By Donald Gilpin

Three experts on nuclear weapons, each with a sharply different perspective on ”A Perpetual Menace: Nuclear Weapons Today, Tomorrow, Forever?”, spoke to a capacity audience of about 100 at Princeton University’s Robertson Hall on Monday.

Bruce Blair, a former U.S. nuclear missile launch control officer and winner of the MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Grant for his work on nuclear arms control, was direct and explicit in his warning about the dangers of nuclear weapons.

“The only reliable answer to the problem is to eliminate all nuclear weapons,” he said. “I firmly believe that if we don’t do that they will be used in our lifetime either recklessly or by some stupid mistake.”

Citing the “incredible dangers” posed by that destructive power in the hands of the leaders, “nuclear monarchs,” of nine different nations, Blair, a research scholar at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security, continued, “There is the risk that an American president could make a stupid call that no one could stop. A president could destroy the world in less than an hour with a single phone call.” Blair noted that 800 warheads on missiles and submarines could be activated within 10 minutes.

Rich in chilling examples and details, Blair’s comments delineated numerous frightening scenarios. “Every day something happens,” he said, and when a potential danger arises, the U.S. early warning team ”is required to make a judgment within three minutes. We’ve come perilously close on a couple of occasions.”

Blair also cited the growing dangers of cyber vulnerability, which could corrupt early warning data, and he mentioned that in Russia and Pakistan, safety records for example, are much more problematic and cyber vulnerability much more tenuous than in the U.S.

“There are a lot of unanswered questions about the reliability of our system,” he said. Describing “a state of brinkmanship around the world right now,” Blair went on to discuss the current tensions in the global climate that could lead to “inadvertent or deliberate escalation of conflict. It’s not so much premeditated as events slipping out of control. Every day there are very dangerous encounters by forces on each side.”

Picking up on the theme of brinkmanship and also moving the conversation to questions of dollars and cents, Sharon Weiner, associate professor at American University who held White House responsibility for nuclear weapons budgets during the Obama administration, outlined the implausibility of U.S. budget projections in the realm of nuclear weapons.

The current program calls for $1.2 trillion over the next 30 years to modernize the nuclear weapons arsenal, but the Congressional Budget Office estimates that that figure is only a floor. Weiner predicts $2 trillion or more and about 65 years to complete the modernization plan.

With a note of optimism, Weiner noted that the modernization program is still mostly in its research and development stages, with only about ten percent having been spent so far. She pointed out the strange concept of “the requirement,” based, she suggested, on arbitrary presidential decision-making, for the nuclear arsenal — “Where does it come from? Why is it here?” — and went on to mention the possibility of challenging the basis of deterrence and the value of nuclear as opposed to conventional weapons.

Coming from the perspective of the non-nuclear “rest of the international community,” third panelist Costa Rican United Nations Ambassador Elayne Whyte Gomez, who led the negotiations earlier this year of the U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, questioned what outsiders could do.

“We can raise our voices about what we think,” she said, “and we can create norms to try to regulate and change the reality of the situation.”

She cited the responsibility of every single government in this scenario, “responsibility to the rest of the world and to future generations.”

Gomez discussed the process of forming the coalition of 122 countries that supported the U.N. Treaty, and she noted that the international community has the ability to build new norms of behavior among the nations of the world.

“We can deconstruct the current reality,” she said. “We can provide pathways to build a new reality. We need new ways of thinking, new ways of understanding.”

In conjunction with Monday’s panel discussion, Princeton University’s Bernstein Gallery in Robertson Hall is presenting a multifaceted exhibition, “Shadows and Ashes: The Peril of Nuclear Weapons,” running through December 7.