ask themselves about the NSA surveillance program.
1. Do you want the government to collect your data (including your naked pictures)?