Nuclear Proliferation: Overview

Introduction

Nuclear proliferation, or the spread of nuclear-weapons capability, is widely perceived as one of the most pressing threats to international security due to the devastation that even one nuclear bomb can cause. At least nine countries are believed to maintain nuclear weapon stockpiles, and several of them, such as North Korea, have regimes in power that have taken threatening stances and refuse to allow inspections. Other countries, such as Iran, have been suspected of developing nuclear weapons, causing international scrutiny and concern. There is also international concern that a country designated as a "rogue state" will obtain weapons capability. The weapons may then be used to launch a state-sponsored attack or even fall into the hands of terrorists.

Historically, the threat of nuclear war came in large part from tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union during the period known as the Cold War. Though the two countries came to the nuclear brink during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, weapons parity, mutually assured destruction, and diplomatic negotiations fostered a precarious balance and what was sometimes described as “peaceful coexistence.”

The first nuclear nonproliferation treaty was the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963, initiated to limit potential nuclear militarized states. The United States and the Soviet Union both believed that by limiting nuclear weapons technology, they could better control the potential risks of nuclear conflict. The Test Ban Treaty was followed by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, or the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which was opened for signature in 1968 and went into effect in 1970. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and signatories of the NPT attempted to curb proliferation, but after the collapse of the Soviet Union the problem of spreading nuclear capabilities grew more acute. In many former Soviet states there are concerns that scientists or other individuals with access to nuclear weapons may be motivated to make the technology easily available to the world in general, allowing rogue regimes or terrorist organizations to use nuclear weapons as blackmail or to attack enemies. Given that some nuclear stockpiles are unsecured and that the ban on selling or providing nuclear technology to nonnuclear countries has been repeatedly violated, the threat of nuclear warfare looms large.

The right of some countries to possess nuclear weapons for defensive purposes is hotly contested. Countries that seek to develop nuclear stockpiles, especially those whose enemies have nuclear capabilities, argue that they have the right to defend themselves, whether by deterrence or a nuclear response in the event of an attack. Others have stated that they seek not nuclear weapons but nuclear energy. Critics of nuclear-proliferation bans also point out that sanctions and international scrutiny demonstrate significant double standards between nonnuclear countries and those nations that already possess nuclear technology. Meanwhile, those who propose reduction and eventual eradication of stockpiles on all sides have been marginalized in this debate.

Understanding the Discussion

Arms control: Attempts to negotiate limitations, regulations, or reductions to a country’s weapons arsenal.

Deterrence: Discouragement or hindrance; in a nuclear-weapons context, the discouragement or hindrance of their use, generally based on weapons parity and the knowledge that retaliation would make mutual destruction a distinct possibility.

Fission: The process by which a single nucleus is split into two or more nuclei in order to release energy. The fission of uranium releases a tremendous amount of nuclear energy.

Fissile: Describes a material that is capable of sustaining a chain reaction of nuclear fission in which either slow neutrons or fast neutrons predominate. Slow neutrons can fuel thermal nuclear reactors, while fast neutrons can fuel either fast neutron reactors or nuclear explosives.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA): An independent, international body that monitors the use of nuclear energy throughout the world, sets safety standards, and promotes the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT): A 1968 treaty designed to restrict the possession of nuclear weapons by and the provision of nuclear technology and weaponry to nonnuclear states.

Nuclear parity: The state of two or more countries having an equal number of nuclear armaments, generally with the aim of deterrence.

Uranium: A fissile heavy metal used in nuclear technology. The isotope uranium-235 is the primary fuel used to generate nuclear power and weapons.

History

Uranium enrichment, the process by which uranium is converted for use in nuclear fuel reactors and nuclear weapons, has become one of the most pressing international security issues of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

The fissile nature of uranium-235 was first discovered by the German scientists Otto Hahn, Lise Meitner, and Fritz Strassmann in 1938. Though they did not work on the Nazis' program to develop nuclear weapons, their discovery gave Germany an early start in the arms race during World War II. During the early 1940s, as part of the Manhattan Project, US scientists experimented with enriching both uranium-235 and plutonium in order to develop the nuclear bomb before Germany or Japan could. By 1945, scientists had managed to produce bomb-grade enriched uranium. Both uranium and plutonium were used in the bombs dropped by the United States on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

Unlike the heavier, more common uranium-238, uranium-235 can undergo fission to produce nuclear energy. However, since uranium-235 makes up less than 1 percent of naturally occurring uranium, its concentration has to be increased to a level between 3 and 5 percent so that a nuclear chain reaction can be started and sustained. Once the uranium ore is mined and milled to make a partially refined substance known as "yellowcake," it is converted into uranium hexafluoride by combining it with fluorine. After the uranium hexafluoride is enriched, it becomes nuclear fuel.

Two processes for enrichment have been developed and used for decades, though alternative strategies are also being explored. The first process is gaseous diffusion, which was common in the United States throughout the twentieth century but was deemed obsolete as enrichment facilities began to reach their ends-of-life. The last gaseous diffusion facility in the United States was closed in 2013; these facilities are being replaced by ones that use the gas-centrifuge method, first popularized in Europe. In any enrichment method, the goal is to separate the lighter uranium hexafluoride molecules, containing a greater concentration of uranium-235, from the heavier molecules, which consist almost entirely of uranium-238. The uranium used in most nuclear power reactors must be enriched to between 3 and 5 percent, whereas nuclear weapons require a much higher level of concentration. However, this low-grade uranium, also known as low-enriched uranium (LEU), could be used in a radiological dispersion device—a "dirty bomb"—that combines radioactive materials with explosives

The United States was the first country to test the possibilities of nuclear explosions and is the only country to have used nuclear weapons in warfare. The devastation wrought on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 at the end of World War II (1939–45) made the power and efficacy of nuclear weapons all too apparent, and it became evident that they would have to be controlled for the benefit and long-term survival of humanity.

In 1946, the administration of President Harry S. Truman introduced the Baruch Plan, the first official effort to control proliferation, to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission (UNAEC). It proposed that atomic energy be used by all countries for peaceful purposes and monitored by an international body, while all weapons of mass destruction would be eliminated. The Soviet Union refused to agree to the plan’s terms, and it was never implemented. The Soviet Union went on to conduct its first nuclear test in 1949, thus beginning a tense arms race with the United States that would last for nearly four decades. Use of nuclear arms was kept in check by the doctrine of deterrence, but a climate of fear was pervasive throughout the period.

The threat inspired President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” speech to the United Nations General Assembly in 1953, which ultimately led to the creation of the IAEA in 1957. Both the United States and the Soviet Union agreed to allow the IAEA to carry out inspections of their facilities. Nevertheless, proliferation grew apace, and in 1970, the NPT went into effect, with the IAEA assuming responsibilities for inspections.

The NPT allowed for countries to pursue nuclear technology for peaceful purposes and officially recognized five nuclear-weapon states—the United States and the Soviet Union, plus the United Kingdom, France, and China—on the basis that they had all developed nuclear capabilities prior to 1967. India, Israel, and Pakistan have never signed the treaty, and North Korea signed in 1985 but withdrew in 2003. South Africa developed nuclear weapons during the apartheid era but later chose to destroy their stockpiles and sign the NPT. India and Pakistan are both known to have nuclear weapons, while Israel refuses to reveal information about its status but is widely believed to possess nuclear weapons as well.

During the latter half of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union negotiated several arms-control treaties or conferences designed to limit the number of nuclear weapons in their stockpiles. These included the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) I (1969–72), the ABM Treaty (1972), SALT II (1972–1979), and the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) I signed in 1991. In September 1996, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) was adopted by the UN General Assembly and opened for signature. However, the treaty did not go into effect because several required member states did not ratify it. These included the United States, China, Egypt, Iran, and Israel, all of which signed the treaty but did not achieve full ratification.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the immediate threat of nuclear warfare between the world’s two superpowers subsided, but it was soon replaced with a new set of threats, arguably more menacing. The political and economic upheavals that Russia and other former Soviet states were undergoing led to concern throughout the international community that Russia’s nuclear stockpiles and materials were unsecured and might be sold to other countries. This threat led to the establishment of the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, an initiative within the US Department of Defense that provided former Soviet states with the economic assistance and expertise necessary to decommission their nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons stockpiles. The US also continued to negotiate with Russia, although the SALT II treaty signed in 1993 never went into force.

Another proliferation landmark was the testing and development of nuclear weapons in 1998 by India and Pakistan, two countries with a history of enmity. The tests fueled concerns that the two nations would engage in such an arms race and resolve their dispute over the territory of Kashmir with their nuclear capabilities.

Most countries that possess or seek nuclear weapons argue that they do so for defensive purposes. Some point out that a lack of parity in weapons capability is not fair, especially if the imbalance is between two enemies. Those seeking nuclear weapons also point out the double standard in allowing some countries to possess them while denying them to others; the United States and Israel are particularly criticized on this point. Finally, these countries often voice their right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. Critics of this argument counter that they may take advantage of such a peaceful program to pursue nuclear weapons in secret.

Critics of nuclear proliferation and nuclear weapons in general argue that the threat posed by such technology is so grave that it needs to be more stringently controlled, if not banned completely. They note that the expense of pursuing and maintaining nuclear weapons is inordinately high and that funds could better be spent on essential services for a country’s citizenry. Finally, the dangers posed by the testing of nuclear weapons, their accidental use, and industrial accidents involving nuclear materials is high. The impact of nuclear production on the environment and the risk to human beings exposed to low-level emissions were cited as concerns. The 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania, the 1986 explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the former Soviet Union (now in Ukraine), and the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan are three incidents often used to illustrate the dangers of nuclear energy and long-term negative health effects of radiation.

There has also been a growing movement within the international community to establish internationally owned enrichment centers that would supply multiple nation-states. The first such joint facility, the International Uranium Enrichment Center, was established in Angarsk, Russia, in 2007. It was operated jointly by Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Armenia.

Nuclear Proliferation Today

In the early twenty-first century, attention to nuclear proliferation by the US government and the American public tended to focus on the capabilities of US adversaries. In particular, Russia, North Korea, and Iran continued to be widely considered significant nuclear threats. In addition, the risk of nuclear materials falling into the hands of terrorist organizations also attracted increasing concern.

Bilateral negotiations between the US and Russia continued through the 2000s and 2010s. The Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT) was signed in 2002 and written to expire in 2012. In 2010, US president Barack Obama and Russian president Dmitry Medvedev signed the so-called New START agreement, which went into effect the following year and superseded both START I (which expired in December 2009) and SORT. Under the terms of New START, both countries agreed to reduce the number of their strategic nuclear missile launchers by half and begin new inspection and verification operations. Originally set to expire in 2021, that year the treaty was extended to 2026. However, in February 2023 Russia announced it was suspending its participation, raising concerns of further proliferation of nuclear stockpiles.

Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, new concerns arose surrounding Russia's nuclear capabilities and the global spread of nuclear weapons in general. Some observers pointed out that Russia, a nuclear state, could not be deterred from invading Ukraine, a nonnuclear state, in large part because of the imbalance in power. As the Russia-Ukraine war progressed, Russian president Vladimir Putin also suggested that Russia would potentially be willing to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, particularly if NATO countries intervened in the conflict. In November 2023 Russia formally rescinded its ratification of the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, which the US had signed in 1996 but never formally ratified. This treaty had banned all nuclear explosions, whether for military or peaceful purposes. In April 2024 Russia also vetoed a UN resolution which would have banned nuclear weapons in space; in the aftermath of that decision, some US intelligence officials warned that Russia was developing a nuclear weapon which could be used in space to disable satellites.

Meanwhile, in 2003, North Korea withdrew from the NPT and stepped up its nuclear program, leading much of the rest of the world to fear the country’s potential to develop a weapon and act as a nuclear aggressor. Throughout the 2000s, North Korea indeed developed and tested nuclear weapons and engaged in frequent back-and-forth discussions with Western powers over its capabilities. There were international reports that North Korea tested nuclear explosive devices in 2006, 2009, 2013, 2016, and 2017. In 2015 and 2016, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un even claimed that his regime possessed and tested a hydrogen bomb. Due to the isolation of North Korea, however, the true extent of the country’s nuclear capabilities remained unclear. After Donald Trump became US president, he effected a remarkable meeting with Kim Jong-un in 2018, in which the two leaders agreed in general terms to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula, but those plans never came to fruition.

During the first decades of the twenty-first century, Iran also came under scrutiny for its nuclear program, which it insisted was for peaceful purposes. Questions arose over the true nature of the nation’s nuclear goals due to the country's repressive government and use of proxies in conflicts throughout the Middle East. Incentives to Iran did not immediately produce the West’s desired effect, and with long-standing hostility between the United States and Iran, international tensions increased over the Iranian nuclear program. Tense relations between Iran and Israel also fueled ongoing concerns over an escalation of conflict in the region. The possibility of a preemptive Israeli strike at Iranian nuclear facilities, reminiscent of the 1981 raid against Iraqi nuclear facilities, made the problem especially urgent.

In July 2015, a major international agreement was made regarding Iran’s nuclear program with the passage of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). This so-called Iran nuclear deal established a new level of cooperation between Iran and world powers including the UN Security Council and the European Union. Under the terms of the agreement, Iran planned to reduce or eradicate its stocks of various forms of enriched uranium, limit its future uranium enrichment program, and reduce or limit other nuclear technologies and facilities, taking special care to provide greater safeguards against nuclear proliferation to terrorists or other rogue groups. The IAEA was also given authority to inspect Iran’s nuclear facilities and confirm the agreement was being followed. In return, the United States, UN, and European Union would lift certain sanctions against Iran. In January 2016, all nuclear-related sanctions against Iran were lifted after the country met key metrics of the deal. Although the Iran nuclear deal was widely seen around the world as a new chapter in international efforts to build trust regarding nuclear technology and prevent dangerous proliferation, it proved highly controversial in the US. During his 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump pledged to "dismantle" the JCPOA, and after he took office as president, in May 2018, he withdrew the United States from the agreement and reinstated US sanctions against Iran. This raised fears that Iran could restart its nuclear weapons program. In 2020, Iran announced it would no longer full commit to the deal, although it suggested it would continue to cooperate with the IAEA. International fears of further nuclear proliferation in the region were fueled by escalating tensions after the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in 2023, which led Iran and Israel to conduct direct strikes against each other.

Concerns about nuclear proliferation by US adversaries such as Russia, North Korea, and Iran also directly connected to the threat of proliferation to non-state actors in the early twenty-first century. Persistent rumors that terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda and ISIS were seeking nuclear-weapons capabilities gained increasing international alarm. The 2004 admission by Pakistan’s top nuclear scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, that he had provided several rogue countries with nuclear secrets further highlighted the dangers of nuclear proliferation. To counter this, the United States led the Proliferation Security Initiative, designed to strengthen previous treaties. The issue was further highlighted in 2005, when the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the IAEA and its general director, Mohammed El-Baradei, for their work in attempting to manage nuclear proliferation.

In light of continued concerns regarding nuclear weapons on a global scale, the UN General Assembly negotiated the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) to create comprehensive guidelines to prohibit the development, testing, stockpiling, and deployment of nuclear weapons by member states. The TPNW sought to reinforce states' support of and commitment to the NPT. However, some states opposed the treaty, believing it could undermine the NPT and take attention away from other important nonproliferation initiatives. Despite such objections, the treaty was adopted in July 2017 and opened for signature two months later; it entered into force in January 2021. Though it was incapable of forcing the elimination of nuclear weapons, the TPNW strengthened legal and political incentives against their use. By late 2024, the treaty had been signed by ninety-four states and ratified by seventy-three states. However, no official nuclear-weapon-holding states participated.

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