38.6.3: Nuclear Proliferation

Nuclear proliferation is the spread of nuclear weapons, fissionable material, and weapons-applicable nuclear technology and information to nations not recognized as “Nuclear Weapon States” by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, also known as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Proliferation has been opposed by many nations with and without nuclear weapons, the governments of which fear that as more countries obtain nuclear weapons, the possibility of nuclear war (up to and including the so-called “countervalue” targeting of civilians with nuclear weapons) will also increase, leading to the destabilization of international or regional relations and potential infringements upon the national sovereignty of states.

Four countries besides the five recognized nuclear weapons states have acquired, or are presumed to have acquired, nuclear weapons: India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel. None of these four is a party to the NPT, although North Korea acceded to the NPT in 1985 and then withdrew in 2003, then proceeded to conduct announced nuclear tests in 2006, 2009, 2013, and 2016. One critique of the NPT is that it is discriminatory in recognizing as nuclear weapon states only those countries that tested nuclear weapons before 1968 and requiring all other states joining the treaty to forswear nuclear weapons.

Research into the development of nuclear weapons was undertaken during World War II by the United States (in cooperation with the United Kingdom and Canada), Germany, Japan, and the USSR. The United States was the first and is the only country to have used a nuclear weapon in war, deploying two bombs against Japan in August 1945. Following their WWII losses, Germany and Japan ceased involvement in any nuclear weapon research. In August 1949, the USSR tested a nuclear weapon. The United Kingdom tested a nuclear weapon in October 1952. France developed a nuclear weapon in 1960. The People’s Republic of China detonated a nuclear weapon in 1964. India exploded a nuclear device in 1974, and Pakistan conducted a series of nuclear weapon tests in May 1998, following tests by India earlier that month. In 2006, North Korea conducted its first nuclear test.

Fat Man. A mock-up of the Fat Man nuclear device. Source: US  Department of Defense.

Non-proliferation Efforts

Early efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation involved intense government secrecy, the wartime acquisition of known uranium stores (the Combined Development Trust), and at times even outright sabotage—such as the bombing of a heavy-water facility thought to be used for a German nuclear program. None of these efforts were explicitly public because the weapon developments themselves were kept secret until the bombing of Hiroshima. Earnest international efforts to promote nuclear non-proliferation began soon after World War II when the Truman Administration proposed the Baruch Plan of 1946, named after Bernard Baruch, America’s first representative to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission (UNAEC). The Baruch Plan, which drew heavily from the Acheson–Lilienthal Report of 1946, proposed the verifiable dismantlement and destruction of the U.S. nuclear arsenal after all governments had cooperated successfully to accomplish two things:

1. the establishment of an international atomic development authority, which would actually own and control all military-applicable nuclear materials and activities, and
2. the creation of a system of automatic sanctions, which not even the UN Security Council could veto, and which would proportionately punish states attempting to acquire the capability to make nuclear weapons or fissile material.

Baruch’s plea for the destruction of nuclear weapons invoked basic moral and religious intuitions. In one part of his address to the UN, Baruch said, “Behind the black portent of the new atomic age lies a hope which, seized upon with faith, can work out our salvation. If we fail, then we have damned every man to be the slave of Fear. Let us not deceive ourselves. We must elect World Peace or World Destruction…. We must answer the world’s longing for peace and security.” With this remark, Baruch helped launch the field of nuclear ethics, to which many policy experts and scholars have contributed.

Although the Baruch Plan enjoyed wide international support, it failed to emerge from the UNAEC because the Soviet Union planned to veto it in the Security Council. Still, it remained official American policy until 1953, when President Eisenhower made his Atoms for Peace proposal before the UN General Assembly. Eisenhower’s proposal led eventually to the creation of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 1957. Under the Atoms for Peace program thousands of scientists from around the world were educated in nuclear science and then dispatched home, where many later pursued secret weapons programs in their own countries. Since its founding by the United Nations in 1957, the IAEA has promoted two sometimes contradictory missions: on the one hand, the Agency seeks to promote and spread internationally the use of civilian nuclear energy; on the other hand, it seeks to prevent, or at least detect, the diversion of civilian nuclear energy to nuclear weapons, nuclear explosive devices, or purposes unknown. The IAEA now operates a safeguards system as specified under Article III of the NPT, which aims to ensure that civil stocks of uranium and plutonium, as well as facilities and technologies associated with these nuclear materials, are used only for peaceful purposes and do not contribute in any way to proliferation or nuclear weapons programs. It is often argued that proliferation of nuclear weapons has been prevented by the extension of assurances and mutual defense treaties to these states by nuclear powers, but other factors such as national prestige or specific historical experiences also play a part in hastening or stopping nuclear proliferation.

Flag of the IAEA. The International Atomic Energy Agency was created in 1957 to encourage peaceful development of nuclear technology while providing international safeguards against nuclear proliferation.

Efforts to conclude an international agreement to limit the spread of nuclear weapons did not begin until the early 1960s, after four nations (the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and France) had acquired nuclear weapons. Although these efforts stalled in the early 1960s, they renewed once again in 1964 after China detonated a nuclear weapon. In 1968, governments represented at the Eighteen Nation Disarmament Committee finished negotiations on the text of the NPT. In June 1968, the UN General Assembly endorsed the NPT with General Assembly Resolution 2373 (XXII), and in July 1968, the NPT opened for signature in Washington, D.C., London, and Moscow. The NPT entered into force in March 1970.

Since the mid-1970s, the primary focus of non-proliferation efforts has been to maintain and even increase international control over the fissile material and specialized technologies necessary to build such devices, because these are the most difficult and expensive parts of a nuclear weapons program. The main materials whose generation and distribution is controlled are highly enriched uranium and plutonium. Other than the acquisition of these special materials, the scientific and technical means for weapons construction to develop rudimentary but working nuclear explosive devices are considered within the reach of most if not all industrialized nations.

Attributions

• Nuclear Proliferation
  • “Nuclear proliferation.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_proliferation. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “Fat_man.jpg.” https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fat_man.jpg. Wikimedia Commons Public domain.
  • “Flag_of_IAEA.svg.png.” https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_IAEA.svg. Wikimedia Commons Public domain.