Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / PREVIEW: Nobel Peace Prize Winner Dave Sweeney

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PREVIEW: Nobel Peace Prize Winner Dave Sweeney · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  Good day, humans. Welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas and the least dangerous
• 0:08
  of dangerous ideas. But one of the most audacious is the idea of abolishing nuclear weapons
• 0:15
  altogether. Regarding them as a technology that humankind should never really have stumbled
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  upon and that it is time to reverse because they can only end in a total annihilation
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  and configuration. That's the attitude of today's guest, Dave Sweeney, who co-founded
• 0:31
  the International campaign to abolish nuclear weapons, which won the Nobel Peace Prize
• 0:35
  in 2017. He is this show's first Nobel Peace Prize winner. I was recently in Hiroshima
• 0:42
  and took a dawn stroll around the atomic dome, the building that has been preserved and
• 0:49
  has become a world heritage listed site because it was pretty much directly underneath
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  the bomb when it went off. As a strange result of physics that I do not understand, it
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  was left standing because there was no lateral blast force since the explosion came down
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  on top of it. That's now this eerie monument with this shattered skeletal dome. As the
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  sun rose over it and rose over the river, next to the peace park, which is now an area
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  for contemplation and commemoration and museums, I went down a rabbit hole with ChatGPT about
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  the current power, the current payload of modern hydrogen bombs in comparison to the
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  world's tiniest first foray into nuclear devastation. I won't bore you with statistics,
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  but suffice it to say it's orders of magnitude more devastating, the arsenals that Russia
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  and the United States and a handful of other nations are now sitting on. Are these a useful
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  backstop to protect us against violence, to protect us against war, and to ensure the
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  survival, the existential ongoing existence of states that might otherwise be threatened
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  with conventional warfare? Or is it just a sort of damically hanging over human civilization
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  that as the clock ticks by and the day is turning into weeks, turning to months, turning
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  to years, turning to decades, it is just inevitable that something is going to happen either by
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  mistake or by intention that ruins, ruins are really good day. That's the opinion of today's
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  guest. He's also an anti-nuclear power campaigner, so we explore the interesting ways in which
• 2:34
  nuclear weapons and nuclear energy may or may not be connected, the relative risks of
• 2:39
  both the impact of uranium mining and so on. There is an Australian election this weekend,
• 2:46
  in which the Conservative Party, which is tipped to remain out of power, has taken an audacious plan
• 2:52
  to the electorate to make Australia a nuclear energy nation. We currently don't get any of our
• 3:00
  power, our energy from nuclear, and that is now on the cards. We talk about the rise of nuclear
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  energy as a potential backstop against the incredible energy, hungryness of artificial intelligence
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  and so on, but I just thought it was a really interesting opportunity to step back and get inside
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  the head of someone who's devoted his entire life really to what seems like a hair-brained scheme,
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  but maybe a scheme that humankind's survival depends on. I hope you enjoy as much as I did,
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  the one, the only Dave Sweeney.
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  Were you in Oslo for the Nobel Peace Prize?
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  Yeah, I was.
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  Did you receive it?
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  I was.
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  What was that like?
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  I didn't receive it. I was in the room and I was part of it.
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  I wasn't. There were two people. There was Beatrice Finn, who was the executive director of
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  Icanning International and there was Setsuko Thurlow, who's a Hiroshima survivor. She dug
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  herself out of the ruins of a school at the age of 13 and she spent her life since advocating
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  against nuclear weapons and calling for abolition. So they were the two that represented and accepted,
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  but I was in the room and it was incredible. Did they give you anything? Did you get a little badge
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  or something?
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  Yeah, we got a little badge. We got a dinner. We got away from the king.
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  There was quite a bit of pomp and ceremony.
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  That was very special.
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  How did you find out that you were receiving?
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  It was an extraordinary story, that one, because like we won Ican one in 2017, the Nobel,
• 4:29
  which was extraordinary, there was this whole sort of wave of attention and interest and the like.
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  And then a couple of people from Ican Australia, because we were the foundation group,
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  it started here in Australia. A couple of people spoke about their excitement at receiving
• 4:46
  an invitation from the Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize committee to come to Oslo.
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  And I was like, I haven't got one of those.
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  And it wasn't like I wasn't like shattered by it, but I was a little bit intrigued and I was a
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  little bit like, oh, and then nothing. And I didn't worry about it. And I thought it's a long
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  way to go and there was a multi-person thing and there'll be great people from Australia going
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  to represent us. So that's all good. A lot of cash, a lot of time, a lot of carbon. It's okay.
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  I'll go to the event in Melbourne that marks it. And then I was looking through my spam folder.
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  And I came across this whole thread from the Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize committee, which
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  Gmail has identified this as a Nigerian scam. Exactly. Exactly.
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  You know, we know Norway being telling this guy about the Nobel Prize.
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  Exactly. Here's this Nobel Prize. Here's this gold medal I found. And you can have a piece of it
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  if you turn up and give me your details. And it was quite extraordinary because it started off as,
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  you know, dear hair, Dr. Dave, and ended up by be advised if you did not reply by this time your
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  seat will go. No. Yes. It was time passed. No. It was the day. Oh my goodness. I was three hours,
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  and it had been weeks, and I was three hours within time. So I thought, you know, the goddess is
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  smart. I'm meant to go. I was loving. I filled in the form and got on a plane, unbelievable.
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  And had you known that you were nominated, like what's the process of doing flag it for you in
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  advance? No, it is absolutely. World governments could take a lesson from that committee.
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  It is absolutely tight. We didn't know. And there was a notification. I think it was one hour
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  before to the Geneva office that said in one hour, the chair of the committee, like they identified
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  themselves as the Nobel Peace Prize committee, the Norwegian committee. They said in one hour,
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  the chair of the committee is going to announce that ICANN is a 2017 recipient. Wow. This is not
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  a joke. Be advised for media purposes. Right. And that was it. That's it. And we didn't hear anything.
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  It was it was early evening seven eight o'clock on a Friday night in Australia. I was in Melbourne.
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  And and the phone just started going crazy. I put the phone in another room. We had friends
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  for dinner and I just didn't want the distraction. And then it was just like ping, ping, ping, ping, ping.
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  Did you tell the friends what was going on? And I went and had a look. And there was this,
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  oh my god, I can't believe it. Unbelievable. Oh my god, from all around the world. Right.
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  And I'm not that technically sophisticated or adept. And it normally takes me like 15 minutes
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  to turn on most platforms. And this time I think I was just guided and I hit and it went to BBC.
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  And it was right at the moment when the chair was announcing and said, and so the prize goes
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  to the international campaign. And I just walked into this into our lounge room and said,
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  just listen. And she said to abolish nuclear weapons. I can. And the place erupted. It was
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  extraordinary. We had no idea. You don't even know you've been nominated. And it was extraordinary.
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  So you turned on BBC TV at the precise moment that the announcement was being made.
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  I turned on BBC TV right when she just finished saying inter. Wow. And so who were the guests who
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  you had? Were they in your industry? Did they understand? They were fantastic. It was absolutely
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  perfect because it was wonderful one. Felicity Ruby, who was the first staff member for ICANN.
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  And I made your driver for years in disarmament work here and in the US and around the world.
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  And she was living in rural New South. And it come back for a bit of a city hit in Melbourne
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  and it picked up Turkish takeaway at one of our favourites in Sydney Road in Brunswick. And she'd
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  bought it around and we were sitting there just mulling over the vision of dips and falafels and
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  the like. And the next minute we were jumping in the air and then love changes. Yeah. I remember
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  reading Obama. I think it was in Obama's first memoir of his presidency about him getting the call
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  that he had won the Nobel Peace Prize. And his first, his initial instinct was a fuck sake.
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  Cause like he didn't want that to be the defining thing that was going to be, you know,
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  obviously he's a president as well. So you know that that's going to be the top line of his
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  obituary. But nonetheless, he felt like at that moment, it was more hassle than it was worth
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  to be associated with these hoity-toity, you know, foreign peace loving people when he was trying
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  to win over Republicans and so on. What was your initial, like after the initial shock?
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  What was your? Well, I reckon with ocean. Well, I reckon with Obama, the current incumbent in
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  the States would be very happy to get a piece of bread. I love it, wouldn't he? Wouldn't he love it?
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  Yeah, he would absolutely adore it. And with Obama too, like that was aspirational, you know,
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  Obama made that most beautiful speech in Prague and the declaration about a world free of nuclear
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  weapons. Was that before or after the prize, you know, it was before the prize and it was
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  largely why he got the prize and it was aspirational. Well, you've said that, you've made that commitment
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  now, step it out, get the prize and deliver. And so two or three steps, he made the commitment,
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  he got the prize, but he didn't deliver. Like America continued to expand its nuclear, you know,
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  weapons, its arsenal, it modernized its arsenal, et cetera, et cetera. So that was
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  disappointing and I think there is sort of that lesson to it. It must be difficult to select
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  a recipient for such a prize of such stature must be a really difficult and charged and loaded
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  thing. And you know, to strike that balance between aspiration and delivery too, like you want to
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  encourage, but you're said, I don't want to preempt, which was the, yeah, I'm sorry. Part of
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  a thing with the barmer also was that he was worried that there's a, that if you, if when they make
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  a selection that is so overtly political, like, you know, a partisan politician in a particular country,
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  conservatives are likely to see that as, well, of course, there's a global estate leader of leftists
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  who are just happy that George W. Bush is no longer the president of the United States,
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  they give it to a new president who hasn't even done anything yet just because they're like him.
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  Absolutely. You know, there would be all that sort of, you know, the hubbub of the woke agenda
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  and all that sort of nonsense there would be. No question. You originally asked so, Josh,
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  about how, how did it, how did I feel? And I felt, like I felt a few, like a jamming of,
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  of emotions all at the same time. I felt like now this will put this issue on the agenda in
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  Australia. Now Australia will step up and take the steps and we're still working for that.
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  We're still working for Australia to sign and ratify the treaty for the prohibition of nuclear
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  weapons and to, and to really be very declarative, like in the time of orcas arrangement with the US
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  and the UK and increasing militarisation and talk of nuclear weapons, we want Australia to
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  absolutely critically, unequivocally draw a line in the sand and say, we are not a nuclear
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  weapons nation. I mean, we are not a nuclear weapons nation. No, but we do shelter and acknowledge
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  and explicitly acknowledge the US nuclear umbrella, they call it. So what they call end,
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  which is pretty apt and it's extended nuclear deterrence. So at a fundamental level in Australian
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  defence posture is this awareness that our great and powerful friend has a vast amount of weapons
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  that can destroy life on earth. And if the worst comes to the worst, we're under that umbrella.
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  Whatever that means, because there's no survivors in the rubble, no joy in the rubble.
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  But that still is a clear part of Australia's defence posture. That has to end. The other thing is
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  that we've now got arrangements with orcas, the Australia, UK, US defence arrangement,
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  which sees nuclear powered submarines with the potential for mission creep into nuclear weapons
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  submarines and the stationing of B-52 long-range US Air Force bombers at the Tindall RWAF
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  base in Catherine in the Northern Territory. Now, those bombers, 50% of the US B-52 fleet
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  is nuclear capable, 50% of them because of the start, the previous arms limitation reduction
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  treaty, because of the start agreement, 50% of that fleet has been rendered not technically
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  capable of carrying nuclear ordnance. That's the treaty between Russia and the United States
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  for denuclearisation. That's right. Strategic arms reduction treaty between the states and Russia,
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  yeah, exactly. And it's just a pause for a moment on the nuclear deterrent and the nuclear umbrella.
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  In a world in which nuclear weapons do exist, why does it not make sense for Australia to avail
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  itself of their deterrent capability? Given that America has them, you know, you say that there's
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  no one wins in a nuclear exchange, and of course they don't. But the logic of the pro-nuclear
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  weapon person is to say the whole point is that you never do have an exchange because the exchange
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  would be so horrifying that you have mutually assured destruction. So as long as we're under that
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  umbrella, we're safer than if we were the only idiots without that deterrent capability.
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  Yeah, that is the logic. That is the logic of, you know, the strange loves and the promoters
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  is mutually assured destruction, and they're so bad that no rational person will use them.
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  There's a few conditions and caveats in that whole set of assumptions. And one is logical person.
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  And two is that there wouldn't be any other reason whereby nuclear weapons be activated, either
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  computer error, AI gone wrong, our aging command and control facilities, particularly in,
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  particularly in, you know, Russia and also in the states where there's aging infrastructure.
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  And also if you look at it, we have Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. They're the two men whose
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  fingers are on the biggest buttons when it comes to nuclear weapons in the world, over 90 percent
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  of the nuclear weapons in the world, in the arsenals of those two countries. So that doesn't
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  inspire confidence. So every model that I have ever seen on nuclear wargaming and they do it
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  every day in the nuclear weapon states, every model sees a tactical or limited exchange just
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  turn into a wide-scale nuclear escalation. But isn't that why we haven't had a small-scale
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  tactical exchange? It could be in one sense you could look at that, but the other sense is there
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  is increasing concern that the whole principle of deterrence is based on the false assumption
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  that every piece of that architecture of deterrence will remain intact under complex times,
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  under non-state actors, under different technology, etc. And under incredibly venial and irrational
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  people. And that's a pretty big role of the dice for the planet. So just to clarify,
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  I can imagine two potential positions that a medium-sized power like Australia could take. One
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  would be we are committed to a nuclear-free world and we want to use whatever geopolitical sway
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  we have to try to encourage everyone to move towards the total elimination of nuclear weapons
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  from the planet. Another could be we believe in that and also we reject their US nuclear umbrella.
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  Could you not play both sides and say as long as there are nukes we want to be protected by them
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  and we also want to abolish nukes. The HWA bets are great Australian tradition, but in this one
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  it's actually a position that our greatest safety and this is like a deeply held view, but not
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  just by me I think there's an increasingly deeply held amongst many strategists and analysts
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  that these weapons can't be used because they will only escalate and cause massive if not
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  irredeemable global damage. But we can't guarantee that they can't be used because there's so many
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  variables in politics, in technology, in non-state actors in malicious intent and it's quite amazing
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  really that we're sitting here and these weapons have existed this year for 80 years and they've
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  been used in anger twice. There've been used multiple times in tests and impacted people all
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  around the world with a legacy that still continues. They have poison the body politic, but in
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  anger there's no better prony of their argument in the sense that the prony of the person will say
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  it's inconceivable that we would have gotten through the Cold War in the 20th century without
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  more significant conflicts than we had without a direct confrontation between the USSR and the
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  United States were it not for the specter of nukes. Yeah I can understand that logic at the time when
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  you're in a binary bipolar situation, when you're in a situation where there were two big
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  arm camps but we're in a different situation now. But does that mean that nuclear weapons were
• 18:25
  valuable during the Cold War? I wouldn't say they were valuable. I would say that if you looked
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  at the Cold War, the Cold War was lukewarm, the very hot and many proxy and guerrilla wars all
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  through that time where the two great powers of that day funded wars all around the globe
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  on their behalf as a proxy was. So it wasn't like we had this massive peaceful time.
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  No, I take the force to the death too. We outsource the death in all throughout Africa,
• 18:56
  all throughout Central America, indeed. But I take your point is that no one pushed the button.
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  And when we were at, you know, when we're looking at the Soviets putting nuclear weapons
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  in Cuba, the Cuban missile crisis and Chris Chevin and Kennedy were staring each other down,
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  they didn't push the button. So we got through that. Yeah. But I don't think we can get through
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  and just to clarify, do you think that were it not for the existence of nuclear weapons,
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  a scenario like that would have been likely to cause a third world war? No, I think that actually
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  nuclear weapons skewed the politics of the time, utterly. I don't think they made a safer.
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  I think that put us in a perpetual, like, snap frozen moment of fear for decades. I think
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  they're really damaged. I think they're really damaged. Why is a snap frozen moment of fear a
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  bad thing? I mean, you could say a snap frozen moment of fear if it means that you're too afraid
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  to go to war is a source of peace. Yeah. Wow. Everyone's shit scared of going to war. Longbow.
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  I get you logic, but longbow. We're not peas. We're people. You know, so snap frozen,
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  it's not the ideal state to be. You know, like, I think that we need to, like, there's no shortage
• 20:11
  of destructive capacity outside of nuclear weapons. You know, the world is a big difference,
• 20:16
  isn't it? There is a big difference in destroying the planet, destroying civilization. Indeed.
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  With the flick of a switch, is the elephant in the room? It is. It's huge. And that's what it is.
• 20:29
  So that's what it is. You've put the nub of it because it's everything that's been, everything
• 20:34
  that is and everything that ever could be could be ended. That's what it is. Every other weapon
• 20:40
  kills people in that vicinity, knocks out infrastructure in that vicinity. This one has the
• 20:47
  capacity to kill well past its use point and well past its detonation point. Like a recent
• 20:55
  modeling that I cam was involved in and the international physicians for the prevention of
• 21:00
  nuclear war were involved in, they modeled just a small nuclear exchange and they modeled
• 21:05
  attention over Kashmir between India and Pakistan and a small nuclear exchange. And from there,
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  to be in people over a decade, die, to be in over a decade because the amount of
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  particulate material smoke ash debris that is sucked and lifted into the upper atmosphere where
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  it's not where there's no wind so it doesn't disperse it sits there. That then drops sun,
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  which drops temperature, growing conditions, et cetera, and to be in dire famine in a decade.
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  And they've run that through multiple sorts of models and it keeps coming up with that figure.
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  Now there's no other weapon that could do that. And like you said, it is existential. It's an
• 21:49
  existential threat. And so I think we really need to change and challenge the way we think
• 21:55
  and what it means. And without getting too sort of hippy or trippy about it, there is that thing
• 22:05
  that we are 8 billion or however many people we are on a small interconnected planet.
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  You've just been to Japan. There's different people, different language, different culture.
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  You flew there. It's a 10 hour flight. You're connected. All of us are connected. People listening
• 22:20
  to this in the States or in Europe or wherever anyone is listening to this. We share the same
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  waterways. We share the same air. We share the same global currents. We share the same dynamics.
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  And we see with civil nuclear accidents, with Fukushima, Pacific pollution, with Chernobyl,
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  right over East and West and Europe, right over Turkey. Radiation doesn't need a passport to
• 22:46
  travel. So it might sound a little bit dreamy, but it's a lot better than nightmare to say,
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  this is a weapon or a set of weapons that are beyond our emotional and intellectual capacity
• 23:03
  as species. We're really smart. We do some really great stuff. We have some pretty funky tech.
• 23:07
  This one, let's step back from it. And people go, well, the gene is at a bottle. You can't do it.
• 23:13
  And I understand that. I understand that logic, but it's also the logic of if you accept that logic,
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  then the logic is, well, I'm just going to keep my fingers crossed through my entire life,
• 23:24
  from my kids entire life, through ever, that no idiot bloke or piece of tech malfunction
• 23:31
  or whether balloon mistaken as an incoming is going to ruin everything that ever was is and will be.
• 23:38
  And I reckon we need to be a little bit more proactive about ensuring this beautiful planet.
• 23:43
  And I also take some sort of hope, like a hundred years ago, you were talking, you know,
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  First World War, the poetry, the Wilfredo, and all of that was gas put on your mask,
• 23:54
  froth corrupted lungs. World War II, all those early images were kids in
• 24:01
  London railway stations with gas masks going to trains to the country, but gas wasn't used.
• 24:08
  There was massive aerial bombardments on all sides. Crawl behaviors on all sides,
• 24:13
  but that wasn't used in that military way. There was terrible use of gas in, you know,
• 24:21
  the concentration camps horrendous, but military bomb gas wasn't used. And yet,
• 24:26
  25 years earlier, it had been the thing, 20 years earlier, it had been the thing.
• 24:31
  And I think that people can put a technology aside, put a aspect aside and say, okay,
• 24:39
  we're drawing a line on that one. He's not used gas on London for humanitarian reasons.
• 24:44
  No, they, well, what, what was the difference? I think I don't know enough about my
• 24:49
  history to know what that was. I think it was, I think it was a combination. It had moral
• 24:55
  compunction. I don't think he, I don't think he went, you know, the League of Nations has passed a
• 24:59
  resolution. Joseph, Joseph, put it down. Yeah. Hey, man. Yeah. No, that's, I don't think it was
• 25:08
  that. Right. But I think it was also like it military utility. Like if you was removed from the
• 25:16
  arsenal because it had limited, there was probably a waste of money, really. And limit and no utility.
• 25:23
  So the same with nuclear weapons. Their utility is what you said before.
• 25:28
  Their utility, their utility is never being used. Their utility is this will ruin everything.
• 25:35
  Their utility is the person on the ledge holding everything saying, I'm going to jump.
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  Like, I mean, I love the way that you phrase it as, you know, in sort of psychedelic or cosmic
• 25:47
  terms, because I do think that's where we need to get to, not just with nukes, but with a bunch
• 25:51
  of different challenges that we face in the 21st century from climate chaos to artificial
• 25:56
  intelligence and to all things that where we are all we all have a stake. The problem presumably
• 26:02
  is that there's a kind of a game theory, prisoners dilemma scenario here where it's a collective
• 26:09
  action problem, right? The to get to a world in which there are no nuclear weapons is desirable.
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  But to get to a world in which only responsible people give up their nuclear weapons and the
• 26:25
  capacity remains for the irresponsible to have some is probably less desirable than the world we
• 26:31
  currently inhabit. That's an interesting one. I think the end point of getting to a world
• 26:39
  free of nuclear weapons is essential more than desirable. And I'd also say that I don't accept
• 26:46
  that there are right hands for the wrong weapon weapons. I don't believe there are responsible
• 26:51
  nuclear weapon holders. I actually are more or less right there. There are less obviously,
• 26:58
  obviously a rational and mad. Okay, that's a fair enough point. But if you look at it like these
• 27:06
  weapons are ultimately they are saying I am prepared in order to achieve my perceived strategic goals
• 27:15
  to end life on earth. That's what nuclear weapons say. Yes, but I don't think that that's necessarily
• 27:21
  an illegitimate claim. If your strategic goal is the survival of liberal democracy, the flourishing
• 27:31
  of civilization. But how does that happen? How does our civilization flourish after a nuclear
• 27:37
  exchange? It doesn't, but I think you're conflating the desirability of nuclear weapons with the
• 27:42
  desirability of a nuclear exchange. I mean, I don't think people who favor nuclear weapons favor
• 27:47
  them because they like the idea of nuclear bonds going off. They favor them because they believe,
• 27:53
  for example, that in a world in which Putin has nuclear weapons, it's a good thing that France and
• 27:59
  the United Kingdom do as well. Yeah, I know that that's what they believe. But then where does that
• 28:06
  leave us? And where does that leave Putin? Like, I mean, it leaves Putin boxed in in a way that he
• 28:12
  wouldn't be if France and the UK didn't have nukes. Arguably? Well, he's not usually constraints is
• 28:21
  like put it this way, do you believe that Europe would be safer if Putin had nukes and the UK
• 28:27
  and France didn't? I believe that Europe would be safer if nobody had nukes and what we need to do
• 28:34
  is step towards that. And I also believe that when you look, if you can't use nuclear weapons
• 28:41
  and you can, unless you've abandoned any pretence of reasonable and rational, because everybody who
• 28:49
  is in that game knows that it escalates. Yeah. So if you disavow first strike. So you disavow
• 28:55
  first strike and if you can't use them, then there is an argument by many hawkish people that say,
• 29:02
  why would you spend so many billions of dollars on weaponry that you can't use? Just say, no,
• 29:09
  we're not having that, but we're having weapons that we can. And there are people in the states
• 29:14
  in a whole school of thought amongst pretty hawkish people. They're not my people that say,
• 29:19
  these are, this is like paying money for an insurance policy for a premium that we're never going
• 29:26
  to call on, that is never going to happen and we're never going to use and we're paying this massive
• 29:30
  premium all the time. Why don't we just rip that one up and spend some more money on weapons we
• 29:34
  can use? Well, it's an existential backstop, isn't it? It's not a weapon you can use. I mean,
• 29:38
  if you think about a country, you know, I think about the smaller states, for example, like Israel,
• 29:44
  they just want the ability for the mullahs in Tehran to know that if they try to wipe out Israel,
• 29:51
  they will also be wiped out. Yeah. It's not that it's a useful weapon. It's not that it's going to work
• 29:57
  functionally on the battlefield. It's not that they've ever thought about deploying it in
• 30:01
  Gaza or something. Well, they have spoken about that. Well, the crazies have. Yeah,
• 30:06
  but the crazies are there and they have spoken about that. And we have now nuclear weapon states
• 30:11
  involved into hot wars, Russia and Israel. And in both of those cases, senior people and those
• 30:17
  administrations have said we should use nukes. Yeah. I mean, there's bluster. There's bluster and
• 30:23
  then there's reality, right? So there's bluster. Then there's strategy and then there's actual
• 30:30
  what's happening on the ground in the war and those three things, I think are pretty different.
• 30:36
  Whether or not nuclear weapons are useful strategically is a different question from whether or
• 30:42
  not they're useful on the battlefield or whether or not people talk about them in blustery ways.
• 30:47
  Have they bought have they bought pizza? Have they bought security? Like is Israel?
• 30:52
  Is Israel more peaceful, more secure, more confident as a nation now because of the existence
• 30:59
  of nuclear weapons that are moaning at facility. They're all secret. I can't roll back the clock
• 31:05
  and watch the alternative timeline unfold. But many people would say that if you look at the level
• 31:11
  of antagonism and sort of the ideological battle between the USSR and the United States in the 50s
• 31:17
  that they probably were, they probably did have a peace dividend near their weapons.
• 31:23
  Well, let's see if we can move an uncomfortable conversation onto a more fruitful maybe,
• 31:30
  not that I'm not trying to get away from this, but I'm trying to say if you're a few of your points
• 31:36
  about existential and the power block and the Cold War. Okay, so where does that leave the role
• 31:42
  of these weapons in a world where it's not that binary east-west thing anymore? We're in an
• 31:51
  age of rising and falling empire, all of which are a nuclear armed. We're in an age of increasing
• 31:59
  non-state actors that have a range of capabilities. Where does that leave people? You mentioned the Western
• 32:07
  democratic project and thinking and compassion and civilization and liberal democracy.
• 32:12
  They're all worthy things. If we're people that share the broad sense of that, which is that
• 32:18
  you can engage in ideas and the contest of ideas and a value misalignment with respect,
• 32:25
  some degree of courtesy and some degree of awareness of commonality, where does that leave us for
• 32:31
  charting through weapons that can end all that now? Because I think about this and I've
• 32:38
  thrown my light in with people who say these weapons, they are existential. So that is then
• 32:46
  a matter of luck, more than grand design and luck sooner or later in any scenario runs out.
• 32:56
  I love this planet too much to rely just on luck. I don't mind a bit. I'd be continues, but
• 33:03
  want to actively do things to reduce. Now some people, and I get it a lot, people say, you know,
• 33:08
  you're dreaming, you're this and that, wake up to yourself. Other people say, oh my god, you're
• 33:12
  fantastic. You deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. I reckon that we all have some skin literally
• 33:20
  in the game of trying to shape a safer future. Well, I certainly think you're fantastic,
• 33:25
  because I think that anyone who commits themselves to an audacious goal and sees it through,
• 33:29
  and as in as dedicated away as you have is fantastic, assuming that the goal isn't like killing all
• 33:35
  the Jews or something. But the, the, some assumptions are safe. That's okay. We don't have to
• 33:41
  qualify that. The question about moving from a bipolar world to a multipolar world is an
• 33:47
  interesting one. I think it plays fore and against your thesis, potentially, right? I think
• 33:54
  like I interviewed William Perry, who was Bill Clinton's Secretary of Defense and has become
• 34:00
  an anti-nuclear activist, I suppose, in his post-political career, probably in the mid-2010s,
• 34:08
  right? So maybe 10 years ago now. And he was definitely before Trump. And I had a sense at the
• 34:16
  time that it was a no-brainer that you would get rid of nuclear weapons. They just felt like
• 34:22
  an artifact from a, a bygone era, from a time when things were much more hostile between these
• 34:28
  two rival ideological camps. We had settled into this kind of cozy post-history period where we
• 34:35
  thought we were a triumphant and descendant. And, you know, everyone was going to march towards
• 34:40
  liberal democracy, and we didn't need to be so paranoid anymore. So let's get rid of them.
• 34:44
  As the world has gotten more complicated over the past 10 years, with Putin and Ukraine,
• 34:51
  with Trump in America, with the rise of the far right in, you know, Europe, with the rise of
• 34:57
  China and questions about the fate of liberal democracy as a viable system,
• 35:04
  you could say that makes it more dangerous to permit the existence of these weapons in a chaotic
• 35:11
  world. You could also say it means we can't take liberal democracy for granted the way that we
• 35:18
  thought we could. And we need to have the rip cord still with us. We need to have that existential
• 35:26
  backstop because you don't know what other people are going to do. What's your response to that?
• 35:33
  Well, I like interpretation. I like the mapping out if you're thinking, and I am actually in
• 35:40
  option A, not surprisingly. And the reason is because I actually don't think that you can say
• 35:48
  civilisation, liberal democracy, decency freedom, and equate them with nuclear weapons as the backstop.
• 35:57
  If we're saying, and we're putting forward, that the best that we can offer the world as people
• 36:03
  who believe in the democratic project, however you broadly you interpret that, is that if you don't
• 36:10
  come on board, we'll blow you all up. Really? No, but really if you don't come on board, the
• 36:17
  claim is if you try and you try to destroy us, we will literally pass. We will blow you all up.
• 36:27
  We're prepared to do that. Look, that is just a civilisation with
• 36:33
  the suicide bomber vest on. That is, that is to me, despair, denialism,
• 36:39
  nilism writ large. It's not a celebration of humanity and our creativity and our hopes and
• 36:45
  the Western project and freedom and inclusion and all those things that we hope for to make the
• 36:51
  garden grow. No, I get it, but I mean, I just hear the, I hear your idealism and then on my
• 36:58
  shoulder, I also hear the cynical pragmatist saying, yeah, but if Ukraine had just kept a few
• 37:05
  nukes when they were all pulled out of Ukraine at the fall of the USSR, then liberal democracy in
• 37:11
  Eastern Europe would be in a very different position than it is today. Yeah. And then there's a real
• 37:15
  politic on my shoulder saying, if you can't, Ukraine had kept those nukes there,
• 37:20
  the codes would still be in Moscow, which is how the Soviets ran it. They deployed in Soviet
• 37:25
  socialist republics for a turn on comradeship. They deployed them there for geopolitical
• 37:30
  reasons and kept the codes in Moscow. So I don't think that one really stacks up in the real
• 37:35
  politic and I'm ultimately driven by a real politic too. My real politic on this is that if we
• 37:42
  lose, we lose. I will lose it all if we lose. So that's the real politic. There's no win in
• 37:51
  an endgame. No, I get it, but I mean, the Ukrainian nukes having codes in Moscow is a bit of a
• 37:59
  technicality in the sense that you could make the same argument about, you know, suppose that France
• 38:03
  extends its nuclear umbrella to Poland. Does that make liberal democracy in Central and Eastern
• 38:08
  Europe stronger or weaker? I mean, on the micro, I understand that you're looking at a macro,
• 38:15
  right? Like, you know, we want to get rid of them off the planet. I'm quibbling with, I suppose,
• 38:21
  the micro, which is the problem of each individual actor having a strong vested interest in retaining
• 38:29
  this capability. Poland and Estonia are going to remain freer if Putin knows that they're protected
• 38:38
  by French nukes than if they're not. I'm not sure. Like, if you look at the Red Army's performance,
• 38:46
  if you're into that sort of wargaming real politic thing, the Red Army, you know, big army,
• 38:51
  this and that, and they've copped a pretty heavy time in Ukraine. Like, they haven't sworn through
• 39:01
  and, you know, cross-sing in Song of the Volga boatman and sworn into Kiev. No, it's not been pretty.
• 39:07
  And it's not been pretty. So there's he want to really expand that. If you're serious about, like,
• 39:13
  okay, I can't understand why Poland. And like, Poland's been on a crossroads of Europe and everyone
• 39:17
  see ridden all sorts of hulved animals or wheeled animals or tracked animals through their place
• 39:23
  for donkeys. Back and forth. Yeah, like it's like a chair in that power park in war. Like poor
• 39:29
  thing. Imagine being stuck between Germany and Russia. So I can understand why you just say no,
• 39:35
  you know, and you'd be very cautious, concerned, mindful. Top of the list is security. So what is
• 39:41
  security? Like, if you're using nuclear weapons, I'd say that's the ultimate in insecurity. If you're
• 39:46
  a Poland, I'd say, I would want to cut a deal. I would be in Brussels and Strasbourg. This was
• 39:51
  just me. This is not the I can't lie. Right. But I would be in Brussels and Strasbourg saying,
• 39:57
  we're at the front line of this. If we wanted to find the European project, Western liberal
• 40:02
  democracy, we need real clear security guarantees that that sophisticated NATO forces,
• 40:08
  Western forces, European forces will be here, will be deployed, that we won't have some
• 40:14
  blink that you can have 100k inclusion or excursion into Poland, etc, etc. This is a red line.
• 40:21
  And that's what you do. And you would have confidence that with the vast array of weaponry,
• 40:26
  like we spend fortunes on all sorts of high-tech, clever, cynical, awful weaponry,
• 40:33
  that we say, okay, this is we're going to deploy it. Like it doesn't have to. And weaponry that
• 40:37
  is actually useful. Well, usable. Yeah. That you would actually deploy. Yeah, right. And then you
• 40:42
  would say to Moscow, here's what's happened in three years in Ukraine. And that's with Ukrainians
• 40:48
  fighting, sure with our equipment, but not with our people. Yeah. Yeah. And we will
• 40:53
  weigh it in big time if you enter into, you know. And that's, and so I suppose the anti-nuclear
• 40:59
  position is that that is both a more, that is fundamentally a more credible threat than the
• 41:06
  than the threat of nuclear weapons saying, like we're going to nuke Moscow because well, you end up
• 41:10
  not going to do that. Well, you end up, that's what it ends up. Like what the nuclear stuff ends up
• 41:16
  as a bluff and counter-bluff. And Putin would go, well, the Americans, like the Chutzpah,
• 41:24
  they won't do it. They're not going to do it unless I do it first. Yeah. And Trump would go,
• 41:27
  I'm not going to take orders from him. Maybe, or the next aid wake up and say, he's a great guy.
• 41:32
  Like it turns into this male call response sort of exercise. And you can talk about
• 41:41
  all these checks and balances and all this sort of stuff. But ultimately, you know, it comes down
• 41:46
  to ego, perception, insecurity. Like those things are massive drivers in any conflict. And in
• 41:56
  the frozen fossilized fear factor, which is the step frozen fear factor of nuclear weapons, I think
• 42:03
  you raised a really good point before about, you know, that I think we squandered the peace
• 42:11
  dividend of the fall of the Soviet Union. Like we were so busy in the West, celebrating the fall
• 42:19
  of, you know, communism. We were so busy opening up new markets, rushing to exploit new markets
• 42:27
  to buy cheap property in East Berlin to sell beamers and burgers throughout the former East block.
• 42:35
  That we actually miss the opportunity to show massive leadership and say, okay, these things
• 42:40
  have served their purpose, they're over, they're out. Or at least a massive
• 42:46
  de-escalation in numbers. Well, we did, didn't we? We did. We went from all five thousand
• 42:52
  of peace. Yes, we did. We did get rid of 75% of them and we increased capacity and sophistication
• 42:59
  and payload. Earlier, you mentioned visiting Hiroshima and reflecting on weapons that are now
• 43:05
  thousands of times more powerful than the one that decimated that city in August 45.
• 43:11
  Yeah. So I think we lost the peace dividend. We might have won it on numbers,
• 43:19
  but we lost it here. We lost it in our ability to rethink and reposition.
• 43:25
  We still had a foe and we still had this sort of, you know, the equivalent of the nuclear hawk
• 43:34
  soft toy that you cuddle into for a bit of reassurance that we've got the big button. And we
• 43:39
  should have then, but you know, it's like planning a tree. Well, when's the best time to disarm?
• 43:44
  Years ago, when's the next best now. And if you look, we're talking now, not long after
• 43:51
  the passing of Pope Francis. Now, strong advocate for nuclear disarmament.
• 43:57
  Early adopter of the treaty for the prohibition of nuclear weapons. Now you can do that with an
• 44:01
  autocratic state. You don't have to go through two houses a parliament. But like, you know, on that one,
• 44:06
  he just said, no, but Matthew five, nine, place it in the peacemakers.
• 44:11
  I've heard the Vatican, Vatican City Court and autocratic state before.
• 44:14
  Well, don't you reckon it's true? Yeah, of course. I mean, it's only a building.
• 44:18
  It's a pretty top there. It is a state. Yeah, yeah. Like a lot of national leaders feel
• 44:24
  they're infallible. But this one really is. Yeah. So, but the point there is that even in his
• 44:31
  like strong supporter champion this, held after the treaty entered into, well,
• 44:38
  became accepted in 2017, held a set of workshops and symposia in Rome at the Vatican to
• 44:45
  discuss how to advance it, sent like papal missions, missives and all that to all around the world,
• 44:51
  to Catholics all around the world saying that this is an important and good thing to champion.
• 44:54
  It's working in the walking in the footsteps of Jesus. And in his last sermon, and
• 45:00
  Easter 2025, call for disarmament, call for putting away the weapons of war and building the weapons
• 45:07
  of peace. Now, like for some, and you know, for the realist on your shoulder going, yeah,
• 45:12
  right, well, he would say that because he's a pope. Yeah, right. Well, he would say that because
• 45:16
  it also makes sense. And it is also right. And sometimes it's harder to actually take that first
• 45:22
  step than it is to just stay in the same couch and really just pretend that this is okay.
• 45:30
  So just thinking about the parties who would have to come to the to the party on this,
• 45:36
  the remind me of where the nukes are. So the US and Russia have 90%. Yep.
• 45:43
  The UK and France, as I mentioned, China, those are the declared. There's more declared ones.
• 45:49
  Yeah. So who are you underclad? Israel, Pakistan, India, India, and Pakistan are declared.
• 45:54
  They declared. Yeah. So there's a clear just means you admit it, right? Yeah, you admit it,
• 45:59
  you show it, you parade it, you have your people doing their funny walk up and down on the
• 46:03
  Mayday or whatever equipment. North Korea would also be in the North. North Korea. And then there's
• 46:07
  Israel. Right. And Israel do the whole Israel, you know, harm, ambiguity thing. And never
• 46:13
  talk about it. They smirk about it and tap the side of their show. And everybody knows. Yeah,
• 46:17
  of course. Modify the new, the Israeli nuclear technician was in this very city in Sydney.
• 46:23
  He was working at the Domona plant top secret facility in Israel and lost his faith in the state
• 46:31
  of Israel because of nuclear weapons and converted to Christianity and moved to Sydney,
• 46:37
  moved here to Sydney, practiced at the wayside chapel. And then people from I think it was the
• 46:45
  Sunday observer newspaper in London. He was reaching out that I have got picks, the full story
• 46:53
  of Israel's secret nuclear weapons program. They sent a crew out here. They had met him, safe
• 46:59
  house, lots of meetings, established that he was credible and fed income, took him to London for
• 47:04
  the whole four-bore XMI five MI six people debrief, completely convincing, completely accurate.
• 47:12
  They were doing this massive profile of him. And then he met a attractive young American Israeli
• 47:20
  who said, let's go to Rome. And in Rome, at the airport, he was lifted by Mossad agents,
• 47:29
  taken fast car to a fast boat over to Israel. Where there was a photo that's gone around the world
• 47:35
  with his hand and says, Venunu kidnapped in Rome. Years in solitary confinement, it's
• 47:45
  bad upon us a traitor as a betrayer. But also Israel was sort of like, not so bad that you do that
• 47:50
  anyway. Now everybody's going to take us seriously. Like you said before, you mess with us, we
• 47:55
  mess with you, that sort of thing. So, but they maintain this strategic ambiguity. But it's
• 48:03
  most of the estimates assume that they've got around 30 to 50 nuclear weapons. Right. Right.
• 48:09
  Right. Any other states? Well, there's nine. So what have we got? We've got US, Russia, UK, France,
• 48:18
  China, India, Pakistan, North Korea, Israel. That's it. That's it. So they all have to come to the table.
• 48:26
  Where do you start? Start with the big two. If you've got 90 percent on the problem,
• 48:31
  like if you're looking at the problem as a volume problem, rail and an attitude problem,
• 48:35
  you've got 90 percent of the problem over. And you've got two systems that have like identifiable
• 48:43
  structures and leaders and this and that. And are influenceable. There are influential points,
• 48:50
  like there are economic considerations to trade political considerations, there's quid pro
• 48:54
  pros. You bring those two to the table.
• 48:59
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