♪ peter: hello and a very warm welcome indeed to the latest totion of "quadriga" coming you from the heart of berlin. defense and security experts from around the world will be gathering in germany for the highly influential unit security conference. it comes at a time when experts say the world is on the brink of a new arms race. are they right? there are growing tensions two key nuclear powers, the united states and russia with both sides

threatening to increase their nuclear capacity and china is also expanding its nuclear arsenal. other countries with nuclear ambitions such as north korea. the question this week is --"the new arms race: a more dangerous world?" to discuss that question, i am joined in the studio by constanze stelzenmuller, who is an expert on security issues with the brookings institute in washington. she says the world has become a more dangerous in the last 12 months. problems with effective arms only one of several reasons. also with us is malte lehming, an editor with der tagesspiegel. he argues that none of the great powers profit from any kind of military escalation. the world is getting very unpredictable but not necessarily more dangerous. and a warm welcome also to xanthe hall from the german

section of the international campaign to abolish nuclear weapons -- weapons, widely known as ican. she says since the adoption of a nuclear ban by the united nations, she is optimistic that nuclear weapons will be a polished in her lifetime. thank you for that note of optimism. long-term optimism. tell us about how safe or unsafe the world we currently live in is. it is terrifically unsafe. some say it is even less safe than it was during the cold war. we have had several conferences on this subject and experts from chatham house have looked at the problem of risk and they say we have some big problems. the problem of large-scale modernization of nuclear weapons but also there is more cyber problems than before. cyberattacks with

attacks. and more nuclear weapon states. do you say that you believe nuclear weapons could be abolished in your lifetime? people would say that is a fine dream but it will not happen. xanthe: my experience is different. in the worst times of the cold war, that is when the best treaties were written. in my view, it sometimes has to get worse to get better. i think we are in that place where people are waking up to the problem. didcertainly, 122 states that last year when they decided to adopt a treaty banning nuclear weapons. we have a majority are ready and the one for a ban on nuclear weapons. that means the chance of putting pressure on nuclear weapons states have gone up and not down. they have to start talking about disarmament although they are not at the moment prepared to do so.

stelzenmuller,e you are nodding. at theze: i was nodding last part. i have a norma's respect for what you do and for what ican does but i think the majority in -- at a time when international law seems to be under attack from all sides, when large and small states are upring up -- are gearing military capabilities including hybrid warfare capabilities and are exhibiting the will, and the intent to use them in all sorts of ways, at a time when the russians are prepared to violate the principle of nonaggression in eastern europe, are still in ukraine and have

illegally annexed to a province of ukraine, i am less than confident that the nuclear states are going to bow as much as i would like that to happen. peter: xanthe, would you like to respond? xanthe: i can understand that. of whether youn are optimistic or pessimistic and that is a largely personal one. in this instance, the only realistic option to deal with this is not to lie down and resign. the only thing we can do is use any bit of optimism we have to stand up to the nuclear weapons states, all of them. and i don't just mean the united russiaand i don't mean or north korea. all of them as a group. to say from the rest of the it is time to lay them down. it is absolutely against international law to be threatening each other,

especially with annihilation. it is time that we understood that nuclear weapons are like biological and chemical weapons. we cannot possibly accept their use or the threat of their use. peter: malte lehming, i would like you to talk about this. the munich security conference is at issue and the question of whether there is a new nuclear arms race and whether one is emerging. one commentator said ahead of the conference that we live in power increaserd in late trumps soft power. is that a fair assessment? malte: i would not say so. nuclear posturing from the united states which puts billions of dollars into nuclear weapons -- the question is, and we had the same discussion talking about the mutually assured destruction from the 1980's.

isn't it enough when the powers have 10 intercontinental ballistic missiles? then they switched over to flexible response. we have to be credible. credibility is the new currency in this thing. --t is happening in the u.s. they think about -- you talked about cyber war. i think that is the next level. but when a country like russia or china is going to cyber war -- how do you react? our low yield nuclear weapons a deterrent? now.ity is right hard to say how to be safe. is nuclearg thing proliferation with terrorist organizations. i think these threats are the biggest. cyber war and nuclear proliferation. justminor nice thing -- modernizing the nuclear system is not enough.

put 1% of the budget, the pentagon does come into cyber war. constanze: let us not leave out of the picture political warfare. put 1% of the budget, the pentagonor as one of my brookins colleagues in a book says -- measures short of war which ourrfere in politics and economies. it is something the russians are doing that also the chinese and the iranians. propaganda. has a toxic and destabilizing affect which undermines the trust you need in societies to get to the kind of agreement you would like to see. inathose are in arguably -- inflicting real-time polities and our social cohesion as we speak.

i think if we do not keep firmly in mind that that is where things are currently having come -- are current happening, we lose a big part of the picture. point 4 billion people are already connected by the internet. all cities and aircraft carriers are heavily reliant on computerization. that leads us to hackers. whole cities are reliant on energy and water supplies. you can sabotage that with cyber war. i think this waste of money for nuclear armament is nothing but a waste of money. , coming back to the security conference. in the issue -- in the report

they issued before the conference, a report says the world has gotten closer to the brink of significant conflict. constanze: i think that means we have seen a variety of actors that possessed nuclear weapons but also significant conventional capabilities threatening each other with actual warfare. the north koreans, the chinese, the americans, and the russians. or actually undertaking it. all of these things add to a client -- a climate of uncertainty. together has taken made the world significantly less safe than it was a decade ago or even two years ago. peter: xanthe? xanthe: i absolutely agree with that. that all ofto see the nuclear weapons states --

only just last week, israel was also involved in a strike by one of its jets -- one of its jets was brought down. escalationchances of going up the whole time through the fact that they are crossing each other's pats with military all of -- each other's paths all of the time. and we still have the troubles with india and pakistan. that, for instance, what would happen if india and pakistan had a limited nuclear war. we worked this out with a study. what would happen on both sides -- if 50 small nuclear weapons were used. it would affect things globally

in a way that we have never seen before. it would plunge us into a period of time with less sunlight and rain and we could potentially have millions of people die from starvation because we could not grow enough food. hand, iut on the other might disagree a little because for example, the great power competition is not the real threat. china has no imperial ambitions. the united states in a way is fatiguedgued -- is war . the experience of going to war is not so good. even for the russians conquering the crimean peninsula. they are stuck now in east ukraine, losing their soldiers and wasting money. for no gain. constanze: i will have to disagree. malte: the experience of going

century --he 19th you could conquer land, gain resources. you could be bigger and more powerful. wherehow me the war people come out bigger and more powerful. it is true that the russians and up with spectacularly bad real estate. crimea -- that is no one's idea of a strategic acquisition. done here wasas more done for political purposes than anything else. however, it is not true to say that russia and china are currently status quo powers. the chinese are building out islands in the south pacific. revisionist are a power. the americans have been messaging to their allies and

the world that they are considering the ability -- a so-called bloody nose strike against korea. most of the allies have been saying -- please do not do this because there is no way to contain such a strike. it is apparently being buried seriously considered in washington. while it is true that the americans -- the american citizenry is tired of the wars in afghanistan and iraq, there are still a lot of forces out there in afghanistan and iraq and are likely to remain there for a long time. and it is entirely possible that war could come to them even if they do not want to pursue it. as we keep peering in washington every day, there are wars they are willing to pursue. off thatt us break conversation and go to some pictures. the key question we are

addressing today is how great is the nuclear conflict. very real, seemed very recently to the people in hawaii. [ video clip ] >> a false alarm about a ballistic missile attack caused a panic in hawaii. for nearly 40 minutes, it seemed like an attack was imminent. public response may have had something to do with the concerns about the international nuclear arms race. for several years now, north korea leader kim jong-un has been provoking the u.s. with nuclear weapons tests. china has also increased its nuclear forces. modernized its nuclear arsenal. and several other countries are trying to develop nuclear weapons. is taking these developments very seriously. spend $1.2ants to trillion in the next three decades to maintain and

modernize its nuclear arsenal. are we facing an increased threat of nuclear war? ♪ what: can you remember went through your head when that was happening? well how remember very i reacted. i was thrown back into the 1980's when i remembered the whention as a 19-year-old i heard the siren going off in birmingham where i was living at the time. and i thought it was the end of the world. and i wondered how i could get to my loved ones and i knew i did not have the time. and i really sympathized with the people. i know people that live in hawaii. --y wrote on twitter saying we do not know what to do. where should we go? it was a horrible moment for me because it brought back --

actually, the reason i am working on this subject now. malte: i completely agree. nuclear arms are still something that cause people nightmares. and rightly so. every use of a nuclear weapon would be immoral because innocent people would die. in the age of nuclear deterrence -- you are threatening with the use of something in order not to use it. this is the rationale of deterrence. the whole formula saying the more people are threatening each other with the use of something, the more likely it is that they go to war is not true of itself. just -- this is the rationale of nuclear deterrence. when donald trump is talking about using any kind of nuclear

weapons in, let us say, north korea, his aim is -- he is talking about it in order not to use it. peter: surely his message is quite explicit. we have a relatively un-significant -- unsophisticated, impetuous president and his message is much more to the north koreans and the iranians. we will use our nuclear capacities. malte: this is his message but his message does not mean he will use it. his message is -- i give you the message in order not to use it. that is the rationale of deterrence. when you threaten someone with an immoral act in order not to fulfill that act. since 1945.working i think you are

climbing up a poll that you will find it very difficult to come down from. and i would like to prevent you from doing that. right now, we have a situation that is completely different from the traditional logic of deterrence. andntially, you have icbms intermediate weapons that were carefully set up in such a way as to produce the effect that you suggest. right now, you have people talking about the actual battlefield use of nuclear weapons in a way that would have been considered outrageously irresponsible by their predecessors during the cold war. -- it is veryhink clear from the things the president of america has said that he believes nuclear weapons can and should be used. he is not saying it just to threaten people. malte: how do you know? constanze: because of the way that he said it. malte: he looks so serious when

he says it. constanze: the reason they are terrified is they believe that he believes they should use them. malte: that is nuclear deterrence. constanze: you're contradicting what you just said. supposed tos not terrify the advisors of the american president. it is supposed to deter your up on it. malte: they should believe he is serious. that is what he is doing. it is working. constanze: i'm sorry. this is just not true. and i think you know better. and i don't want to keep harping on the current american president. present -- presidents of the, george w. bush had his advisors work on a nuclear posture review which also considered the usability of nuclear tactical weapons.

this had nothing to do with deterrence as american specialists knew very well at that time. our problem i think -- and i think we are closer to each other -- we are seeing a loosening up or the undermining of the logic of deterrence. the situation today is completely different. an ideological confrontation as we did in the cold war. we do not have confrontations right now of fighting about resources. it is not the great power competition that we used to face. what is lacking is the whole rationale of going to work. but there is great competition all around us. between the americans and the russians. -- e: innocent deaths

my problem is not that donald trump will decide to use a nuclear weapon on north korea. my problem is that he will provoke -- that he will provoke kim jong-un by the rhetoric he is using. i feel the same way about russia. even if one sees them as being just as aggressive. one sees the corners that they are putting each other into through a particular kind of rhetoric. i'd like to go back to what you said about it working since 1945. the fact is that deterrence has not kept the peace. there are several instances where it failed. and we can say at least one we know of with stanislav petrov where he saved the world. -- actually thought

saved thepetrov world. latee late 19's -- in the 1990's in the moment when he thought there was a missile attack coming in from the united states. he was absolutely sure that this could not be the case. give thatdid not information of the line of command for them to make the decision. constanze: and he was right that it turned out to be a malfunction of the signaling. but under the logic of deterrence, he went against his training and said -- i will make a personal decision here and he decided not to do that. there are several instances where that has happened and we were just lucky. point made. i'd like to take the conversation in a different direction. you mentioned the countries that have signed up to the nuclear nonproliferation agreement.

what about the countries that have not signed up like china or russia for example. aat kind of leverage does nobel prize-winning organization like your own have with governments like russia and china? xanthe: ican is not just looking at two of nine nuclear weapon states. the point of the treaty is not to single out nuclear weapon these are thesay states that do not have nuclear weapons and they feel threatened by those that do. and they want nuclear weapons band. that is what cap -- nuclear weapons banned. and that is what has happened with this treaty. the idea for this treaty is to put pressure on those they -- on those states that do have nuclear weapons to start discussions on disarmament. they want to delegitimize nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence to get us there because we are stuck in a

position at the moment where nothing is happening but modernization and an arms race is starting. we have to do something very drastic year. peter: when you talk about legitimacy. is it right to have nuclear weapons on one's territory? xanthe: there is no reason to have those nuclear weapons. one could use them in fact a signal that one wants to move away from this doctrine of nuclear deterrence. and the german government has been consistently saying they are in favor of a nuclear weapon free world but i have not seen any concrete -- look at the coalition agreement. i have not seen any concrete ideas in this for how we are going to arrive at any kind of nuclear disarmament. peter: the music has come up. we will have to leave it there. our topic today was "the new arms race: a more dangerous world?" we hope we have given

you plenty of things to think about. goodbye. ♪

♪ peter: hello, and a very warm welcome indeed to "fokus on europe," with me, peter craven. now, valletta, the capital of the tiny mediterranean island of malta, is currently making headlines. it's just been inaugurated as a european capital of culture. so, expect a dense year-long prograof events to mark the island's colorful heritage, including parades and spectacular performances. but another, darker side to the island is also in the headlines. because malta is mired in corruption that it's believed could extend right up to the highest levels of government.